Where The Mind Is Without Fear

Rabindranath Tagore

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.

Footnotes

Originally written in Bengali language, titled as “Prarthana” (प्रार्थना), this poem was translated by Rabindranath Tagore to English in his book Gitanjali. It was written before the independence of India. Through this poem, the poet requests God of what he wants his country to be like after the independence.