Kolkata: India celebrated poet, lyricist, novelist, playwright, painter, philosopher and educationist Rabindranath Tagore on his 75th death anniversary, on Sunday. He died on August 7, 1941.

His death anniversary is celebrated as per the Bengali calendar, that is 22 Shrabon (the Bengali month of monsoons), which fell on Sunday this year. Several cultural programmes were organised all over Kolkata, where artists from across the country performed songs and plays by him.

In his ancestral home in north Kolkata — which is also a museum of Tagore memorabilia — Rabindra Bharati University has reconstructed the events that led to his death at the age of 80. Tagore first fell seriously ill on September 15, 1940, when he complained of severe pain in his lower abdomen, while visiting Kalimpong in north Bengal.

The doctors diagnosed him with a severe urinary tract infection and Tagore was rushed back to Kolkata before moving back to Shantiniketan. Tagore, who practised ayurvedic medicine, refused to undergo surgery in spite of repeated insistence from a medical team that included the first chief minister of independent Bengal, Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy.

He was finally operated on in Kolkata, where a balcony outside his room was transformed into an operation theatre, by Dr Lalit Bandyopadhyay and overseen by Dr Roy. Although the doctors could not operate on his inflated prostrate, they conducted a bypass surgery to remove accumulated urine and relive pain.

“Not much has been said about his last days until now. Based on historic documents we have charted this flow of events and his medical condition that led to his death. Many people at that time were aware that he was operated on the veranda outside his as whole of [then] Calcutta joined him with prayers on their lips. But most are unaware that he was suffering from cancer in his prostate glands,” Sabyasachi Basu Roy Chowdhury, vice-chancellor of Rabindra Bharati University, said.

A series of panels have been created at his ancestral house to chronicle his final days; present day doctors believe after the surgery, the infection may have led to septicaemia — there were no antibiotics in those days — and ultimately his death.

Meanwhile, the West Bengal government has written to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) seeking a status report on the probe in the theft of Tagore’s Nobel Prize and 47 other pieces of memorabilia that came to light on March 25, 2007.

“Tagore’s Nobel Prize is our pride and a significant part of our culture. If they [centre] cannot recover it, we should be given a chance,” the chief minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, said.

However, most believe that there is little that can be done specially since the CBI closed the case five years ago. “She [Banerjee] then as opposition leader had demanded a CBI inquiry. Now she wants the state government to re-examine. She should stop playing politics with the sentiments of the people of the state,” said Sujan Chakraborty of Communist Party of India (Marxist).