India kicked off celebrations on Saturday to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of iconic poet and playwright Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for literature.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh launched the festivities for the poet who won the Nobel in 1913 and is revered by the world’s 250 million Bengali speakers in India, neighbouring Bangladesh and elsewhere. The events, planned over one year, aim to stir new interest among a wider audience in the Bengali writer’s novels, music, plays, poems and paintings, the government said.
“A number of commemoration events have (also) been planned abroad, particularly in countries with which Tagore had some association,” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a speech in New Delhi.
