Back from Death: Young Adults in Northern India Who as Children Were Said to Remember a Previous Life, with or without a Shift in Religion (Hindu to Moslem or Vice Versa)

Abstract

In an age when interreligious strife resurges, I am conducting a longitudinal study of young adults in northern India who as children were said to remember a previous life, with or without a shift in religion–Hindu to Moslem or vice versa. I am seeking to learn what this experience has meant to these young adults; how it impacts their attitude toward Ashis Nandy's recent Hindu—Moslem reconciliation movement; where they fit in their communities; and to assess if they are higher on dissociative and psychic experience scales than those who have no such memories. These cases in northern India represent a very small subsample of the small percent of the population that is reported to remember a previous life as a young child. Eventually the Hindu-to-Hindu cases will be compared to those who have made a shift in religion. Reincarnation is accepted as “the way things work” by all Hindus, yet most of the reported cases entail someone who died violently and came back quickly. The Moslem population does not formally accept reincarnation as a possibility, yet they report about as many cases of children remembering a life in the “other” religion as do the Hindus. The question is: why do some people apparently experience in their rebirth this major shift in religion?