Solved English Precis exercise on “Tagore, a great celebrity of India” complete Precis for Class 10, 12 and Competitive Examination.

Solved Precis exercise on “Tagore, a great celebrity of India”

One of the greatest of the sons of modern India was Rabindranath Tagore, poet, author, religious preacher, social reformer, artist, and musician. This great man representing all that is best in India thought and character, did much to make his people more truly understood by the Western World.

Tagore was born in 1861, four years after the tragedy of the Mutiny had threatened to wreck British influence in India. At that time, nearly a hundred years ago, modern Western inventions had barely gained a foothold in India; railways were in their infancy, and machinery was regarded with suspicion. The superstitious dread of losing caste by crossing the ocean kept all but a few daring spirits at home, so the Indian knew little of any land but his own. But the work of mission schools had begun to arouse a desire for education, and the first Indian universities had just been founded at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay.

Tagore’s father was a Bengali land-owner, remarkable man, who earned from his fellow countrymen, during his lifetime, the title of Maharishi (“Great Seer’). He revived a Bengali religious society, provided it with a printing press, and made it possible to issue a monthly magazine. The society included many men of great ability and noble character, and it was from Bengal that the ‘Great Awakening’ swept over India in the late nineteenth century, just as the ‘New Learning’ or renaissance had spread from Italy over Europe in the sixteenth century. This society teaches that there is one Supreme Being, and its members believe that the root principles of their religion and all other true religions are the same.

In this atmosphere of culture and religion, Tagore and his brothers grew up, the free room the superstitions which enslaved so many of their countrymen. One brother was the first Indian to enter the Indian Civil Service. Another, a noble character, was not only an artist whose work aroused the admiration of one of the leading British art critics, but also a man of wide interest and boundless energy, a promoter of river steamers, a pioneer of social reforms, a man who poured out money for his various ventures so freely that he himself was poor. Yet another brother was a poet, and lived to a great age, honoured and revered by all India.

Such was the highly cultured family to which Tagore belonged. He himself managed his father’s estate from the age of twenty-four, and already he had attracted much attention on account of his ability and high ideals. During the eighteen-nineties he founded a magazine, the fines periodical Bengal had ever known, and through its pages, he guided his people towards the achievement of true nationalism.

Solved Precis

Tagore, a great celebrity of India

A genius par excellence, Tagore was born in 1861, at a time when modern inventions had barely gained a foothold in India and superstitions reigned supreme. In course of time, however, the establishment of the universities of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay reversed the trend. Ravindra Nath Gagore was born in a very cultured family of Bengal. His father, known as Maharishi, was a great man of learning and religion. Tagore’s brothers also had distinguished themselves eminently in different fields. Tagore imbibed lofty ideals in his character from such an atmosphere. At later stages in his life, he did much in guiding his people to true nationalism through the pages of a magazine founded by him.