From generation to generation
Mankind has been laboring in ignorance of its own achievements. After
four centuries when a history is near completion that man has realized
that unaware of the Divine plan humanity has been compelled to labour at
the tremendous task of conquering and unifying the earth.
In the 15th
Century Columbus with his little fleet discovered America and commenced
its conquest. Gradually progress at unification became swifter.
Science came to the rescue and sea routes became the nerve system of the
earth unifying it into one body.
Unfortunately when the
isolated braches of the human family were brought physically together
the diversity in various groups created dissension. It was then
discovered that unification of this earth into a single body was not
possible without a spiritual amalgam to unify it into a single soul.
The other alternative was the extermination of the human race through
wars and it痴 devastating after effects.
God in his wisdom had provided
that spiritual amalgam by the birth of Baha置値lah in 1817. He declared
the oneness of Mankind as the basic principle of the Baha段 Faith and
augmented it by arch other teaching which made that unification
practicable. The pages of Baha段 history are smeared by the blood of
20,000 martyrs, but his disciples fearlessly marched on to different
parts of the world in their effort to bring about that unification
envisaged in the different scriptures of the world.
The history of the Faith in
South East Asia is linked with India. In 1949 an International
Conference called the World Pacific Conference was held in the
open air
university called Shantiniketan, in Bolepur, near Calcutta. This
conference had been planned by
Mahatma Gandhi to propagate the idea of
non violence in setting Political problems. Political and religious
leaders from different parts of the world attended.
Sokarno and Sultan
Sharir came from Indonesia as they wanted to discuss their problems with
Jawaharial Nehru since Mahatma Gandhi had already been assassinated and
was not available to guide them in their problem of Independence and
freedom from Dutch.
The National Spiritual
Assembly of India appointed me to represent the Baha段 Faith.
Tunku
Abdul Rahman who was then leader of the group clamoring for independence
for Malaya was also attending along with
Mr. Yan Kee Leong a famous
cartoonist, who had started the world Brotherhood Movement and Swami
Satyananda who was running an orphanage in Kuala Lumpur for Indian Boys.
My talk on the Faith delivered
on the second day of the conference. After leaving the platform I
returned to my husband and as I sat beside him Mr. Yankee Leong and
Swami Satyananda came and introduced themselves and praised the talk and
the contents. They then said they would request that I visit Malaya and
they would arrange my talks. I said I could not leave India since I had
a lot to do here, but they persisted and would take no negative reply.
Ultimately finding the futility of further excuses, I agreed to visit
Malays, but I knew that was not possible.
