Talk:William Hastie

A fact from William Hastie appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 4 December 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that according to legend, Swami Vivekananda was first introduced to Indian mystic Ramakrishna in a literature class given by Scottish theologian William Hastie?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2013/December. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/William Hastie.

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Chain-smoking?[edit]

The only support for the "chain smoking" claim given is a newspaper article (The Hindu, a 2002 article) in which the author states,

By the same token, Baikuntha Sanyal in his work on Vivekananda states that Hastie was so fond of Dutta that he made allowances for some of his faults as well, one being Dutta's habit of chain smoking.

There is no direct reference to any work of Sanyal, nor any direct quote. Which work of Sanyal? The only one which comes up in a search is Sri Sri Ramakrishna Leelamrita

This reference seems quite weak—it's a newspaper article which refers obliquely to some other unspecified source. Nowhere else do we find any evidence that Narendranath was a chain smoker. Yes, he smoked—but the evidence suggests he was not a chain smoker. So I suggest removing the claim unless and until the original source can be found and verified. Devadaru (talk) 04:20, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]