Rabindranath Tagore [1861-1941] was considered the greatest writer in modern Indian literature. A Bengali poet, novelist, educator, Nobel Laureate for Literature [1913]. Tagore was awarded a knighthood in 1915, but he surrendered it in 1919 in protest against the Massacre at Amritsar, where British troops killed around 400 Indian demonstrators.

Tagore gained a reputation in the West as a mystic originally and that has perhaps mislead many Western readers to ignore his role as a reformer and critic of colonialism.