Dawn of a New Day

The perusal of your Annual Report and the messages conveyed by the elected representatives of the Indian and Burmese Baha’i communities, assembled at Convention, have served to deepen my sense of admiration for the work collectively achieved by the members of these communities, and of my gratitude for the magnificent qualities they display, and for the spirit which so powerfully animates them in their stewardship to the Faith of Baha’u’llah.

They now stand on the threshold of a new epoch in the history of the evolution of the Administrative Order in their land. The transfer of the central institution of that Order to the capital of India; the wide measure of centralization which this historic step must needs involve; the purchase of a befitting seat for the ever expanding activities and multiplying agencies of that institution in that same capital, the progressive transfer of the national committees to the national Haziratu’l-Quds—all these must synchronize with a remarkable, and indeed unprecedented, intensification of effort in the pioneer field of Baha’i activity, as well as in the sphere of public teaching, designed to arouse the masses and 125 proclaim the verities of the Faith throughout the length and breadth of that subcontinent and its adjoining territory of Burma.

In this twofold activity, supporting directly and indirectly the interests of the Plan, committed to your charge, the Hindu, the Moslem, the Burmese and Zoroastrian believers must jointly, unitedly, and effectively participate. The minority elements in these ever-expanding communities must be continually stimulated, encouraged, trained and in some cases, as when an equal number of ballots have been cast in an election, given priority, in order to reinforce the representative character of Baha’i institutions, demonstrate the distinction of these institutions from all other man-made agencies, and win, to an ever-increasing degree, the sympathy and support of the teeming masses of Hindu and Moslem extraction, on whose adherence to the Faith, the ultimate progress, establishment, and triumph of the Cause of Baha’u’llah must chiefly depend.

Courage, good-will, resolution, self-abnegation, are imperatively required, at this momentous stage in the evolution of these nascent communities, who, having reared, with assiduous care, the machinery of their Administrative Order, and launched the Plan which the institutions of that Order are now so efficiently promoting, have arisen to initiate a crusade which, as it gathers momentum, must embrace all the diversified races, classes and creeds of that vast country, and its adjoining territories. May the impelling power of the Faith which they champion enable them to surmount every obstacle, and reach their destined goal.