जहां मन है निर्भय / Where the Mind is Without Fear

Who doesn’t know Tagore, the Bard of Bengal, writer, composer, playwright and painter? Shri Rabindra Nath Tagore was born on this day in 1861.

At 16, he released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym “Bhanusimha” (Sun Lion), and in 1913, he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for his collection Gitanjali (Song Offerings).

His compositions were chosen by two nations as their national anthems – “Jana Gana Mana” by India and “Amar Shonar Bangla” by Bangladesh. The Sri Lankan national anthem was also inspired by his work.

One of his famous quotes is- “It’s very simple to be happy, but it’s very difficult to be simple.”

Today I’m going to share Hindi and English translations of one of his most popular poems. Here it is:

जहां मन है निर्भय / Where the Mind is Without Fear

जहां मन है निर्भय
और मस्तक है ऊंचा,
जहां ज्ञान है मुक्त,
जहां पृथ्वी खंडित नहीं हुई है
छोटे छोटे खंडों में,
जहाँ शब्द निकलते हैं
सत्य की गभीरता से,
जहाँ अविश्रांत प्रयास बढ़ा रहा है
उसका हाथ परिपूर्णता की ओर
जहां स्पष्ट न्याय का झरना
खोया नहीं है अपना मार्ग
निर्जन मरुभूमि के मृत्यु सदृश
सुनसान रेत के अभ्यास में,
जहाँ मन को नेतृत्व दे रहे हो तुम
निरंतर विस्तारित विचार और गति को,
उस स्वतन्त्रता के स्वर्ग में,
हे मेरे प्रभु, मेरे देश को जागृत होने दो!

🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀

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
Where words emerge
from the depth of truth,
Where tireless striving stretches
its arms towards perfection,
Where the clear stream
of reason has not been lost its way
into the dreary desert sand
of dead habit,
Where the mind is led forward
by you into ever-widening
thought and action,
Into that heaven of freedom,
my God, let my country awake!

–Kaushal Kishore

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