Rabindranath Tagore

Asia's first Nobel laureate, Tagore - the avante garde poet, writer, philosopher, playwright, novelist - is a cult figure in Bengal. The English translation of his poetry collection Gitanjali was published under Yeats' auspices, and the Nobel Prize followed in 1913. The poems also appeared in Ezra Pound's magazine Poetry. The British crown's Knighthood was repudiated by this humble nationalist in 1919, in protest of the Jallianwalabagh Massacre (Punjab).