PM, Sonia Gandhi pays floral tribute to Tagore in Delhi

New Delhi/Kolkata, May 8 (ANI): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi paid floral tribute to Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore as part of celebrations to mark his 150th birth anniversary in New Delhi on Tuesday.

Among the others present at the event were Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar.

Parliamentarians also offered flowers before Tagore's painting.

Meanwhile, artistes in Kolkata wowed the audience with Rabindra Sangeet as a tribute to Tagore on Tuesday.

One of the organisers of the event, Swaminathan Pillai, said participants from all over the state have participated in the event to pay homage to the Nobel Laureate.

"More then 300 students and other participants from all over Bengal, all the reputed legendaries and other persons who do respect Rabindranath Tagore, will give their homage to this great poet or composer or lyricist or you can say the greatest person of the modern song of Bengal," said Pillai.

The visitors at the event said Tagore made them proud with his works.

"We are proud of Rabindranath Tagore, his works of poetry, music and literature is famous across the world and has made us proud. He was the father of the modern music," said Kumar Shambhu, a visitor at the event.

The yearlong celebrations witnessed elaborate programmes on the multi faceted genius Tagore- a poet, writer, painter, musician and philosopher par excellence.

Exhibitions of Rabindranath's paintings, musical soirees, seminars, workshops, release of commemorative publications, coins and joint productions and performances of dances and dramas, based on the stories and songs written by Rabindranath were organized across India as part of the celebrations.

Rabindranath Tagore was a multifaceted genius whose creativity spanned every form of artistic expression. His concerns ranged from global and universal ones to practical and mundane issues.

He was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. (ANI)