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Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali - Song 35 “Where the Mind Is Without Fear”

Poem

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Essay 

       Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali is a collection of 103 song offerings to God. Tagore got Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Song 35 “Where the Mind Is Without Fear” turns from a religious to a patriotic poem.

     Tagore dreams of an independent and progressive India. The poet prays for the spiritual emancipation of his country.  He asks for a country, 

  • where a man can move fearlessly and hold his head high with nobility and generosity; 
  • Where every individual can be imparted knowledge freely; 
  • Where there are no bounds nor are there any fragmentation of the country; 
  • Where there are no boundaries of cast, creed, and religion; 
  • Where there is regard for truth; 
  • Where a man can work for perfection;
  • Where his mind is not bound by outdated habits and customs. 

Tagore wants God to lead the country forward into the freedom of a widened thinking and attitude. He asks ‘The Father' to awaken his country to such a ‘freedom heaven.'

  To sum up, Tagore yearns for an awakened country where there would be freedom of the mind and expression of true ideas. Thus the poem invokes the deep patriotic feelings.

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