Rabindranath Tagore on religion; A philosophical analysis

Abstract

Rabindranath Tagore was a prominent 20th-century philosopher known as a poet, social reformer, educator, and practitioner. His educational model has a unique sensitivity and suitability for education within multi-racial, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural situations. Most of Tagore’s ideas are expressed in his books and usual writings that draw the attention of Tagore’s scholars, a layman/woman cannot connect easily. This article tries to analyze different standpoints of Tagore on religion and how he implemented it in his real life. Tagore’s concern is to find out the basis of the religion that unites human beings, and he is searching for it in the truth of man’s nature. Tagore realizes that teaching of religion can never be imparted in the form of lessons, but he finds it in the living personality of man. In his work The Religion of Man ~ the Hibbert Lectures for 1930, published in 1931 ~ Tagore compiled his views on religion and the philosophy of life. The compilation was by and large based on the Hibbert lectures Tagore delivered at the University of Oxford in 1930