from my hosts and friends in Vancouver Canada last year Sep.
umesh
Subject: "The Reluctant Prophet" (Newspaper article in India)
Baháulláh The Reluctant Prophet An edited translation of the following
article was printed in the weekly color insert of "Dainik Bhaskar", India's
largest newspaper - reaching an audience of over 13.1 million.
A Prisoner and an Exile August 31, 1868. It was a swelteringly hot, humid
stench that met Baháulláh on the shore of prison city of Akká. Surrounded by
Turkish soldiers, he made his way up the black muddy beach towards the sea
gate. Exhausted, humiliated, tortured, exiled, slandered, betrayed by his own
brother - and now imprisoned in the most desolate penal colony of the Turkish
Empire. An angry mob had gathered to revile, curse and taunt him. It was not
the first time he had been pelted by a mob on his way to prison.
A Prince in Deed Born in 1817 to wealth and nobility, eldest son of a
leading Minister to the Royal Court of Persia, Baháulláh had inherited a
care-free life including a vast estate, position and wealth. But from the
earliest years there was much about this youth which did not fit the image of a
spoiled young prince. Eschewing comforts and diversions of the privileged, he
became renowned for generosity, compassion and a magnetic character.
Only 22 years of age when his father passed away, Baháulláh was immediately
offered his fathers position as Minister. Surprisingly, he refused the post.
When asked about this refusal, the Prime Minister replied Such a position is
unworthy of him... His thoughts are not like ours. Let him alone.
The Break of Dawn Five years later a millennial light broke on the somber
horizon of Persia. From the city of Shiraz, an eloquent youth, known to history
as the Báb, put forward the impossible claim that he had been sent by God to
prepare for the coming of a great Universal Teacher whose Cause would unite the
fragmented spiritual heritage of humankind. A passionate wave of inquiry swept
across the land and the panicking clergy quickly denounced the Báb as a
dangerous heretic. He was arrested, imprisoned in a remote mountain fortress
and finally executed under dramatic circumstances. His followers and admirers
were hounded out and slaughtered or bludgeoned into silence. Shocking friends
and family, the young nobleman, Baháulláh, immediately arose in the face of
great danger to champion this new Cause - abandoning rank, title, lands and
wealth.
It was October 1852 in Tehran and Baháulláh was surrounded by brutal
soldiers. For nine years he had championed the Bábs Cause and for this he was
now on his way to prison. The soldiers half-heartedly restrained a howling mob
which pelted him with insults and stones as he stumbled forward towards the
dreaded subterranean prison known as the Black Pit. As a special torture
Baháulláh was freighted with a unique set of chains - fifty kilos of cold
iron - tearing his clothing, cutting through flesh, pressing against and
bending bone itself. Four long months he endured the black extremes of human
cruelty. It was into this place, a place of unyielding darkness and agony, that
the finger of God reached out and touched - placing a new light into the world
of man.
...though the galling weight of the chains and the stench-filled air allowed
Me but little sleep, still in those infrequent moments of slumber I felt as if
something flowed from the crown of My head over My breast, even as a mighty
torrent that precipitateth itself upon the earth from the summit of a lofty
mountain. Every limb of My body would, as a result, be set afire. At such
moments My tongue recited what no man could bear to hear.
A Sacred Mission Released from imprisonment, Baháulláh was a changed
Being - charged with a divine mandate and galvanized with an overwhelming
vision of the earth as one homeland of a united human race. And when he spoke,
many recognized his voice. Bend your minds and wills to the education of the
peoples and kindreds of the earth... Noble I made thee, wherewith dost thou
abase thyself? Let not a man glory in that he loves his country; let him
rather glory in this, that he loves his kind.
Assailed by forces of fanaticism and ignorance, Baháulláh was banished from
his native land to Baghdad and thence to Constantinople, Adrianople and finally
to the Turkish prison city of Akká, in modern-day Israel, where he remained
incarcerated and in whose neighborhood he passed away in 1892. I have been,
most of the days of My life, even as a slave, sitting under a sword hanging on
a thread, knowing not whether it would fall soon or late upon him.
Over the course of forty years of exile and imprisonment, Baháulláh
expounded, in over a hundred volumes, the elements of His Faith. He proclaimed
his Cause to the kings and rulers of both East and West. He addressed the Pope,
the Caliph of Islam and the Chief Magistrates of the Republics of the American
continent. In numerous epistles he boldly challenged them to abandon petty
selfish concerns, warning them of the consequences of failing to appreciate the
forces of a newly rising World Order. At times he described, with chilling
accuracy, their impending downfall, such as in these words to Napoleon III:
Hath thy pomp made thee proud? By My Life! It shall not endure... For what
thou hast done, thy kingdom shall be thrown into confusion, and thine empire
shall pass from thine hands...
The Reluctant Prophet Such, in brief, were the life and teachings of
Baháulláh; Sage, Saint, and modern-day Prophet. Although Baháulláh is
widely known for his visionary and liberal teachings, what is not well known is
the degree of his personal sacrifice required to make this mark in human
history.
Were it not for the cold, how would the heat of Thy words prevail,
O Expounder of the worlds?
Thou seest the hearts are filled with hate, and to overlook is Thine... When
the swords flash, go forward! When the shafts fly, press onward!
O Thou Sacrifice of the worlds.
Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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