Meet Shanti Devi, the reincarnation case that shook the entire world.
Meet Shanti Devi, the reincarnation case that shook the entire world.
Possibly the most famous and well-documented case of reincarnation ever.
It is one of the most well-documented cases of reincarnation in modern studies and definitely one of the most convincing, studied by hundreds of researchers, critics, scholars, saints, and eminent public figures from all parts of India and abroad.
I spent the entire last week reading stuff around this topic. It was a lot of fun knowing something one doesn’t get to interact with a lot.
This Sunday, I published the story of Barbro Karlén, who claimed to be the reincarnation of Anne Frank.
Though it was fascinating, apparently it had way less proof and scrutiny than this one.
This case of reincarnation comes from India, from a time when India was fighting for its independence. Mahatma Gandhi was becoming popular. And this story caught his eye.
He ordered an independent commission to be formed and investigate this issue.
What did it conclude? Well, see this newspaper headline:
With that, let’s get into some more interesting facts and events from this one-of-a-kind case of reincarnation that took the world (mainly researchers, critics, and believers and non-believers in reincarnation, okay, everyone!) by storm.
“Shanti Devi’s reincarnation case is the only fully explained and proven case of reincarnation there has been.”
—Sture Lönnerstrand, a Swedish author and critic (one of the prominent documentorof Shanti’s case the first one to introduceit to the Western world)
Let’s first get the basics right
Because there are too many names and that too, Indian names, most of you might get confused.
I’m sure you will. I myself was like “who’s this? Okay, okay, okay!” despite being an Indian. There are many names!
So first, we will name the names. And I’ll try to keep the less important character’s name out of the story, as much as possible. Thank me later.
— Shanti Devi: we are talking about herrrr.
— Lugdi Devi: Shanti Devi in her alleged previous life
— Kedarnath: Lugdi’s husband; or Shanti’s past life’s husband
Let’s start with Shanti Devi
She was born on December 11, 1926, in Delhi, India.
Less than a year after the death of Lugdi Devi (October 4, 1925).
She didn’t speak until the age of 3. But as soon as she did, she started to talk about her past life. She claimed to remember her past life.
At the age of 4, she told her parents that her home was in Mathura (a town 160 km from New Delhi), and that she was married.
But her parents kept ignoring her. She even attempted to run away from home but failed.
She often told her mother that she was not her real mother.
“You are not my real mother. You don’t even look like her,” she’d say.
She also declined to eat non-vegetarian food and would say: “I want Satva food.”
No one used that word in New Delhi. She further explained that satva means vegetarian as they didn’t kill animals (about her past life as Lugdi Devi).
Then she starts school. In school, she kept talking about all this—her previous life, her husband, how she died, etc.
Most of the students and teachers too ignored her, but amidst all this, her activity caught the attention of the principal of the school.
He noticed that she was using Mathura dialect and was quite consistent in what she was saying. Her claims sounded true.
She names her husband “Kedarnath Chobay”.
Her principal became curious and wanted to know if it was true.
He wrote a letter addressing the person Shanti Devi was referring to. He didn’t expect any reply.
But, but, but…
It came. He was shocked to the core. There really was a person in Mathura, who was a merchant by the name of Kedarnath, whose wife had died 10 years ago, just after 10 days of giving birth to his son.
He visited Delhi with his cousin, his present wife and Lugdi’s 10-year-old son, Naunita.
To test if Shanti actually knew who her past life husband was, Kedarnath convinced Shanti’s family to not tell her and that he would act like his elder brother. They agreed.
When Shanti came home from school, she wasn’t informed that her past-life husband was there to meet her. She went to the room where he was seated and she immediately recognised him. He touched his feet and she became emotional when she saw her son.
Just imagine this: An 8-year-old girl meets her 10-year-old son.
After that, she talked to Kedarnath for a long time. They talked about different things from very public subject matters to intimate things.
Her previous life husband even interrogated her and he was amazed by the sheer amount of details she knew about Lugdi Devi (remember who?).
He was finally convinced that she was indeed the reincarnation of Lugdi Devi, her late wife.
Enter Mahatma Gandhi
The news started to spread like wildfire after these incidents.
Major newspaper outlets extensively covered this case. Millions of people were now curious to know if it was true.
And it only escalated after this story caught Mahatma Gandhi’s attention.
It was a time when India was fighting for its independence and Mahatma Gandhi was a popular figure. Many more people, who could not read or write, came to know about this alleged reincarnation case after they heard about Gandhi’s involvement in it.
In 1935, Mahatma Gandhi set up a commission to independently investigate this issue.
A lot of things happened after the involvement of the committee and because of that, it was also well-documented. Like, Shanti Devi travels to her home (in her previous life), Mathura, for the first time.
On November 24th 1935, twelve days after Kedarnath had visited Shanti Devi, her parents and the entire committee boarded the train to Mathura.
When they arrived at Mathura, there was a large crowd waiting for them.
She recognised her husband’s elder brother amidst the crowd and touched his feet. When asked by the commission why she touched his feet, she correctly named him and said he was his husband’s elder brother.
She remembered a lot of details, too. And then there happen a lot of incidents that only confirm these claims of reincarnation to be true.
Like, she pointed out to the commission all the things that had changed in the past 10 years, the way that led to her house, the well where she used to bathe, and even a spot where she had hidden some money.
But when the commission went to the spot, there was no money. Only a flower pot. She claimed that she vividly remembered the money that she had kept there and asked them to look again.
And soon Kedarnath confessed that he had taken out the money after Lugdi (her late wife) died.
The commission published its report in 1936 conforming to the case of Shanti Devi and concluded that she was indeed the reincarnation of Lungdi Devi.
Many foreign researchers have also published papers and books on this topic. Most of them believed and confirmed this case to be true.
Some even consider it the only case of reincarnation that is convincing enough.
And yes, it is. Like hell, I found an overwhelming amount of information about this one on the web, unlike other cases, which only had a little mention, and that too mostly from unreliable sources.
Sture Lönnerstrand, the famous Swedish author and parapsychologist, also published a book titled I Have Lived Before: The true story of the reincarnation of Shanti Devi.
After many years, Sture Lönnerstrand was declared the only official biographer of Shanti Devi. He interviewed all the living participants in the case and finally confirmed that it was true. Interestingly enough, he originally travelled from Sweden to India to prove this case “fake.”
Poor Sture!
You can learn a lot more about this case by borrowing this book on archive.org, for free. There are a lot of angles I intentionally omitted here because it will make it even more complex. Read on here!
Loved this! #FarrahNaykaAshline
Whoa that's twisted