Heaven of Freedom or Where the Mind is Without Fear by Rabindra Nath Tagore (Summary & The Poem)

 

Heaven of Freedom

or

Where the Mind is Without Fear

by Rabindra Nath Tagore

(Summary & The Poem)

Rabindra Nath Tagore was an Indian celebrity. He was a poet, patriot and a philosopher. He was born in 1861 and wrote stories, plays, novels and poems. In 1901 he founded a school of fine arts, which grew into Vishwa Bharti University. Initially, he wrote in his mother tongue Bengali, which, when translated into English won great recognition. It was in 1931, that he won the noble prize for literature for his Gitanjali, a collection of songs and prayers offered to God. Tagore was a patriot and a religious man. He was a man of nature, music and poetry and he awakened the imagination of his pupils to the world of beauty, goodness and wide sympathy.

‘Heaven of freedom’ / ‘Where the mind is without fear’ is both patriotic and religious song. It is the 35th song of Gitanjali. The poet has expressed a picture of an ideal India in this poem. The poet wants his country, a free land for all the casts, creeds and their thoughts and their actions.

Heaven of Freedom

or

Where the Mind is Without Fear

(The Poem)

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.

Summary

In the poem, the poet expresses his longing for the future of India. Tagore wants to have the freedom of minds for his countrymen. He wants his people to be free from all type of fears and hold their heads high with pride. He wants India to be free from all types of bondages. It is the wish of the poet, that without any distinction, all the people of his country should have knowledge. Tagore does not want his country to be divided into “fragments by narrow domestic walls”. The poet says, that the true freedom should be obtained and the true freedom is the freedom from narrow ideas, from the consideration of casts and creeds and from nationality etc. According to him true freedom can be achieved when our words come from the depths of truths.

The poet further personifies the ‘Tireless striving’ and says that it has stretched its arms towards ‘Perfection’. The dream of the poet portrays India a place, where reason flows in a clear crystalline stream and does not lose its way into the desert of dead habits. According to him his country will be a place, where all thoughts and all actions will be welcomed. He prays God, to let his country awake in such heaven of freedom.

The poem is written in a free verse form. It presents noble ideas. It has no rhyming pattern and has a controlled rhythm. The poet has personified ‘timeless striving’ and ‘perfection’.