The Mouths of Babes

In 1995, when she was about eighteen months old, Shukla Gupta of the village of Kampu in West Bengal began to cradle her pillow and call it Minu. When asked who Minu was, Shukla would reply, “My daughter.”

 

During the next three years the small child often spoke to her family about her husband and her daughter and the life that they had led together. She told them that she was a reincarnation of a woman named Mana, and that her husband, brothers-in-law, Khetu and Karuna, and Minu were still living at Rathtala in Bhatpara, 11 miles away.

Shukla asked to be taken to Rathtala, but her family had never heard of this district, Shukla said that she could show them the way herself. Then her father discovered that Rathtala did exist and that someone named Khetu did live there. Investigation revealed that Khetu had a sisiter-in-law named Mana; she had died some years before, leaving a small child, Minu. His curiosity aroused, Shukla’s father arranged for the two families to meet.

When Shukla and her parents arrived in Rathtala in the summer of 1959, Shukla led the way to the house of the people she had mentioned over the years. It was especially striking that she addressed her brother-in-law as Karuna; everyone else called him Kutu. Even close neighbours did not know his true name.

Shukla recognized many of the objects in the house and picked out Mana’s sarees from a trunkful of clothes that had belonged to a number of other people. She showed extraordinary affection for her husband and for Minu.

Subsequent inquires revealed no history of fraud in either family; nor any motive for fraud.

The case of Shukla is one of hundreds in the files of Professor Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia. For more than a quarter of a century, Stevenson has been investigating cases in which children recall the homes, work, and families of individuals unknown to them in this life, and sometimes long dead. Stevenson suggests that these may be genuine instances of reincarnation.

However, two Dutch researchers, Titus and Esteban Rivers have questioned many of Stevenson’s cases. In particular, they point out that in many instances the alleged former incarnation belonged, or was known to, the family of the claimant, who may have simply remembered information stored subconsciously.

Of the hundreds of examples in Stevenson’s files, only two, in addition to that of Shukla, pass the test of the dubious Dutchmen. These, they believe, may be instances of “real reincarnation memories.”

Born in 1955, Kumkum Verma had never been away from her village of Behara, 25 miles from Darbhanga. When she was about 3 ½ years old, she began to talk about a previous life. She had lived in Urdu Bazar, a district of Darbhanga, and had married a blacksmith, from a lower caste than that of her present father, a doctor. Kumkum had had a son named Mishri Lal, who had also become a blacksmith, and a grandson, Gouri  Shankar. She said that her daughter-in-law had poisoned her during an altercation.

Often, while talking about her previous life, Kumkum would say, “Call me Sunnary,” which means “beautiful”, or so her family thought. Anxious to know the truth, in 1959 Dr. Verma discovered that Mishri Lal really was a blacksmith in Urdu Bazar and had a son named Gouri Shankar. His mother’s name had been Sundari, which he pronounced “Sunnary”.

Mishri Lal confirmed everything that Kumkum had said. Sundari had ben born about 1900 and died in 1950. She married and had two sons, one of them Mishri Lal. About five years after her husband’s death she again married.

It was not a happy union, and Mishri Lal became convinced that his stepfather and called his mother as a witness in the case. But before the trial date she suddenly died. These and a host of other details of Sundari’s life that Kumkum described were also confirmed by independent investigators. Stevenson could discover no suspicious motive behind Kumkum’s story and no previous connection between the families.

Born in central Ceylon (Sri Lanka today) in 1956, Gnanatilleka Baddewithana confused her parents when she was a year old by saying that she had “another” mother and father. By the time she was two, she had made it clear that these parents were from another existence.

Gnanatilleka gave details of their village, Talawakele, in a remote highland location only 16 miles away. She also named her two former brothers and sisters. She herself, she said, had been a boy.

A local priest who heard of Gnanatilleka’s claims identified the family that she had described, Fifteen months before Gnanatilleka had been born, one of their children had died, a boy named Tillekeratne. In 1961, arrangements were made for Gnanatilleka to go to Talawakele to meet the family.

She correctly recognized seven of Tillekeratne’s family and two people from the village, whom she picked out unprompted in a crowd. She delightedly embraced her former mother and former teacher, whom she especially remembered for his gentleness. And Gnanatilleka showed the same warmth or hostility as had Tillekeratne toward individual members of the family.

There were other striking correspondences. Tillekeratne had been markedly effeminate; Gnanatilleka’s parents think she is slightly masculine. Both children share the same favourite colour, blue. Tillekeratne suffered a fall that contributed to his death; Gnanatilleka avoids heights and has a district fear of anything medical.

Once again Stevenson could find no motive for fraud and no evidence of contact between thefamilies. And once again even the skeptics had to agree on the onlt plausible explanation Gnanatilleka was telling the truth.