I never had much guest posts in my blog. From what I recall, it was only once,
and it was from Fernando Pessoa, the well-known and Portuguese poet. It was a
passage written by him that I included, years back. At this moment, I think
about guest posts again. The reason is very extraordinary and simple at the
same time.
For
the past few days I have been thinking a line from a poem by an Indian poet.
This is the line “Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high.”
This line is from
Rabindranath Tagore’s Githanjali, a collection of spiritual songs, for which he
won the Nobel Prize for literature. He was the first and last Indian to bring
the Nobel here. But that doesn’t count as much as how deep his verses are. None
of the other poets in the tradition of Indian English literature have been able
to bring such a depth within such a concise verse format.
I taught this poem at the university and studied it myself as a young graduate. In all these years, most
of the courses in Literature, teach this poem as a political poem, as an odd
one in the collection of spiritual and philosophical verses.
Here is the complete
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
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
What
propels the reader to take this poem as a political statement by Tagore might
be the word, “country” at the ending line of the poem. The simple consideration
of a possible metaphoric status of that word can reveal an altogether different
and philosophical side of the poem. The word country could be suggestive of the
human stature. It could be body, or self. You or me. what if the word suggests
our mind? Then the poem, without any question, becomes a garden of varied
flowers, the ones that never bloomed anywhere near and with such magnificent
charm that it brings no others in comparison.
4 comments:
Let me ask one question, what is the meaning of the phrase "my Father" in the last poem... We Indians normally won't address God as Father.. Would you please enlighten me/.
My friend, I have in no means the capacity to enlighten you.That phrase, to be frank, never stuck odd to me. Perhaps due to my Christian spiritual tradition. I do address God as Father. Addressing God as mother is not exactly an 'Indian' way of using it, instead a 'Hindu way'.There is a difference. A serious and demographic dementia has been in operation when Indians are labelled uni-cultural. We must not forget, even before the arrival of the British and even before the institutionalization of Hinduism, other religious systems, institutional or not, existed in India, and many of them addressed God neither as Mother nor Father.
Tagore in these lines must not necessarily talking about God alone, I believe personally. It is rather a philosophical stand, as Father is a term that stands for order, rule, structure, etc. It need not be confused with mystical idea of God. It could be the philosophy of structure and the spiritual idea of 'Atman' or the inner being.
I have one objection to the view that "Addressing God as mother is not exactly an 'Indian' way of using it, instead a 'Hindu way'". It is because in ancient 'sambradayika' systems and other pre-historic times and even in Harappan tradition, you can see 'mother' figure; The term 'Hindu' is an Aryanized version...
They say, the "Aryan invasion theory" is just a hoax to justify certain similar changes in Hinduism. And Aryan invasion never happened; they were always here. In prehistoric times, in the pagan tradition, even in the middle east, people worshiped the sacred feminine. It's not particularly an Indian phenomenon.
Post a Comment