Sunday, May 9, 2021

Democracy on Rabindra Jayanti

 


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.