Where The Mind Is Without Fear

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

The poemWhere the Mind is Without Fear

is a prayer to a universal father-figure,
that is, the God Almighty. The poem, with its inspiring lines, elaborates
Tagore's vision of a new, enlightened India.
The poem, written originally in Bengali,
was composed before Indias independence most probably in the year 1900.
The original poem titled Prarthana was included in an anthology named
Naibedya and the poem was translated into English by Tagore himself
around 1911.
The poem is Poem 35 in the English Gitanjali published in 1912.
The poem had a special place in Tagores heart and he recited its English
version at the Indian National Congress session in Calcutta, 1917.
The poet, Rabindranath Tagore, envisages an ideal nation; liberal in outlook,
united in strength, dynamic in progress.
The poet is totally devoted to God and entreats Him that He must direct the
poets fellow countrymen to be industrious, truthful and rational
so as to advance the country towards the most ideal stature.

The poet desires peace and prosperity among his countrymen and prays that
his country might attain overall welfare and self-reliance.
The poem is written in free verse and consists of just one sentence.
The poem can be considered to consist of two sections:
the first seven lines with a series of adverbial clauses
and the principal clause coming at the end.
The first seven lines refer a circumstance presented by a setting, where the
mind is without fear, where knowledge is free, and so on.
We do not know the exact setting or scene which these lines refer to until we
come to the concluding line of the poem.
However, we can envisage that the place referred to is an awe-inspiring,
almost an ideal, place.
It is almost a utopian realm where all the sublime features- such as valour,
knowledge, harmony, truth, intellect, and advancement- prevail.
In the principal clause of the sentence the poet identifies that circumstance,
that metaphorical scenario as that heaven of freedom and requests the
Father, the God Almighty, to let his country to reach there or his country to
realise that that she ought to endeavour to accomplish the capability to
establish all these marvellous lineaments.