Tradition · religion · India
The Bahá'í Faith
The youngest religion in the repository and, by population, the largest Bahá'í community anywhere: some two million, mostly in villages of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, gathered largely in the 1960s and after. It arrived through the Bábí period in the 1840s and then through Jamál Effendi's journeys from Bombay in 1872. Its Indian growth rested on a claim that fitted an existing expectation — that the Bahá'u'lláh was the Kalki avatar the Puranas promised.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Not assessed
Worth knowing
Its temple in Delhi, the Lotus, is among the most visited buildings on earth and has no images, no pulpit and no clergy in it — a house of worship with nothing to worship in it.
Connections (2)
- Institutional successionJamál Effendi
The organised teaching in India dates from one traveller. Jamál Effendi arrived at Bombay in 1872 on Bahá'u'lláh's instruction and spent years crossing the subcontinent — Calcutta, Madras, Kashmir, Burma, and on to the Andamans — establishing the first Indian communities. The growth that made India the largest Bahá'í population anywhere came a century later, in the villages of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar in the 1960s, and it rested on presenting Bahá'u'lláh as the Kalki avatar the Puranas promised.
- Shrine within cityLotus Temple, Delhi
The Lotus is the faith's argument in a building. Twenty-seven marble petals, nine doors, no images, no pulpit, no altar and no clergy — a house of worship with nothing inside to worship, because the Bahá'í principle is that scripture of any religion may be read there and nothing else may happen. It is among the most visited buildings on earth, which makes the emptiest religious interior in India also one of its busiest.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Bahá'í Faith in India”. William Garlington, The Baha'i Faith in America and India; Bahá'í National Spiritual Assembly of India records.
Open The Bahá'í Faith in the repository →