The role Ruhiyyih Khanum, Shoghi Effendi’s widow, played in the abandonment of the guardianship is provoking. She speaks of the guardianship question being open in the five and one-half years before the election of the UH] (1957-1963), yet there are indications that from the death of Shoghi Effendi, she believed that no future guardian would be forthcoming. Being the “First Lady” of the faith, she immediately took on the responsibility for directing the faith. In her first cablegram after Shoghi Effendi’s death, she announced that the guardian was sick. This has become a controversial statement. Some guardianists contend that Ruhiyyih started her efforts to rid the faith of the guardianship with an outright lie. The Haifa Baha’is, to the contrary, say this is customary practice to soften the blow of announcing an event that otherwise would be a great shock. Ruhiyyih gives her own explanation for why she first cabled that the guardian was ill:

What of the old and the ill and the weak to whom the news would come as an insupportable blow, having the same effect on them which the news of the beloved Master’s death had produced on Shoghi Effendi and on my mother.
It was because of this that I immediately cabled the members of the International Baha’i Council in Haifa: “Beloved Guardian desperately ill Asiatic flu tell Leroy [loas] inform all National Assemblies inform believers supplicate prayers divine protection Faith.” I knew that a few hours later I would have to follow this by a second cable telling them the full truth but I felt impelled to send this one first, in the hope of cushioning the terrible blow. (Ruhiyyih Khanum, The Priceless Pearl, p. 447)

In a subsequent cablegram to the IBC in Haifa, she urged Baha’is to “REMAIN STEADFAST, CLING (to the) INSTITUTION (of the) HANDS LOVINGLY REARED, RECENTLY REINFORCED .. . .” (Ministry of the Custodians, p. 7). Then in a cablegram to all NSAs on November 6, 1957, she announced that any press releases should state that the hands would be meeting in Haifa soon to make an announcement to Baha’is regarding “future plans.” She lists among the “problems of inconceivable magnitude” before the hands the question of “How to assume the reins of authority, with no document to support us, other than the general theological statements about the Hands.” (Ministry of the Custodians, p. 9)

It becomes obvious that Ruhiyyih is thrusting the hands into prominence for deciding the direction of the faith. She speaks of how the hands of the cause “arose and firmly seized the destiny of the endangered and grievously shaken body of Baba’u’llah’s followers the world over.” (Ministry of the Custodians, p. 1) Ruhiyyih’s language was perhaps unfortunately stated when she said the hands “firmly seized the destiny” of the faith. At least, the guardianship people later took this to mean that they unauthoritatively seized the faith’s destiny when they had no right to do so.

When she speaks of the guardianship being an open question — that the custodians could not reach a decision about whether the guardianship was closed for the present dispensation — she is most likely alluding to conflicts between Mason Remey, one of the custodian’s hands, and herself and most of the other hands. Remey insisted that the guardianship was necessary, whereas she and most of the other custodians were determined the guardianship was over and had had its day.

What Mason Remey has to say about Ruhiyyih in his “Daily Observations” is revealing. He speaks of her taking a dictatorial role in the secret conclaves after the guardian’s death, as though still the liaison officer for Shoghi Effendi, how she would point her finger and slam her fist on the table.

He says she“maintains that be [Shoghi Effendi] is still the Guardian of the Faith directing us from the Abha Realm, therefore, no successor is needed or is ever to be. She holds that the Guardianship is closed” (“Extracts from the Daily Observations,” p. 21)
http://members.inet.au/~guardian/daily.observe

Remey tells how on one occasion,
Ruhiyyih Khanum went down to Kampala for the 1958 conference there as planned by the Guardian [five years before the 1963 election of the UH], which could reexamine the guardianship question] and there at one of the meetings, she announced that the guardianship was BADAH and ended. Then later in a meeting of the Hands here in Haifa [Remey was still in Haifa as one of the custodians], she explained herself saying that she spoke on the spur of the moment and without thought and should not have announced this. This slip of the tongue proved to me her inner conviction and thought for those who speak without thinking always say what they really think. (Ibid, p. 20)
Remey means Ruhiyyih Khanum made a “Freudian slip,” believing one thing while outwardly intending to say something else, which uncontrollably comes out in a slip of the tongue.
News reached the custodians that Hermann Grossman in South America was telling people the hands “had a change of mind and that undoubtedly there would be a second Guardian of the Cause.” The custodians felt they should send a cablegram, but not knowing exactly what he said, they decided to wait till the next day to cable him. Remey points out,
During the discussion someone suggested that possibly Hermann thought the Universal House of Justice might reestablish the Guardianship. Whereupon Ruhiyyih Khanum: said that she was unalterably opposed to our having another Guardian and that if there ever were one appointed that she would abandon Haifa and the Baha’i Administration and take herself somewhere up into the wilds of Tibet, there to hide herself from all Baha’is. (Ibid, p. 25)

Remey concluded that the custodian hands were, thus, “playing a double game, as it were, to deceive the Baha’is,” (Ibid, p. 26), meaning, on one hand, they were holding out hope to the Baha’is that the UHJ could perhaps appoint another guardian, while on the other hand believing inwardly that there was no way the guardianship could be reinstated, as Holley had said in his “New Baha’i Era” that neither the hands nor the UHJ had been “endowed with authority for such appointment.”
Remey’s words about Ruhiyyih’s going into “the wilds of Tibet” receive some verification from Grace Behrens, who had written to Frank Schlatter, which he included in a letter to Joel Bjorling. Part of Ms. Behrens’ message is as follows:
Mr. Bjorling wonders how the matter of no more Guardian was presented to the Baha’i community. We were a witness to it, so I know. At the time when Mason Remey’s proclamation was in the mail to all the U.S. Baha’is, the National Convention [1960] was due to begin. On the first day, Rubiyyih Khanum addressed the assembled delegates and visiting Baha’is and said that they would find a message when they returned home after the convention and were to disregard it as the ramblings of a senile old man. She said that if there were ever another Guardian, she would take to the woods and we would never see her again… The hands who were there went along with what amounted to a command from the “First Lady” of the Baha’i World. (Frank Schlatter quoting Grace Behrens in his letter to Joel Bjorling, August 29, 1990, as conveyed by Bjorling to the author, January 17, 2005. The ellipsis after the word “again” is in Schlatter’s letter.)
Remey maintains that “Ruhiyyih Khanum frequently threatens to commit suicide if she can’t have her way… but Milly [Collins] says there is no danger of her killing herself — that this is but a tantrum….Leroy [loas] thinks that Ruhiyyih may snap and have to be put in an asylum.” Remey relates that Ruhiyyih “stated to me in a meeting of the Custodians: ‘That after her no one would ever live in the Guardian’s house in Haifa.” (“Extracts from the Daily Observations,” p. 24) The guardianists believe that Ruhiyyih did not want to vacate the guardian’s mansion in the event that another guardian was appointed.
The guardianists consider the different roles that Ruhiyyih would have, for without a guardian, she would be able to maintain an unbounded leadership within the faith; with a new guardian, she would have to vacate the guardian’s mansion and have no authority whatsoever. The guardianists reason that the prospect might have been tempting to her — in lue of the contrasts — to retain her position as “First Lady” of the faith. This is why Mason Remey said “this relation that she once held is now ber stumbling block” for “because of her previous position as the contact liaison between Shoghi Effendi and the people about the Guardian, she was in the entire Baha’i world indeed the most important personage apart from the Guardian,” and Remey says, “it is plain to see that she intends that no one is to supplant ber in this position that she has assumed, and from which she seeks to rule and to dictate the affairs of the Faith.” These are hard words, but perhaps they need to be considered in view of the tremendous change about to take place in the Baha’i faith.

-VERNON ELVIN JOHNSON, PH.D.

( Baha’is in Exile, Page 22-26, published by RoseDogBooks PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA 15238 )