Bahai Social Networking :: Bahai Friends :: Bahai Network :: Bahai online :: Bahai Singles :: Bahai dating » Blog » Baha’i Community in Bangladesh

VIEW FULL VERSION: Link

Title: Baha’i Community in Bangladesh
Tags: the beginning
Blog Entry: Baha’i Community in Bangladesh Background: the beginning ...................................................................................................... Bangladesh was one of the first regions of the world to receive the message of Bahaullah. During the life time of Bahaullah, he sent Jamal Tunkabuni better known as Jamal Effendi , to India to dessiminate his teachings . Jamal Effendi travelled through big cities of India and princely states. He met the local elite, usually highly Persianized Muslim intellectuals of India and Nawabs and Persians settled in Indian cities. In his travels he met a young Indian Syed Mustafa Roumi, in Madras who accepted the Faith and accompanied Jamal Effendi on his journeys. Syed Mustafa was later to play an important though indirect role in spread of the Baha’i faith among the inhabitants of Bengal. Jamal Effendi and Mustafa Roumi travelled through present day Bangladesh, Dhaka and Chittagong, on their way to Burma. Burma at that time had a small Bengali community, mainly belonging to the Satkania area of Chittagong. Some of them accepted the Faith and were active in community life there. After the Second World War, and after independence, most of these Bengali Baha’is returned to the then East Pakistan. But by then the center of Baha’i activities has shifted to Dhaka, the now provincial capital. Urdu speaking Baha’is of Muslim background from northern India migrated to eastern part of Pakistan. Later they were joined by U.S and West European ‘pioneers', some of them were employed by the central/provincial governments of Pakistan in different capacities. Teaching work continued more or less in the pattern set by Jamal Effendi-meeting highly educated intellectuals, giving talks on topics related to the Faith in colleges etc. Therefore teaching of the faith was more or less confined to the milieu of their teachers, that is Urdu speaking north Indian immigrants of Muslim background . In the late sixties, Dr.Rahamatullah Muhajir, a Hand of the Cause stressed encouraged and inspired the institutions and individual Baha’is to take the Faith to the local, to the rural areas. The Faith was taken to rural areas, to tribes in Chittagong Hill tracts in the south and to the Santhal tribes in the north. But even in the beginning of the 1970s when the process of taking the Faith to indigenous population was at full swing, Baha’i community of Bangladesh was still mainly urban based and had a very strong ‘foreign’ look to it. Source:A brief history of Bangladesh Baha'i community prepared by  Mahmudul Haq on request of National Spiritual Assemby of the Baha'is of Bangladesh.