Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high,
চিত্ত যেথা ভয়শূন্য , Rabindranath Tagore
Where knowledge is free,
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.
Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote this poem after the partition of Bengal, at the time when talks of declaring India as an independent nation were happening. This poem described his idea of a new India, an awakened one.
When we were kids, we never properly understood this poem because we never really felt it from the position of comfort and privilege we were in. We were encouraged to speak up, share our ideas, and talk about our discomforts. We never knew there would be a time when ‘the clear stream of reason’ would lose its way.
But as we grew older, we gradually learned to comprehend these lines in their real sense, in the modern-day context. To call Tagore a genius is an understatement—that he wrote something which is so subtly contemporary even for an India almost 70 years post its independence. And I am not even talking about the poor and downtrodden section of the society, for whom every word is, anyway, relate-worthy.
Here, I am talking about the entitled, educated class where we try to silence others from our position of power or authority. We still see cases where there’s fear, or to use a better word, apprehension in our mind to express what we think, ask questions, or suggest a different course of action or thinking.
Knowledge is free but it is used as per convenience, where yesmanship ranks over perfection. Where ‘narrow domestic walls’ exist, and transparency stands outside of the door. Voicing out our thoughts comes with self-doubt, anxiety, and a fear of retaliation in the form of anger or sentiment. Where ‘do as we say’ culture is still prevalent because you are not supposed to use your brain.
With this mindset, we would never be truly free. Our generation would never be really woke.
Moments to Stories 