Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore Honoured In China

By Suparna Chakaraborthy

Monday, May 31, 2010, 12:16

A statue to Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore was unveiled in Shanghai by Indian President, Pratibha Patil. Tagore was a popular poet, novelist, musician and play writer in the late 19th and the 20th century. He was the first Asian to win the Nobel prize for literature.

Designed by Gautam Pal, the statue that weighs 125 kilograms is located at the busy junction of the Mao Ming Road and Nanchang Road in China"s business hub. The purpose behind unveiling Tagore"s statue was to acknowledge his impression on Chinese poets and scholars.

China has already shown interest in constructing a gallery at Rabindra Bharathi University in Kolkata to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of the great poet.

The Beijing Lecture Association invited Tagore in 1923 to deliver a series of talks as part of its objective to enable foreign scholars to come and interact with Chinese intellectuals.

The Nobel laureate visited China thrice in the 1920s. To bring out the original concept of Tagore"s works, several Chinese scholars learned Bengali to translate his poems.