Tagore's Birth Anniversary

Today is Rabindranath Tagore's birth anniversary. He remains one of Modern India's greatest thinkers. A poet, educator, romantic, spiritualist and a seeker, may Tagore's thoughts and words be an inspiration not only for generations of Indians but for people the world over.

Below is an excerpt of Tagore's dream for India but I would take it to be for the world at large. In today's age of restricted thinking, rote education and commercialism, his words are a reminder for us to keep believing in all that is good.

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 of 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.

And here is another spiritual couplet from Gitanjali, Tagore's monumental work on devotion and love...

"When one knows Thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose touch of the One in the play of the many."

What a thought!