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Aug 2022
9 m

The Bard of Bengal

Bbc World Service
About this episode

In August 1941, one of the greatest poets India has ever produced died.

Known as the "Bard of Bengal", Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Farhana Haider spoke to Professor Bashabi Fraser, Director of the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies, in 2017.

Photo: June 1921, Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore in London. Credit: Getty Images

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