He is truly delighted to know that your Annual Convention this year has
been most united, and highly constructive and fruitful in its result, and
trusts that the important discussions and deliberations held by the
delegates at various Convention sessions will have the result of
stimulating afresh the progressive and systematic penetration of the
teaching work throughout India and Burma. The Six-Year Plan of teaching
inaugurated last year by your N.S.A., the Guardian feels, however, cannot
succeed unless it receives the continued moral and material support of the
entire body of the Indian and Burmese believers, and it is this fact which
the National Assembly should continually endeavour to impress upon them
all, through frequent appeals destined at once to encourage and provide
the facilities required for all those friends who are qualified to work in
the field of pioneer teaching. The Guardian would particularly recommend
that the N.S.A. should make every possible effort to open up to the Cause
those Indian provinces which still remain deprived of the light of the
Teachings, and to this end would suggest that those believers who can
arrange to settle in those virgin territories should at once be urged to
do so, and the necessary facilities extended to them by the N.S.A., with
the view of enabling them to prolong their stay until some definite
results are accomplished. Also, he feels, your Assembly should endeavour
to strengthen the weak areas which have been recently opened, and also
launch a wide and systematic campaign for the dissemination of Baha'i
literature throughout the whole country. Membership in Baha'i Assembly or
Committee is a Sacred Obligation
...The Guardian wishes you to make clear to all the believers that
membership in a Baha'i Assembly or Committee is a sacred obligation which
should be gladly and confidently accepted by every loyal and conscientious
member of the Community, no matter how humble and inexperienced. Once
elected to serve in a given Assembly a believer's duty is to do his utmost
to attend all Assembly meetings, and cooperate with his fellow-members,
unless, however, he is prevented from doing so by some major reason such
as illness, and even then he should notify the Assembly to this effect.
The N.S.A.'s duty is to urge, and also facilitate attendance at assembly
meetings. If a member has no valid reason to justify his repeated absence
from assembly meetings, he should be advised, and even warned, and if such
warning is deliberately ignored by him, the assembly will then have the
right to suspend his rights as a voting member of the Community. Such
administrative sanction would seem to be absolutely imperative and
necessary, and while not tantamount to a complete expulsion of such a
member from the Cause, deprives him of any real participation in its
administrative functions and affairs, and is thus a most effective
corrective measure which the Assembly can use against all such
half-hearted and irresponsible individuals in the Community.