One of Rabindranath Tagore’s oft quoted poems – ‘Where the mind is without fear’ appears as Poem No. 35 in his seminal work in English – ‘Gitanjali’. The poem was originally composed in 1910 in Bengali with the title ‘Chitto Jetha Bhoyshunno’ (চিত্ত যেথা ভয়শূন্য) and translated by Tagore himself.

Lofty and lyrical, the composition is a prayer that came from the innermost recesses of Tagore’s heart and lays down his dream for his motherland.  Whenever one reads the poem, one sits back and reflects if we have been able to build the India, the Bharat that Tagore and many of his generation dreamt of…

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.