Bahá'í Faith in Vietnam

The introduction of the Bahá'í Faith in Vietnam first occurred in the 1920s, not long after French Indochina was mentioned by `Abdu'l-Bahá as a potential destination for Bahá'í teachers. After a number of brief visits from travelling teachers throughout the first half of the 20th century, the first Bahá'i group in Vietnam was established in Saigon in 1954, with the arrival of Shirin Fozdar, a Bahá'í teacher from India. The 1950s and 1960s were marked by periods of rapid growth, mainly in South Vietnam; despite the ongoing war affecting the country, the Bahá'í population surged to around 200,000 adherents by 1975. After the end of the war, Vietnam was reunified under a communist government, who proscribed the practice of the religion from 1975 to 1992, leading to a sharp drop in community numbers. Relations with the government gradually improved, however, and in 2007 the Bahá'í Faith was officially registered, followed by its full legal recognition a year later. As of 2012, it was reported that the Bahá'í community comprised about 8,000 followers.

The earliest association of Vietnam with the Bahá'í Faith was a brief mention of French Indochina—of which the country was then a part—as a destination for Bahá'í teachers in ‘Abdu'l-Bahá's Tablets of the Divine Plan. The specific tablet in question was written on 11 April 1916, but was delayed in being presented in the United States until 1919, after the end of World War I and the Spanish flu. These tablets were translated and presented by Mirza Ahmad Sohrab on 4 April 1919, and published in Star of the West magazine on 12 December 1919.

"The moment this divine Message is carried forward by the American believers from the shores of America and is propagated through the continents of Europe, of Asia, of Africa and of Australasia, and as far as the islands of the Pacific, this community will find itself securely established upon the throne of an everlasting dominion..., if some teachers go to other islands and other parts, such as the continent of Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, also to Japan, Asiatic Russia, Korea, French Indochina, Siam, Straits Settlements, India, Ceylon and Afghanistan, most great results will be forthcoming."

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Wikipedia