No, King George V Did Not Give Tagore Nobel Prize for Writing National Anthem

The claims about Rabindranath Tagore, the national anthem, and his Nobel Prize for Literature are unsubstantiated.

A video of activist Rajiv Dixit talking about the origins of the Indian National Anthem and the role of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore is being shared on social media.

What does he say in the video?: Dixit says that Tagore wrote the anthem to honour King George V, the then-ruler of India during British rule.

• As per Dixit's statement, the monarch was so impressed by the praise in the song that he decided to award Tagore with the Nobel Prize in Literature, in his capacity as the chairman of the Nobel committee.

• He says that Tagore was urged by MK Gandhi to return the award after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919, but Tagore refused to do so.

(Archives of more claims can be seen here and here.)

But...?: The claim is false.

• Tagore did not compose the anthem for the monarch and clarified the same in official letters, after a similar misunderstanding arose back in 1911.

• Moreover, King George V was not the chairperson of the Swedish Academy in 1913, which was responsible for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

• While Tagore did not return his Nobel Prize – which the Britishers did not confer – he wrote a letter regarding the revocation of his knighthood after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919.

How did we find out?: We started by looking into the details of the composition of the Indian national anthem, titled Jana Gana Mana.

• A 2011 report by the BBC, which marked 100 years of the Indian national anthem, noted that it was shrouded in controversy when it was sung in front of King George V when he arrived in Kolkata.

• It mentioned, "...a section of the Anglo-Indian English press in Calcutta thought – and duly reported – that Tagore's anthem was a homage to the emperor."

• Quoting Tagore's letter, written in 1939, it said that he rebutted the claim, stating, "I should only insult myself if I cared to answer those who consider me capable of such unbounded stupidity."

We found the same information on page 3 of a book titled 'Our National Songs', published by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, confirming that Tagore had not written a song to honour the British monarch.

Did George V award Tagore his Nobel Prize?: To verify this part of the claim, we looked for information on the Nobel prize's website.

• There, we found that Thomas Sturge S Moore, a member of England's Royal Society of Literature, had nominated Tagore for the prize, not George V.

The claim states that the British monarch was the chairperson of the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize in Literature.

However, the transcript of the award ceremony speech on the Nobel Prize's website mentions that Herald Hjärne was the chairperson of the Swedish Academy in 1913 when Tagore was awarded the prize for the translated version of Gitanjali: Song Offerings (1912).

Tagore and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre: The last section of Dixit's speech says that Tagore was urged, by Gandhi, to return his Nobel prize after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919, as it was given to him by British colonists, but refused to do so.

• As seen earlier in this report, Tagore's Nobel prize was awarded by the Swedish Academy, and not British colonists or George V.

• In our investigation, we did not find any evidence to support the claim that Gandhi asked Tagore to return his Nobel prize.

• However, we found multiple reports about Tagore asking to be relieved of his knighthood, which conferred the title 'Sir' upon him and was given to him in 1915.

The same was corroborated by the Amrit Mahotsav website run by the government of India, which carried text from Tagore's letter to Lord Chelmsford.

Penned after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Tagore expressed shame at carrying a title given to him by the British, saying that he wished to relinquish it in solidarity with his countrymen.

"These are the reasons that have painfully compelled me, with sincere reference and regret, to request Your Excellency to relieve me of my Knighthood, an honor I had the privilege to accept from His Majesty the King through your predecessor, for whom I still hold great admiration for his nobility of spirit," Tagore's letter reads.

Conclusion: The national anthem of India was not written to King George V. Tagore, who was not given his Nobel Prize for Literature by the British monarch, and he did not refuse to return the prize.

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