Talk:India/Archive 2

message: The "Origin of Names" section says:
"The official name India is derived from Sindhu, the historic local appellation for the river Indus, which is one of the most internationally recognized landmarks of the country"
Is this true? Most of the Indus river is not even in India any more - it is in Pakistan; I think the original connotation of the above sentence (before it was edited a few days ago), was that the name India is the most internationally recognizable name of the country. I don't think the Indus river is an internationally recognizable landmark of India now, but I am not going to change this without consensus, since the above statement is probably historically correct. Any thoughts?
The same section also says:
"The king Bharat was known for his love towards his subjects ( i.e people in his state ). He was the first king to start the system of Provinces ( i.e. to devide the Empire into smaller parts to rule effectly and efficiently )."
AFAIK, Bharat is more of a mythological figure than a historical one. The first sentence above sounds rather lame - also, do we have sources for the rest (first to start provinces, etc)? To the best of my knowledge, there are no historical records about Bharat to make the above claims.
--ashwatha 21:02, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of Names 

message: HAVE NOT HAD SUCH A GOOD LAUGH FOR A LONG TIME THANKS WIKIPEDIA
The entire 1500 years of Muslim rule in India seemed to be wiped out from the history of India - Good Grief!!
This is not history its the distortation of history by some half wit who claims to be a historian no doubt from the ilk who distort hitory as I can see things here from Mythology - Come on folks the past cannot be changed - You see it in the red fort and the many thousands of monuments all over Delhi and India includeing the Taj Mahal What about the Kilji Dynasty, The Tuglak Dynasty, The Delhi Sultanate, The Muguls - The Deccan Kingdoms - Mir Jafar and Tippu sultan and the wars aginst the E India Company - 
This can be compared  to wipeing out the entire British History from Queen Victoria to the depature of the Romans and adding King Arthur and Merlin as fact . Only write about Ancient India include some mythology then Jump forward to the present day because you don't like muslims. Ha Ha!
Lets get the Indian Historians in!!!  this version is written by an illliterate who fancies himself an intellectual and scholar
But maybe better still keep it!!! Its a good example of creative history writing as a goo example and bit of a laugh for Indian Historians working in Universities all over the world.
:To please some of my friends here ... we should atleast consider revising the line India is home to a large population of Muslims (13.4%) and mention that India also has the second largest population of Muslims in the world after Indoneshia. Sjain 04:49, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  DISTORTATION OF INDIAN HISTRY LEAVING OUT MUSLIMS 

message: I oppose the image IndiaNumbered.png because the word "presently" is misused. "Presently" means "soon" or "in the near future", not "right now" or "at the present time" --  lists the latter definition as a usage problem. Also, the image seems cluttered with the additional areas of "administered by blah blah"... Also, please don't start a revert war, especially on a featured article. ugen64 22:00, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: About the use of "presently", dont mind but you are being a lil pedantic. Almost everyone uses presently for NOW - or at present - since its an obvious interpretation. Using presently for "in the near future" actually confuses the reader. A suggestion Merriam-Webster is better than Dictionary.com   Sense 2 (NOW) is most common in contexts relating to business and politics.  Anyway since you object with a valid reasons, the solution to both the points you raise lies in removing the text from the image - besides that goes along with the wikipedia guideline of uploading image. Something like If possible, upload a another image without labels ... --Ankur 06:08, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I just noticed there are several versions of this image with the same text. Now, changing all these images will be asking too much. --Ankur 09:52, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: I just changed the main article map to conform to ugen's request, but Ankur is right - the state maps all have "presently administered" and it would be too much trouble to change them, unless someone here has the time + know-how + photoshop; but "presently" is not inaccurate in the context. -- Simonides 10:08, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Image 

message: The line that explained the context of the term Hindustan seems to have been removed. Now we just have a translation of Hindustan as Land of the Hindus, but IMHO this gives the wrong idea to he reader. Associating the word Hindu with a follower of Hinduism is a post-1750s phenomenon.The word Hindustan has been around since the Moghul period, when that association was not there. We used to have a line there that clarified what the word Hindu means in this context. I say we put it back.  --ashwatha 16:17, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin of Names

message: Surely India does not share a border with Afghanistan.
: As per the official map of the Indian government, it does share a small border with Afghanistan. Howeve, this border is not in Indian control - the state of Jammu and Kashmir is disputed by India and Pakistan, and the Afghan border is in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. There is a small footnote in the article to this effect. --ashwatha 15:31, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: ??? Nice vision, but what, if any, is the relevance here? --ashwatha 22:23, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bordering Countries 

message: Do we need a space program section here? It should be enough to link to this in related topics. We have also mentioned the space program right in the intro. Conversely, if there is a section on the space program, why not sections on IT, Biotech, nuclear program, and so on? 
It is a huge article, and personally, I think it is better if we don't clutter it with a huge number of sections. If there are no objections, I will be removing this section and addin the ISRO link into the related topics section.
--ashwatha 15:45, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Now that you mention it, i think a lot more people would be interested in the indian nuclear program then in their space program. It's on the news all the time --62.251.90.73 01:05, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  True - there already is an article on India's nuclear program, and this page links to it. --ashwatha 01:59, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Space Program 

message: "Multicultural" appears to be a buzzword. Besides, we do not need the word up there in the first paragraph. Let's say "India's culture is often described as multicultural" in the "Culture of India" paragraph. WhisperToMe 18:00, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: "Multicultural"

message: To 192.94.94.105 (sometimes 209. .....):
* Get a user id
* Wherever did you come up with the idea that "400 million people" are starving to death, as you proclaim in your edit comment? 
* Just out of curiosity, do you vandalise articles on all countries that you consider to be "third world"?
* Also out of curiosity, do you always have this tactic of vandalizing an article and then accusing others of vandalism when they fix your vandalism?
--ashwatha 21:29, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Given that you haven't backed up your claim regarding 400 million people, I don't see how you can talk about others propagating myths. In any case, the article clearly provides data about India's GDP status and per-capita GDP. The readers can make their own conclusions about what "world" India belongs to. Given that the definitions of terms like "first world" and "third world" are vague at best, it is much better to provide actual data and leave it to the readers (which is exactly what this article does). --ashwatha 02:53, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  third world? 

message: added a Miscellaneous topics subsection to the page to standardize the page accoring to the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countries. More links from the "See Also" can be moved here to highlight them. kaal 02:49, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Miscellaneous topics

message: I have temporarily protected the page due to the spurt in vandalism and addition of POV links. Nichalp 20:05, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)
: 48 hours, time to give the page another chance.  Unprotecting. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 20:06, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protection 

message: The beginning of the article is not well done. The reason is that the first sentences just talk about the rankings of India and its growing status. This seems to be rather subjective than objective, since I get the feeling that someone wanted to show India being of a high importance in the world. Not that I think it isn't but I get this impression in no other article related to countries (be it USA, Germany, Great-Britain or Japan).
I agree that the beginning is badly written.
India is not about what it is today but what it stood for in ancient times as a prosperous, very ancient, contributing and innovative in all aspects of civilisation, be it governance, theology and religion, medicine, multi-ethnicities and religions, scientific advances, literature, festivals, ....
The entire mystery and romance of ancient India is missing.
Modern India does have to be represented strongly in terms of positives as it has long been subject to negative stereotyping globally now for a number of decades. Indicating size, scope and performance through rankings and absolutes is as objective as one can get. Indians ought to remember they are selling the concept of India here and it is for them to do a good job of it unapologetically.
----
I think you exaggerate about India's importance in world history. Its importance is not comparable to Greece, Italy, China and Egypt whose historic influence is immense on today's world.
Quote: "modern India does have to be represented strongly in terms of positives as it has long been subject to negative stereotyping globally now for a number of decades." Where are your proves for this claim? I never talked with friends (amongst them were indians) about India being an underrepresented country. India is a country like any other as well, yet I don't see that much objective background as is the case with other countries' articles.
Am not clear about the above comment "that someone wanted to show India being of a high importance in the world".
 
India has indeed re-awakened and may be that is what has reflected in the intro.
Rankings are anyways, defined to be objective indicators. 
But then in realty, we know the fact that subjectivity comes to play when it comes to (selecting and) using statistics. If we look at a number of pages in Wikipedia, we can easily find that people have used the Wikipedia pages to pursue their own agenda which do not have any base on realty. But then as readers do not have enough time to sit and edit the matters, they let the issue go.
So if someone wants to project a reawakened India, let he/she do it. Those who do not agree to it, let them start another page.
:Without actually commenting on the intro, I would like to make a few points: The article should not be advocating any views. Forking (splitting an article into different versions depending on viewpoints) is not permitted on Wikipedia; policy is that different viewpoints should be integrated into one NPOV article incorporating all viewpoints. If one were to start another page it would be quickly nominated for deletion. — Knowledge Seeker দ 07:12, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Beginning of the article

message: Hi kunjan1029, I have reread the first paragraph. It consists of three sentences and I was counting the word "largest" 4 times. It is not a good style to use a word so often in just 3 sentences, furthermore does it always stress something as if every single aspect would be of such importance that we must say that it is "larger than anything else", or as one word "largest". 
Altogether the beginning of the article is poorly written and should be completely changed into something more neutral. It is one way to say that the largest country of area in the world is Russia  but it is another thing to say that the largest eggplant happens to be in Bangladesh (or whatever other country), if you understand what I mean: Don't point out every single thing in a ranking.
=== Aryan Invasion Theory ===
This is being disputed widely. It should be mentioned that scholarship disputes the Aryan invasion theory and it is a contravertial view. 24.126.17.155 03:37, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  About the beginning again 

message: This is being disputed widely. It should be mentioned that scholarship disputes the Aryan invasion theory and it is a contravertial view. 24.126.17.155 03:37, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aryan Invasion Theory 

message: India's national sport is field hockey !!!! I knew that it is kabaddi. =Kxd23 «Talk»=
:It is field hockey. --  14:17, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)
:Hockey  =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:32, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)
:Kabaddi is the national sport of Bangladesh, *not* India. Field hockey is India's national sport, as seen in the link above. Thanks. --Ragib 15:44, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  National sport 

message: Anon  added a huge quotes section, which I find totally unnecessary in the main country level article. First, it makes the whole article bloated, Second, India related quotes are already linked in the WikiQuotes link provided at the end. And finally, what this or that person (one of them had the only "distinction" of being the former Chinese envoy to USA) said really isn't relevant to the top level article. Right now, the article is in a great shape, adding too much bloat just makes it unreadable. It is fine to have a separate page on "Quotes on India" (which for all it's worth, should go to WikiQuotes) and a page on Facts about India. But pushing every tiny detail into the main page does not serve any good purpose. Thanks. --Ragib 22:14, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Anon, great to know all these facts, but don't please stuff the main article with these. Keeping an article brief and simple  makes it readable. India is one of the best articles from Wikipedia (a featured article), and keep it simple. True, quotes about India and the facts list you present look fine, but putting them to the top level country page makes it bloated. I suggest you make articles titled "Quotes on India" or "Facts on India" and place your content there. Thanks. --Ragib 03:29, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "Quote" section increasing page bloat 

message: Mr. Singh goes to D.C. And what does he do when he gets there? He bad mouths next door neighbor Pakistan. The scene is a lot like a kindergarten playground, where a 5 year old little girl in pigtails runs off to the teacher to snitch on another little girl. Observe the following fictional girl I'll call little Miss Piggy in an all too common scenario in real life playgrounds of the world:
"Teacher, teacher, you know what Jenny just did?" Miss Piggy asks the teacher triumphantly, her face beaming.
"What?" her teacher asks irritated.
"She peed in the bushes again, hehehehe". Miss Piggy diligently points where Jenny is answering the call to nature, as she continues her infuriating giggling.
Expecting the teacher to go running after bad old Jenny, for peeing where she wasn't supposed to, she looks up eagerly at the teacher, her face now flush with anticipation.
"Oh, this is gonna be sooooo goooood!" Miss Piggy thinks to herself.
But instead of investigating Jenny's bad deeds, the teacher pulls out a Colt 45 and points it at little Miss Piggy's face. Just as Miss Piggy tries to open her mouth to say something, the teacher presses the trigger and blows poor Miss Piggy's  fucking brains out. A headless Miss Piggy falls to the ground - as all the surrounding children break out in cheers accompanied by a thunderous applause.
Upon hearing the gunshot, the principal comes rushing out to the playground in a panic.
"Oh my God, what have you done?" He frantically asks the teacher.
"Oh nothing...I just shot Miss Piggy". The teacher calmly replies, smiling to the Principal.
"Oh, Ok. Never mind. Good job. I should've done it myself, a long time ago." The principal says happily and heads back to his office, whistling,
Glory glory Man United, Glory glory Man United...
as Miss Piggy's cold dead body languishes in the playground, a lone bee buzzing over it.
The fictional scenario illustrates this point: Manmohan Singh goes to D.C. and complains about and bad mouths Pakistan. Doesn't he know that the only reason US even spits on his face is because US wants to counter balance China? The US knows EVERYTHING that Pakistan has done and it doesn't care about it. If tomorrow Pakistan launched a preemptive strike on India and erased it from the face of the planet, the US won't give a fuck about it. 
Listen to me Mr. Manmohan and understand this: The US does not give one fuck about India. Your shit country has to live with Pakistan. It has no choice in the matter. Instead of acting with some dignity, you go and prove that you ara after all a bloody sikh, with his head firmly lodged way up his filthy worm ridden ass. 
You also expose your continued slave mentality. And the fact that you do NOT know how to speak English. The world had a much better image of you - UNTIL YOU OPENED THAT BIG FUCKING MOUTH of yours. Next time, have some self respect and don't go to far away places only to snitch on Pakistan, when you know full well, that the US relationship with Pakistan is the strongest it has EVER been in history. Do you know what all those bored white men in congress were silently thinking while pretending to listen to your god awful and incredibly stupid speech? They were thinking, "Oh, shut up, you stupid taliban with your stupid taliban turban." Next time, just keep your trap shut - it'll do you a whole lot of good. Please don't let your ass do the talking for you again. The Village Idiot 04:56, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Before anyone takes this guy's bait and participates into a meaningless flame war here, I just want to point out that the best way to handle such rants is to IGNORE it completely. From this user's cross post to Pakistan and Kashmir, I guess s/he is just wishing for a reply so s/he can start another rant. So, let's just ignore it. --Ragib 05:40, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

text: Whatever, I agree with his rant. Pakistan should wipe india off the map. --200.198.80.7 07:21, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Over 50 years after independence, the Indians still have a slave mentality

message: Do you not think we should include on this page , some of the people that made India what it is today , a great nation ?
There should be a special mention of people such as Mr A.K.Sen , who was the longest serving cabinet minsiter , as well as MP.
:No, it shouldn't be here. The article sticks as closely to core India topics as possible. The moment we bring in biographies of famous people, more editors will add to the list. Why don't you add it in the Parliament of India instead and create an articl of AK Sen instead? =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:05, July 31, 2005 (UTC)
::I agree, the top level page should only reflect the main facts about India. Mr. Sen definitely is notable, but the information belongs to Parliament of India or Mr. Sen's own page. --Ragib 19:32, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Famous Mp's