Do you think today's India is the same as Rabindranath's dream of free India?
Why / Why not? (80 words
Answers
Prize for Literature. In the introduction to Gitanjali , W.B.
Of
The East, he insisted, could resist this by drawing on a “ no longer its ugly voluminousness -- till it begins to crack and gape, breathe gas and fire in gasps, its
death-rattles sound in cannon roars. In this war [World War I] the death-throes of the nation have commenced. Suddenly, all its mechanisms going mad, it has begun the dance of the Furies, shattering its own limbs, scattering them into the dust. It is the fifth act of the tragedy of the unreal.
Those who have any faith in Man cannot but fervently hope that the tyranny of the Nation will not be restored to all its former teeth and claws, to its far reaching iron arms and immense inner cavity, all stomach and no heart; that man will have his new birth, in the freedom of his individuality, from the enveloping vagueness of abstraction.."
Tagore wouldn’t live to see an Independent India, through his vision of the country it could be advanced the cause of freedom across the globe. His reservations, such as they are, are about nationhood itself, about the negotiating of arbitrary boundaries, not about the land and his love of it. It is no co-incidence that “Where the mind is without fear” is taught to school children across the country. His hesitation, moreover, has proved prophetic: who can deny that unbridled nationalism has been at the root of much of the destruction of the last century? As we celebrate our tryst with destiny, thus, we would do well to listen to the voices of our past.
Finally, since I cannot let a poet go past without scoring some verse, here is some to brighten up your day. The poem below could as easily have been written about India as any coy lover, for what is a country if she is not the most skilled of flirts?
Lest I should know you too easily, you play with me.
You blind me with flashes of laughter to hide your tears.
I know, I know your art;
You never say the word you would.
Lest I should prize you not, you elude me in a thousand ways.
Lest I should mix you with the crowd, you stand aside.
I know, I know your art;
You never walk the path you would.
Your claim is more than others; that is why you are silent.
With a playful carelessness you avoid my gifts.
I know, I know your art;
You never accept what you would.
Updated Date: August 16, 2011 11:49:57 IST
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India Literarypalate Poet Rabindranath Tagore
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Answer:
The poet is wishing that his country be free of the fear, the fear of oppression by its colonized rulers. According to him the freedom of fear is the real freedom. He wishes the country to be free of burden of the years it has been oppressed.