Where the Mind is Without Fear - Rabindranath Tagore

Where the Mind is Without Fear

- Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
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.

Rabindranath Tagore - Biographical

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, which was a new religious sect in nineteenth-century Bengal and which attempted a revival of the ultimate monistic basis of Hinduism as laid down in the Upanishads. He was educated at home; and although at seventeen he was sent to England for formal schooling, he did not finish his studies there. In his mature years, in addition to his many-sided literary activities, he managed the family estates, a project which brought him into close touch with common humanity and increased his interest in social reforms. He also started an experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his Upanishadic ideals of education. From time to time he participated in the Indian nationalist movement, though in his own non-sentimental and visionary way; and Gandhi, the political father of modern India, was his devoted friend. Tagore was knighted by the ruling British Government in 1915, but within a few years he resigned the honour as a protest against British policies in India.

Tagore had early success as a writer in his native Bengal. With his translations of some of his poems he became rapidly known in the West. In fact his fame attained a luminous height, taking him across continents on lecture tours and tours of friendship. For the world he became the voice of India's spiritual heritage; and for India, especially for Bengal, he became a great living institution.

Although Tagore wrote successfully in all literary genres, he was first of all a poet. Among his fifty and odd volumes of poetry are Manasi (1890) [The Ideal One], Sonar Tari (1894) [The Golden Boat], Gitanjali (1910) [Song Offerings], Gitimalya (1914) [Wreath of Songs], and Balaka (1916) [The Flight of Cranes]. The English renderings of his poetry, which include The Gardener (1913), Fruit-Gathering (1916), and The Fugitive (1921), do not generally correspond to particular volumes in the original Bengali; and in spite of its title, Gitanjali: Song Offerings (1912), the most acclaimed of them, contains poems from other works besides its namesake. Tagore's major plays are Raja (1910) [The King of the Dark Chamber], Dakghar (1912) [The Post Office], Achalayatan(1912) [The Immovable], Muktadhara (1922) [The Waterfall], and Raktakaravi(1926) [Red Oleanders]. He is the author of several volumes of short stories and a number of novels, among them Gora (1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) [The Home and the World], and Yogayog (1929) [Crosscurrents]. Besides these, he wrote musical dramas, dance dramas, essays of all types, travel diaries, and two autobiographies, one in his middle years and the other shortly before his death in 1941. Tagore also left numerous drawings and paintings, and songs for which he wrote the music himself.

Where the Mind is Without Fear: About the poem

“Where the mind is Without Fear” by Rabindranath Tagore is one of his vastly read and discussed poems.  It was originally composed in Bengali possibly in 1900 under the title “Prarthana”, meaning prayer. It appeared in the volume called ‘Naibedya’ in 1901. Later in 1911 Tagore himself translated the Bengali poem into English and that translation appeared as poem 35 in his Nobel winning anthology “Gitanjali” (Song Offerings) published by the Indian Society, London in 1912.

So when the poem was written, India was under the British Rule and people were eagerly waiting to get their freedom from the British Rule. The poem is written in the form of a prayer to the God, the Almighty for a true freedom for his country. And thus Tagore reveals his own concept of freedom throughout the poem, Where the Mind is Without Fear.

Where the Mind is Without Fear: Line by line Explanation

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

In the very first line, the poet prays to the Almighty that his countrymen should be free from any fear of oppression or forced compulsion. He wishes that everyone in his country has his head held high in dignity. In other words, according to him, in a truly free country every person should be fearless and should have a sense of self dignity.

Where knowledge is free;

In the second line of Where the Mind is Without Fear the poet dreams of a nation where knowledge would be free. Education should not be restricted to the upper class only but everybody should be allowed to acquire knowledge. Not only that, the children should learn freely from the nature and the world around them. They should not be forced memorize some predetermined lessons. And this is Tagore’s typical concept of education.

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls;

In the next two lines, the poet emphasizes the unity of not only of his countrymen but also of the entire world. He thinks there should be no division among people based on their caste, creed, color, religion or other baseless superstitions. In other words, prejudices and superstitions should not divide the people in groups and break their unity.

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

In line 5 of Where the Mind is Without Fear, Tagore wants a nation where people are truthful. They should not be superficial and words should come out from the depth of their hearts.

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

In the sixth line of the poem, the poet wants everyone to work hard to reach their goal, and in the long run to reach perfection. . He thinks they should not be tired by working. People should not be lazy and ignoring their work.

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habits;

In line 7, the poet compares ‘reason’ or logical thinking to a “clear stream’ and in the next line compares ‘dead habits’ or superstitious beliefs to a ‘dreary desert’. He wants the stream of reason not to lose its way into the desert of prejudices. In short, people’s thought should be monitored by rational thinking, not by superstition; logic should rule over old baseless beliefs.

Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action;

In line 9 and 10 the poet wishes his countrymen to be progressive and broad-minded. He wants that their minds are “led forward” to “ever-widening thought and action” by the Almighty. In short, we should be open-minded and do something unusual or extraordinary, overcoming the narrowness of mind.

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

In the final line of the poem, the poet addresses the God as ‘Father’. He asks him to awaken his country into such a ‘heaven of freedom’ where the above conditions meet.

To make it clear, the poet prays to the Almighty (my Father) to raise or lift (awake) his country to such heights where freedom would be realised at its best (a heaven of freedom). In turn, he is actually praying that God awakens his countrymen so that they come out from the darkness of ignorance, prejudices, disunity and all other evils.

Here, a great addition from our reader Ravi Murti suggests that Rabindranath wants to awaken the God within us to free our mind from shackles and bondage. It is not invoking God but using it as metaphor for the higher self within us. This interpretation is beautiful and I can’t resist the urge to add it here.

Finally, In the poem the poet’s message is very clear. If all the people of a nation are not wise enough to lead a happy and peaceful life free from all evils, they cannot enjoy their freedom well. So to the poet, only political freedom is not so important unless you are fearless, self dignified, knowledgeable, truthful, hard-working and broad-minded enough to enjoy it fully.

Analysis of Where the Mind is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

FORM:
The verse form of the poem is free verse, having no metrical patterns or rhymes. He was credited for having discovered this new form of composing poems, called prose poems.

ALLITERATION in Where the Mind is Without Fear:
Tagore has used alliteration in his poem, Where the Mind in without Fear. Alliteration is the repeated use of the same consonant sound at the beginning of each word in a line of verse. Here, in this poem, the examples of alliteration are as follows,-
‘head held high’, ‘where the world’, ‘dreary desert sand of dead habit’ and ‘where words.’

METAPHOR:
A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action that does not literally denote in order to imply a resemblance. In simpler words, comparing two words but not clearly stating. Examples of metaphor in the poem,-
‘clear stream of reason’ and ‘dreary desert sand of dead habit’.

PERSONIFICATION:
“a tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection” is an example of fine personification in the poem. Personification refers to attribution of human qualities to inanimate ideas. Here the ‘tireless striving’ has been personified like a human being stretching his arms to reach his goal through perfection.

STYLE:
Where The Mind Is Without Fear was included in the volume called ‘Naibedya’, the original poem bears the title ‘Prarthana’ meaning prayer. The poem is a prayer to God. The poem is a form of a prayer to the universal father-figure, presumably God. Tagore prays to the father-figure for a country where the people should be free from fears, where knowledge would be free to all individuals and the people from all religions should be united. He wants India to awake in such a heavenly state.

Portrayal of the British Rule:
Through the poem, the poet has revealed subtlety the miserable condition of India during the British Rule. The state of India can be understood by the opposites of the phrases used in the poem. Following few are the examples of the phrases used,-

* Mind without fear implies a mind full of fear

* Head held high implies head bowed down (no dignity)

* Perfection implies imperfection

* Truth implies lies

*Knowledge for free implies restricted knowledge

The above opposites implies the state of the country under the British Rule and therefore the poet’s earnest prayer to the Lord to reverse the current condition of the state.

FREEDOM expressed in Where the Mind is Without Fear
Where the Mind is without Fear was written when India was under the British Rule. Tagore wanted his motherland to attain freedom from all levels- religious, political, moral and intellectual. The following are the kind of freedom Tagore insisted upon.

*Freedom from oppression

* Freedom of thought and expression

*Freedom to acquire knowledge

*Freedom to speak truth

*Freedom of mind

*Freedom to attain perfection

Themes of the Poem Where the Mind is Without Fear:

Banga-bhanga (Division of Bengal): In 1905, the Indian state of Bengal was divided into two parts by the British – West Bengal and East Bengal. East Bengal later became Bangladesh in 1971. The division was done according to the policy that came to be known as the’ divide and rule’ policy. It was done on the basis of religious identity. In the regions included under West Bengal, the Hindu population was considerably greater than the Muslim population, and in the regions included under East Bengal, the Muslim population was present in a larger proportion than the Hindu population. The division of Bengal was known as “Banga-bhanga” in the Bengali language, “Banga” being the original Bengali name of the region (the mane of which was later Anglicized) and “bhanga” meaning the action of breaking something. This was an event that directly affected every citizen of the previously united territory of Bengal, and Tagore was no exception. Hence, it is probably the division of Bengal that he has in mind while writing lines 3 and 4 of “Where the Mind is without Fear” in which he speaks about the nation being broken into fragments. Written as it was in 1910, you can see that five years after the event, the poet is still deeply saddened by it. In fact, the Indian festival of ‘rakhi’ (during which sisters tie rakhi on the hands of their brothers) is derived from something that Tagore started. One auspicious day, Tagore appealed to all Hindus in Bengal to go out in the streets and tie a thread on the hands of their Muslim brothers, and vice verse. This was an initiative on his part to protest against the division of Bengal.

Combination of East and West: Tagore was not one of the staunch nationalists who believed that everything about the West was bad. In fact, he believed that many practices of the West could be incorporated into Indian culture to make it better. His novels like Gora and Ghare Baire speak of the synthesis of the two cultures. That a British boy could come to love India and consider his motherland was a radical message at the time. That Indian women could be educated by English mistresses was another. Tagore was also greatly influenced by English poetry, especially that of the Romantics, and uses similar themes in his own poems. He also adopted many Western tunes for his Bengali lyrics. The most famous example of this is “Purano shei diner kotha”, which was set to the tune of Robert Burns’ Scots poem “Auld Lang Syne”. In this poem, too, Tagore advocates the application of the Western virtue of reason to do away with the superstitions harboured by his fellow men. As we know, reason was a legacy of the Age of the Enlightenment that came to England in the 18^th century. However, Tagore felt that it ought to be adopted by the Indian peoples as well, for it would help them become more open-minded and teach them to have more confidence in themselves. Ultimately it would help them to gain their independence from their colonial rulers. This technique is known in postcolonial studies as ‘using the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house’.

Tone of the Poem

The Poem starts with a wistfulness, a longing, a yearning for a land where there would be freedom from fear, superstition s,age old beliefs and customs. In The first eight lines gives us an impression of the poet seeking a world which sounds almost utopic. But as the we progress in the poem we realize that the poet‘s thought is is crystallized  and his “heaven of freedom” stands for a country which is independent ,where there is no repression and a society which gives equal opportunities irrespective of religion, cast, creed or colour.

The title of the poem is very significant and appropriate to convey the expressions and thoughts in the poem. Hope you’ll share this analysis of Where the Mind is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore.

Conclusion: “Where the Mind is without Fear” is one of the best-known poems of Tagore. That is because its message can easily stand the test of time.  Of course it was inspirational to be the freedom fighters of India at the time in which it was written. However, it has continued to move readers for a century since then. The way in which it defines freedom is radical – not just freedom from the rule of another race, but freedom of the mind. That is the kind of freedom that everyman craves, even one who is living in a supposedly free state. That is why its subject matter is relatable to all readers, and it inspires them greatly as well.