This intellectual biography of Tagore, perhaps the first of its kind, portrays him as a man who was deeply skeptical, self-critical, tormented by conflicts in his inner life, aware of the historical significance of his times and continually interacting with adversaries and friends across the world; someone who built on the heritage of the 19th-century renaissance in India and became one of the makers of the modern Indian mind. 

Rabindranath Tagore: An Interpretation situates the iconic figure in the history of his tumultuous times of an India in the throes of the national struggle for independence and of a world moving from Victorian stability to the turmoil of World War II. Coinciding with his 150th birth anniversary, it illuminates Tagore's extraordinary contributions: as a poet and writer, nationalist and ideologue, educationist and philosopher, composer and painter.