Talk:Partition of India/Archive 1

message: There is something missing from the end of the following par
:==Division of Assets==
:The assets of the legal entity that was "India" as of August 15, 1947, namely the British Indian Empire, were divided between the two dominions. The process got involved. Gandhi went on hunger strike at one point to pressure the government of the Union of India to transfer funds, an action that is reportedly 
User:IFaqeer, can you complete it? Moriori 01:27, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)
:Have added a bit. It's pretty much still a placeholder; will expand as I can—or maybe someone else can help.—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 01:40, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)
Just asking you guys if you know of any historical debate between historians on the partition...like conflicting views and differing oppinions??
: Probably there is, but I don't think any of the editors here are experts in that field of history. We've done our best to give an overview, but the academic ins and outs remain to be covered. Zora 23:49, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: What's missing?

message: : Added more specific population exchange data based on 1951 Census of India and 1951 Census of Pakistan that enumerated Displaced Persons.  --User:Ravimetre| January 26, 2006 (UTC)
: Population figures: Provided 2005 as date of recent estimate. For percentage population religions in India replaced 1991 Census percentage with 2001 Census percentages. Added 1951 Census data for total population of the three countries as per this first Census after the partition. --  User:Ravimetre| January 26, 2006 (UTC)
: Ravi, thanks on behalf of all of us for your good work on this article. It is a great improvement. Zora 08:22, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Population Exchange and Population

message: The tensions that resulted in the Partition, mass migration, and massacre were created/inflamed/whatever by "communal riots" in the pre-independence period. So far, there's no mention of these in the article. I can't contribute yet, but I'm reading Patricia Gossman's interesting book, Riots and Victims, and will have more to say as I slog through this book. But someone else might start a section?
I'm also wondering if "millions died" is sufficient tribute to the horror of the time? I'd have to look at the Wikipedia treatment of other such catastrophes to get some sense of how such things are treated here, I suppose. Zora 05:57, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Riots 

message: Under Seeds of partition, someone added a strong POV item. I have not even removed the "widely held belief" verbiage—though IMHO, it is only believed in India and in the face of contrary facts. I have added what I think is balancing text. But I still think the whole discussion is petty; both what is there and what I have myself added.—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 09:37, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
----
I rewrote and ended up deep-sixing that argument. Strangely enough, I'd always subscribed to the broader version of it, which is that the Muslim upper classes were unwilling to submit to what they feared would be Hindu rule after independence. But a little dipping into sources convinced me that the Hindu extremists (who are often left out of these discussions) were scary folks. Personally, I don't think the Muslims took the right course -- they just mirrored the tactics of the Hindus -- but it's *understandable*, and not to be explained simply by pride and greed. I've got a Hindu quote with the "two nations" theme even earlier than the Jinnah one that was in the article. 
Of course, we may want to add a para about the Jinnah/Muslim "wanting to rule" argument and then the counterarguments. Zora 11:30, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "Jinnah Did it for the Glory" `discussion 

message: With reference to:
:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Partition_of_India&diff=8342950&oldid=8304787
Godse being a former member of the RSS is debatable?—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 07:24, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)
---- 
Was he member at the time of the assassination? RSS says he was a former member, had resigned before the assassination, but some people feel that the RSS is lying. 
Someone -- an anonymous editor I think -- deleted a reference to the RSS in another part of the article, saying that it was too small then to be politically significant, and, IIRC, added the bit about Godse being "ex-Congress and ex-RSS". It didn't dawn on me at the time (d'oh!) but I think that might have been someone trying to deflect blame from the RSS. I didn't follow up with some research, and should have. 
I could be avoiding dealing with this because I am aware that I have a visceral loathing of the RSS and BJP and I'm not sure I trust myself to be NPOV in writing about them. Zora 08:40, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Godse being ex-RSS is debatable? 

message: Better? Zora 05:38, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I removed  notice. OneGuy 10:56, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edited Aftermath 

message: Recent edits by Alimustafakhan strike me as POV. I'm especially unhappy with his removal of a well-cited quotation. I'm going to leave it to those more expert than I to sort this out, just pointing out that it should be discussed. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:44, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
:I have rv to the earlier version, as no explanation was given for the edits by alimustafakhan. kaal 00:51, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alimustafakhan's edits 

message: User:Davidsteinberg recently linked to a bibliography that I gather is his own. It looks useful; can someone possibly caption the link better, though? -- Jmabel | Talk 04:49, July 26, 2005 (UTC)
: How's about "One scholar's bibliography"? Since David Steinberg is not a household name, I thought I'd leave his name out. Zora 05:50, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  David Steinberg 

message: I think the 2-column/side-by-side sectioning recently introduced in this article looks hideous. I'd like to revert it, but will wait for at least a couple of other people to give opinions. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:16, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't mind reverting. However, we could also try it as a table, instead of just columns. I'm not volunteering, however. Zora 06:30, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Tables that aren't really tables (that is, the rows and columns don't matter) are sheer hell on people who view the web with assistive devices. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:15, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK, clearly you have thought more deeply on this than I have. Remove the columns by all means. Zora 06:22, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Side-by-side sectioning 

message: Rama's Arrow created a new template and applied it to the article. I removed it. There was no discussion; if there had been, there would have been objections, I'm sure, since the template was biased towards Indian nationalism. The British were "figures" and the Indians were "freedom fighters"; no mention of the Muslims who went to found Pakistan; India-centric, no mention of the three other nations created by the Partition. That template should not be applied ANYWHERE -- in fact, it isn't necessary, since categories and links can do the same job, less obtrusively. Zora 21:48, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  New template 

message: This edit changed 83% Muslims 16% Hindus to 86% Muslims 13% Hindus. It gave no citation, but as far as I can see, neither did what it replaced. Would someone please replace with a cited number? -- Jmabel | Talk 18:43, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Percentages 

message: The article's intro implies that only the British possesions in the Subcontinent were involved in the Partition (not Gwadar or French and Portuguese India). It also mentions that Burma and Ceylon had been severed from British India prior to Partition. Did British India at any point include the Maldives, Bhutan, Afhanistan or Nepal as well? //Big Adamsky 20:45, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[British India]]

message: Massive violence and slaughter occurred on both sides of the border—leading to the deaths of as many as five million people—as the newly formed governments were completely unequipped to deal with migrations of such staggering magnitude.
Where did the figure of five million come from ? http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat3.htm#India contains the numbers listed in various sources and nowhere is it greater than a million. Tintin Talk 16:37, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've seen many estimates, in many places -- and I didn't take notes. You've put your finger on a fault in the article. Surely we should expand this section to give a number of estimates, suitably referenced. Readers can then check out the various sources and decide for themselves which they think most creditable. But I can't commit to the project! I'm spending too dang much time on Wikipedia as it is. Zora 20:20, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have changed it in the article as between 2,00,000 and a million. Tintin Talk 12:58, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of deaths 

message: An anon made a number of edits, some of which were somewhat controversial. I reverted them all. Perhaps I shouldn't have -- some of them seemed OK at first glance. But I wanted to get rid of the controversial ones without having to rewrite the article at what is, here, 2:30 AM. Anon, perhaps you can make the edits a bit at a time and let us discuss them. Zora 12:38, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reversion of anon's edits 

message: I know one of the editors has been working over that template, and it's improved, but it's still too blankety-blank big. It takes over the entire page. 
Templates, IMHO, should be sized either to be long thin lines across the bottom, or long thin columns to the right. If they take up too much real estate, they are a distraction rather than a help. 
That template should be narrowed and pruned mercilessly. Zora 21:28, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template 

message: The Pakistan's Muslim population was 97% in 1991. The Muslim percentage always increases in India but seems to be dropping in Pakistan's statistics in Wikipedia. The Muslim birthrate is higher; nearly 3 million Afghan Muslims; over 300,000 Bangladeshi Muslims; and approximately 200,000 Iranian, Burmese, African and Arab Muslims have also settled permanently in Pakistan. This all points to Pakistan's Muslim percentage to be over 98% and not 96.3%.
Siddiqui 00:22, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pakistan's Muslim demographics 

message: Shouldn't the 1905 partition of Bengal be part of "Background of the partition"?--ppm 22:23, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know much about it; does it prefigure the currrent border? - Jmabel | Talk 03:35, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  1905  partition 

message: I had been letting edits here go past without carefully examining them. I should have been. Someone introduced a sentence saying that the 2002 Gujarat violence was caused by Hindu fundamentalists. I think it was too, but there are people who don't think that way, and it's only fair to let the question be argued in the 2000 Gujarat violence article, not here. Someone said that the wars between India and Pakistan had been inconclusive; I'm not sure that this is true. My impression is that Pakistan generally got whupped. But ... it's arguable and we shouldn't argue it here. I removed that sentence. The para had also been jumbled about so that it wasn't organized. Overall, I tried to bland out the section. Zora 15:25, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No. India regained Kargil in 1999. The war was a major economic disaster for Pakistan:
http://bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/publication.cfm?program=STPP&ctype=article&item_id=438
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/10/13/reacts/print.html
The morale and credibility of Pakistan Army was gone.
http://bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/publication.cfm?ctype=article&item_id=39
Riots ensued in Pakistan over their defeat
http://www.warbirds.in/downloads/HeraldKargil.pdf
In fact Musharraf had advised against Kargil:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_2-7-2003_pg7_19
Knowing full well that they'd be defeated.
I also believe Benazir Bhutto called Kargil Pakistan' biggest blunder.
See:
http://www.ipcs.org/PakMedia05-UAug04.pdf
Pakistani media lambasted the defeat of their own military
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/990709.htm
In contrast, India's stock market rose after the war, India's military budget skyrocketed, and India wound up with one of the largest armies in the world.
India definitely won the war in all aspects. India also won the 1971 war with Pakistan, with about 1 lahk surrenders from Pakistan army, and the other wars were a strategic victory for India (if not a tactical one). The only major loss for India was the China war. China had (and still has) superior army than India Rumpelstiltskin223 07:29, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aftermath section 

message: The "divide & rule "policy of british esp . Partition of bengal  & morley-minto "reforms" which granted seperate electorate for Muslims , needs to be included as seperate subsections. Bharatveer 05:55, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Seeds of Partition

message: Numbers changed with no citation are always a bit suspicious. Someone may want to find something solid on this and cite it. - Jmabel | Talk 22:25, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And now they have changed again, still with no new citation. I'd really like to see either a good online citation or some non-anonymous editor, preferably one who's been around for a while, vouching for having taken a set of numbers from a good print source. - Jmabel | Talk 05:01, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Numbers changed with no citation 

message: I moved the History of South Asia template down, so that it was next to some areas of light text. I removed a claim that the Aga Khan had spearheaded the Muslim League -- really? if so, it should be referenced. I added a fact tag to someone's population transfer figures. They're very exact and they come from somewhere -- but where? I harmonized claims about the number of people who died during the Partition. I rewrote a para that had been modified to give the impression that it was always Muslims persecuting Hindus, and never Hindus persecuting Muslims. I didn't add the claim that Muslims have been the major sufferers in Indian communal violence, since I didn't have a citation, but I believe that this is true. 
It could be added, if someone has a solid reference.
Finally, I visited the History of South Asia template and removed the edits that changed South Asia to Indian subcontinent, and History of India to History of Greater India. Greater anything is irredentism and usually a preface to war and conflict. Zora 03:42, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zora's edits 

message: I removed some names from the list; they have been recently added, and they seemed to me to be politicians of much less stature than the ones who have been on the list since this article was started. I have the impression that this is due either to descendants of the politician trying to make sure that their ancestor is duly revered or perhaps to followers of present-day political parties who want to exalt their founders. I could be wrong, however. Could some of the other editors check my edit and make sure I haven't been too severe? 
Also, an anon kept removing Sikhs from the history of the Partition. They suffered as much as other groups -- perhaps even more, since the new border ran right through traditionally Sikh areas. Zora 09:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Personality list 

message: SInce only Punjab and Bengal where divided,why is it called "Partion of India".Think about it.Cant say that all those provinces were together before 1947.Extremely misleading.WOnder who invented the term in the first place74.98.241.189 07:34, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is called "the partition of India" because prior to that time all of what is now Pakistan or Bangladesh was considered part of India. - Jmabel | Talk 02:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  misleading term 

message: Substituted at 21:52, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment