[NEW DELHI, INDIA, OCTOBER 7-15, 1953]
With high hopes and a joyful heart I acclaim the convocation, in the
leading city of the Indian subcontinent, of the fourth and last of the
Intercontinental Teaching Conferences of a memorable Holy Year
commemorating the centenary of the birth of the prophetic Mission of
Baha'u'llah.
On this historic occasion, when the members of the National Spiritual
Assemblies of the Baha'is of the United States of America, of the Dominion
of Canada, of Central and South America, of Persia, of the Indian
subcontinent and of Burma, of 'Iraq and of Australasia, as well as
representatives of the sovereign states and dependencies of the Asiatic
continent, of the republics of North, Central and South America, and of
Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania are assembled, and are to deliberate
on the needs and requirements of the recently launched triple campaign
embracing the Asiatic mainland, the Australian continent and the islands
of the Pacific Ocean--a campaign which may well be regarded as the most
extensive, the most arduous and the most momentous of all the campaigns of
a world-girdling Crusade, and which, in its scope, is unparalleled in the
history of the Faith in the entire Eastern Hemisphere--my thoughts, on such
an occasion, go back to the early dawn of our Faith, to those
unforgettable scenes of matchless heroism, of dark tragedy, of
imperishable glory which heralded its birth, and accompanied the spread of
its infant light in the heart of the Asiatic continent.
I vividly recall the meteoric rise of the Faith of the Bab in the
provinces of Persia and the stirring episodes associated with His cruel
incarceration in the mountain-fastnesses of A_dh_irbayjan, with the
revelation of the laws of His Dispensation, with the proclamation of the
independence of His Faith, with the peerless heroism of His disciples,
with the fiendish cruelty of His foes--the chief magistrate, the civil
authorities, the ecclesiastical dignitaries and the masses of the people
of His native land--with the humiliation, the spoliation, the dispersal,
the eventual massacre of a vast number of His followers, and, above all,
with His own execution in the city of Tabriz.