Story of Jamshed Maani

He [Dr. Muhájir] had an assistant, Jamshed Maani, who also did wonderful work there, in Sarawak and in Borneo where he was sent in 1963 by the National Spiritual Assembly for the region. Jamshed brought in 6,000 Bahá’ís among the Dyak tribe, who lived in long houses. Each long house had an Assembly. The Dyaks told Jamshed they had been waiting for him because according to their tradition a white man would come and bring a new religion. So they accepted the Faith quickly.

The National Spiritual Assembly of Southeast Asia sent Yankee Leong, a Chinese Bahá’í from Malaysia, to assist Jamshed in Sarawak. Yankee Leong said one of the native Bahá’ís carne to hug him, and the man was filthy as the natives never take baths. Yankee Leong told the man to go home and take a bath and he would hug him. The man said if he took a bath it could kill him. Yankee Leong suggested he do it gradually, by putting only his foot into the water the first day. The next day he could put his leg into the water and proceed like that each day until his entire body had been bathed. A few days later the man returned, having taken a full bath, and Yankee Leong said "after that he was quite huggable."

Jamshed Maani reminded one of Jesus Christ in appearance, detached, very spiritual. I wanted him to come to Saigon and help us conquer the entire country of Vietnam. However, it seems he went to bed one night and dreamed that Bahá’u’lláh came and told him he was the next prophet. The following morning he notified the Iranian Bahá’ís in Indonesia, who called the National Spiritual Assembly to ask them to send someone to Indonesia to examine Jamshed Maani. They feared he had become a Covenant breaker. He was summoned to Djakarta to meet with Jim Fozdar and me from Vietnam, and Dr. Muhájir from Singapore. According to Dr. Muhájir, Jamshed had been pioneering alone for five or ten years and he had no wife, so this might have been part of the problem. No action was taken concerning Jamshed. We all went to Haifa together for the election of the first Universal House of Justice. When Jamshed returned to Indonesia, the Bahá’í religion was banned by the Muslim government. Some Bahá’ís were arrested and imprisoned, one of them because he was praying. Jamshed returned to Iran where members of his family became his followers which caused him and them to be declared Covenant breakers. Incidentally, the language spoken in Mentawai Island was the same as that spoken in Borneo, although they are 1500 miles apart. This was helpful to Jamshed as, having pioneered in Mentawai Island, it enabled him to translate some of the books for the Dyaks in Kuching, Sarawak when he went there.

(Servants of the Glory: A Chronicle of Forty Years of Pioneering, Morgan, Adrienne and Dempsey)

https://afnanlibrary.org/servants-of-the-glory-40-years-of-pioneering/