The Baha’i Faith in India: A Developmental Stage Approach

Studies in the Bábi and Bahá’i Religions, Volume 28

India has the largest Baha’i community in the world, claiming some two million believers. The origins of the community stretch back to the time of the Bab and Baha’u’llah.

William Garlington’s The Baha’i Faith in India: A Developmental Stage Approach is an important and groundbreaking study of how the Babi and Baha’i Faiths came to take root in India and how the Baha’i community has developed into an important player in the life of India with its myriad of religious traditions. It is the first book to offer a comprehensive history of these events. Garlington’s book brings to life the activities and motivations of Baha’i teachers including Hands of the Cause, early pioneers, and native believers.

“William Garlington’s meticulously researched account of the origins of the Baha’i Faith in India and his analysis of early mass teaching efforts there will be of great value to scholars of the growth of modern religious movements generally, as well as in India.” Marc Jason Gilbert, Emeritus Professor of History, Hawai’i Pacific University

The reviews are in:

The Bahá’í Faith is an independent world religion with around eight million adherents, of which an estimated 2.2 million live in India. This makes India the country with the largest Bahá’í population in the world today. The Baha’i Faith in India, by William Garlington, is a new publication of some admittedly dated research, as the second sentence in the book’s opening paragraph states: “The work was composed in 2003, and consequently does not cover subsequent decades of community development” . . . .

Notwithstanding the fact that this earlier work has now been republished more than twenty-five years later, the present work still makes a contribution to scholarship. This is due to its impressive field research, originally presented in Garlington’s 1975 PhD dissertation, “The Bahá’í Faith in Malwa: A Study of a Contemporary Religious Movement,” Australian National University. . . .

As such, The Baha’i Faith in India is original research on the origins and establishment of the Bahá’í community of India. The book covers “the first 150 years of Indian Baha’i history.” . . .

As indicated by the book’s subtitle, A Developmental Stage Approach, the overarching framework of analysis is a stage-wise method represented by five distinctive phases of development in the historical period surveyed.

Part One presents a “Historical Overview,” which covers the earliest moments in the “Babi Prelude,” before examining initial states of community development between 1872 and 1910, and then discussing the first steps toward national unity, 1910 to 1921. “The Period of the Guardianship and the Evolution of the Indian Baha’i Community as Part of an International Administrative Structure” is covered in chapter 4, while chapter 5 looks at the era of mass teaching.

Part Two, “The Baha’i Faith in Malwa” is the fruit of Garlington’s fieldwork as a graduate student in the 1970s. His analysis is set forth in three chapters: “Malwa,” “Baha’i Teaching Activities in Malwa,” and “Channels of Communication and Attempts at Consolidation.” The final chapter nicely summarizes the research results, and is followed by notes and a bibliography. Several distinctive features of The Baha’i Faith in India should be highlighted, particularly in Part Two, the result of highly original and significant field research in its own right. Especially interesting is Garlington’s section on Baha’i bhajans. A bhajan is “a rhythmic devotional song that has long been popular among bhakti sects in India.” In addition, the Bahá’í use of avatar concepts strikes an eschatological connection between the appearance of Bahá’u’lláh (1817–1892, charismatic founder of the Bahá’í Faith) and the long- expected Kalki avatar.

A sound academic work, William Garlington’s classic and foundational study, The Baha’i Faith in India, has received the long-overdue recognition that it richly deserves, by way of publication as volume 28 in the prestigious Studies in the Bábí and Bahá’í Religions series of Kalimát Press. Garlington’s work may be the first word, but not the last word on the subject. His solid study lays a firm foundation for future scholarship to build upon, and will hopefully spur additional research into the Bahá’í Faith in India. Recommended for university and public libraries with substantial collections in comparative religions. The book is also good reading for individuals intrinsically interested in the subject matter.

Buck, Christopher (2024), Nova Religio 27, no. 4, 124-125. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/nvr.2024.a929290.

Although the enumeration of Baha’i communities in countries with low levels of education is fraught with difficulties, it is generally considered that India is home to the largest Baha’i
community in the world. A history and description of this community is therefore of considerable interest and somewhat overdue. The difficulties of researching a community of individuals, often illiterate, scattered mostly in small villages over a vast subcontinent should not be underestimated. It is a daunting task.

Garlington points out that the Baha’is during [the] early period of their history directed their message mainly to the educated urban middle classes in India. But the rising politicization in India in the years leading up to independence and the consequent rise in nationalism and communalism did not lead to a fertile ground for the Baha’i message of globalism and the oneness of humanity and so the growth of the community was slow. It is also noteworthy that the Baha’i Faith spread mainly among Zoroastrians and Muslims until the 1940s. The Baha’is had not created a Hindu framework for presenting their teachings, whereas Muslim and Zoroastrian frameworks were already available from Iran and the rest of the Middle East.

The most notable feature of the history of the Indian Baha’i community was the rapid growth that occurred in the 1960s–70s. Garlington describes the shift in the focus of propagation activities from the educated urban middle classes to the poor, usually illiterate, Hindu villagers that resulted in this large increase in numbers. . . .

The main value of this book, however, is in the second part (chapters 6, 7 and 8), where the author looks in detail at the area of Malwa in Madhya Pradesh in central India, where there was rapid growth of the Baha’i community in the 1960s and 1970s. This was the subject of the author’s PhD thesis, and he has first-hand knowledge of the area, having visited there in 1974.

Garlington describes the steps taken by the Baha’is to strengthen the devotional and administrative aspects of the Baha’i community. He describes conferences, teaching institutes and travelling teachers, all of which were part of the mechanism for carrying forward the rapid growth of the Baha’i community. Of particular interest is the author’s more detailed description of four sample villages. These amply demonstrate that these Indian village Baha’i communities are varied in their make-up and in the way that the Baha’i teachings were brought to the village and diffused there.

Garlington discusses a number of factors that contributed to the rapid growth of the Baha’i community in this area. He notes that although conversions to Islam, Christianity and Buddhism were often a protest movement by lower caste and unscheduled Hindus, this cannot be the whole story for the Baha’i converts. There were also many upper caste converts, although undoubtedly the majority of converts were from ‘unclean’ and nonscheduled groups (including tribal peoples), who may have been attracted by the Baha’i teaching of the oneness of humanity. He considers that an important factor was the adaptation of the Baha’i teachings to Hindu concepts. . . .

Garlington also examines the nature of the Baha’i conversions. He proposes that the mass entry of Indian villagers into the Baha’i community should not be seen as a conversion since the new Baha’is were not required to repudiate their former religious beliefs or traditional practices. Rather, he considers that what occurred was similar to the adoption of a bhakti movement. He cites the fact that the converts were not required to denounce Hindu tradition, that there was an emphasis on personal devotion to Baha’u’llah, the identification of Baha’u’llah as an avatar, and the use of bhajans, as being evidence of the parallels between the Baha’i community and a bhakti group. He points out that bhakti groups have often been anti-caste in orientation. He states that although there was a ‘strand of social idealism’ present, this idealism remained ‘essentially abstract and utopian’ and would thus strengthen the parallel with bhakti groups. . . .

In all then, this is a creditable first attempt at producing an account of the history and development of the Indian Baha’i community, looking in particular at the village communities in Malwa where the first large-scale entry of villagers into the Baha’i community occurred. It has put forward a number of theses both with regard to the factors that produced this growth and the nature of the enrolments. It lays a foundation for future studies and has opened some questions for future research.

Momen, M. (2024). Religion, 54(3), 606–609. https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2024.2326322