English translation. Tagore certainly had strong religious beliefs (of an unusually non-denominational kind), but he was also interested in many other things and had many different things to say about them. For Tagore, it was of utmost importance that individuals have the ability to live and reason flexibly. His mentality towards matters of government and society, patriotism and internationalism, custom and progress, can all be seen in the light of this belief. Nothing, perhaps, communicates its qualities so clearly as a ballad in Gitanjali: Where the spirit is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls; ...Where the clear current of reason is not lost in the dreary sand of the desert of dead habits; ...In this paradise of freedom, my Father, may my country wake up. Rabindranath's qualified support for patriotic developments and his resistance to the unfreedom of foreign directives flowed from this dedication. The same goes for his reservations about patriotism, which he believes can restrict both the ability to captivate thoughts outside "thin provincial dividers" and the possibility also to support the reason of individuals in different nations. Rabindranath's ardor for expediency underlies his firm stricture to an irrational traditionalism, which makes us a prisoner of the past (lost, as he puts it, in "the troubling sands of the desert of dead propensity"). Tagore describes the oppression of the past in his interesting book. but deeply authentic, Kartar Bhoot (“The Ghost of the Leader”). As the considered pioneer of a non-existent region bites the dust, his terrified supporters are...... middle of paper ......f his best and truest confidants in the extraordinary development he is leading . Life at home was, in many ways, troubled. He married in 1883, lost his wife in 1902 and never remarried. He sought a close friendship, which he did not always have (perhaps even throughout his married life - he remained in contact with his wife, Mrinalini: In case you and I could be confidants in all our work and in all our considerations it can be wonderful, but we cannot achieve everything we want). He enjoyed a warm camaraderie and strong Platonic bond with the beloved wife of literary works, Kadambari, of his elder brother, Jyotirindranath. He dedicated a few sonnets to her before her marriage, and a few books shortly after, others after her disappearance (she committed suicide on him, for poorly understood reasons, in