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Dawn of a New Day

  • Author:

  • Shoghi Effendi

  • Source:
  • Bahá’í Publishing Trust of India, date unknown
  • Pages:
  • 228
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Pages 39-40

Publication of Baha’u’llah & the New Era
[From the Guardian:]
I wish to emphasize afresh the vital necessity of speeding up the work of the translation and publication of the Gujrati, the Urdu and the Hindi versions of the ‘New Era’, a book that has already been published into 14 different languages and is being translated into sixteen additional tongues. I am deeply appreciative of what you have already achieved, and wish to assure you of my continued prayers for the success of your painstaking efforts and the realization of your dearest wish in the service of our beloved Faith.
October 19, 1932
Shoghi Effendi wishes me to communicate with you to inquire regarding the Hindi and Urdu translations of Dr. Esslemont’s book. It is sometime that he has had no definite word as to the progress of that work which you have so kindly undertaken to supervise. He sincerely hopes that gradually that task will be successfully achieved and that they will be ready to be submitted to the printers and then to the readers who may be anxiously awaiting to study them and benefit from their contents.
This work once completed will become a great stimulus to the teaching activities of the friends, for books can do infinitely more work than teachers. Sitting in a chair in a solitary corner one is infinitely more receptive to truth than in a lecture hall or in a discussion group. The public has learned the habit of reading. It is through that channel therefore that we have to approach them.
November 19, 1932 40
He was very glad to obtain some news regarding the translation of Dr. Esslemont’s book into Urdu and Hindi, for he feels deeply interested in the work. He feels that it is only when such books are accessible to the public that the Cause will begin to spread and its followers increase in number.
He, therefore, wishes you to exert your effort along that line so that the task may be achieved properly and without any needless delay. Also please keep him informed regarding any new development or any progress made.
We do not now have any pilgrims, but the news we receive from different parts of the world show great progress achieved by the friends. Even though material conditions in some instances hamper their activities to an appreciable extent, yet their devotion and self-sacrifice are daily winning for them the admiration and sympathy of the world around them. Every day a new group is formed and new souls attracted to the faith.
[From the Guardian:]
I grieve to learn of the delay in the translation and publication of the various translations of Dr. Esslemont’s valuable book, and I urge you to do all you possibly can to hasten the realization of our cherished hopes—hopes which when fulfilled will no doubt lend a great and fresh impetus to the advancement of the Faith in that land. I am enclosing a copy of my recent letter concerning the Greatest Holy Leaf and the measures which, I feel, must be taken by the friends in Persia preliminary to the formation of the House of Justice.
January 10, 1933