The Green Announcement — Page 3
3 misled or they wish to mislead others. The fact is that no one can cite a single word from any of my announcements published before the child’s birth in August 1887, and which have been cited by Lekh Ram of Pesh a war in sup- port of his own assertion, in which I claimed that this particular boy, who is now deceased, would be the Prom- ised Reformer and blessed with a long life. On the other hand, I clearly stated in my announcements of 8 th April 1886, and in that of 7 th August 1887—which was issued on the day of Bashir’s birth with reference to the former announcement—that Divine revelation had not yet dis- closed to me whether this particular boy was the Promised Reformer who was to be blessed with a long life, or whether he would be born afterwards. I am amazed that though Lekh Ram was driven by his prejudice to raise ob- jections on the basis of these announcements, and made characteristic use of foul and abusive language in doing so, he did not bother even to read the announcements carefully, which would have saved him the embarrass- ment of this hasty action. It is unfortunate that the pundits who sermonize in bazaars and preach that shunning false- hood and adopting the truth are the principles of the A rya faith, do nothing to stop these habitual liars from uttering such falsehood. It is indeed unfortunate that these princi- ples are always preached but never practised. The long and short of it is that the above mentioned statements of 8 th April 1886 and 7 th August 1887 are com- pletely silent on what qualities the child would possess. They both testify that the matter was still unclear in the