A social media post that shares an incident of how an elderly woman named Kamala Devi Hazarika taught a Christian pastor about Hinduism is being widely shared. The post accompanies images of freedom fighter and activist Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay, attributing the story to her. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Kamala Devi Hazarika’s befitting reply to a Christian pastor.
Fact: The images shared in the viral post are of Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay, noted Indian social reformer and freedom fighter from Karnataka. However, there are no credible reports attributing this story to her. There is no mention of this story in her biography. An online blog published a similar story, the blog credited the story to a book titled ‘Beware of the tactics used for religious conversions’, about religious conversions targeting Hindus. Most likely, the viral story could have been inspired from this book. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
The images shared in the viral post are of Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay, noted Indian social reformer and freedom fighter from Karnataka.
However, there are no reports attributing the viral anecdote shared in the post to her. Even in her biography, there is no mention of any such account of interaction with a Christian pastor. There are no reports that establish a connection between Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay and the viral anecdote.
Further, we could not find about any popular personality by the name Kamala Devi Hazarika hailing from Assam. As far as the viral anecdote is concerned, the same story is doing rounds on the internet at least from 2017. Since then, the same story is being circulated in different languages. An online blog that shared the same story in 2017 can be read here.
Another blog shared a similar story by the name Kamala Devi Hazarika. The blog mentions the reference of the story as ‘Beware of the tactics used for religious conversions.’
Taking a cue from this, Google search with relevant keywords yielded books with the same title on various online portals (here & here). The book is about religious conversions targeting Hindus and lays emphasis on northeastern states. Most likely, the viral story shared in the post could have been inspired from a story about religious conversions mentioned in this book.
Moreover, we could not find any credible reports attributing it to the freedom fighter Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay.
To sum it up, there is no evidence to attribute this story to freedom fighter Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay.
