He was one of the founders of the religious society called the Brahmo Samaj, which, confronted by Christianity, attempted to purge popular Hinduism of "idolatry" and to reconstruct the "pure monotheism" of classical Indian religion.
The house in which Rabindranath grew up was the home of a vast joint, or extended, family; there were sometimes as many as 200 Tagores living in the complex known as Jorasanko, in northern Calcutta. These included the painters Abinindranath and Gaganendranath and, among Rabindranath's own 11 elder brothers and sisters, the writer and philosopher Dvijendranath, the musician Jyotirindranath, and Bengal's first woman novelist, Svarnakumari Devi, who also edited a literary magazine.
With his father frequently away and his mother ill, Rabindranath was cared for in his early childhood largely by servants and teachers who confined him strictly, breeding in him, as he later wrote, a longing for the freedom of the outside world and a detestation of conventional and restrictive scholastic education. The boy showed unmistakable poetic talent, and as early as 8 he was urged by his brothers and cousins to express himself in poetry.
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