But even with such dynamic leadership and a new sense of being an active part of an expanding international organization, at the time of Shoghi Effendi's death in November, 1957, there were still less than a thousand Bahá'ís in the entire country.(The Bahá'í Faith in India: A Developmental Stage Approach by William Garlington, published in Occasional...
Thursday, September 22, 2022
The beginnings of the Indian Baha'i Community (1872-1910)
Two members of the Afnan clan who were resident in Bombay, Haji Sayyid Mirza and Sayyid Muhammad, became Bahá'ís in the 1860s, and they wrote to Bahá'u'lláh requesting that a Bahá'í teacher be sent to India. Bahá'u'lláh asked Sulayman Khan Tunukabani (known as Jamal Effendi), who was both a Sufi and a learned scholar of Arabic and Persian, if he would...
Claims to divinity
A third significant convert during this time was a blind Sayyid, Jinab-i-Basir. Nabil states that he was the above mentioned Sayyid converted by Shaykh Sa'id-i Hindi. In contrast the Tarikh-i-Jadid claims that Jinab-i-Basir heard of the Bab's appearance in Bombay from where he traveled to Mecca and met him in person. After the Bab's death Jinab-i-Basir,...
History of the Babi period in India
Converting People, Independent Investigation of Truth, Personal Observations
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The Babi movement, the predecessor to the Bahá'í faith, had some connections with India. Two of the most important Babi histories make mention of several prominent Indian believers. The major Bahá'í historian for this period, Muhammad-i Zarandi, Nabil-i Azam, informs us that one of the Bab's original disciples (Letters of the Living) was an Indian...
A short introduction of the Baha'i faith by William Garlington
Independent Investigation of Truth, Personal Observations
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The Bahá'í Faith is a contemporary religious movement active nowadays in over three hundred countries and dependencies throughout the world. Evolving from the Babi movement, which spread throughout Iran and Iraq in the mid-nineteenth century, the Bahá'í Faith has slowly moved beyond the pale of Shi`ite Islam and thereby established itself as an independent...
Some estimates at the low end have placed the worldwide adult Bahá'í population at closer to 1.5 million and the adult Bahá'í population in India at 100,000 to 150,000.
Of the approximately 5 million members claimed world-wide by the Bahá'í authorities, nearly 2 million Bahá'ís are said to reside within the Republic of India.**These figures are based on official Bahá'í statistics. Since they only indicate the number of declarations (signed affirmations of belief in Bahá'u'lláh) and not active membership in a local...