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

Rabindranath Tagore

Summary
In this poem Tagore is trying to imagine a world where there are no issues
or problems between people using metaphors to convey his ideas. For example,
by saying "Where the world has not been broken up into fragments " he was
trying to express that the whole society lives in unity and is not separated into
casts.
First Stanza
He is relating our current and harsh reality with imaginary heaven with no
problems. This was saying that we should live as a unit and erase the borderlines
between countries, social casts. Also where you can trust each other, where
everyone is dedicated and loyal, where the Almighty is the center of society.
Where the mind is without fear' is the 35th no. in Tagore's English 'Gitanjali'.
'Gitanjali' means 'song-offerings', and this is one such song--a prayer to God, the
Father.

The poem was written when India was under British colonial rule, struggling for
freedom. But for Tagore, freedom was more than merely political; it was to be
truly spiritual. The present poem reads like a prayer for that spiritual freedom.

True freedom means liberation from the shackles of fear. The head 'held high' is
a manifest posture of that liberated mind.

The whole world of man must be re-integrated; narrow, parochial walls

fragmenting the world are to be demolished for achieving this holistic oneness.

Words must issue forth from 'the depth of truth'; that is to say, language shall
have to be liberated from the half-truths and lies of expediency.

Untiring efforts should be directed towards the goal of perfection.

Reason is like a 'clear stream', the transparency of which should not have been
swallowed up by outdated and irrelevant customs--'the dreary desert sand of
dead habit'.

True freedom lies in the mind which is always led forward by the universal mind
of the Father into 'ever-widening thought and action'.

Tagore prays for 'that heaven of freedom', seeks the grace of the Father, to be
awakened to a new spiritual consciousness.

The poem combines patriotic zeal with fervent spritual longing. The urge for
political freedom is enhanced and tranformed into a moral-intellectual freedom
of the mind. The poem is also remarkable for its simplicity of diction and images.