 And the very outset, let me first say that I'm standing here in front of you to speak to you about the learning of the Baha'i community of India in the area of the promotion of public discourses on behalf of a team of friends who have not been able to make it here. And I would like to also place the gratitude of the National Assembly of the Baha'is of India to the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity that played a great role, a tremendous role in guiding, in educating, in accompanying the Office of Public Affairs in its efforts at promotion of discourses. When I shared with my colleagues on the National Spiritual Assembly about the invitation that I received from the Association for Baha'i Studies, for which I'm very grateful, they were very happy and they also said to convey their love and greetings to the association as well as to the National Spiritual Assemblies of Canada and the United States. No friends, I was very happy today when I realized that this talk was scheduled to be after the presentation of Councillor Borna Nuredin because the conceptual framework that has guided our learning, our accomplishment so far in the area of expansion and consolidation is truly the very same conceptual framework that we are applying in the area of contributing to the discourses of society and social action. As I was preparing for this session today, apart from, of course, your experiences, your memories and your, I think, the documents that have already been prepared and reading and going through them, I also went through in depth at the message that the Beloved House of Justice sent to the Baha'is in Iran dated 2nd March 2013. And I felt that this letter was really like a crystallization of the work that the Baha'i community throughout the world is engaged in, thank you, okay, thanks, in the areas of expansion and consolidation, social action, discourses of society. And with your permission, the presentation today morning, I will go a little bit through those points that the House mentions there. And then I will begin to share more of the experiences. The House of Justice in this message draws our attention to the concept of history, a historical concept of our understanding of where humanity is moving, of the movement of humanity towards this unification of the entire human race. Says humanity, it is the firm conviction of every follower of Baha'u'llah is approaching today the crowning stage in a millennia long process which has brought it from its collective infancy to the threshold of maturity, a stage that will witness the unification of the human race. And then the House goes on to explain about the two processes that are at work in the world today and have contributed to bringing about the revolutionary changes. They talk about the destructive force and the forces of integration. And it mentions here that the forces of disintegration are actually sweeping away barriers that block humanity's progress, opening space for the process of integration to draw diverse groups together and disclose new opportunities for cooperation and collaboration. And then it says that Baha'is of course strive to align themselves individually and collectively with forces associated with the process of integration. And then there are two dimensions to that contribution that Baha'is are making. One is our own focus in the area of growth and development, its own growth and development and the second involvement in society at large through of course social action and participation in relevant discourses of society as well as of course in the process of expansion and consolidation. We are very much involved in the life of society. And then there is this beautiful quote from Baha'u'llah in that very same message and I thought that it was so important for us to remind ourselves of this. Since Baha'u'llah commands his followers, they that are endued with sincerity and faithfulness should associate with all peoples and kindreds of the earth with joy and radiance in as much as consulting with people had promoted and will continue to promote unity and concord which in turn are conducive to the maintenance of order in the world and to the regeneration of nations. And of course the other quote, be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age you live in and center your deliberations on these exigencies and requirements. One of the very crucial elements when we engage in the work of discourses of society with like-minded organizations, etc., is this very principle of building relationship. Building relationship with people no matter what their background, policy makers, academics, people in the institutions of governance, development organizations, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, building the true bonds of friendship with them, building a relationship which helps us so much to be able to sit with them, to talk to them, to share ideas and to be truly humbled in our attitude in that process. And not to go with this thing that Bahá'u'lláh has brought the answer and the solution to all problems of humanity, so now I'm going to tell them. If that is our attitude we will never progress, we'll never be successful and I don't think that is at all correct either. We have the principles that are given to us but applying those principles into the life of society to be able to transform social reality is a process in which we are learning as much as others are learning and the purpose of us in participating in discourses of society is to be able to humbly contribute the teachings, the principles of the faith in the discussions, in the consultations, in collaborative projects with other organizations so that we move towards the emergence of a world civilization. I would again read the same quote I think since yesterday you have been hearing it again and again and it is this from the House of Justice in its Resonant Message but it says only as effort is made to draw on insights from his revelation, to tap into the accumulating knowledge of the human race, to apply his teachings intelligently to the life of humanity and to consult on the questions that arise with the necessary learning occur and capacity be developed. Another framework to influence a public policy, again these points that I mentioned here are taken from the same message of the House of Justice dated 2nd March 2013. The first point in the House talks says that mankind is on the threshold of its maturity so bringing about that vision and that understanding to everyone on board that it is the unification of the human race that we are geared towards but we are looking at it in that concept of history, the historical concept. The principle of the oneness of humankind, the hallmark of the age of maturity implies a change in the very structure of society. So here we come to the very important point that in the field of development we are not only looking at individual change and transformation but we are also looking at the transformation in the structures of society. Its dedication to a learning process that animated by this principle of oneness explores the workings of a new set of relationships among the individual, the community and the institutions of society, the three protagonists in the advancement of civilization. Its confidence that the revised conception of power freed from the notion of dominance with the accompanying ideas of contest, contention, division and superiority underlies the desired set of relationships. Its commitment to a vision of a world that benefiting from humanity's rich cultural diversity abides no lines of separation. Councillor Nurideen highlighted a number of these points in his presentation and I thought that I would move ahead and begin to discuss some of the aspects of this framework which I feel are very important. The oneness of humankind, in many of the messages the House of Justice has drawn our attention to the fact that there is this spirit of world solidarity which is animating the undertakings of various organizations at international level, at national level etc. Yesterday when Dr. Mahmoudi was talking and she brought her attention to the various aspects of unity. And one of the things that was mentioned there is this reference to the talk of Abdul Baha where he mentions about unity of thought in world undertakings. In the 1990s we really witnessed and to date as well the prevalence of these gatherings world undertakings on various issues whether it is on the rights of children, whether it is on education for all, on the equality of men and women, on what constitutes sustainable development, the millennium development and today as we in different national communities are probably engaged in consultations with regard to the post 2015 development framework. But all these discussions are aiming at, they are all aiming towards that unification, unity of thought in world undertakings, the commitment of the world leaders to this even though it is still being manifested at the level of statements, at the level of conception and it is not really so much trickling down or translating itself to a transformation in their political structures, in their economic structures, in the settings, in the legal settings that they have etc. in order to ensure that human beings irrespective of gender, race, nationality, social status etc. all enjoy the same level of equality and opportunity. Therefore oneness of humankind moves beyond this to an organic change in the structure of society. The principle that is to infuse all facets of organized life on the planet is the oneness of humankind. It calls for a complete reconceptualization of the relationships that sustain society, relationship of human beings with nature, home environment, the relationship between husband and wife and children and other members of extended families, relationship between individuals and institutions of society that are constantly at loggerheads with each other to the extent that in one place you have despotism and another place you have situations where every order or every decision of an institution of governance is being, is not being followed, is being rejected by the people, sorry, and the relationship between sectors of an emerging global community. Why is that also a threat is because of the disparity in accumulation of wealth. Now there are certain convictions that we have and these are the underpinning convictions of the principle of oneness. Number one, the rational soul has no gender, race, ethnicity or class. This is a principle that we follow in all our discourses. Knowledge is central to social existence, again another of those conceptual framework elements. Science and religion are two complementary systems of knowledge and practice. Religion without science degenerates into superstition and fanaticism while without religion science becomes the tool of crude materialism. True prosperity is a fruit of dynamic coherence between material and spiritual requirements of life and justice as a faculty of the soul allows for investigation of reality and on social issues justice is the single most important instrument for establishing unity and work performed in the spirit of service is equal to the worship of the Almighty. I will now take you with me, I will now take you with me through a process of understanding the experience of the Baha'i community with this conceptual framework that we discussed in the background. India is a country of great diversity. It is a land that has tremendous human resources. It is a country that also claims to have a huge number of its population, something between 300 million and above 300 to 400 million living on $1 a day. The population of India today is around 1.2 billion. There are various religious backgrounds and diversity in this. We have what we call as our caste system which has divided the society into different categories. We also have a country that today is one of the emerging economic powers in the world. In this background of a nation that gained independence in 1947 and gradually adopted various approaches in its own five-year plans for the development of the country, we are today at the stage where India is following a very competitive new liberal economic policy. The objective is to increase the number of people in the middle income group and in this manner to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor. This is at least the logic that the country has behind its own approach to development. It's also the land where people like Mahatma Gandhi contributed so much to this whole idea of development. It's also a place where a lot of Christian missionaries have done tremendous work for the people, for their advancement. It is a birthplace of Ramakrishna. It's a birthplace of Swami Vivekananda. It's a place where applying spirituality in your development work is not a concept which is not known to the people. It's not a concept that the people have not tried to experiment with. The 1960s witnessed a series of teaching activities or mass conversions in India. We had huge numbers of people who accepted the fate in groups in masses. 1970s in the beginning of it, it continued, but then there was a period of love. There was this urge that we need to work more on consolidation, but then what had happened was that people as Baha'is, we were very conscious of the fact that here is a country which is extremely receptive to the teachings of the faith. One of the things that happened in the 1980s was the establishment of Barli Development Institute for Rural Women. I'm so glad that I see friends here from the Mona Foundation who are contributing to some of the projects of the Barli Institute. Now the Barli Institute and the way that it began to work was a beautiful example of organic development work, of working with the people in order to arrive at a plan, at a work of development which was more and more holistic and looking at different aspects and dimension of it. I'm very glad to tell you that one of the government agencies in that particular state of Madhya Pradesh, where Barli Institute is located, did a study on Barli Institute and has introduced it as a model for holistic women development. That is, I think, one of our great achievements. The House of Justice blessed the community of India with the construction, with the establishment of a continental house of worship in New Delhi, the beautiful Lotus Temple. Today, we are so grateful that as a result of this 25 years of the temple being there, of the spiritual energies that have been released to the community and to the neighborhoods around it, we have two of our most successful centers of intense activity, very near to the House of Worship, so much so that they claim for more than 500 of our core activities of the cluster of Delhi. The temple in India has also contributed to another aspect. It gave an image of the faith as a religious community that believes in the oneness of religion, that also believes that religion is not just limited to acts of worship, but that it has to also have the component of service to society. In 1996, when the Office for Advancement of Women was established by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of India, the Baha'i community of India was quite well established as an organization which believes in interfaith, that believes in the oneness of religion, that has a lot of development activities in various parts of the country, that has something like 100 schools, rural and urban that are contributing to the cause of education of children. So we had all that. I remember when we used to go and participate in various seminars and consultations or to give perspectives of the Baha'i faith, and we would speak about some of the quotes or quotations from the Baha'i writing that had relevance to that particular discourse being discussed, and we would bring the element of the importance of the spiritual components in development, the question that would gradually arise was, okay, what do you mean by that? They would say it's so beautiful what you say, but we want to understand what it means in practice. When the House of Justice blessed our community with the hosting of the colloquium on science, religion and development, it gave us an opportunity for the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of India to approach policymakers, academics, leaders of thought, media personalities, researchers. With this beautiful concept noted, I'm sure all of you or some of you must have read which is science, religion and development, some initial consideration, you can see that on the website of the institute, globalprosperity.org. This concept note was an opening ground for bringing the attention, the inquisitiveness of a number of organizations that were also trying to understand the application of the spiritual principles in development practice into our circle of network contacts that were interested to explore the ideas. The colloquium was a wonderful occasion, 150 development organizations, et cetera, were present. After that, what happened was a secretariat was formed at the request of the participants and this secretariat was formed by the National Assembly of India but it was constantly guided, nurtured, accompanied by the institute where studies in global prosperity. And as it moved on in promoting the discourse in what we call as expansion, like you know enlarging the circle of network, it began to soon realize that you need to have more content, you need to have more knowledge generated. And so then there was a group of academics and policymakers who gathered together in a seminar and the papers that they presented was put together as science, religion and development advancing the discourse. This publication was used in various places. And I must say that one of the important things as an outcome of the colloquium, sorry for jumping back, was that our Ministry of Human Resource Development asked the National Assembly of the Bahá'ís of India through its own new era foundation to serve as a regional training center for education in human values. We were very happy with that accomplishment and it carried on for some time till there was a change of government and so there was a change of government and so there are political issues and so it affects the work as well. All right, so that was something, but I believe that the achievement that was made was significant. The Institute for Studies of Global Prosperity soon began to realize that it was very important to work with some development organizations that have grassroots presence in order to understand the application of the spiritual principles to develop and practice. And so they came up with this beautiful statement, science, religion and development, some aims and challenges. These, there were five statements in this which was to guide an action research project. A gathering was organized, a number of organizations were present. Vasu Mohan was there at that time in New Delhi, India, working with IFS and so his organization was one of those who said that they would like to try to apply spiritual principles in their work and to come up with the generator of knowledge and understanding about this issue. And so there was a collaboration between IFS and the Secretariat for the promotion of the discourse. There were other organizations at the approach who were very keen. Work went to some extent but could not go beyond a certain level and then the institute decided to do its own pilot project in India. And it did a beautiful project with an organization which was one of the partners of the discourse on science, religion and development and it was, the NGO was called Seva Mandir, the Temple of Service and the outcome of that learning is a book called, May Knowledge Grow in our Hearts. And so today in one of the breakout sessions, we will discuss more about this particular action research project and so I don't have much time to discuss that and so I will not speak about it. Viswan began to realize that it was important to go more into areas of application of the discourse on science, religion and development rather than emphasizing just the discourse on science, religion and development. In other words, this discourse and the elements that it contained became the guiding principle for introduction of other discourses. And so the Office of Public Affairs, as it was already engaged in the discourse on equality of men and women, started to use the concept notes of the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity on advancing towards equality of men and women and the setting at which we found to be most effective to study this document was a setting like a group study, like a study circle, where you sit with the members of either one institution or with the representatives of different institutions together to study that document. And again, I invite you to visit the website and you will see the concept note and like the earlier discourse on science, religion and development, this concept note also draws on insights from religion and the methods and contents of science in looking at this whole area of equality of men and women. It identifies challenges in this area. It looks at the whole question of identity of human beings, what is our essential identity? It looks at this whole issue of oppression when people don't have an understanding of who they truly are and how that is the greatest form of oppression and especially for women who are being projected in the media as a completely different thing and not really as human beings. And then there was this whole idea of the re-conceptualization of power which is so important when we are looking at the issue of governance or at the issue of equality of men and women. And therefore, can you tell me how much of time I have? And therefore, the whole area of re-conceptualizing power, a discourse which itself has been very much promoted at the international level to look at this issue of power not as a domination of one against the other but as building capacity of people, power in the sense of capacity, the capacity to love, the capacity to consult, the capacity to cooperate, the powers that are associated with that aspect of us which truly makes us human. This learning with the various women organizations was very interesting and I just want to mention that because of the fact that we were already involved at the national level on consultations about policies for women, national policy for women or on consultations about a national policy for children and the organizations had that very, that great trust in us that when we approach them with the new concept, because it is a new concept, when you tell people that our essential identity is our soul and the soul has no sex and therefore equality of men and women is a spiritual reality and that we need to apply it in society to understand and change social reality, these are all new concept to them. They are looking at equality as an important prerequisite for social existence. We don't deny that it is important but the Baha'i approach is more fundamental. It is looking at the spiritual empowerment of the people to understand the concept of equality. You know, Councillor Nuretdin mentioned something which was so important. I remember that when we were attending and participating in various seminars and conferences and every time the idea was being discussed about applying spiritual principles, for some years we only spoke about barley development institute for rural women but with the training institute and the community building efforts of the Baha'is, we saw the tremendous change that was happening. The institute material, the junior youth, the spiritual empowerment activity books, especially the one breezes of confirmation, these were all helping so much in transforming Baha'is in understanding the concept of equality. Because they were now beginning to understand that our essential identity, our spiritual identity, we are one and the same. And therefore, and I'm not saying it's a rosy picture of course, but that essential understanding is so important in order for us to have a willingness to address structural issues, to address issues of consultation within the family, a family unit, how it has to run. And therefore, we were able to quote examples from community building activities of the Baha'is as a practical example to substantiate what we were saying in theory. The learning mode and humility that we spoke about is of course so important to any success in our efforts at inviting more and more people to join with us in contributing to the discourses of society. And this is something that we also share with the organization, that it is important for them to look at their development thoughts and practice, to have reflections about it, what are their approaches, what are the elements of their conceptual framework. We introduce our elements of the conceptual framework. The Sevamandir research project that I mentioned to you speaks about this concept of oneness of mankind, speaks about the dual process of individual and collective transformation. It talks about knowledge and the role of science and the role of religion in development of human beings. And therefore, we are able to share with them these elements of a conceptual framework inviting them to have their own reflection. In other words, I think another great contribution that we could make when we are promoting discourses is to introduce this element of consultation, action, reflection, research and study. And this is a methodology that guides any work in the area of discourses of society because if we don't have that, we will not be able at all to be successful. If we don't have a good knowledge of what our government is doing and knowledge of what other organizations are doing. It is wrong to even sit and speak to them and try to tell them to do something else. It is very important for us to be well informed about what is happening in our society. A couple of months ago, when we sat in our office, we constantly sit and consult and discuss about what we should do. And we saw that India has more than half of its population being youth. And so today, our office is also looking at the discourse on youth empowerment. But we don't have much to share with you in terms of what we have been able to do so far. And therefore, I would just mention that the discourse on science, religion and development, the discourse on equality of men and women and the discourse on governance in which we have made some initial steps, as well as the discourse on role of youth in society are the kind of discourses in which the Baha'i community of India is engaged in. And again, it is in direct response to our social reality because the House says that you have to first read your social reality and then decide that what it is, what kind of discourses you should engage with. And that was our social reality, which guided us in pursuing those discourses. It is a long learning process, and it is something that the Baha'i communities throughout the world, I think, are very blessed to be able to pursue these discourses with the kind of guidance and assistance that they are able to receive today. If you remember, in Res 1, 2013, the House of Justice mentions about the Office of Public Discourse that it has established at the Baha'i World Center, which is helping the national communities to engage systematically in this process of contributing to the discourses of society. And it is this office today that is also helping us to understand our work better and to be able to engage more actively, especially with our discourse on the role of youth in society. Allah hafaz, and thank you very much.