On May 7, 1861, Rabindranath Tagore, India's first Nobel winner, was born in Kolkata. In addition to being a poet, he was also a playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter. Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, and the second non-European after Theodore Roosevelt, for his collection of poems Gitanjali.

Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature 'for his profoundly sensitive, new, and beautiful verse, by which he has made his poetic philosophy, articulated in his own English words, a part of the Western literature with exquisite mastery.'

Rabindranath Tagore, also known as Gurudev, Kobiguru, and Biswakobi, was a Bengali polymath who was a poet, novelist, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter. He was born Rabindranath Thakur on May 7, 1861, and died on August 7, 1941. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he used Contextual Modernism to transform Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art. He was the first non-European and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, for his 'profoundly sensitive, fresh, and lovely' poetry of Gitanjali. Tagore's poetic songs were considered mystical and mercurial, yet his 'beautiful prose and magical poetry' are largely unknown outside of Bengal.