Rabindranath's Prayer
If we pray for Freedom, we are in Submission - Where The Mind Is Without Fear - A Song by Rabindranath Tagore, India, (1861-1941).
When we pray, if we pray for riches, certainly we are very poor. If we pray for health, we are then certainly sick. And if we pray for freedom, we are in shackles, bondage and our hands and feet are fettered. Rabindranath Tagore wrote his poem Where The Mind Is Without Fear in the first decade of the Twentieth century. It is the 35th song in his famous book Geethanjali which was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. He wrote this poem during the peak hours of the cruel and brutal British Rule in India. It is his Utopia, in a sense, in which he prays God to let his country awake to a blissful heaven of freedom that is his dream. The distance between his dream and the real state of affairs in his country is far, and he skilfully brings to world's attention the state into which his great nation has been fell into by the mighty British Empire. He does this without offending anyone and as is expected from an England- educated noble genius. As an aftermath of the second world war and due to the severeness of the Indian Independence Movement, the British however were forced to leave India during 1947. But 6 years earlier, Tagore had died without seeing a free India. In the present times, this poem serves a dual purpose. It unveils the horrible downtrodden position to which his country and it's heritage was brought to by Britain. At the same time it is a scale to measure whether India has progressed any after half a century of her independence.
By describing his visions of the characteristics of a glorious country, he emphasises the pitiful plight of his native land. He prays for a heaven of freedom, to denote the hell of submission and slavery prevailing then. People cannot express themselves fearlessly. The Nation's head is forced to be held low and stooping. Knowledge is not free. The Nation is broken up into fragments by
When we pray, if we pray for riches, certainly we are very poor. If we pray for health, we are then certainly sick. And if we pray for freedom, we are in shackles, bondage and our hands and feet are fettered. Rabindranath Tagore wrote his poem Where The Mind Is Without Fear in the first decade of the Twentieth century. It is the 35th song in his famous book Geethanjali which was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. He wrote this poem during the peak hours of the cruel and brutal British Rule in India. It is his Utopia, in a sense, in which he prays God to let his country awake to a blissful heaven of freedom that is his dream. The distance between his dream and the real state of affairs in his country is far, and he skilfully brings to world's attention the state into which his great nation has been fell into by the mighty British Empire. He does this without offending anyone and as is expected from an England- educated noble genius. As an aftermath of the second world war and due to the severeness of the Indian Independence Movement, the British however were forced to leave India during 1947. But 6 years earlier, Tagore had died without seeing a free India. In the present times, this poem serves a dual purpose. It unveils the horrible downtrodden position to which his country and it's heritage was brought to by Britain. At the same time it is a scale to measure whether India has progressed any after half a century of her independence.
By describing his visions of the characteristics of a glorious country, he emphasises the pitiful plight of his native land. He prays for a heaven of freedom, to denote the hell of submission and slavery prevailing then. People cannot express themselves fearlessly. The Nation's head is forced to be held low and stooping. Knowledge is not free. The Nation is broken up into fragments by