The Inter-Religious Organisation of Guyana (IRO) has extended to the Bahá’í community, greetings and best wishes on the observance of the 12-day Festival of Ridván, from 21 April to 2 May. It marks the period when Bahá’u’lláh declared His Mission in Baghdad in 1863.An IRO release said: “The arrival of Bahá’u’lláh in the Najibiyyih Garden, subsequently designated by His followers the Garden of Ridván, signalizes the commencement of what has come to be recognized as the holiest and most significant of all Bahá’í festivals, the festival commemorating the Declaration of His Mission to His companions.”

“The ethical, the moral and doctrinal foundations of a nascent community had been established, in the course of Bahá’u’lláh’s exile in Baghdad. And finally, it was in the Garden of Ridván, on the eve of His banishment to Constantinople, that He made the Declaration of His Mission. What now remained to be achieved was the proclamation, in the city of Adrianople, of that same Mission to the world’s secular and ecclesiastical leaders, to be followed, in successive decades, by a further unfoldment, in the prison-fortress of ‘Akká, of the principles and precepts constituting the bedrock of that Faith, by the formulation of the laws and ordinances designed to safeguard its integrity, by the establishment, immediately after His ascension, of the Covenant designed to preserve its unity and perpetuate its influence, by the prodigious and world-wide extension of its activities, under the guidance of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Center of that Covenant, and lastly, by the rise, in the Formative Age of that Faith, of its Administrative Order.”

During this period, Bahá’ís also assemble for the annual elections of their local and national administrative institutions.