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Question
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
- Why does the poet say, ‘Where the mind is without fear’ ?
- What are the narrow domestic walls being referred to ?
- Why are they ‘narrow ’ ?
- How /when does the ‘clear stream of reason’ lose its way ?
- What is the poet’s appeal ?
Solution
• The poet says this because there is no fear where he lives. There is no social division, no
discrimination and no exploitation of man by man . There is freedom of every kind.
• The narrow domestic walls are referred to as superstitions, beliefs and narrow-mindedness. These lead to social or communal fragmentation
• These walls are narrow because of religious narrow-mindedness and fanaticism . The 'clear stream of reason' loses its way into a fearful desert of fixed or narrow-minded ideas. In other words, dead ideas, old beliefs and superstitions blind the mind. In India these don't choke rationality.
• The poet's appeal is that his country, that is, India, should awake into the world of ever-widening thought and action. This world is heaven-like full of freedom and free of any religious fanaticism or narrow-mindedness.
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