wandering singers poem

Wandering Singers

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Introduction

The poem Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu is about a group of people who keep wandering from villages to towns and from towns to forests. While on the way, they keep singing.

According to the poet, these wandering singers do not have any hopes or desires. They go where the wind goes. In other words, they seem to either nomads or some nature lovers who are Romantic and do not have any love for materialistic things. Instead, they love following the nature.

In the first stanza, the wandering singers say that they roam where the voice of the wind calls their feet . The word wind is symbolic here. It perhaps refer to changing seasons or even the changing times. Calling the wandering feet means asking them to accompany it (the wind). In other words, they wander wherever the wind goes.

The wandering singers travel through the echoing forest and the echoing street with lutes in their hands and always keep singing . Here, echoing forest mean the villages which are full of hustle and bustle. Similarly, echoing street refers to the cities which are again full of life.

According to the wandering singer, all the humans on earth are their family and the whole world is their home. In other words, they do not have a family of their own or even a home. They rather consider themselves to be the citizen of the world.

In this stanza, the wandering singers tell us what they exactly sing about. According to them, their lays (songs) are of cities whose lustre i.e. glory is shed i.e. gone. They also sing of laughter and beauty (i.e. cheerful life) of women who died long ago.

They sing of sword of old battles (i.e. wars and battles) and also the crown of the old kings (i.e. kings, their rule and their time). And also, they sing of happy (joyful), simple and even sorrowful things which means they sing of past as well as of present. They sing of those who are gone long ago and also of the present.

The wandering singers then raise a rhetorical question. They wonder what hope and dreams they should have. Hope and dreams are for those who think of achieving something (worldly things). But they (wandering singers) do not have any desire. Hence they do not have dreams.

They go wherever the wind goes. No love bids them tarry i.e. the love never leaves them. They always feel loved by the nature. And no joy bids them wait i.e. the joy never makes them for it. They always enjoy because the voice of the wind is the voice of their fate i.e. the fate of the wind is their fate as well.

Read important questions and answers of this poem.

Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu – Summary, Analysis and Questions and Answers

Table of Contents

Central Idea Of The Poem

The poem is about the wandering singers who engage their entire life in singing for others pleasure and never minds about his pleasure. The poet Sarojini Naidu is a great poet to paint the life of wandering singers in poetic words.

The poem “Wandering Singers” by Sarojini Naidu is about the band of folk singers wandering through their singing from town to town and from village to village to spread the message of love. They play the lute; as they wander from place to place, they play a musical instrument. The wind’s voice symbolises the welcoming tone of the song echoing through the streets and forests. All mankind, to the wandering singers, is like their extended family and their home is the world.

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The theme of the songs they sing goes back to ancient battle stories or ancient kings. They also have songs about women’s beauty and about things happy and sad. The wandering singers do not have their own dreams or hopes; they go wherever the wind calls them. No love can make them go slow, or they cannot be asked to wait with no joy. The wind’s voice is the voice of their lives and their destiny as well.

About the poet

Sarojini Naidu was an Indian political activist and poet. She was an important figure in India’s struggle for independence from colonial rule. Naidu’s work as a poet earned her the sobriquet Nightingale of India.

1. lutes – a lute is a kind of musical instrument with strings

2. kindred – family or relatives

3. lays – (old usage) songs

4. cities whose lustre is shed – cities which were once great and famous, but not anymore

They count the world as their home and all the people around their innate family and their relatives. They hold lutes in their hands, and they always sing about the city sheen and the past.

Their songs radiate the laughter and beauty of the women of the past, the legends of the sword and the old battles, and the crowns of the old kings.

Analysis of Wandering Singers

Wandering Singers is a lyric developed in three stanzas of four aa, bb, cc, ddd, ee, ff. In the first stanza wandering singers sing the song. The voice of the wind calls the wandering feet of singers through echoing forest and street with lutes in hands and singing the songs. All men are their relatives and the whole world is their home.

They sing about the cities lustre who is lost, laughter and beauty of woman who is dead, sword of old battles and crowns of old kings. They just depend upon their fate. There is no love that compares them to sit in a particular place and no joy can allow them to wait. The voice of wind is the voice of their fate.

‘Wandering Singers’ is a lyric song, in the very tune of the songs of the wandering singers in India. The main theme of the poem is philosophical attitude towards death, life, birth, love, sorrow, passion. The wandering singers sing of past and present and its glory and greatness. The ‘Wandering Singers’ sing about the community life, who wander from one place to another place like wind.

They always keep on singing and wandering ‘walls’ with their musical instruments in their hands, i.e. national, provincial, racial, caste, etc. biases do not separate them from their fellowmen. They regard all men as their brothers and the whole world as their home. In their outlook, they are cosmopolitan. They are believers in the unity of all men. They are world brotherhood voters. They are votaries of world brotherhood.

Their themes can be appreciated by all. They sing of cities which have lost the glory which they once enjoyed, for example, cities like Chittor or Golconda. They sing of women who have been dead for a long time, such as Jhansi ki Rani or Zeb-ul Nissa. They sing of battles which were fought in the past and of kings and warriors who fought those battles. They are these repositories of custom and tradition who keep alive a local and traditional legend and communicate it to the people. They thus perform a very useful social function, for it is they who make the common men conscious of their cultural heritage, of the glory and greatness of their past. Through their songs, they assert the cultural and historical continuity of the legacy of the past. Their themes are simple; sometimes they are happy and at other times sorrowful.

The wandering singers have no dream of the future and they have nothing to hope for in this respect they are like Shelley’s skylark which does not ‘look before and after and pine for what is not.’ Just as the skylark keeps on flying higher and higher, so also they wander on and on without any hopes and dreams. They live entirely in the present without any regrets for the past or hopes for the future. The urge to wander is strong in them and they are more along in obedience to the call of the wind. They have no objects of love relation, friends, wives etc. Hence, they do not stop but wander along singing continuously like so many singing birds. They follow only the path of wind. The society of the wandering singers is an absolutely free society, as free as is possible under the limitations imposed on us by our human condition.

In the ‘face of modernity’, Naidu affirms the Indian identity through wandering singers. Wandering singers belong to the cultural heritage of India and Naidu is not ready to lose this Indian tradition under the threat of modernity.

The poem rightly reveals the search for cultural identity of the Indians. It gives expression to the distinct Indian folk personality, in order to reintegrate the Indians with their rich cultural heritage.

A. Answer these questions

1. What is the song Wandering Singers about? Ans. The song is about a band of folk singers who wander from city to city and from village to village to spread the message of love through their singing. They play the lute; as they roam from place to place, they are a musical instrument.

2. Do the singers stay at one place or do they wander about? What determines where they go? Ans. They wander about from one place to the other. The call of the wind determines where they go.

3. What do the singers sing about? Ans. The Wandering Singers’ song is about tales of ancient battles or of ancient kings. They also have songs about women’s beauty as well as happy and sad things. All mankind is like their extended family and their home is the world.

4. How do the singers sing? Ans. The singers sing songs with lutes in their hands and travelling from place to place.

5. Are the singers homeless travellers? Why do you think so? Ans. No, the singers are not homeless. They think that the world is their home and people are their brothers and sisters.

6. What do the singers sing about? Ans. They sing about the stories of the cities whose beauty has long passed away; the women’s happiness and beauty that was robbed either by the wars or by the time. They sing about ancient battles as well or about old kings. They have songs about life’s simple, happy and sad things, too.

7. What has happened to the cities? Ans. It has been ravished by wars, famine etc., so, the beauty has gone.

8. What does, “The laughter and beauty of women long-dead” mean? Ans. The laughter and beauty have died because of wars or because of famine.

9. What songs do the singers sing of the sword of old battles? Ans. They sing about the brave warriors who fought bravely with the sword.

10.Why do the singers feel nostalgic of the crown of old kings? Ans. They feel nostalgic because, during the kings’ period, these singers used to get rewards which made them lead a comfortable life.

Reference to context

1. “What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow?” Explain these lines. Ans: The poet tells us that because of their wandering nature, wandering singers can not have any hope or dream of a bright future.

B. Extra Questions and Answers

Q.1. Which line tells us that the singers sing as they travel?

Ans. ‘with lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam’

Q.2. The wandering singers have no permanent homes and families. Do they show any sadness about it? Or do they have a different notion of family and home?

Ans. Although the wandering singers do not have any permanent home or family, they do not show any sadness about it. In the line ‘All men are kindred, the world is our home,’ the wandering singers tell us that they consider everyone their family and the whole world their home. So they feel a bond with everyone and at home anywhere and everywhere.

Q.3. What do the wandering singers sing about? What might their listeners get from their songs in terms of –

(a) Knowledge (b) Mood?

Ans. The wandering singers sing about cities which were once great and famous, about the laughter and beauty of women who died long ago, old battles and kings of past, happy, simple and sad things.

(a) In terms of knowledge, listeners can learn something of history and folklore from the wandering singers ‘songs, as they sing of cities, battles, women and kings from the past.

(b) In terms of mood, the listeners can feel fascination, curiosity, admiration, sadness and excitement as they hear about cities that used to be grand, women who were happy and beautiful, battles that were bravely fought and kings who were great, but none of whom exist anymore.

Q.4. Why do the wandering singers not wait anywhere? Why do they keep travelling?

Ans. The wandering singers do not wait anywhere because no close ties or loving relationships make them stay at any particular place. Their happiness is not associated with a particular place where they might want to wait. Instead, the wind as it moves freely from one place to another, calling out to them to travel to one place one day and another place the next day. Their destinations keep changing, like the wind. So they keep moving from one place to another.

Appreciating the poem

Q.1. Why do you think the speaker uses, the words, ‘wander’ and ‘roam’ and not ‘march’?

Ans. The words ‘wander’ and ‘roam’ mean walk or move in a relaxed, unhurried manner, with no fixed purpose. The words ‘march’ and ‘stride’ mean to walk quickly with a purpose in a specific direction. The first two words have been used instead of the others because the wandering singers are never in a hurry, they have no fixed destination or place to reach. They move in a relaxed pace, going wherever they feel like going, free to change direction as often as the wind.

Q. 2. What is the rhyme scheme of the poem?

Ans. The rhyme scheme of this poem is aa bb cc dd ee ff.

Q. Write a summary of Wandering Singers .

The Wandering Singers have no fixed abode. They are forever on the road, led to ever new places by the voice of the wind. Whether they are travelling through streets or forests, the places echo with their songs. These songs have many themes: cities that were once glorious but no more; happy and beautiful women who died a long time ago; old battles and old kings. As can be seen, all these themes have something pleasant-beauty, happiness, glory or bravery- and something sad about them- they belong to the past.

The wandering singers have no family and no home, but they consider everyone their family and the whole world their home. They do not dream and plan the way other people do, for their lives do not follow a fixed, regular pattern, their destiny is as changeable as the changing direction of the wind. They are not held back by love or happiness, yet they love their wandering lifestyle and are happy to keep travelling forever.

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Analysis of Wandering Singers

Sarojini naidu 1879 (hyderabad) – 1949 (lucknow).

WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things. What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow? Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go. No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait: The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu, born as Sarojini Chattopadhyay also known by the sobriquet as The Nightingale of India, was a child prodigy, Indian independence activist and poet. Naidu served as the first governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949; the first woman to become the governor of an Indian state. She was the second woman to become the president of the Indian National Congress in 1925 and the first Indian woman to do so.  more…

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Sarojini Naidu

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Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home.

Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things.

What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow? Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go. No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait: The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

– Sarojini Naidu

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Wandering Singers

By sarojini naidu.

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WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things. What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow? Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go. No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait: The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

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More Poems Published by this Author

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• The Queen's Rival
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Sarojini Naidu | Wandering Singers | An Analytical Study

Sarojini Naidu’s Poem ‘Wandering Singers’-An Analytical Study

The poem “Wandering Singers” by Sarojini Naidu portrays a group of wandering singers who travel freely wherever the wind calls them.

The main theme of the poem is the nomadic nature of the wandering singers and their connection to the world around them. The poem celebrates their itinerant lifestyle, emphasizing their sense of belonging to a larger human family. It also highlights the transient nature of life and the acceptance of fate.

The poem mentions the subjects of their songs, which include cities that have lost their former splendor, the beauty of women from the past, the glory of ancient battles, the crowns of kings, and a mix of happy, simple, and sorrowful things. This imagery suggests that the singers draw inspiration from a wide range of experiences and emotions.

The wandering singers are portrayed as free spirits who don’t stay in one place. They are driven by the voice of the wind, and no love or joy compels them to stay or wait. The wind’s voice is presented as their fate, guiding their footsteps and shaping their journeys.

The poet uses vivid and evocative language to convey the essence of the wandering singers’ existence. The wind is personified as it calls out to their wandering feet, leading them through forests and streets. The singers carry lutes and sing as they roam, considering all people as their kindred and the world as their home.

To say in brief, “Wandering Singers” celebrates the nomadic life of the singers and their connection to humanity. The poem explores the idea of embracing fate and finding inspiration in a variety of experiences. It encourages a sense of openness to the world and the ever-changing path that lies ahead. 0 0 0 .

Sarojini Naidu Wandering Singers An Analytical Study

N.B. The article ‘Sarojini Naidu Wandering Singers An Analytical Study’ originally belongs to the book ‘ Analytical Studies of Selected Poems of Sarojini Naidu ‘ by Menonim Menonimus.

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Wow it is very useful

it was really amazing and it was very usefull

really useful !!!!!!!!!

Nice summary but you should have included the rhyme scheme also.

Really help me to understand the poet. Thanks

?This is very very useful for me in my final exam

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Wandering Singers

Sarojini naidu.

WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things. What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow? Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go. No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait: The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

• Turn, O Libertad ( Walt Whitman )
• Not all the singers of a thousand years ( Lord Alfred Douglas )
• Singers to Come ( Alice Meynell )
• The Green Singer ( John Shaw Neilson )
• The Indications ( Walt Whitman )
• We Are Coming, Sister Mary ( Henry Clay Work )
• Romulus and Remus ( Rudyard Kipling )
• Oppression ( Langston Hughes )

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Just read "Wandering Singers" and wow, what a journey! The emotion behind every line really resonated with me. This poem speaks to the traveler in all of us, the longing for both the thrill of new experiences yet a connection to something familiar too. “The world is our home” is such a powerful phrase. Beautifully written!

LOVE THIS POEM BY SAROJINI NAIDU!!! REALLY RESONATES WITH MY WANDERLUST HEART. IT'S LIKE SHE'S PAINTING A BEAUTIFUL PICTURE WITH WORDS. SO POWERFUL AND DEEP. REALLY MAKES YOU THINK ABT THINGS DIFFERENTLY. KUDOS TO THE POET. LIFE IS A JOURNEY INDEED!

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7. Summary of the poem

Poem by Sarojini Naidu - Term 2 Unit 2 - 7th English - Wandering Singers | 7th English : Term 2 Unit 2 : Poem : Wandering Singers

Chapter: 7th english : term 2 unit 2 : poem : wandering singers.

Wandering Singers

Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet,

Through echoing forest and echoing street,

With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam,

All men are our kindred, the world is our home.

Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed,

The laughter and beauty of women long dead;

The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings,

And happy and simple and sorrowful things.

What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow?

Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go.

No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait:

The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

                                                                                              Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu was a famous Indian poet and a major freedom fighter. She was given a sobriquet Bharat Kokila (The Nightingale of India) on account of her beautiful poems and songs.

lute - a kind of stringed musical instrument

roam - wander, travel

kindred - relations

lays - songs, stories

tarry - wait, delay

fate - destiny, luck

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Available answers.

Say whether these statements are true (T) or not true (NT). Change the not true statements to true.

• The wandering singers stay and sing at each place for some time.
• They sing in the street but not in the forest.
• They do not make plans about where to go first, where next, and so on.

Which line tells us that the singers have no permanent home and no reason to stay at a place?

Look at the list of topics the singers mention. What do they think their listeners get from them? (line 9)

Compare the first line with the last. What is the difference? Which line talks about each day's activity? Which talks about the whole life?

The wandering singers have no permanent homes and families. Do they show any sadness about it? Or do they have a different notion of family and home? (line 4)

Look at the repetition of 'voice of the wind' (first line, last line), 'the wind calls' (last but two lines) as well as 'echoing forest', and 'echoing street' (second line). Are they specially appropriate to a poem about singing? In what way?

Wandering Singers Questions & Answers

Hi Everyone!! This article will share Wandering Singers Questions & Answers. This poem is written by Sarojini Naidu. In my previous posts, I have shared the questions and answers of A Sea of Foliage , Homesickness , The Master Artist , Uncomfortable Bed and Maps Poem so, you can check these posts as well. I have also shared Wandering Singers Poem Summary so, make sure to check that post also.

Wandering Singers Questions & Answers

Question 1: the wandering singers have no permanent homes and families. do they show any sadness about it or do they have a different notion of family and home.

Answer: Although the wandering singers do not have any permanent home or family, they do not show any sadness about it. In the line ‘All men are kindred, the world is our home,’ the wandering singers tell us that they consider everyone their family and the whole world their home. So, they feel a bond with everyone and at home anywhere and everywhere.

Question 2: Which line tells us that the singers sing as they travel?

Answer: The line that tells us that the singers sing as they travel is ‘with lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam’.

Question 3: Why do the wandering singers not wait anywhere? Why do they keep traveling?

Answer: The wandering singers do not wait anywhere because no close ties or loving relationships make them stay on any particular place. Their happiness is not associated with a particular place where they might want to wait. Instead, the wind as it moves freely from one place to another, calling out to them to travel to one place one day and another place the next day. Their destinations keep changing, like the wind. So, they keep moving from one place to another.

Question 4: What do the wandering singers sing about? What might their listeners get from their songs in terms of – (a) Knowledge (b) Mood?

Answer: The wandering singers sing about cities which were once great and famous, about the laughter and beauty of women who died long ago, old battles and kings of past, happy, simple and sad things. (a) In terms of knowledge, listeners can learn something of history and folklore from the wandering singers ‘songs, as they sing of cities, battles, women and kings from the past. (b) In terms of mood, the listeners can feel fascination, curiosity, admiration, sadness and excitement as they hear about cities that used to be grand, women who were happy and beautiful, battles that were bravely fought and kings who were great, but none of whom exist anymore.

Question 5: Tell us the rhyme scheme of the poem?

Answer: The rhyme scheme of this poem is aa bb cc dd ee ff.

Question 6: Why do you think the speaker uses, the words, ‘wander’ and ‘roam’ and not ‘march’?

Answer: The words ‘wander’ and ‘roam’ mean walk or move in a relaxed, unhurried manner, with no fixed purpose. The words ‘march’ and ‘stride’ mean to walk quickly with a purpose in a specific direction. The first two words have been used instead of the others because the wandering singers are never in a hurry, they have no fixed destination or place to reach. They move in a relaxed pace, going wherever they feel like going, free to change direction as often as the wind.

Question 7: In what person has this poem been written? Why the poet did not use ‘I’ or ‘they’?

Answer: This poem is written in first person plural – ‘we’. The poet did not use ‘I’ because the poem is about a group of wandering singers – not any specific group, but any or all wandering singers. She does not use ‘they’ because she wants it to seem as if the wandering singers are speaking to the reader directly, telling the readers their own story in their own words rather than someone else talking about the singers.

Question 8: What do the following lines mean?

(a) all men are our kindred, the world is our home..

Answer:  All human-beings are like the extended family of the wandering singers and the world is their home.

(b) Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet.

Answer:  They go where the voice of the wind calls them.

(c) What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow?

Answer:  Here the poetess tells us about their sadness related to their future. They do not stay at one place. So, they cannot gather hope and have dreams about their bright future.

(d) Our lays are of cities whose luster is shed.

Answer:  Their songs are about the cities whose glory has faded now.

(e) The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

Answer:  It means that the movements of wandering singers depend on the call of the wind. So, these were Wandering Singers Questions & Answers.

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Opinion Lydia Polgreen

The Student-Led Protests Aren’t Perfect. That Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Right.

Supported by

By Lydia Polgreen

Photographs by Mark Peterson

Ms. Polgreen is an Opinion columnist and a co-host of the “Matter of Opinion” podcast for The Times. Mr. Peterson is a photographer based in New York and a member of Redux Pictures.

• April 26, 2024

On Wednesday morning, on a corner across the street from Columbia University, a man dressed in black, a huge gold cross around his neck, brandished a sign that featured a bloodstained Israeli flag and the word “genocide” in capital letters. He was also shouting at the top of his lungs.

“The Jews control the world! Jews are murderers!”

I watched as a pro-Palestinian protester approached the man. “That is horribly antisemitic,” she said. “You are hurting the movement, and you are not a part of us. Go away.”

The man shouted vile, unprintable epithets back at her, but the woman, who told me she had come to New York from her home in Baltimore to support the protesting students, walked away.

Hours later, a well-known congressional reporter covering House Speaker Mike Johnson’s visit to Columbia’s campus posted a photograph of the same man. “One sign here at the Columbia protest,” the reporter, Jake Sherman, wrote. “This man is ranting about Jews controlling the universe.”

The man wasn’t at the Columbia protest. The university’s campus has been closed to outsiders for over a week — even as a journalist and an alumna, I had trouble getting in. He was, several people on social media told Sherman, a well-known antisemitic crank completely unconnected from what was unfolding on campus. Indeed, last week I had seen a man wearing an identical cross carrying a similarly lettered sign that read, “Google it! Jews vs. TikTok” protesting outside Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Lower Manhattan. He was, for the record, standing on the pro-Trump side of the protest area.

But the incident is emblematic of how difficult it has become to make sense of what is actually happening on college campuses right now. As the protests have spread to dozens of campuses and counting , competing viral clips on social media paint vastly different versions of what’s happening inside these pro-Palestinian camps. Are they violent conflict zones, filled with militant protesters who hurl antisemitic abuse and threaten Jewish students, requiring, as some political leaders have suggested, deployment of the National Guard? Or is it a giant love-fest of students braiding daisy chains and singing “Kumbaya”?

I tried to figure this out the only way I know how: by reporting. I happened to have been on campus on April 18, the day Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, decided to call in the New York Police Department to clear the protesters from campus, and I returned a week later to spend the day reporting on the protests and the mood on campus.

What I saw were moving, creative and peaceful protests by people seeking to end the slaughter in Gaza, where more than 34,000 people have died, a majority of them women and children. I also saw things that left me quite troubled and heard from Jewish students both inside and outside the camps navigating a campus fraught with emotions. But while reporting on the protests up close gave me insight into how unsettling some aspects of activism can be, it doesn’t mean the protesters’ actions are misguided. These young people seek a worthy cause: to end what may be the most brutal military operation for civilians in the 21st century.

In the days since Shafik called for the N.Y.P.D. to break up protests, copycat encampments have sprung up on dozens of campuses across the country, and at least 17 of them have faced police intervention. My social media feeds have filled with horrifying images of students and professors being violently dragged away by the police. In one especially shocking video from Emory University captured by CNN, a police officer shouts at Caroline Fohlin, a middle-aged economics professor: “Get on the ground! Get on the ground!” The officer grabs her and flips her onto the grass as she screams: “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

On Wednesday afternoon during his visit to campus, Johnson made it clear what he thought was happening there. He all but called the university a war zone and declared the protests as antisemitic, conflating, as many proponents of Israel do, opposition to Israel’s policies with hatred of Jews. “It’s detestable, as Columbia has allowed these lawless agitators and radicals to take over,” he said. “If this is not contained quickly and if these threats and intimidation are not stopped, there is an appropriate time for the National Guard. We have to bring order to these campuses.”

While Johnson was meeting with a group of Jewish students, I was wandering among the lawless agitators, who have been camping out on a lawn on campus. In one corner of the encampment, a small group of students sat cross-legged, discussing the poem “Kindness” by the Palestinian American poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Another group had broken out art supplies to reapply the paint to its Gaza Solidarity Encampment banner. Others were napping or doing yoga. There was a well-stocked food tent, with options for all — gluten-free, vegan, nut-free and more. I have spent more than my share of time in war zones. This felt more like an earnest folk music festival.

On campus, I spoke to Muslim and Arab students who told me how frightened and angry they were. I spoke to Jewish students who participated in the pro-Palestinian protests and scoffed at the notion that the protests endangered them. I also spoke to Jewish students who told me that they felt the protests targeted them as Jews and made them fear for their safety.

Whether you are watching student protesters on social media or experiencing the protests in person, the way you understand these protests depends on your perception of what they are protesting. It could not be otherwise. If you feel that what is happening in Gaza is a moral atrocity, the student protests will look like a brave stand against American complicity in what they believe is genocide — and a few hateful slogans amid thousands of peaceful demonstrators will look like a minor detail. If you feel the Gaza war is a necessarily violent defense against terrorists bent on destroying the Jewish state, the students will seem like collaborators with murderous antisemitism — even if many of them are Jewish.

I heard both of these perspectives from Columbia students themselves on campus. “When I sit in statistics class and I am hearing ‘globalize the intifada,’ ‘from the river to the sea and so on,’ I cannot study, and I cannot focus on the class,” Saar, a junior at Columbia who asked that I not include her last name, told me. “I don’t know who will sit behind me in class, who might follow me after class, and God knows what might happen. You’re living in fear all the time. People are hiding their faces. You don’t know who is who.”

David Pomerantz, a sophomore who was among the group that met with the House speaker, told me that he didn’t personally feel he was in imminent danger but worried about others. “I think especially my friends who are visibly Jewish, who walk around in kipa, get dirty looks, get chastised for that,” he said. “I think they do feel like they’re in real physical danger. It’s a problem that can’t continue.”

While Jewish students who object to the pro-Palestinian encampment navigate fear and uncertainty, those inside the camp are facing a different type of threat. I spoke to Jared, a Jewish student participating in the protests. He had given an interview in which his full name appeared, and he said someone in his family had received a threatening voice mail.

“They like to dress us up as a token minority or as self-hating Jews,” he told me. “But I was raised as a Jewish person to call attention to injustice whenever I see it. Palestinians should be the focus, not my safety on campus. The only threat to my safety comes from the administration.”

Just outside the campus gates, the scene was more tense. The protests have become a destination for opportunists of all kinds. Nasty purveyors of chaos. Gavin McInnes, the right-wing founder of the Proud Boys, turned up , student journalists reported. On Thursday, Christian nationalists descended on Columbia to stage their own, ostensibly pro-Israel protest, screaming through the campus gates to the student protesters inside: “You want to camp? Go camp in Gaza!” according to a reporter on the scene.

At times I saw pro-Israel protesters seek to provoke pro-Palestinian groups into confrontations. A white-haired man in a khaki military-style shirt with a small Israeli flag stitched onto the chest approached a group of protesters I was interviewing just off campus. They were standing around, not chanting or holding signs.

“Israel has had 400 Nobel Prize winners,” he falsely claimed (13 Israelis have won the prize), tapping the flag. “How many has your side won?”

One of the protesters, a man with a kaffiyeh wrapped around the top of his head, replied: “I don’t care about Nobel Prizes right now. I care about dead Palestinian babies.”

Interactions like those make up the flood of “evidence” we’re seeing online, much of it placed there by the moral combatants themselves. Some videos, like one that supposedly depicted a Jewish Yale student getting stabbed in the eye by a Palestinian flag, turn out to be misleadingly portrayed by the victim. Others depict what appears to be clear harassment of Jewish students, such as the one filmed outside the gates of Columbia’s campus where a protester shouted, “Go back to Poland,” at Jewish students and another declared that Oct. 7 would happen “10,000 times.” Many videos show peaceful, even joyful protests or feature Jewish students who support the pro-Palestinian protests and declare that they feel safe on campus.

What are we to make of these competing claims? Having spent the past week immersed in these protests, I understand the desire to fix upon some singular piece of evidence that will decode, definitively, their moral core. But there is plenty of evidence ready-made for any side to claim moral high ground here. The camps are on the whole peaceful but it must be acknowledged that problematic things are being said.

On Thursday, video from January began circulating of one of the student protest leaders at Columbia, Khymani James, saying that “the same way we are very comfortable accepting that Nazis don’t deserve to live, fascists don’t deserve to live, racists don’t deserve to live, Zionists, they shouldn’t live in this world,” and “be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” On Friday James released a statement apologizing for the video.

On Monday, after the arrest of more than 100 N.Y.U. protesters, the demonstrations outside Police Headquarters went on all night. I live nearby and went down to see the protest for myself. It was a different vibe from the night the Columbia students had been arrested. There were more chants, delivered with much tighter unison and at greater volume.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine is almost free,” one chant went.

“Move, cops. Get out the way. We know you’re Israeli trained.”

“There is only one solution: intifada revolution,” went another.

I winced upon hearing the last chant. Not so much the word intifada, which has many meanings and intonations depending on the context. But why choose the word “solution,” one so redolent of the Nazis’ “final solution,” which murdered six million Jews across Europe?

When the time came for a late-evening prayer, some protesters laid down their banners to use them as prayer rugs, turning toward Mecca, which in this case meant bowing down before a line of police officers in riot gear. After the prayer concluded, some of the men wandered over to the line of officers who stood behind barricades. They singled out one officer in particular, a dark-skinned man who they seemed to think was a fellow Muslim.

“There’s no way he is a Muslim and he supports the killing of 15,000 kids,” one of the protesters said (it’s estimated nearly 14,000 children have been killed in Gaza since the war began). “Impossible, unless he is not a Muslim.”

“May Allah forgive you, bro,” another said.

The officer stared straight ahead, betraying no reaction to what he was hearing. Standing next to him was another officer, a Black woman. Another protester seemingly shouted her way: “Your ancestors are ashamed of you. Your ancestors were murdered by colonizers, and you are here standing with the colonizers.”

Almost instinctively, I took umbrage at the sight of a group of light-skinned young men badgering a Black woman doing her job. Personally, I found these tactics unpleasant, even repellent. It made me uncomfortable. I can see how they may make someone feel unsafe. But to me, this discomfort came nowhere near constituting a crisis requiring extraordinary interventions, like bringing in the National Guard.

Pretending that there is no antisemitism whatsoever in the movement is foolish and self-defeating. Antisemitism is widespread, not to mention on the American right . It stands to reason that there are some people who hold antisemitic views among a mass movement of protesters.

It is easy when looking backward to remember the fight for a good cause as pure and untainted, even if it did not seem so at the time. In the same way, we now remember the Vietnam War as an American tragedy. The students at Columbia University who protested it seem, in retrospect, to have been right. But our memories elide some of their more outré tactics. A list of popular chants employed by antiwar protesters at a time when thousands of American soldiers were dying each year fighting in the war included things like “One side’s right. One side’s wrong. We’re on the side of the Viet Cong!” and “Save Hanoi. Lose Saigon. Victory to the Viet Cong!”

These slogans are sickening. But by 1968, when the protests reached their peak, the U.S. government had already realized, according to the Pentagon Papers, that the war was all but unwinnable. Yet its brutal killing machine ground on for five more years, and an additional 38,000 Americans and countless Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian people died pointless deaths in a senseless, futile war.

There are clear signs that Israel is prosecuting a war just as brutal and unwinnable as the United States did back then. Some people may not like the slogans, tactics or proposals of today’s pro-Palestinian protesters. But the truth is that a majority of Americans have qualms about Israel’s pitiless war to root out Hamas, whatever the consequences for civilians. As politicians send riot police onto campuses to try to smother a new protest movement, we’d do well to keep in mind why we’ve forgotten the ugliest aspects of the Vietnam protests: Those memories have been replaced, instead, by an enduring horror at what we did.

Mr. Peterson is a photographer based in New York and a member of Redux Pictures.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Lydia Polgreen is an Opinion columnist and a co-host of the “ Matter of Opinion ” podcast for The Times.

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