Tagore, Debendranath

Tagore, Debendranath

 

Born May 15, 1817, in Calcutta; died there Jan. 19, 1905. Prominent figure in the early, prebour-geois stage of India’s national movement. Son of the large landowner Dvarkanath Tagore.

An educator and an associate of Rammohun Roy, Tagore, after the 1840’s, became one of the leaders of Brahmo Samaj, a reformative and instructional religious society. He advocated a return to the religious-philosophical and ethical principles of the Vedas, to which he gave a highly individual interpretation. He also sought to rid Hinduism of later distortions. According to Tagore, the path to India’s spiritual rebirth lay in the reformation of Hinduism and the dissemination of education.