shanta devi

Shanti Devi (11 December 1926 – 27 December 1987) was born in Delhi, India. As a little girl in the 1930s she began to claim to remember details of a past life. The case was brought to the attention of Mahatma Gandhi who set up a commission to investigate; a report was published in 1936. Two further reports were written at the time. The report by Bal Chand Nahata was published as a Hindi booklet by the name Punarjanma Ki Paryalochana. In this, he stated that "'Whatever material that has come before us, does not warrant us to conclude that Shanti Devi has 'former life recollections or that this cases proves reincarnation". This argument was disputed by Indra Sen in an article later. A further report, based on interviews conducted in 1936, was published in 1952. Later in life Shanti Devi was interviewed again, and a Swedish author who had visited her twice published a book about the case in 1994; the English translation appeared in 1998.