Chitto Jetha Bhayshunyo
"Where the mind is without fear" (
It is an expression of the poet's reflective spirit and contains a simple prayer for his country, the India of pre-independence times.
Original Bengali script - By Rabindranath Thakur or Tagore
- চিত্ত যেথা ভয়শূন্য, উচ্চ যেথা শির,
- জ্ঞান যেথা মুক্ত, যেথা গৃহের প্রাচীর
- আপন প্রাঙ্গণতলে দিবসশর্বরী
- বসুধারে রাখে নাই খণ্ড ক্ষুদ্র করি,
- যেথা বাক্য হৃদয়ের উৎসমুখ হতে
- উচ্ছ্বসিয়া উঠে, যেথা নির্বারিত স্রোতে
- দেশে দেশে দিশে দিশে কর্মধারা ধায়
- অজস্র সহস্রবিধ চরিতার্থতায়,
- যেথা তুচ্ছ আচারের মরুবালুরাশি
- বিচারের স্রোতঃপথ ফেলে নাই গ্রাসি,
- পৌরুষেরে করে নি শতধা, নিত্য যেথা
- তুমি সর্ব কর্ম চিন্তা আনন্দের নেতা,
- নিজ হস্তে নির্দয় আঘাত করি, পিতঃ;
- ভারতেরে সেই স্বর্গে করো জাগরিত৷
English translation
Tagore's own translation, in the 1912 English edition of Gitanjali:[1]
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.
History and translation
This poem was most likely composed in 1900. It appeared in the volume
As in most of Tagore's translations for the English Gitanjali, almost every line of the English rendering has been considerably simplified. Line 6 in the English version omits a reference to manliness (পৌরুষ), and the stern ending of the original, where the Father is being enjoined to "strike the sleeping nation without mercy" has been softened.
This poem often appears in textbooks in India and is also popular in Bangladesh. There is a Sinhala translation of this song by the name "Mage Deshaya Avadi Karanu Mana Piyaneni" (Sinhala: මාගේ දේශය අවදි කරනු මැන පියාණෙනි; lit. "My father, let my country awake") which was translated into Sinhala by Mahagama Sekara.
A more recent translation by Niladri Roy (who also translated Sukumar Ray's Abol in its entirety) – much truer, literally, to the original Bengali verse – and which preserves the rhymes in the original Bengali verse, can be found in the attached image (used with permission from the translator) .
See also
References
- ^ Tagore, Rabindranath (1915). Gitanjali (Song Offerings). New York: The Macmillan Company. pp. 27–28. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
- ^ "Gitanjali". The India Society, London / One More Library. 1912. Retrieved 28 April 2019.
- ^ Sisir Kumar Das, ed. (1994). The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, v.1: Poems. Sahitya Akademi. p. 9.
- ^ Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, rabIndrajIbanIkathA, 1981, p.104