Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941) was an Indian philosopher, Bengali poet, painter, composer, musician, and Brahmo Samaj devotee who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, making him the first Asian Nobel laureate. Tagore revolutionized Bengali literature in a period known as the "Bengal Renaissance" with works such as Ghare baire (The Home and the World) and Gitanjali, and expanded Bengali art with a myriad of poems, short stories, letters, essays, and paintings. He was a dedicated cultural and social reformer as well as polymath. He modernized the art of his homeland by deliberately attacking its strict structure and classical formal language. Two of his songs are today the national anthems of Bangladesh and India: Amar Shonar Bangla and Jana Gana Mana.