Key Facts

• Full Title: Letter to Lord Chelmsford Rejecting Knighthood
• Author: Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941)
• Language: English
• Written Date: 31 May 1919 ✪✪✪
• First Published: 1919 (in Indian newspapers and later in The Statesman, Modern Review, etc.)
• Genre: Political and Moral Protest Letter 
• Form: Open Letter (formal, persuasive, and moral in tone)
• Type of Work: Public declaration renouncing the British title of Knighthood
• Period: Indian Renaissance / British Colonial Period
• Narrative Style: Formal, dignified, reflective, and morally charged prose
• Tone: Respectful yet firm; emotional, patriotic, and condemnatory
• Climax: Tagore declares his decision to renounce the Knighthood, “to stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who… are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.”
• Famous Line: “The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation.”
• One-Line Summary: A powerful moral protest in which Rabindranath Tagore returns his Knighthood to condemn British brutality in Punjab after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
• Point of View: First-person (personal yet national perspective; voice of moral conscience)
• Setting
• Time Setting: 1919, the aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in Amritsar, during the height of British colonial repression in India.
• Place Setting: Written from Calcutta (Jorasanko, Tagore’s home), addressed to Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy of India based in Delhi.