Talk:Indian Rebellion of 1857/Archive 1

message: : Mintguy's remarks: that's a weak argument. In this case, we have to localize all names so that other people who don't bother to read the article can understand it (we wouldn't remove all mention of sepoy or indian mutiny as other names!) World War I and World War II are therefore incorrect since from an International perspective they were only in Europe and the Pacific, but there wasn't anything going down in Africa, South America, India, or (aside from Pearl Harbor) in all of North America. I can understand, then, if you talk about weight of usage. This is where I would argue that war of independence of 1857 has quickly become (in ENGLISH texts) much more popular than before and even encyclopedias that have the title Sepoy Mutiny refer to its as the first Indian "War of Independence". Yes, the easy "Indian Mutiny" is currently, through sheer usage, more prevalent, but not so much more so that it is clearly the only distinctive marker for the war. Lastly, Wikipedia throws out sheer weight of usage when the term being used is so offensive and incorrect as to nullify such usage. "Sepoy Mutiny" or "Indian Mutiny" both imply that the insurrection against the British was 'out of order' and, according to dictionaries, "Insurrection against constituted authority, particularly military or naval authority; concerted revolt against the rules of discipline or the lawful commands of a superior officer; hence, generally, forcible resistance to rightful authority; insubordination." This is unacceptable, since by all historically sound scholarship there was nothing 'righteous' about the British incursion and, obversely, nothing 'unjust' about the rebellion of Indians. For these reasons, the new term (now gaining great currency in scholarship regarding India) "War of Independence of 1857" makes much more sense, from both an encyclopaedic and common sense point of view. --LordSuryaofShropshire 20:02, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)
::Firstly you seem to have a poor grasp of the extent of military activity in WWI and WW2. Both wars raged across all continents. e.g. in WWI one of the first military actions on the part of the Allies was the South African occupation of German South-West Africa. Naval action also took place off the South American coast e.g. the Battle of the Falkland Islands. The war was fought in the middle east notably with Lawrence of Arabia. In WWII, the war was fought in North Africa and also in East Africa where  Italian forces in Ethiopia invaded British Somaliland. Again in the South Atlantic e.g. the Battle of the River Plate. Brazi and Argentina even declared war on Germany towards the end of the war. Far from there being "nothing going on" in India, Japanese forces actually crossed into India during their Burma campaign. Colombo in Sri Lanka was bombed. I could go on. If the term "Indian Mutiny" is so offensive why does the Indian Ministry of External affairs use the term? . Why is it named as such in the syllabus for degree level history published by the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commision?. Why do the Dehli Police use the term?  etc.. The general Wikipedia policy on naming is that of the principle of least surprise, and in this case Indian Mutiny or a near equivalent overwhelmingly wins out. Mintguy (T) 21:56, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: War of Independence has simply not received widespread international useage. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar called his book 'The 1857 War of Independence' in 1909. It was written from a nationalist perspective nearly one hundred years ago, but the term is still not in widespread usage. I doubt whether any academc body outside of the sub-continent uses the term. A number of books published as recently last year do not refer to it as the War of Independence. Also 1857 War of Indepenence doesn't tell us where it took place. It could be anyhere. Your argument regarding urine is not worthy of comment. Mintguy (T) 22:33, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Further Comments on Title Change

message: The article Indian independence movement also has a large section that was copied from these two articles. Maybe make this section into a stub and link to War of Independence of 1857 or Indian Mutiny? -- Chris 73 | Talk 05:15, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Indian independence movement]] 

message: # Davodd 11:17, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)
# Imc 12:34, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Indian rebellion of 1857]]

message: #--iFaqeer 11:02, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)Why not just this? Of course, I am assuming that we will mention clearly the issue of there being raging discussion from then to now on what to call it.
:::I'm sorry but this is a complete misnomer. It would be of as much use as the now thankfully dead analogue disk record It is also possible to confuse this title with several other wars that were raging in 1857. Mintguy (T)
----
I'm too late to vote but it's turned out well. I'll just remind Mintguy that force of habit with a name and resultant piles of literature using the name doesn't change the fact that it's an insulting and factually inaccurate misnomer that's been undergoing a lot of scrutiny by many scholars in spite of the willingness of the majority to just 'stick with what's familiar'. --LordSuryaofShropshire 21:59, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)
:Please look at this reading list of recent works suggested by the National Army Museum in Chelsea.  We can't ignore the fact in English the vast bulk of historians call it the Indian Mutiny. To move thage page to another title would be like moving the article on WWII to "The Great Patriotic War" Mintguy (T) 07:16, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: [[War of 1857]]

message: Having looked through the article, there are some likely errors.  I'm posting   those I've noticed here first, in case of comments. Some of these may be partially corrected in the other article, but not sufficiently to leap out at me. 
Current Indian mutiny article.
* “It is widely acknowledged to be the first-ever united rebellion against colonial rule in India.”
No, surely it is quite clear that the rebellion was not united. For instance, the Sikhs, Nepalis, and most people who did not want the restoration of the Mughals did not join in. 
* " It was also largely limited to the area of Bengal and the North. " 
AFAIK, the rebellion did not involve Bengal at all. It involved Bengal Presidency lands which is a different thing. 
* “... the next day British officer William Hodson shot his sons Mirza Moghul, Mirza Khizr Sultan, and Mirza Abu Bakr under his own authority.”
Was not at least one of these killed a grandson rather than a son? Also was it established that Hodson did this under his own authority? Imc 15:42, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Omissions and errors

message: I have taken it upon myself, as someone interested in history but with no great knowledge of these events, to perform the merge.  I have tried to make sure that nothing is lost or changed dramatically, paragraphs have been moved around, spellings made consistant and a few lines altered for readablity.  MeltBanana 17:30, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Integrated article [[Indian rebellion of 1857]] 

message: I'm loathe to bring this up again, but seeing as the name of the article was decided by such a tiny number of people I feel somewhat emboldened to do so. I have two problems I'd like to raise regarding "Indian rebellion of 1857". The first is the use of the lower case "r" in "rebellion" - if this event is (beyond just Wikipedia) sometimes known as "Indian rebellion of 1857", then surely the "r" should be upper case? And this is where my second problem arises: isn't this name just a little too underused outside of Wikipedia to be truly useful? Searching the Internet I find almost all references to "Indian rebellion of 1857" derive from the Wikipedia article, and there are very few references to "Indian Rebellion of 1857". Meanwhile, the Library of Congress and many other sources give as an authoritative name for the event: "Sepoy Rebellion", which is both commonly used and NPOV. I find it odd that the above dicussion of the article name so rapidly became polarised to the limited choice of "War of Independence of 1857" (and variations) vs. "Sepoy/Indian Mutiny" (and variations); i.e. War of Independence vs. Mutiny. Although an anonymous editor provided a comprehensive list of choices (under Pick a name, any name), including "Sepoy Rebellion", the latter wasn't included in the final vote, itself limited to only 5 choices. So, with misgivings I'd like to suggest that the article be yet again renamed - this time to "Sepoy Rebellion", a name that is common (only a little less common than Indian Mutiny), NPOV, backed up by authoritative sources/references, and genuinely helpful in accurately suggesting the event in question (unlike "Indian rebellion of 1857", which in spite of the date seems too vague - it could just as easily be seen to refer to one of the US-Indian wars on the American Plains...). Any thoughts? Pinkville 15:04, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article Name Revisited