Talk:1947 Amritsar train massacre

Recent reverts

Is there a specific reason why Khosla is reliable enough to be used as a source for this massacre, but not for the preceding one? And is there a reason why the other massacre, which is mentioned not only in The Advertiser (Australia) (which I doubt is a primary source for this information), but also other sources, including the Railway Gazzette journal, doesn’t warrant any mention? UnpetitproleX (talk) 12:11, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

The main secondary sources used in the article are a) Marian Aguiar (2011), b) George Revill (2012), c) Ian Talbot (2008) all written by academics, and thus meeting WP's highest standards of reliable sourcing. (See WP:HISTRS) and (d) Elisabeth Åsbrink (2016) a book by a prize-winning journalist and author whose review in the New York Times begins with:

The Swedish journalist Asbrink’s “1947” is an extraordinary achievement. Careening around Europe and the Middle East as well as South Asia and the United States through a singular year, she deliberately juxtaposes the intimate and the ephemeral with immensely consequential political and diplomatic developments. New inventions like the Soviet engineer Mikhail Kalashnikov’s assault rifle, the French couturier Christian Dior’s resplendent New Look, the American Navy admiral Grace Hopper’s virtuoso development of computer language, Thelonious Monk’s and Billie Holiday’s musical genius and the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin’s coinage of the term “genocide” jostle with the United Nations’ efforts to find a workable resolution for Palestine, gruesome rapes during the partition of India, anti-Semitic riots in England and the Nazi Einsatzgruppen trial at Nuremberg. These, in turn, are nestled alongside evocative accounts of the ardent physicality of Simone de Beauvoir’s love for Nelson Algren, the struggles of George Orwell working on “1984” and ships filled — variously — with fugitive Nazis or displaced Jews. Amid all these gleaming fragments are meditations on the nature of historical time, the mysteries of human motivation, the endless riddle of causation and the heart-rending loss of once-possible alternatives. ...

While not an academic book, it has been reviewed in the world's major newspapers, and in semi-scholarly journals such as Economic and Political Weekly (India). The primary sources, including Khosla are in the nature of supportive ones that supply or support something already in the secondary sources, a figure of mortality, perhaps, etc.

You, on the other hand, have not only used primary sources in a secondary manner but have also engaged in WP:SYNTHESIS to tack together an implication using two sources that is not there in either source. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:40, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Khosla is the only source that actually details the particulars of the massacres, it has been republished by OUP twice, both times noted for being detailed. Khosla and The Advertiser (Australia) played an important role in why this article was kept during AfD. And Talbot doesn’t make any mention of the massacre but you have still used it extensively in the lead. Elizabeth Asbrink, the review of whose book you have posted here, has used The Advertiser as her only source for the massacre. Marian Aguiar uses the Railway Gazzette. Both of these mention the second massacre, which you claim happened "allegedly." Your objections are not making sense. UnpetitproleX (talk) 08:04, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

And what is this synthesis that you’re referring to? Where have I engaged in synthesis? UnpetitproleX (talk) 08:07, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Ian Talbot, is the preeminent historian of the Partition of India and author with Gurharpal Singh of the definitive textbook:Talbot, Ian; Singh, Gurharpal (2009), The Partition of India, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-85661-4 (Google scholar citation index 346) and more recently of Talbot, Ian (2016), A History of Modern South Asia: Politics, States, Diasporas, Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-19694-8 Talbot's eight books on the partition not only makes him the most cited scholar in WP's own Partition of India, but also by virtue of both books being major textbooks, a notable determinant of due weight in the field. Talbot is used to cite the sentence, "The violence was the most pronounced in the Indian East Punjab," and, in general, to set up the context and coherence required in the narrative.

Khosla, on the other hand, was a judge—a puisne judge in the East Punjab High Court—when he wrote the book, published by B. Hawnam (?) and Sons in 1947. It was republished by Bhawnani, New Delhi, in 1948, and thereafter by Bhawnani, New Delhi in 1949, 1950, and 1974 (see here). It was picked up by OUP, India, in 1989.

(Incidentally, OUP, India, has had a long history in India, beginning in 1912 with an abridgment of Scott's Ivanhoe by P. C. Wren (of Wren and Martin's Grammar fame, which was used throughout South Asia until recently) in the series "Stories re-told for Indian students." From the outset, they've published an eclectic range of books, specialist and general, including Jim Corbetts memoirs of his hunting days in the different "Maneater" series. So, OUP India's picking up of Khosla, does not signify reliability and weight in the same way as does Tim Dyson's A Population History of India, OUP, Oxford, 2019. Khosla, moreover was not a trained historian such as Talbot, or a trained historical demographer such as Dyson (who has not been used in the article, but should be examined further...) prolific though he certainly was: he wrote books on an impressive but swirling nebula of topics: The Last Moghul (Hind Pocket Books, 1969, Memory's Gay Chariot: An Autobiographical Narrative Allied Publishers, Delhi, 1985 on the assassination of Gandhi (Murder of the Mahatma), on the death of Subhas Chandra Bose (Last Days of Netaji, Thompson's India and Publications Division, New Delhi, 1974); on Tipu (The Sword of Tipu Sultan); Tales of Love and War from the Mahabharata (OUP, India, 1994); and so forth. )

The train incidents in East Punjab in Stern Reckoning are described in Chapter 7. About the accuracy of his mortality estimates in Stern Reckoning, he says in his preface:

For the material of Chapter Two the writer is indebted to various official and unofficial reports, the accuracy of which is beyond suspicion. In compiling Chapter Seven the writer had to rely mainly on newspaper reports and some official documents which, however, did not give a complete account of what happened. This was inevitable in the nature of things as first-hand evidence of these events was not available.

Summing up, I think Khosla needs to be used with an abundance of caution, generally only as buttressing information when other more reliable secondary sources state some fact.

As for the more immediate primary sources published in contemporary newspapers, they have been used only as confirming sources for statements mentioned in modern secondary sources.

The modern secondary sources can use primary data—that is what secondary sources do—but we can't. Sorry to unburden too much on Khosla, but as I was writing, I realized he did not have a WP page. So, I kept writing to have a springboard. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:41, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, but I don’t require an introduction to Talbot. I’m well-acquainted with his work on the partition. In this article, he’s been cited for "the Sikh Jathas, which were ruthless, led the attacks for ethnically cleansing the Eastern Punjab of its Muslim population. Earlier in September, they had massacred 1,000 Muslim refugees on a Pakistan-bound train near Khalsa College, Amritsar. The violence was the most pronounced in the Indian East Punjab." He has been used to weave an unrelated massacre into the article, though he himself doesn’t even mention the massacre of our article at all.

Aguiar has a single sentence on the massacre. Revill too, has just one sentence. (Revill has mistakenly claimed the wrong month for the massacre. It happened in September, not in October, as claimed by Revill. He cites Aguiar, so we know he’s not referring to a different massacre.) This article has been written predominantly using The Advertiser. We cannot use The Advertiser (and Railway Gazette) for some details (such as, for the full ordeal of the massacre) but then disregard the other things they mention (i.e. the massacre carried out as reprisal). That would be cherry-picking.

As for Khosla, his work was republished by Oxford University Press twice, the second time as recently as 2005. If it is reliable enough for OUP to publish in the 21st century, it is reliable enough for wikipedia—especially so because of the near-complete lack of sources that go beyond one line mentions for this particular massacre. His work is certainly not less reliable than Asbrink’s. And unlike Revill, he hasn’t gotten his months mixed up.

Removing the mention of massacres directly linked to the one that is the subject of this article in reliable sources—the same reliable sources that have been used liberally to write the rest of the article—I still can not wrap my head around. Is the objection that these massacres did not happen, or that they are not directly related to the massacre of this article? UnpetitproleX (talk) 11:50, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

I have to be away from Wikipedia until August 16. Khosla is a primary source. He is included in OUP India’s Partition Omnibus for that reason. His narrative is an account of recent happenings that he had observed or was a part of. The introduction of the volume says: “Finally, and as a first-hand account based on personal observation and the reports of a government fact-finding organization, Stern Reckoning documents in great detail the riots, massacres, casualties, and political occurrences that led to ...”. More when I get back home, where I have the volume. Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:22, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Perpetrators

@Suthasianhistorian8

The reasoning behind my edit was because the Hindu soldiers that were supposed to defend the train from the sikh attackers deliberately missed their gunfire in order to avoid killing any of the sikhs.This shows us that the Hindus were sympathetic towards the Sikhs,and stayed idle while the Sikhs massacred the trains passengers.The Hindu soldiers had the ability to kill or subdue any of the attackers,but instead allowed them to massacre the Muslim passengers inside the train. This makes the Hindus complicit in the violence,thus making them a perpetrator (even if they themselves did not directly participate in the massacre) Twarikh e Khalsa (talk) 15:40, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

The Cambridge Dictionary defines perpetrator as someone who has committed a violent act. The Hindus may have turned a blind eye to the violence but they certainly did not commit it. And besides, MOSINFOBOX clearly states that contentious edits should not be placed in the infobox but rather in the body of the article. This is already explained in the body so I don't see any need for any modification to the infobox. There is not dobut as to whether the Sikhs were involved in the violence, but there is on whether the permissive role of the Hindus constitutes perpetration of violence (it doesn't in my opnion and probably many others). Southasianhistorian8 (talk) 16:35, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

@Suthasianhistorian8

I agree that the edit shouldn't be included in the infobox unless there are more sources to support the alleged hindu involvement in the massacre.However in my opinion,the hindus were complicit in the violence considering they deliberately allowed the Sikh mobs to massacre all of the Muslim passengers.The Hindus were also given strict orders by their leading British officer to protect the passengers,but instead refused to obey orders.To give you a similar example,imagine a person has jews under their costudy during the holocaust,and they decide to hand over the Jewish captives over to the nazi government. They ultimately lead the jews to their deaths,which makes them complicit in the holocaust. Similarly,the Hindu soldiers deliberately missed their gunfire and allowed the sikhs to massacre the passengers. That in itself makes them a perpetrator,since they aided the sikhs in massacring the Muslims by turning a blind eye,when they had every opportunity to help the muslims.A person who perpetuates a violent act is a perpetrator,but a person who aids a person in carrying out that act is also a perpetrator aswell. Twarikh e Khalsa (talk) 17:42, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

@Suthasianhistorian8

I need to further mention that the source cited is a newspaper that dates back to 1947. This in itself counts as a primary source,which can't be used unless its backed up by a reliable secondary source.It also doesn't help that both of us are interpreting on what the newspaper is stating,which goes against wikipedias guidelines (to interpret a primary document) Twarikh e Khalsa (talk) 17:52, 2 November 2023 (UTC)