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 take on the task, and his arrival in Bombay in 1872 can be rightly said to signal the beginning of organized missionary activity in the subcontinent.
After a short stay in Bombay Jamal Effendi began a teaching tour that took him across the entire country and was highlighted by his attending the ceremony in Delhi at which Queen Victoria was proclaimed The Empress of India. The proselytizing style he employed can be gleaned from an account penned by one of his Indian converts, Sayyid Mustafa Rumi of Madras:
It was his custom to notify his arrival to the Governor or highest official of the place in British India and the ruling prince in an Indian state. He would then pay a visit to them and deliver the message. His list of those to whom he delivered the Message contains names of almost all the high officials and princes of the land.
Thus Jamal Effendi established an elitist approach to teaching the Bahá'í Faith in India, and it was this style of teaching that would dominate Bahá'í missionary activity in India for decades.
It seems that for the most part Jamal Effendi's efforts were met with courteous interest if not overt enthusiasm. The progressive character of many of the Bahá'í principles spoke well to reformers, and the universality inherent in many of the religion's teachings was welcomed by those who feared communalism. There were, however, exceptions. Both in Bombay and Calcutta Jamal Effendi raised the ire of conservative religious leaders. What the liberal wing of Indian intellectual leadership saw as forward looking, traditionalists viewed as dangerous. These conservative Muslim and Hindu anti-Bahá'í polemics were muted by the relatively small number of converts Jamal Effendi was able to attract by the time of his departure in 1878.
Jamal Effendi left behind him three prominent converts (Rafi u'd-Din Khan of Hasanpur, Haji Ramadan of Rampur and Sayyid Mustafa Rumi), who would begin the slow process of building the Indian community. During this time the Afnan's printing press in Bombay produced the first ever Bahá'í books to be printed. The Book of Certitude and the Secret of Divine Civilization were both published in1882. In order to further the publishing work, prominent Bahá'í calligraphers such as Mishkin-Qalam and Mirza Muhammad Ali came to Bombay.
After the death of Bahá'u'lláh and the inauguration of the ministry of Abdu'l-Bahá, the Bahá'í community in Bombay was split as a consequence of the activities of the followers of Mirza Muhammad Ali who had challenged his half-brother's right to legitimate leadership. As a result, Abdu'l-Bahá directed a number of prominent emissaries to India, both Persian and Western, to guide the community and encourage teaching. Among these were Mirza Mahmud Zarqani, Aqa Mirza Mahram, Mirza Hasan Adib, Ibin-i-Asdaq, Lua Getsinger, Mrs. H. Stanndard, Sidney Sprague, Hooper Harris and Harlan Ober. By 1908 the work of these individuals along with a small group of local converts had produced functioning communities in Bombay, Calcutta, Aligarh and Lahore. Of these, the Bombay community took the forefront in both teaching and translation work. Its advancements in the area of translation marked the first time any of Bahá'u'lláh's writings had been translated into one of the native languages of India. Bombay also managed to acquire the first Bahá'í cemetery in India, and Abdu'l-Bahá designed the layout of the sight. The activities of the Bombay community were commented upon by Sydney Sprague who in 1908 reported: "There are three meetings a week held in Bombay and there are as a rule eighty to a hundred men present." He also noted that it was not easy to become a Bahá'í: "It often means a great sacrifice on the part of a believer, a loss of friends, money and position."
During this period, a number of Indian Zoroastrians ("Parsis") were converted to the Bahá'í Faith, thereby forming a nucleus of future Bahá'í leadership in India. The conversions came about as a result of the work of agents who had originally been sent abroad by the Indian Zoroastrian community to help their coreligionists in Iran. There they came into contact with the Bahá'í Faith and supported its activities. Later, several Iranian Zoroastrian converts to the Faith traveled to Bombay (notably Mulla Bahram Akhtar-Khavari) and actively promulgated their new religion among local Zoroastrians. Although they were met with opposition by some of the conservative dasturs, these missionary converts were quite successful in opening the Zoroastrian community to Bahá'í concepts and teachings.
(The Bahá'í Faith in India: A Developmental Stage Approach by William Garlington, published in Occasional Papers in Shaykhi, Babi and Bahá'í Studies, 2, 1997-06)
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