চিত্ত যেথা ভয়শূন্য, উচ্চ যেথা শির, জ্ঞান যেথা মুক্ত, যেথা গৃহের প্রাচীর
আপন প্রাঙ্গণতলে দিবসশর্বরী বসুধারে রাখে নাই খন্ড ক্ষুদ্র করি
Written
more than a hundred years ago in times of colonialism, Tagore’s words are still
relevant in a land where freedom dies a thousand deaths every day. It dies in
the halls of our Parliament, it dies in the courts of justice, it dies by the
stroke of a pen of a corrupted bureaucrat,
it dies by the actions of our elected representatives as they shamelessly
thirst for power and abuse our democracy, but most of all, freedom dies in our
minds.
Because
in the end, it is up to us. It is not somebody else's responsibility, but it is
our individual responsibility to preserve our own democracy. Our democracy is
only as strong as our willingness to fight for it. That's why the most
important office in any country is not that of the president or of the prime
minister. The most important title is
“citizen.”
Today,
even as the fires in our crematoriums burn ceaselessly, and our graveyards run
out of space, our freedom and simple human dignity, die a thousand more deaths,
while we the citizens of India sleep in ignorance, while we the citizens of
India choose not to question our elected government, while we the citizens of
India, bicker in our differences in community, in religion, in caste, in
political allegiances, in sexes and in sexual orientation.
Today
is Rabindra Jayanti and also International Mother’s Day. We have heard this
prayer for our country written by Tagore a hundred times before but today as a
mother, I feel that the time has come for us, the citizens of India, to pause
and ask ourselves - What do we need to change in ourselves to live up to the
ideals of this prayer so that our daughters and our sons, will still know what
it is to live in a truly free country where human dignity is honoured.
Let
us pray unto ourselves.
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,) my fellow citizens, let my country awake.
