Mahatma Gandhi has been reincarnated as Van Jones, the celebrated American civil rights and environmental activist who was named Time magazine’s “environmental hero” in the US in 2008. Or so says Walter Semkiw, world’s leading past life researcher and best-selling author from the US.

Jones’ facial bone structure and features are the same as that of Gandhi’s, Mr Semkiw said. His manners and body language are also similar to that of the Indian freedom fighter and he does the same things Gandhi did in Africa during the 1930s — campaign for civil rights.

But our reader from Adambakkam, Chennai, Mr N. Dharmeshwaran differs with Mr Semkiw's idea of re-incarnation.

"Re-incarnation pertains to only the soul considered immortal while the body perishes after death of the person." Mr Dharmeshwaran writes. "Soul is believed to enter from one body to another in the birth-death-birth cycle and physical resemblance or physiological similarity of a body of occupied by the soul earlier and to the one it has entered now is fallacious."