Couple of years ago, when i was still doing some soul searching, completely disillusioned by the ongoing and never ending atrocities in my homeland, i stumbled upon "Geetanjali" written by Guru Rabindranath Tagore. it brought me peace, some tranquility to my troubled self and most imortant of all, it gave the courage to hope amidst all things worse. Tagore, being the staunch patriot he was, wrote some beautiful lines about India and his hopes for India.. I must admit that this peom still remains as one of my eternal favourties..
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 by thee into ever widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
No matter how many times i read these few lines, i still cannot stop myself from contemplating whether these few lines will ever come true, whether Tagore's vision of India will ever see daylight, will his dream be ever realized. On this eve of 63rd Independence day, i still am searching for that dream to come true. somewhere amidst all this pessimism, these few lines force me to find hope and believe in that invisible hope. but then sometimes i think, is this hope all in vain.. Was Tagore wrong in envisioning such a wonderful country. May be he was, may be his words would have been different if he had decided to pen down a few words about the India as we see now.
I am not a staunch supporter of Gandhi neither i believe in Gandhism and his path of non violence. i must admit that the times are different to what it was 100 yrs ago. May be Gandhi too would have changed his opinion about it had he lived in the current era or may be not. But then Gandhi once said,
"When women in this country can walk without fear at midnight, India will then be truly free"
I just wonder if that will ever be the scenario.. today indian women cannot walk safely even during the day. Molestations, rapes, murders, abductions, honour killings, religious radicalism, inflation, poverty, corruption, illiteracy, under deverlopment, false promises, sexual harassments, poor infrastructure are but a few of the short comings of the country.. yet we hoist the tricolour in pride to commemorate the martyrs who laid down their lives for the country.. people smile and wish each other "Happy Independence Day".
Tagore wrote only one poem in his "Geetanjali" about the nation and his dream for the future.. now i wonder whether its mere coincidence or whether he too saw the truth behind the veil which we the people have put on Mother India.
as a tribute to Tagore, i rewrote the lines of the above poem for the india of the 21st century
Where the mind is filled fear and the head stooped low,
Where knowledge is not free
Where the world has been broken up into a million fragments by narrow domestic walls,
Where words and promises by leaders are hollow,
Where tireless striving stretches its arms to make ends meet,
Where plausible thought and reason has lost its way into the dreary desert sand of religious banter,
where poverty is not a dream but a distressing reality,
where corruption and fraudulent ways have deep seated roots in the society,
where the rich get richer and the poor, poorer,
where the people worship a female deity, but a girl child is still not welcome,
where education is a not a birth right,
where hope has found its way into oblivion, like impressions on beach sand,
From that world of ignorance and despair, let my country and its countrymen, awake..
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