How Rabindranath Tagore Renounced His Knighthood After the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre

On this, 7 May 2026, the 165th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, we remember his decision to renounce his British knighthood in 1919 – one of the most significant acts of moral and political protest during India’s freedom struggle. The Nobel laureate poet returned the honour weeks after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, condemning the British government’s actions in Punjab and expressing solidarity with fellow Indians facing colonial repression.

Tagore had been awarded a knighthood by King George V in 1915, two years after he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for the English translation of Gitanjali, a collection of his poetry. By then, he had already emerged as one of the most influential literary and intellectual figures of his time.

The turning point came after the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on 13 April 1919, when British Indian troops under Brigadier General Reginald Dyer opened fire on a large gathering of unarmed civilians. Hundreds were killed and many more injured. The incident shocked the country and altered the political climate of the independence movement.

Deeply disturbed by the violence and the colonial administration’s response, Tagore wrote a letter to Viceroy Lord Chelmsford on 30 May 1919, asking to be relieved of his knighthood.

In the letter, he wrote that the events in Punjab had “revealed to our minds the helplessness of our position as British subjects in India.” He stressed that the repression was “without parallel in the history of civilised governments, barring some conspicuous exceptions, recent and remote.”

Tagore criticised not only the violence but also the manner in which news of the suffering emerged despite censorship and silence. “The accounts of the insults and sufferings by our brothers in Punjab have trickled through the gagged silence, reaching every corner of India,” he wrote.

He accused the colonial government of ignoring the anguish felt across the country and condemned sections of the Anglo-Indian press for praising the administration’s actions and “making fun of our sufferings.”

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The most widely remembered portion of the letter came in its concluding paragraphs, where Tagore rejected the symbolic value of imperial honours amid widespread humiliation and suffering.

“The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation,” he wrote. “I for my part, wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.”

Tagore’s protest came after several unsuccessful attempts to organise a wider public response to the massacre. According to accounts later published about the episode, Tagore had explored the possibility of travelling to Punjab along with Mahatma Gandhi as a form of protest. He also tried to organise a protest meeting in Calcutta. When those efforts did not materialise, he chose to make a public moral statement by renouncing the title.

The letter was later published in The Statesman on 3 June 1919 and circulated widely in newspapers and pamphlets. The gesture drew international attention and became a powerful criticism of British imperial authority.

British authorities reportedly refused to formally accept the renunciation, arguing that the knighthood had been awarded for literary contributions rather than political reasons. However, Tagore’s action had already become a defining symbolic moment in India’s anti-colonial movement.

[DS]

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