• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Reincarnation? The Taranjit Singh Case

With regard to the handwriting evidence, I must say I find this a little iffy. My handwriting today is not even close to that I used as a child, although either could, coincidently, appear similar to someone else's - it all depends on the markers being used to determine points of simularity and the readers' interpretation.

Jane.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
IS rebirth possible? Are there any scientific bases for believing in rebirth? Since time immemorial, man has been struggling to find a solution to this mystery but conclusive evidence has thus far eluded him. Jupinderjit Singh from TribuneIndia.com (03-13-03)
Now, in probably the first-ever case of its kind, a Patiala-based forensic science expert has sought to scientifically prove the phenomenon. Putting forward for debate his research in a case involving the rebirth of a child who lived in Chakkchela village of Jalandhar district in his past life and now lives in Alluna Miana village of Ludhiana district, Vikram Raj Singh Chauhan claims to prove on the basis of the comparison between the handwriting of the child in his previous and present births, the theory that rebirth is possible. His findings have been hailed at the recent National Conference of Forensic Scientists at Bundelkhand University, Jhansi.

A couple of months ago, a six-year-old boy Taranjit Singh of Alluna Miana village near Payal in Ludhiana claimed to remember his previous life. In fact, according to his economically weak parents, the boy had been claiming this since he was two years old and used to attempt to run away from home. The boy said he was born in Chakkchela village in Jalandhar district in his past birth and his real name was Satnam Singh and his father’s name was Jeet Singh. He said he was a student of Class IX in a school in Nihalwal village at the time of his death. On September 10, 1992, he was returning home on a bicycle from his school along with his friend Sukhwinder Singh when a scooter-rider named Joga Singh of Mirajwala village, Shahkot tehsil, hit him. He received serious injuries on his head and died the following day.

His present father Ranjit Singh said as the boy became more insistent, he and his wife took him to Chakkchela village in Sangrur district. They could not find anyone resembling the people their son had described as his parents. When someone told them that there was a village called Chakkchela in Jalandhar district as well, they decided to go there.

The boy’s father Ranjit Singh and his friend Rajinder Singh went to the government school in Nihalwal village in Jalandhar district where they met an old teacher who told that it was true that a boy named Satnam Singh had died in an accident and he was the son of Jeet Singh of Chakkchela village. Then the family reached the house of Jeet Singh and narrated the whole story.

Ranjit Singh also said that his son claimed that the books he was carrying when the accident occurred had been soaked in his blood. He also had Rs 30 in his purse. On hearing this, the woman Taranjit claimed was his mother in his previous birth, started weeping and confirmed his claim. She said she had preserved the blood-stained books and Rs 30 as the last memory of her child.

After few days Taranjit Singh’s brother in his previous life Kewal Singh, sister Lakhbir Kaur, friend Buta Singh, father Jeet Singh and mother Mohinder Kaur came to Alluna Miana village to meet Taranjit. Lakhbir Kaur showed the photographs of her marriage to Taranjit Singh and asked him to recognise himself in his previous birth. Taranjit Singh immediately recognised the same as also the photo of his parents in his previous birth.

This story was carried in some newspapers. Vikram Chauhan told this writer that as a man of science, he refused to believe such a story but driven by curiosity, he decided to investigate. He visited the villages concerned a number of times. The boy and the parents of both the births repeated the same story. He spoke to a shopkeeper who told him that the boy had taken a notebook on credit of Rs 3 from him a few days before his death. When the shopkeeper went to the boy’s village, the boy immediately recognised him but said he owed him Rs 2 only. The shopkeeper admitted the fact and said he had only wanted to test the authenticity of the child’s claim.

Thereafter to confirm the incident scientifically, Chauhan took samples of the writings of Taranjit Singh both in Gurmukhi and English and also of Satnam Singh from the notebooks kept by the family of Satnam Singh, in order to find out whether or not the handwritings of Satnam Singh and Taranjit Singh were similar. A basic theory of forensic science that the handwritings of two different individuals cannot be the same was the basis of his investigation. If Taranjit Singh and Satnam Singh were the same person, then their handwritings also had to be the same.

The author explained that a person’s handwriting has specific characteristics, which are determined by one’s personality and hence no two persons write in the same manner.

It is an applied science combining the study of optics, physiology and psychology. A person’s psychological makeup determines, to a large extent, his handwriting. Thus, the mind plays an important role in shaping a person’s handwriting and the hand only translates into action the dictates of the mind, which cannot be the same in two different writers.

The author revealed he was amazed to find that the handwriting of Taranjit Singh corresponded almost exactly with that of Satnam Singh. The only difference lay in the muscular coordination of the two writers as Taranjit Singh was not accustomed to writing. This was quite unusual and suggested that something in the two boys was same.

The author argued that if it is presumed that the soul is transferred from one person to another then it can be inferred that the mind will remain the same. Thus, if Satnam Singh’s soul was believed to have been transferred into Taranjit Singh’s body, then it stood to reason that the handwriting of Taranjt Singh would correspond with that of Satnam Singh.

The scientist proved this in a conference. According to the minutes of the conference, a number of forensic experts examined the handwriting samples and found that these were similar.

http://science.krishna.org/Articles/2003/03/016.html
 
If Taranjit Singh and Satnam Singh were the same person, then their handwritings also had to be the same.
Click to expand...

:roll: Oh of course. Irrefutable.
 
If it were the same then yes it would be (current theory).

A basic theory of forensic science that the handwritings of two different individuals cannot be the same was the basis of his investigation.
 
Surely the handwriting of two six year olds would be broadly similar, given that they are too young to have developed a unique style?
 
Surely ?

As my mother worked in a primary school with six years olds, no they don't seem broadly similar.

The fact it's very similar is also tied to the fact the child remembered being the child whose writing is very similar. Wouldn't be too easy imho.
 
Surely the handwriting of two six year olds would be broadly similar ?

Plus I doubt a scientist would attempt to find this similarity if there is no way of distinguishing six year old's handwriting.
 
philuk said:
Surely ?

As my mother worked in a primary school with six years olds, no they don't seem broadly similar.
Click to expand...

How does the fact that your mother worked with six year olds, make you an expert in juvenile graphology? :roll:

When I was at school, I spent a whole year in a class full of six year olds. We were all taught to form words and sentences by copying examples from the blackboard, or tracing over dotted lines on textbooks. Thus, our writing was broadly similar.

Don't be so desperate to defend this claptrap.
 
when did i say i was expert.

When I was at school, I spent a whole year in a class full of six year olds. We were all taught to form words and sentences by copying examples from the blackboard, or tracing over dotted lines on textbooks. Thus, our writing was broadly similar.
Click to expand...

I don't remember much when i was a six year old. Man you have a good memory. Plus i doubt we are talking about tracing over dotted lines, everyone's writing would look the same then.

Plus you havent answered why a scientist would attempt to find this similarity if there is no way of distinguishing six year old's handwriting. You just attacked my weakest point.

Don't be so desperate to defend this claptrap
Click to expand...

I'm not desperate to defend it, but I'm a little more objective than to call something claptrap without raising why. It seems you are no expert about handwriting forensics but call it claptrap. I was hoping for people with handwriting forensics knowledge to post. Not people just trying to destory the thread with prejudiced answers.
 
According to the minutes of the conference, a number of forensic experts examined the handwriting samples and found that these were similar.
Click to expand...

The author argued that if it is presumed that the soul is transferred from one person to another then it can be inferred that the mind will remain the same. Thus, if Satnam Singh’s soul was believed to have been transferred into Taranjit Singh’s body, then it stood to reason that the handwriting of Taranjt Singh would correspond with that of Satnam Singh.
Click to expand...

A) similar handwriting doesn't prove anything
and
B) how can it be inferred that the mind will remain the same? Furthermore it doesn't stand to reason at all that the handwriting of the two would correspond
and actually while i'm at it
C) this all depends on graphology not being a complete load of old bollocks
 
the article doesnt say how similar

but if graphology isn't bs and the handwriting's are extremely similar, then it's certainly interesting.

What is the % of the boy randomly finding such an accurate match. I don't know, but it would be interesting to find out.

The author revealed he was amazed to find that the handwriting of Taranjit Singh corresponded almost exactly with that of Satnam Singh. The only difference lay in the muscular coordination of the two writers as Taranjit Singh was not accustomed to writing. This was quite unusual and suggested that something in the two boys was same.
Click to expand...
 
philuk said:
but if graphology isn't bs and the handwriting's are extremely similar, then it's certainly interesting.
Click to expand...
That's at least one too many "if"s, I'm afraid. A bit like those bits of annoying cricket commentary: "If he'd hit that ball a bit higher, and there had been a fieldsman in that part of the ground, he might well have been out."

There are a number of reasons handwriting might be similar. Certainly it can be hard to tell between the handwriting of different women brought up in the New South Wales school system in the 80s and 90s, and they all use the same style (which I believe was the one taught at that time - don't know why men don't write that way, other than it being a rather feminine style).

Of course, exactly how they determined that the only difference was due to musculature, and the latter one's lack of experience writing. It could be that the only similarities were due to musculature...
 
I have no opinion on this case, because we are not given enough information in the article to form one.

The sole point I wish to make is that the article (and possibly but not necessarily the scientist, articles being what they are) confuses, not unnaturally, two uses of the word "graphology."

Forensic handwriting analysis is the comparative study of physical forms of letters for similarities and differences in things like length of stroke, curvature, idiosyncratic letters, pen pressure, and direction of slant in order to determine whether an unknown handwriting sample was produced by the same person as a known handwriting sample. If you took two or three or a dozen competent forensic handwriting analysts and gave them samples of my, my father's, my mother's, and my little sister's handwriting, and then gave them a mass of cut up manuscript by the same people with my husband thrown in, each of them will in all probability wind up with roughly the same five piles of paper labeled Peni, The Rev. Mom, Robby, Peg, Unknown. This will happen even if I try to write like Damon and Dad tries to write like me, because freehand writing is an unconscious activity and habit will out. Even if I succeeded in making all my strokes look like Damon's, the fact that I was concentrating will show in hesitation marks in the flow of ink. It takes hours of practice to become a good freehand forger.

They will refuse to answer any questions about which one of us is greedy, bad-tempered, patient, and/or writes children's books, because that's not what they were looking for.

The claim that studying handwriting can reveal aspects of personality is much more problematic than the claim that it can be used to match an unknown sample to a known one. Because personality is so difficult to quantify, graphic analysis for psychological traits, if it can be done at all, is difficult to test and, though it may be useful in the same way a good profile of a crime scene is useful in some cases, it may equally be misleading.

Whether I would have handwriting similar to the handwriting of my previous incarnation would depend on the way reincarnation works. Certainly I would be intrigued if I found that a forensic handwriting analyst had confused my handwriting with that of Louisa May Alcott. I don't know that I'd draw any conclusions from it, but I don't draw any more conclusions than I can help anyway.
 
Peni, do you have any idea how easy it is to find someone with a similar style ? is it common, or unlikely.

If you went to say a village in the UK and compared your writing with all the people in that village would you find a close match ?
 
I have no idea. The information I have is a synthesis gained from years of reading books on true crime and various Fortean subjects, and I don't recall any of them discussing the matter in such terms, though analysts in criminal cases sometimes point to a distinctive feature and declare it unique in their experience.

It would not surprise me if you could find a book specifically on handwriting analysis at your local library, and if anyone has done a study that would yield that sort of estimate it might be in there.

Don't quote me on this, but I believe it's possible to guesstimate the age of an unknown writer based on the handwriting, since children's styles aren't "formed," whatever that means precisely. It would be a tentative guess, however, since the "forming" is a result of practice; so a semi-literate adult might have "childish" handwriting and a child who wrote a lot might develop an "adult" style. Elements of handwriting also alter over time, due to exterior factors such as health, but a good analyst should still be able to group them with the correct known sample most of the time.

I also have not seen any references to handwriting analysis outside of the Roman alphabet and European languages, though I believe writers of kanji have distinctive styles as well. If analyzing a historical sample, it also matters that, prior to typewriters, people used different handwritings on different occasions, a practice which seems nearly impossible today; though I know my handwriting looks a little different when I'm writing normally and when I'm working hard to be legible. (I don't normally succeed). The school you went to probably also matters - I know that my mother and father, who learned cursive from the same teacher, shape their capital Ps in a certain old-fashioned way, and have a differently-shaped terminal T, both of which I started out using and was trained out of in a big city school.

You see why I don't think we have enough information in the original article to form an opinion. Too many variables should have been taken into account, and might have been, but we can't tell one way or another.
 
Sadly, graphology is considered a science in many parts of europe (cf France as the worst offender)
 
In the process of scanning my old slides into the computer, I'm using the list of slides I compiled up to 35 years ago. My handwriting then was reasonably neat, certainly legible.

Nowadays my writing is awful, whether using joined-up or print style -
I blame this on years of using a computer keyboard, so that I'm out of practise with pen and paper!
 
Same here, rynner. I never had good handwriting (authors don't, historically - it's a matter of the wetware outpacing the hardward), and the faster I type the worse it gets.

Still characteristic, though.

Any idea how scientific personality graphologists are quantifying personality traits in order to apply scientific testing procedures to their connection of certain handwriting features, Mr. Duck?

I prefer to cut everyone slack if I can (I can believe anything for the duration of a story), but my only experience is with one of those pop-art graphology books, which told me my big fat g tails were "moneybags" - signs of greediness - and my long slim g tails were a sign of, oh, spirituality or something - and I didn't see how I could be both.
 
Yup Peni - I did a brief look-in when I was studying psychology. In a nutshell, there is no evidence that graphology works and it doesn't link to any 'real' theories of personality such as the big 5 - not unless you do some very contorted reasoning. It is closer to Astrology or the psychoanalytical use of thematic apperception tests rather than a science; thus it comes down to how the 'graphologist' interprets your writing (they have their little books with structure analysis, but there again, you can buy similar books on palm reading)...Indeed, would you trust a palm reader to make employment decisions? (okay, I hate HR departments too, and would love to see their faces if this happened)
 
However, graphology is a side-issue here - we should be talking about recognising someone's handwriting.

It probably happens less often now that letter writing is in decline (thanks to email and message boards!), but I expect we've all had the experience of receiving a letter and knowing who it's from by just a glance at the hand-writing on the envelope.

At work I frequently handle credit card transactions, and as chip'n'pin is not yet universal I still sometimes have to match signatures. In fact I've got so used to it, that I can tell from the upside down view as the customer is actually signing whether his sig. matches the one on his card (which I have in front of me.)
 
Reincarnation

Try reading some of the work of IAN STEVENSON on reincarnation. Very interesting!
 
rynner said:
It probably happens less often now that letter writing is in decline (thanks to email and message boards!), but I expect we've all had the experience of receiving a letter and knowing who it's from by just a glance at the hand-writing on the envelope.
Click to expand...

A good example is knowing who sent which birthday card purly from the recipients address written down.
 
what have others made of this case other than talking about the handwriting bit? It seems a bit weird that it was caught onto and the rest of the text almost totally ignored!
I am not decided on the whole reincarnation thing, it is a very interesting story though, what are your thoughts on the seeming memory that the boy had of this other life?
It seemed so specific, i'm not saying that proves that its a past life memory, what else may provide an explanation for his apparant memory? It seems a bit thin to jump to a conclusion that he may have heard of the other boys life, but i am not up on the geography of this region so its possible. Of course there's always the chance that a few people thought it was a good story to make up and flog to the unsuspecting public!! Any thoughts?
 
Going back to the case: I don't want to appear rude (well...it is a hobby) but a lot of these stories originate in countries where reincarnation is accepted as a major religious belief. Secondly, within these countries there is a lot of poverty and one would imagine that cultural norms would be similar and also restrictive due to living conditions and traditions. Thus any behaviours, such as knowing where to look for something hidden or of an event that happened to the village/town (monsoon, disease, vermin infestation) might be an easy guess. Further, one needs to check the use of names within these countries - how common or rare?. Indeed, think of what it would be like over here. I could easily make up a story about Tony Jones from East London; taxi driver. However, if I claimed memory of Skipwith ffyfe-Mortensen of Castle Linstrum and claimed he was a scientist (and had scientific knowledge), then that would be a different kettle of fish!
 
Re: handwriting. Many years ago, I was involved in a weekend stock-take. Awful but had to be done. Came into work Monday morning and someone handed me a form and asked why I hadn't included the total. It was not one of my own department's forms. However, as was pointed out to me, the partially completed form was undeniably in my handwriting. It was one of those have-I-gone-mad moments. There was my handwriting, yet how and why had I been conducting stock-take in the wrong department, as the form indicated I had? I hadn't done so. I had no answer to the situation. It was my handwriting, no doubt about it. But I couldn't have written it.

Then the newly-appointed manager of the other department breezed in, stopped to say hello, saw the partially-completed mystery form I was poring over and said: 'Oh, there it is. I've been looking for that. It's one of the ones I didn't have the chance to finish'.

Upshot of it all was, he and I compared several of the forms he'd completed the previous weekend, with several of mine. Our writing was indistinguishable. Oh, I'm not saying a forensic graphologist wouldn't be able to find differences, but to the untrained eye, including those of the two people involved, our writing was identical, including all the usual idiosyncrasies. We couldn't tell the difference. We were both stunned. For those who haven't experienced anything similar, I can say that it is not a comfortable feeling.

More followed few weeks afterwards. It was my birthday. I turned up to work, couldn't stand the place. Dropped into the office of the man with whom I shared my handwriting and said it was my birthday and I intended to give myself the day off. I was head of one department, he of the other. He frowned. Told me it was his birthday and he had intended to give himself the day off. I thought he was being sarcastic, but in the end he pulled out his driver's licence and yes, we shared the same date of birth, although he was a few years older.

On that particular day, I had chosen to wear ink-blue slacks, white shirt, red vest with narrow white and blue trim on the V-neckline. At first I didn't notice -- then I did. He was dressed identically. It wasn't a uniform, they were not company colours. It was random; just happened that way. All true. We were the same physical type. Had the same colour hair. Different sex. At a later stage, his wife gave birth to twins. Approx. one year later, so did I. No, he wasn't the father. Our personalities were very similar. We were born in countries 12,000 miles apart, had not been taught to write in the same style at all. Weirdest thing. If I'd been born male, there's a good chance I would have been a lot like him. He was probably thinking the same thing, in reverse. I found him attractive and repulsive at the same time. I guess he felt similarly about me. Basically, he annoyed the daylights out of me but it was hard to stay mad at him. We had a brief, mild flirtation, nothing physical; laughed at and insulted each other. I decided I needed a career change. Left. Never saw him again. My husband mentioned him the other day, out of the blue, then while reading this thread I remembered the freak handwriting thing.
 
Again, that is totally amazing.

No doubt someone (maybe even me!) could work out the statistical chances of this sort of thing happening, and conclude, well, it probably happens somewhere in the world x times a year, so it's just coincidence.

But I prefer to just enjoy the story, so some other b*gger can do the calculations! :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top