Let our country be WOKE

Dearest Tagore, we havent forgotten you, nor your words. It is the practice and actions we have. To keep up with the current cult, I was audacious enough to plagiarise your work. In your memory and our upcoming celebration as a republic, here I go!


Where the mindlessly fearless minds are not feared,

Where high-headness is not held high,

Where opinions do not float freely as facts or knowledge,

Where our world does not boast of narrow mindedness or its claustrophobic walls;

Where words do not spew hatred from the depths of ‘personal truths’;

Where tireless striving does not mean stretching arms to hurl stones or hoist war cries;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit, of unreason and adamance and mediocracy;

Where the mind is not led forward recklessly in the name of ‘thee’ into ever-widening thought and action –

Into that heaven of freedom, my country wo/men’, let OUR country awake!!

Original follows:

“Let My Country Awake”

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.

R. Tagore)