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In "Where The Mind is Without Fear," what should the poet's countrymen do to be led into the heaven of freedom ?

The speaker in the poem believes that his fellow citizens should "wake up" and embrace what can be in light of what is.


In order to enter a world "where the mind is without fear," Tagore tells his fellow citizens to shed their inhibitions. Tagore believes that change is possible if people willingly embrace it:



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.



In order to enter "that heaven of freedom," the nation must "awake."  It is clear that Tagore believes that people in the nation have allowed fear to take over their sensibilities.  This is why he sees them as asleep.  


Tagore's poem articulates a world of possibility.  It is a world where "knowledge is free" and "narrow domestic walls" are broken.  It is a setting where there is a "tireless" pursuit of "perfection" that avoids "the dreary desert sand of dead habit."  Tagore argues that his fellow citizens can achieve such a world through the embrace of an internal change.  The world where "the mind is without fear" does not exist outside the individual.  Rather, it is within us.  We need to have to courage to see things as they can be and not be tethered to the way things are. Tagore believes "that heaven of freedom" is entirely possible when we shift our mind accordingly.  When we move our thoughts into embracing what can be, Tagore sees greatness for all of us.

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