Where The Mind Is Without Fear
Where The Mind Is Without Fear
'Where intelligence is what nature has given us, not something forged in labs'
WE WILL BEAR WITNESS to our world. This media project collects stories from earth's citizens, recording climate destruction, devastation, resilience and hope.
Tell your story.
Where the mind is without fear
By Rabindranath Thakur
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.
Where the mind is without fear
By Ashish Kothari
(In honor of Rabindranath Thakur)
Where Amazon is an endless rainforest, not an endless orgy of shopping
Where Cloud is lavishly rain bearing, not a data loaded aid to snooping
Where Reliance is what you have in your friends, not some capitalist’s hand in your pocket
Where Apple is a delicious fruit for all to adore, not a company with a rotten core
Into that world, my Indigenous friend, lead us
Where Shell is that wondrous thing we find on the seaside, not a corporation that tears up the oceans
Where Twitter is what birds do in the sky, not a playground of the chatterati
Where Jaguars are cats stalking their preys in jungles, not knocking down pedestrians on city streets
Where Microsoft is the gentle touch of a mother, not a monopolistic profit making machine
Into that world, my eco-feminist friend, lead us
Where my Face is a Book, but not to be sold to surveillance regimes
Where Musk is a Himalayan deer’s fragrant gland, not a fat-cat helping the rich to escape to Mars
Where Gautam is a teacher of compassion, not the head of a rapacious Indian corporation
Where Smart is 40,000 years of Australian aborigines living with the earth, not what IBM wants to make the planet
Into that world, my climate justice friend, lead us
Where religion at its radical core is about compassion, not a dogmatic theocratic fashion
Where power is everyone’s birthright, not the prerogative of a centralized state
Where intelligence is what nature has given us, not something forged in labs
Where wealth is a measure of wellbeing, not what puts you on Forbes (500) list
Into that world, my “disabled” friend, lead us
Into that world, without fear or dread, let us all lead and be led
Into that world, only a seeming impossibility, let us boldly tread.
Ashish Kothari
Ashish Kothari is an environmentalist who has been working at the intersection of environment, biodiversity and development for decades. He’s the founder of Kalpavriksh, an Indian non profit organisation working on environmental and social issues at local, national and global levels. He also organises both the Confluence of Alternatives and the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, projects which bring together people all around India and the world to imagine and strategise alternative ways of being, politics, economies and systems.
Listen to his interview on Planet: Critical on colonialism, the global obsession with economic growth, development as neo-colonialism, global and national inequality, patriarchy and the reality of elite exploitation across all nations.
WE WILL BEAR WITNESS to this moment in history. This media project features stories from earth's citizens, recording climate destruction, devastation, resilience and hope. Tell your story.