Talk:Bengal famine of 1943/Archive 9

Archive 5

←

Archive 7

Archive 8

Archive 9

Archive 10

Archive 11

Archive 12

Images

In case it's helpful in tracking down images (assuming approaches to others are unsuccessful), the papers of Ian Stephens are held by the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge ("Stephens, I. M. papers"). They include "a very large collection of photographs taken by Stephens plus a collection of glass slides contained in 17 wooden slide boxes (Rm.18, boxes C3,C4,C5) and a box of 35mm slides predominantly of SWAT (C3). Plus 6 photo albums (Rm.18, OS boxes A 125, A 126)". SarahSV ^(talk) 17:14, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Women and children

I've been trying to copy edit this section, but it's not entirely clear.

• "A section of the contractors has made a profession of selling girls": which contractors?
• "When taken up voluntarily, this survival strategy ...": When women sell themselves to avoid starvation for themselves or their children, it's hardly a choice.
• "Added to this number were the women and girls pushed into the sex trade": see above; be careful about drawing these distinctions.
• "in late 1943, entire boatloads of girls for sale were reported": for sale by whom? reported by whom? There is too much passive voice in this section (and in the article generally).
• "Families sent their young girls to wealthy landowners overnight or sold them outright into prostitution": who were the wealthy landowners (and why only to landowners?), why overnight, and what distinction is being drawn between that and prostitution?
• The next paragraph changes without warning to a different topic (children abandoned or orphaned, and sold as domestic servants), Then it swings back to sexual exploitation, repeating: "They were also purchased by sexual predators. The fate of these women and children was an immense social cost of the famine."

SarahSV ^(talk) 18:59, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

That section is pretty closely referenced, and I'm not convinced that the simplification here is wrong. For example, does it greatly help in an encyclopaedia article to know that the "entire boatloads" were reported by charity official Ela Reid? David Trochos (talk) 21:20, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Precision matters. For example, an earlier version said: "Children were abandoned by the roadsides or at orphanages, dropped down wells, thrown into rivers, or buried alive." Sources: Greenough 1980, pp. 230–33; Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a, p. 68. I can't see Greenough. The Famine Commission, p. 68, doesn't mention wells, rivers or being buried alive. I did find one source, but I can't remember which one now and can't be bothered to search for it, that discussed one incident of a woman who appeared to drop her baby down a well or something similar, but it wasn't enough to support the text.

It often isn't clear what's meant when details are left out. What do you understand by "A section of the contractors has made a profession of selling girls"? SarahSV ^(talk) 22:01, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

• Military contractors, of course, who were abundant in that time/place. Recall the hugwwe military construction boom. Would you like me to copy/paste the relevant paragraphs from all sources?
• I think you're trying to avoid drawing a distinction in a place where a distinction needs must be drawn. Yes of course from our perspective choosing prositution over starvation is not much of a choice, but there is a huge difference between that and being kidnapped (which was apparently altogether too common). We are not "slut shaming" those women... The distinction is important because it illustrates survival strategies undertaken in genuinely desperate times. The distinction is important precisely because the women's' choice was not an immoral one, but the kidnappers was.
• Pushed into the sex trade... by their parents.
• landowners... "overnight" I assume is a euphemism for fucking, because the landowners didn't continue feeding the girl after fucking.
• And as for "too much passive" and "precision matters", well, precision matters, except when it doesn't, and passive is bad, except when it isn't. I recall that the actual name of a man throwing a child down a well was given & I can find it, but putting it in would be.... counterproductive, perhaps? There were numerous children thrown down numerous wells by numerous parents. Passive is appropriate... I will paste snips from whatever sources you don't have here.
• "entire boatloads" is very helpful. It is a matter of scale. Passive is useful because it was altogether too common. Moreover, the original source didn't say "Person A reported x number of boats in y port." Etc. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:39, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
• Here's Greenough:

A woman in Bengal without the protection of her father, husband, brother or son is fair game for criminals on the lookout for recruits to rostitution. This was especially true during the famine, when, with no more inducement than regular meals, women were procured. Reports of boatloads of women and girls for sale in the ports of East Bengal surfaced in late 1943.50 By late 1944 the problem had become rampant.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Lingzhi (talk • contribs)

I'd appreciate seeing a quotation from the source that supports "Children were ... dropped down wells, thrown into rivers, or buried alive."

There's too much passive voice throughout the article. If often feels like "bad stuff happened", and we're left none of the wiser as to who caused it, ordered it, signed it, wanted it. Where these things are known, why not tell us?

Re: landowners. The point is: why landowners in particular?

The word "contractors" appears only once in the article; if you mean "military contractors", say so, and it would help to say who they were. Brian removed it, perhaps because it was unclear to him, so this:

"A section of the contractors has made a profession of selling girls to the military. There are places in Chittagong, Comilla and Noakhali where women sell themselves literally in hordes, while young boys acted as pimps for the military."

became:

"In Chittagong, Comilla and Noakhali young women sold themselves, while young boys acted as pimps for the military."

This implies that young women sold themselves only in Chittagong, Comilla and Noakhali, and the point about military contractors is lost. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:09, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

• "Landowners" echoes earlier sections; laborers were often, for all practical purposes, debt slaves (and the word "slave" is not hyperbole). Jotedari could say, "hey, you wanna work here? Well, here's are my terms: your daughter's sexy. Bathe her and bring her to me." That was even before the famine; after the famine, well, there was a far greater breakdown of moral order. In fact, "Breakdown of moral order" is a subsection of at least 2 or 3 or 4 articles, IIRC.
• Do you want me to email Greenugh to you?
• Bad stuff: No one caused it, no one signed it, no one ordered it. Yes the military and the accompanying military contractors were heavily involved but they were just the most easily identifiable segment.
• I will look for all these things but I am being intermittently interrupted by the need to perform household chores. So it may take a small amt of time. Please continue asking for specific quotes so I can find them more easily. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:45, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Hey, stop taking stuff out because you don't like it. Put it back. It can all be verified, perhaps quickly, or perhaps within at most 2 days... Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:58, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
    • I don't know who this is addressed to. Brian removed contractors selling girls to the military. I restored it, but in a later edit, because I couldn't understand it, I moved it to a footnote and opened this discussion. The section could use a rewrite, in my view. I can see some details in other sources, so I may try to add something. If I do and you don't like it, you're welcome to remove it.
    • When I talked about too much passive voice, I meant the whole article, not just this section.
    • I don't need Greenough, thanks, just a quote to support the sentence about wells and buried alive. But there's no rush. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:07, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

• I was prompted by this section to look at one edit: this one. It needs to be undone – a simple "revert" or "undo" can't be completed – as it introduces a serious factual inaccuracy. You cannot turn a quote from 1945 into a statement written in present tense. In particular: There are places in Chittagong, Comilla and Noakhali where women sell themselves literally in hordes, and young boys act as pimps for the military. - This was written in 1945, and bears no resemblance to today. I'm also entirely lost as to why "They were also purchased by sexual predators. The fate of these women and children was an immense social cost of the famine." was removed, but the accompanying reference left in. Greater care needs to be exerted in the process of copy-editing or else you'll leave the article with more work to be done than when it was started. Mr rnddude (talk) 02:10, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

• I agree with the last point, which is why I opened this section. I think Lingzhi's rewrite was excellent, but it had problems too, and they needed to be fixed. The risk is that copy edits lose more clarity.

I don't follow the point about "bears no resemblance to today". I removed the final sentence about sexual predators because it was repetitive. The previous paragraph covered children and sexual predators, so it seemed odd suddenly to mention it again. See the final point of my first post above (18:59, 14 February). As I said, I think the section needs a rewrite, not a copy edit. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:27, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

(←) (ec) Amen to mrnddude! let's all slow down here! We are chopping stuff out left and right... as for SV deleting things, I was referring to "Added to this number were the women and girls pushed into the sex trade". They were pushed. Into the sex trade. Stop taking stuff out because you don't like it... as for "who ordered it":

In other words, the Greenough and Sen studies, taken together, suggest that, at least during famines in market-dependent agrarian societies, the tension between entitlement and enfranchisement becomes very great. In normal times, entitlement, the capability of a person to make legitimate claims on the social stock of food, disguises the harsh realities of enfranchisement, the capability of that person to make decisions about entitlement. In the patterns of victimization during the Bengal famine of 1943-1944, we see those who are enfranchised-the government classes, the rural land-controlling classes, and male household heads, in general-deciding to withhold the entitlement rights of dependents, women, and children. Entitlement without enfranchisement, the fate of rural clients, women, children, slaves, and household pets in many societies, is not a safe condition when famine sets in. The problems of inequality, poverty, and starvation come together in the relationship between entitlement and enfranchisement.

 Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:32, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

• SV: Footnote AI is a quote, but that's not clear from the footnote itself. It's written in present tense and sounds like it's saying that women are currently selling themselves in hordes to the military. This would, I hope, bear no resemblance to the present state of affairs over there. It needs to be either (a) clarified that it's a quote (compare it to footnote AH directly prior), (b) re-instated as a quote, or (c) paraphrased into past tense. Though in this exact moment, perhaps do nothing till we've cleared up what works. I hope that clarifies what I meant. Mr rnddude (talk) 02:39, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

• Mr rnddude, Lingzhi wrote it that way. I just moved it to a footnote. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:51, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

• Lingzhi has sent me Greenough 1980 for "Children were ... dropped down wells, thrown into rivers, or buried alive."

On p. 231 Greenough quotes an underground nationalist newsletter, Biplabi (5 August 1943), which talked about a woman who could not stand watching her two sons suffer. She dropped one of them, "the apple of her eye", in the river. She then dug a pit and tried to bury her other son, but a passer-by stopped her. On pp. 231–232, Greenough repeats a report from the Hindusthan Standard (28 November 1943), which said a man threw his daughter down a well when he was unable to find someone to buy her. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:14, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

• Your comments and (regrettably) edits both seem very much on a mission to defend the nobility/integrity of the famine victims. You are selecting the outcome before engaging the literature. Please invest significant time reading before you decide what approach to take. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:11, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Going forward

I've been trying to think how to move this forward. There have been two main criticisms.

First, the accuracy of the article has been questioned, but checking it would be an enormous amount of work. The only constructive suggestion I have is that editors start adding quotations from the sources to footnotes for anything contentious or hard to understand, and for anything for which the source is hard to access. I've done this at several articles, and people have often found it helpful; it helps to stabilize articles and I assume readers find it useful too. If the Notes section becomes too long, a subpage can be opened: Talk:Bengal famine of 1943/Notes.

The second criticism has been that the article isn't neutral, within the meaning of WP:DUE, namely: "Neutrality requires that each article ... fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects."

Adding quotes to footnotes might help with the NPOV aspect too, but it wouldn't be enough. The current majority views should be made clearer throughout and explicitly discussed in the historiography ("Debate about causes") section. For example, what is the current majority view of Amartya Sen's work and FAD/FEE? Mark B. Tauger wrote in 2009: "According to the generally accepted viewpoint, food availability in Bengal was not low enough to have caused a famine. The key proponent of this viewpoint [is] the economist Amartya Sen  ... Most studies of this famine and others refer to Sen’s chapter without questioning the data or his use of it." (He goes on to criticize it.) Is that still "the generally accepted viewpoint"?

The "Debate about causes" section at times seems to treat sources equally, whether they're from 1945 or the 2000s. At other points, it seems to emphasize a minority view. For example: "Some sources allege that the Famine Commission deliberately declined to blame the UK or was even designed to do so;[311] however, Bowbrick (1985, p. 57) forcefully defends the report's accuracy." Footnote 311 names four sources, yet Bowbrick's view is highlighted, and we're left not knowing what the current majority view is of the Famine Commission's report. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:53, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

• In its original version, it was fair fair fair. God only knows what it looks like now. Forex, my version clearly stated that SEN's view is consensus.. whether it did so in body text or footnote I don't recall, but I recall adding it... I doubt that subsequent editors/editing have swung it all the way over into WP:NPOV or WP:UNDUE, as you allege, but I do not doubt that some of my dotting i's and crossing t's has been blurred... You need to be very careful because whenever you allege WP:NPOV or WP:UNDUE you kick the dorr wide-open for the various nationalists (on both sides!) and tinhat-wearing supercranks who have been quiet lately... I still do not accept your edits, SlimVirgin, which serve to defend the famine victims. I have not reverted because I am allergic to edit wars in general. But the famine victims did horrible things to survive, just as you or I might under similar circumstances. Protecting their reputations is actually (and surprisingly, I admit) a backhanded way of covering over the depths of their suffering. It does their memory a greater disservice than letting out the truth would. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:08, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

I opened this section to discuss how to move forward, not to discuss particular edits. But one of the problems since the rewrite is that you accuse people who challenge you (and the sources) of having an agenda. Now my agenda is that I'm defending the victims's reputations, but I'm doing no such thing. That may be the effect of my edits, but it's not what I have in mind. You ought to explain why you wrote that children were buried alive. If you'd said "sorry, I made a mistake," fine. But you seem to be defending it. (I don't care whether you revert my edits, by the way, so please do if you want to.)

Re: NPOV, I don't know what you mean by "fair". "Neutral" on Wikipedia means reflecting the majority view. The whole article has to reflect it; it can't just be made clear in a sentence or a footnote. The article must be written from the majority perspective. It should also include significant-minority views, making clear in some way (explicitly or by the space give to them) that they are minority views. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:27, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Then the article was neutral, neutral, neutral.... Bowbrick is minority (occasionally even gets scoffed at), ditto Tauger (who gets scoffed at on other completely different topics but not this one), but for very different reasons. I said "children buried alive" because Greenough did. If he didn't, then I may be experiencing hallucinations. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:39, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

He didn't say it on the page(s) you referenced or elsewhere that I can find. I asked you for a quote from him but instead you sent me the whole article. I quoted above the only reference I could find to it in that paper. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:43, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

(←) Tauger, BTW, is taken very seriously but as a clearly minority view, at least on Bengal famine of '43. The problem for his side is that there is simply no hard proof of the severity of the spore infestation, since none was collected.. but experts in the field of... whatever field covers plant diseases... do take quite seriously the whole scenario that the famine may have been caused naturally... as for "buried alive", I thought I saw it in the file I sent. I thought you even mentioned it... I will look for it for you. The ur-source here is Greenough's (1982) book, but I no longer have access to it, and getting it would be prohibitively difficult for me. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:59, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Here is your original rewrite. Can you point to which part of the lead reflects the majority view of the causes? In "Debate about primary cause(s)", you describe the FAD and FEE lines of thought, and you name at least six FAD scholars (which, as I understand it, is the minority view). Which FEE scholars are named in that section (O Gráda and Sen?), and how would the reader know which was the majority view? SarahSV ^(talk) 03:13, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

The FAD explanation blames famine on crop failures brought on principally by crises such as drought, flood, or man-made devastation from war. The FEE account, as formulated by A. Sen (1977) and A. Sen (1981a), agrees that such external factors are often important, but holds that famine is primarily the interaction between pre-existing poverty (as a "structural vulnerability") with some shock event (such as war or political interference in markets) acting as a trigger (Devereux 2000, pp. 24–26). When these interact, some groups within society are unable to purchase or acquire food even when it is available. Current academic consensus adopts the FEE view for most modern famines (Indra & Buchignani 1997, p. 6).

Looking at it now, I might wanna refine/tweak/clarify "pre-existing poverty", which is.. not exactly the correct way to describe it, but I'd have to go find sources for good terminology. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:19, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

The source that supports "Current academic consensus adopts the FEE view" is 21 years old. Tauger's paper that says the "generally accepted viewpoint" is Sen's is nine years old. The first question is whether that is still the majority view in 2018. Once that's established, the next question is what to do to make sure the article reflects that throughout. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:25, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

To be honest, it seems to have quite nearly become taken for granted. People don't go around repeating what is taken for granted. But... I suppose... I could try to find someone repeating that Sen's view is consensus.. in something newer.. if you insist, which is yur right I suppose, but.... here I risk repeating what I've just written. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:30, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Lingzhi, I asked above: "Which FEE scholars are named in that section (O Gráda and Sen?), and how would the reader know which was the majority view?" In reply, you quoted a footnote. It isn't made clear in the section itself, which has to reflect the majority view. The whole article does. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:37, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Again, I'll go back and re-re-re-re-read the section I wrote many months ago. That footnote I copy/pasted above could easily be dragged into body text; that is a minor tweak... as for "now consensus or not":

The conclusion [of a book I just now googled, which may or may not reflect consensus (?)] is that while the entitlement approach might continue to play a key role in famine analysis, there are some factors that are not easily incorporated in famine analysis based on the entitlement approach. These relate specifically to the collapse of legal formal and informal institutions (often in times of violent conflicts) as well as to the incorporation of political factors.

...OK I've re-read that section in my version. Yes I made a huge mistake by putting that text in a footnote. It should be moved to body text, in precisely the same spot where it is now placed as a footnote. This edit involves removing a couple curly braces.... and then, that could be tweaked with text such as the quote above.. but... I just found that quote in 10 seconds; I'd wanna see who else says the same thing. But yeah, move the footnote to body text. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:56, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Parts of the article read like this: "Some people oppose female genital mutilation [footnote: United Nations, World Health Organization, and almost every government], but African feminist 1, African feminist 2, and African feminist 3 strongly oppose the eradicationalist position, calling it the new imperialism." SarahSV ^(talk) 03:57, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

My reply is the post you ec'd with (immediately above yours here). See "Yes I made a huge mistake"  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:38, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

My point wasn't to draw attention to that one footnote. Anyone reading the whole article should be left in no doubt as to what constitutes the majority view, and anyone reading the lead alone should be left in no doubt either. SarahSV ^(talk) 06:01, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

We seem to be talking around each other. I admitted my approach was wrong (by putting "Sen is consensus" in a footnote instead of body text). I said that the cure is two steps: first, move the footnote to bodytext so body text plainly says "Sen is consensus", and perhaps add something about later people wanting to add the political dimension. That could be put in the lede, too, but I would wanna do that maybe at a later stage, after the dust has settled... [BY THE WAY, everything I'm discussing refers to my original version, not the current version. I haven't even read the current version & am not very eager to do so.] Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 06:12, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

I can't tell whether you've understood the point, but I suppose time will tell. Just to be clear one last time: I'm not talking about your footnote that begins "The FAD explanation blames famine on crop failures ...". That is just one issue and one location. I'm talking about the entire article. SarahSV ^(talk) 06:44, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

(←) I keep saying, take the footnote and make it no longer a footnote, by adding it to the body. That solves your problem. It truly does. It changes the article's text. It alters the article text radically. It makes the whole section of the article different because it adds the words "sen is consensus" to the text of that section. Then we can add a sentence about how later analyses emphasized politics... Then ... if you want... you can delete one or two of the mentions of various FEE or FAD scholars so that both sides have the same number... then it doesn't look lopsided and over-emphasizing one side...the FEE vs. FAD is only in that section of the aricle, so that plus (a little later) the lede are all that need to change... right now I'm busy. I'll jut edit the article 2 or 3 hours from now. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 12:10, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

• (my earlier, irrelevant post removed) OK, I have a copy of Greenough 1982 now. Am re-reading chapters 4 and 5. More later... Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 10:24, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

what's missing

I've been thinking about this or over a year of course, and a large thread was archived listing many things that could be considered "missing" (I need to go back and re-read that), but if we are trying to keep the length down then at this moment I only recall 2 major ones; all esle could probably be left "missing":

1. Need at least a sentence, perhaps even 2, about the collapse of the patronage system. Put it in with other things about breakdown of systems.
2. Weigold [Law-Smith, who is the same person as Weigold] made a point of saying that Linlithgow had Viceroy's special powers that could have ended the interprovincial trade barriers with the stroke of a pen, but declined to use them. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:54, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Here's the second one, which I added then deleted weeks ago. Highlighted text was existing text preceding; may still be on page: Bengal was unable to import domestic rice; this policy helped transform market failures and food shortage into famine and widespread death. This was the case despite the fact that Viceroy Linlithgow held special powers under the 1935 Government of India Act to intervene in provincial matters to resolve crises; these powers certainly permitted him to set the inter-provincial trade barriers aside. Linlithgow's near-constant refusal to use this power may have reflected reluctance to take actions which might jeopardise future efforts to manage the impending independence of India within a Constitutional framework.

• Law‐Smith, Auriol (1989). "Response and responsibility: The government of India's role in the Bengal famine, 1943". South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. 12 (1): 49–65. doi:10.1080/00856408908723118. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 06:55, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
• Wavell strongly supported using section 93 to get things done. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:11, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Children "buried alive"

I see this has been restored:

Children were dropped down wells, thrown into rivers or buried alive.

The sources offered are Greenough 1980, pp. 230–233, and the Famine Commission's "Report on Bengal", p. 68.

The Famine Commission report does not mention it. One incident of a woman attempting to do this to her son is mentioned in Greenough 1980 and described in detail in Mukerjee 2010 (who quotes the primary source). It was one incident of a woman losing her mind, and she was prevented from doing it. Not plural: "Children were ... thrown into rivers or buried alive." SarahSV ^(talk) 18:57, 19 February 2018 (UTC); edited 19:26, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

I'll repost here what I wrote above about Greenough 1980. On p. 231 Greenough quotes an underground nationalist newsletter, Biplabi (5 August 1943), which talked about a woman who could not stand watching her two sons suffer. She dropped one of them, "the apple of her eye", in the river. She then dug a pit and tried to bury her other son, but a passer-by stopped her. On pp. 231–232, Greenough repeats a report from the Hindusthan Standard (28 November 1943), which said a man threw his daughter down a well when he was unable to find someone to buy her.

There is too much in Mukerjee to quote here, but she offers more details and quotes the primary sources. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:26, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

• I restored what you deleted. Your discussion here does not seem to mention all of the facts you deleted, only the ones hardest to prove. I think the famine commission (which you say isn't relevant to the deleted text) probably refers to those other facts you deleted but did not mention deleting. I haven't looked yet.... I am a little busy and so on and only have little snatches of time. I apologize. I am trying to re-read Greenough for info, but only in snatches. I have not forgotten or ignored anything written here. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:06, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

• Please add a source or remove/rewrite the sentence. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:10, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

footnotes

SV, you're adding more and more and more text in footnotes. length was a concern here.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:08, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

involuntary "repatriation" dec 43

I'm gonna add a sentence or two about the involuntary "repatriation" of "destitutes" in calcutta dec 43 in the next day or three. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:28, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

"Voluntary and forced prostitution"

"Families also disintegrated, with cases of abandonment, child-selling, infanticide, and both voluntary and forced prostitution."

Sources: Greenough 1980, pp. 225–233; Ó Gráda 2009, pp. 59–63.

Neither source discusses voluntary prostitution. Greenough 1980 discusses prostitution on pp. 229–230; he doesn't state or imply that there was anything voluntary about it. Ó Gráda 2009 talks about destitute women being "driven" to it (p. 59). SarahSV ^(talk) 19:06, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

• You seem once again to be hung up on "voluntary". There is a distinction between those who take it up as a conscious decision (thus voluntary, even tho it is a survival strategy) and those who are kidnapped/coerced. That is the distinction at hand. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 21:56, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

• You're making a distinction that the sources don't make. You're saying that a woman who is starving to death, and whose children are starving to death, has a choice. But if she had a gun to her head, you'd agree that she had no choice. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:06, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

• It'll take me a while to pore over every reference to the string "prostitut" to look for the word "choice" or similar, in order to satisfy your unreasonable demand... But yes. Again, the literature said many made that choice. And yes, those who were kidnapped or pushed into prostitution by their parents are indeed categorically different from those who chose to survive by selling sex. You are blurring a distinction that the former group (the kidnap victims etc.) might wish to be kept clear, were they still alive...btw, the sex trade was mushrooming even before the famine, during the "military buildup" phase...so then there are three groups of women: those who chose prostitution to increase their pre-famine income, those who chose prostitution as a survival strategy during the famine, and those who were abducted or sold by their parents. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:54, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

prostitution, footnotes

(copied from SV talk)

• i spent days (off and on, but much more off than on, admittedly) searching through the articles in my computer for "women turn to prostitution as a survival strategy". Came up mostly empty-handed, with many hints and so on. But then I searched google books (duh!) & found a clear one in seconds. Will add in a little while.
• I don't mean to sound like I'm scolding, but the whole point of this latest round of edits was to chop down the length. I wince when I see what I think are extremely useful explications deleted (not by you), but I grit my teeth and bear it. yes I have re-added a little since then -- I dunno, maybe 50 words? -- but only 1) key stuff removed from lede, and 2) really really key points.... so... pls do try to keep the length down when you add more to the footnotes. Plus the latest addition ("social cost") seems unnecessary since it repeats what article text says. If you think my version is too close paraphrase, then rephrase it; I thought it was OK because the terms are very broad, common, eg "social cost". but whatever. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:16, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Men who force starving women to have sex in exchange for food, rather than just giving them food, would usually be viewed as rapists, not customers visiting "voluntary prostitutes".

Re: footnotes. They don't add to the readable prose size. I'm doing what I suggested at 01:53, 18 February 2018, second paragraph. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:30, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Re rape, prostitution: There are many many variations. Women who wandered into Calcutta certainly could have and presumably did deliberately search for a brothel if/when they found begging and turning to food kitchens etc. inadequate. This is part of the cruelty and injustice. Is it injustice? yes. is it rape? No, not if the women chose to walk into a brothel or chose to solicit customers. Yes if they were coerced. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:35, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

You're arguing that human beings who are starving to death are not being coerced. I think you should stop talking about this. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:38, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

You're arguing that the terminological definitions within your value system should overrule any other considerations. Rather than telling me to shut up (which is exactly what you are doing), I think you should consider the possibility that you might not have such an ironclad argument as you assume you have. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:47, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Driving through the desert, you find a young man who is dying of thirst. He begs you for water. You have water to spare, but you don't give it to him. Instead you tell him to perform a sex act. He does it, then you give him water. Was he coerced into performing the sex act? SarahSV ^(talk) 01:50, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

a) No. No threat or force applied, therefore not coercion. b) Not what is being said. If I walk into a brothel and say give me your customers I need money for food and water, that's my choice. I could equally have gone out and committed murder to satiate my needs. I'm not suddenly not guilty of muredr if I do this. SV, open the floor up to others for comment, but don't tell people to shut up. Mr rnddude (talk) 03:51, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

(←) Since when is my POV relevant?... BTW, I think I did find a cite somewhere about a survey where prostitutes listed "I don't want to starve" as a reason for becoming prostitutes. It's not with me at the moment. You want me to add that somewhere, perhaps? Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:14, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Two editors who used to be active here said you had cherry-picked sources to support your opinions about the famine, rather than summarizing the sources.

Is that what's happening here? You believe that people forced to have sex for food, even when they are starving, are "voluntary prostitutes". But the mainstream sources on the famine don't use that language. Therefore (it seems), you're searching hard for any source that does use the words you need so that the article supports your view. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:45, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

• You're putting me in the uncomfortable position of defending the texts themselves. Please read Das. Please read MacIntyre (easily available on google books and amazon). MacIntyre cites das. I think I remember other people citing Das. The work of Das (an Indian anthropologist) is respected . Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:54, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

The quote you added from MacIntyre was not about this famine; she was talking about "economic crises". I don't know what Das says; please add a quotation. But it's striking that you have to rely on a source from 1949. None of the modern sources that I have read supports your language. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:01, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

the title of MacIntyre's chapter is "Famine and the Female Mortality Advantage". If it's not striking that macIntyre and other modern scholars rely on Das (1949), why is it striking that Wikipedia relies on what they rely on? You're struggling for an argument. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:17, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

But the sentence from Macintyre that you quoted was not about the famine; that sentence was about "economic crises". Regarding Das, have you read Das yourself, or did you copy the quotation from Macintyre? SarahSV ^(talk) 03:45, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I'll take some time out to look at the sources myself. Will bring up my findings when I'm done. Mr rnddude (talk) 04:04, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Citation 238: it says p. 72, but there's nothing on page 72 about this. I'm guessing it's p. 62 that was wanted as that's the chapter for Calcutta, however, pp. 62–64 don't exist on the archive link so I can't verify it. Mr rnddude (talk) 04:33, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

• Found somewhat relevant --Dickerman cites Bhaduri; Jiggins wants to have it both ways

[Mildred Dickemann, The ecology of mating systems in hypergynous dowry societies] -- Let me mention a specific case. Between one-and-a-half and three million died in the Bengal Famine of 1943, which was studied in vivo by anthropologists, statisticians and others. Starvation corpses in the streets of Calcutta forced the government into action, yet none of these dead were natives of greater Calcutta (Bhatia, 1967, p. 324). A study of destitutes entering the city (Das, 1949, passim) revealed a significant disproportion of women, especially in the age cohort 15 to 60, who comprised 29% of the total surveyed, while males in the same age group formed only 16 per- cent. Even more striking, over 67 percent of the ’units’ (i.e., primary groups, usually broken families) were led by women, and this disproportion was greatest in the poorest, scheduled castes, where women leaders were over three times as common as male leaders. There was, however, an excess of males in the ages under 15, producing a sex ratio of about 150:100, which observers explained as a result of heavy sale of girls into brothels. It was estimated that Calcutta prostitutes increased during the crisis period by about 25,000 women (Bhaduri, 1945, pp. 31-33). [source given as Bhaduri, P. 1945 Aftermath of Bengal famine: Problem of rehabilitation and our task . Calcutta, National Book Agency.

JIGGINS Women and Seasonality: Coping with Crisis and Calamity] --- Beyond the point of family breakdown caused by deepening poverty and sudden shocks such as the death of a husband, or flood, there are a number of last desperate measures women may take - or be forced into taking - to save themselves and their children. Briefly, they might be listed as follows:

# migration, often involuntary, after they have been pushed out of the marital or natal house or the husband has abandoned the family [Scott 1984:50; Obbo 1980; Jahan 1979; Rahaman 1981]. A large number of involuntary women migrants turn to begging and vagrancy. Jahan [1979:270] remarks of the Bangladesh situation: 'The basic cause of [female] vagrancy is poverty, destitution brought on by the death/disability of male guardians or crop failure in densely populated areas.' either just before or shortly after family breakdown, efforts might be made to place (especially male) children in others' households where they will work in return for food [Rahman Khan 1979] or they are left outside an orphanage, or they are bought and sold in return for food, or, in worst case situations, simply abandoned [Rahaman 198 1:1361.]

# changes in the character and intensity of gathering or cultivation of wild and semi-wild foodstuffs, preferred species giving way to famine foods which become a major or even the only food source [Rahaman 1981]. Anecdotal evidence from famine relief workers suggests that often it is women who preserve knowledge of the whereabouts and preparation of these foodstuffs.

# failing all else, prostitution, for adult women and female children, may be the last resort. A study of 273 prostitutes in Dhaka [Jahan 1979:270-4] and the case material from Bengal adduced by Greenough (1982) suggest that it is impoverishment, made unsupportable by flood or famine, and the loss of male guardian or spouse (through death, divorce or desertion), which are the main causes leading women into involuntary prostitution. [Greenough source given as: Source: Constructed from case notes presented in P. R. Greenough; 'Some notes on peasant prostitutes recruited in times of famine', Wid notes, Mucia Wid Network, Land Tenure Centre, University of Wisconsin, Madison, nd., pp4-7.]

• As for das, I added it a long time ago, then took it out recently after re-reading Das, then forgot I had taken it out and re-added it from Macintyre just moments ago, thinking it looked familiar.. the Macintyre thing is more than a little odd; I believe I see precisely the same information in Mehtabunisa A. (1984) Woman in Famine: The Paradox of Status in India. In: Currey B., Hugo G. (eds) Famine. The GoeJournal Library, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht, DOI10.1007/978-94-009-6395-5_7. Can anyone get access to that? If you can please do, otherwise I'll go to WP:RX.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 11:36, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

On 8 April 2017, you added to the page: "When taken up voluntarily, this survival strategy was not only for the women's own sakes but also, in many cases, for their children's survival ...", cited to Das 1949, p. 72. (Those are the words I found on 14 February 2018 and to which I objected.) I can't see anything like that in Das (pdf). Can you say where it came from?

I can only find two places where Das discusses this. On p. 10, he writes: "It is not impossible that some of the young women sold their body for food. But such cases did not come within our knowledge nor did we hear any direct or indirect statement to this effect from our informants in Calcutta."

And on p. 43: "[W]e are forced to conclude that the low proportion of girls in the first three quinquennia was mainly caused by their absorption in large number in the brothels of Calcutta. ... The girls of the third quinquennium were the best preys of the touts of these infamous houses. Devoid of any encumbrance in the shape of children and being of the age which was suitable at the moment or would be so in near future for the carnal trade[,] they were readily victimised." SarahSV ^(talk) 17:44, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Das 1949, p. 72, was first added on 23 December 2016 to support the voluntary/involuntary distinction: "Women often chose prostitution as a strategy to save not only their own lives but also the the lives of their children." Sourced to Das 1949, p. 72 (failed verification). It was followed by "The move was certainly not always voluntary, however ..." That sentence was sourced to Mukerjee 2011, pp. 158, 183–186, and Greenough 1982, chapter 4 (why no page number?). I'd be surprised if Mukerjee or Greenough make the voluntary/involuntary distinction. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:45, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

• I have deleted Das before; one instance on 22 Feb. (added in Meena). You made some changes while I was asleep and I am too sleepy to figure them out at the moment. I'll try to review them at lunch time or something. Did you find things from my original version that others had deleted, and add them back in or something? ... Meanwhile, I am wondering if the Das thing is a case where one person mis-cited (here I suspect Mehtabunisa (1984) may be the original source (?)) and others copied the cite without reading the text. Hence I asked above if anyone has Mehtabunisa. I have seen this "Das p. 72 discusses prostitutes" cite in other sources as well... Since no one wants to help, I will request Mehtabunisa at WP:RX. As for Greenough, there is a Greenough source mentioned above that I had never seen any mention of before yesterday. It is very specifically scoped to prostitutes and would be immensely valuable... As for our article, SV is unflaggingly motivated to deprive those who were kidnapped and imprisoned of any distinction at all between their lives and those who walked into brothels. I will try to find a way to use Jiggins.. and try to get Greenough's talk about prostitutes.. and try to get Mehtabunisa... there are more things to be done with this article; SV's unwavering certainty that all distinctions must be erased between the violent, brutal rape of innocent children on one hand and an adult's recourse to rational, consciously chosen survival tactics on the other has caused far more than enough unnecessary delay already. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 22:29, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

FWIW, in my database of pre-1769 Indian famines, I have used the term "voluntary slavery" where people have sold family members and/or themselves into slavery during famines, to distinguish the practice from capturing people to enslave them, but I'm wondering about changing it to something like "consensual slavery". David Trochos (talk) 23:03, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

On further reflection, I'm now considering the phrase "volitional slavery" but I suspect there just isn't an ideal term. David Trochos (talk)

• Recent reports about aid workers blackmailing women for sex use the language of coercion, abuse and sexual predators (see, for example, Reuters). For Wikipedia to set itself up as an authority on moral choice, and to decide that people who were—quite literally—dying of hunger were "voluntarily prostitutes" when forced to swap sex for food, is a bizarre example of "original research". SarahSV ^(talk) 22:39, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
  • [Note to all listening]. I'm trying to remain silent here, but it's beginning to look like others are gonna start expounding at length. If you have any opinions at all on what should or shouldn't be today's terminology, I'm sure you can add multiple insightful comments at Fox News or Slate or The Guardian or Huffington Post. I'll wave cheerfully and be glad to skip all that. Meanwhile, here on this forum, we'll try to figure out a very careful and neutral way to draw on relevant academic sources —sources about the Bengal famine of '43, not about Foucalt or whatever — to handle this delicate issue. Thanks.... My perspective on the general (not finding answers yet) approach is this: there are two logical domains of activity that took place. One is criminal activity — forcible rape and kidnapping of minors and adults. The other is survival strategies. The whole topic of survival strategies is an extremely important subdomain of famine analysis. It deserves due care. Trading sex for a cupful of rice gruel to avoid starving is a huge injustice that cries out for amelioration — but it is a survival strategy. That fact needs to be included in some careful analytical manner, and alas, only in a sentence or so. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 23:48, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
    • You continue to frame it as something the victims do. Try swapping your vocabulary for this: "Requiring sex from dying human beings before you feed them is ...". Is what? SarahSV ^(talk) 00:29, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

You don't see a distinction between pinning a woman down and forcibly raping her against her will, and brothel work for survival? Though to answer your question: cruel and inhumane. This is verging on spinning around circles here. Mr rnddude (talk) 04:32, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

• I would call that premise "a springboard for reflective exploration of my own POV" and therefore "a topic for some other forum"
• I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that you also deleted the passage about parents pushing their children into the sex trade (?). If so, I suspect that on'e gonna be significantly easier to verify than this one. For this topic, even scholars are willing to drop a curtain of grace over the topic of sex trade as a survival strategy... I think I found political newspapers of the time that baldly say it's true, and they are probably right since hey were there at the time, but dispassionate observers are far more hesitant to even touch the subject... I do wish I could get access to Greenough's talk about prostitution.
• I'm also adding a new (completely unrelated) topic below. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:28, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't recall removing anything about parents pushing their children. I began trying to copy edit the section and had to stop when I realized I didn't know what it was saying. I did find the invisible note disturbing—"many were victimised by their own mothers and fathers.<!-- pls don't shorten to 'parents'; the assumption will be that males only or primarily were the culprits -->" (see e.g. this revision), particularly when it's unsourced and unclear what "victimised" means. That, together with the unsourced voluntary/involuntary distinction, the unsourced "any woman who had chosen or been forced to become a prostitute", the unsourced "children were buried alive", the misunderstood? "as much as two maunds", and some of the writing, made me uneasy. That's when I started this discussion.

As I said then, the section needs a rewrite. It's oddly written, and it's thin gruel compared to the richness of the sources; it looks as though it was produced after a skim of the sources but not a close reading. (But I should add that it's understandable if an author runs out of steam for one particular aspect; I know the feeling very well.) A lot has been written about how families broke down as they did and why; what the position of women was before the famine and how it changed. It's interesting and it belongs in the article. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:14, 28 February 2018 (UTC) (edited 05:29, 28 February 2018 (UTC))

• I don't remember writing a note about not only males being culprits, and my first reaction is to say that it wasn't me who did so, but before you go combing the history you should know that my memory is genuinely shockingly bad, and "Finding Dory" coulda been "Finding Linzhi". And yes I very very much did run outta steam at the end, but in addition to that, the later sections don't really require as much explanation. It's just a recounting of unadorned, ugly, straightforward human suffering in the later sections, not careful explication of a confluence of historical and economic factors over a long period of time that all came to a head during a World War... I should tell you hee that though your ethical arguments re "voluntary" are very counterproductive, you are currently clearly ahead on points in the battle of "Sources cited". Pls see earlier comments about some scholars copying and passing on misreadings of other scholars, and about other scholars employing a "curtain of grace". I don't think I can get Greenough's notes/talk about prostitution, and I doubt I can get Bhaduri. It will soon move in a direction more to your liking, but pls don't jump the gun too much or add any Foucalt or anything. Pls be patient. It will all come together, see meta:eventualism. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:44, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
• SV,I've taken out a few things which were in fact attested in the sources but did not match your urgently-pressed worldview. Be warned that I may put them back in at a later date, depending on the availability of sources etc. The new text I've added needs some cites but it's late here. meta:eventualism Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 17:16, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Created new article, Media coverage of the Bengal famine of 1943

• Cross-posted on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Journalism

The section on " Media coverage of the Bengal famine of 1943" is already too long in an article that is generally concerned with wholly separate issues. The issue of media coverage, unlike such things as the origins of the famine, is not directly germane to the famine itself, except with respect to the Statesman articles and their very direct and very tangible impact... I need to take a close look to see what can be trimmed from the section in this article.. I also shortened the "other media" section a tad and merged it with media (and properly so)...

To aid in this effort, I have started a new article, Media coverage of the Bengal famine of 1943, and will cleanup/extend bit by bit as per meta:eventualism.

• There was of course a great deal of political hay-making going on in the media, as nationalist papers hammered the UK govt. this is a journalism major's dream topic.
• There was of course tremendous speculation – now completely irrelevant, except for brief mention– of the causes of the famine. That blind speculation of the day has been supplanted by modern analyses, which are covered in depth in this article, but they would be fascinating to see in an article about media coverage...

And many other topics to be explored. All of this will total up to really really really significant verbiage – far far far too much for an article that is already large.

I think it will be an excellent article and a fit project for valiant editors to adopt. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:13, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Created second new article, Sex and gender in the Bengal famine of 1943

Wow, this one is gonna be a blockbuster! There is just so much untapped information that can be added to the article! I eally will make a commitment to add one or two new bits of information several times per week! Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 08:54, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Source request (Greenough)

Can we have a page number for "Greenough suggested that Sen's figures should be raised to between 3.5 and 3.8 million". Currently sourced to a large page range, Greenough 1982, pp. 299–309. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:55, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

• I can send you the pdfs. Regrettably the pdfs I have are not searchable so we'll have to just read the pages. if you don't want the pdfs, I can read the source, but you are throwing up several requests. I am still finding sources for depeasantiztion, since you completely ignored the first two. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 23:08, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

• Thanks, I don't need pdfs, just the page number.

Instead of searching for sources on depeasantization, it would be better to stick to summarizing the sources. Deciding what to say first, then searching a database for any source that supports it, is what the other editors meant by cherry-picking. This article should summarize the contemporary high-quality sources on the famine, whatever they say. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:28, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

• I actually had time to read. The first mention of 3.5 to 3.8 is on page 309;it's the very last sentence before the "age and sex mortality" section. Thank you for spotting that imprecise pagination. I revised it to "Greenough 1982, pp. 309 Entire section "Appendix C: Famine mortality 1943–46" on pp. 299–309 is relevant.", which I'm sure is what I was thinking at the time I originally added it. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 14:25, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

"Entire section "Appendix C: Famine mortality 1943–46" on pp. 299–309 is relevant." I am not sure if it is actually adhering manual of style. I can be corrected. Raymond3023 (talk) 16:41, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• Thank you for the page number. I'm going to add something from it to the footnote about mortality estimates. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:02, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Structure

Another issue—and I say this tentatively because I'm at an early stage of reading sources—is that the article seems to mix up the famine and its causes (by famine, I mean the lack of food and/or the messed-up distribution); and the effects of the famine (why it was so devastating; high death from starvation and disease).

For example, the early section "Soil and water supply" addresses why there was a high death toll. It should come later, where you explain why disease took hold as it did. (And it should be significantly shorter: a sentence or two.) Ditto with railways in the Transport section: some of that is about soil. How do the main famine sources handle those issues? I think I would place the first paragraph of Transport in the boat denial section to explain why boat denial mattered. I might lose "Rural credit and land-grabbing" completely, or massively reduce it.

It currently feels top heavy, as though the article is building an argument. It also makes it less interesting to read, because you have to digest so much before you get to the famine itself. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:49, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

• I thought about that a long time ago. For example, if you mention railways early on and don't say why, then in the early sections it's like "who cares about railways?" If you move the whole railways info much later, it becomes a boring & buried detail. I dunno how much you could argue that railways should just be dropped: there was a clear difference in malaria mortality between different regions. Some is mathematical/artificial: regions with high malaria mortality before the famine didn't see the relative increase because their rates were already high. Some of it is soil. Some of it is railways. Some of it is that people in the west kinda sorta tended to get paid in kind more than people in the east. Some it is that some areas dedicated more land to jute (which cannot be eaten, and selling it for money was... not helpful). And so on. I don't think readers need to grind through all that; they can click the links if they only want the actual outbreak etc.... as for rural credit/land grabbing, well, one reason for the high mortality among the poor... maybe even the biggest reason -- is that grain in hand was many multiple times more advantageous than cash in hand, due to soaring inflation & drop in real wages. So people with no land to grow rice just died. I think many sources mentioned small, scattered land holdings as a reason for mortality... [and part of that was also was due to inheritance laws]. ... [And Greenough would add that the government failed to help those people with little or no land, and their landowners failed to help them, but those who needed help were originally placed in that problem because "no land"]. If I were gonna drop anything at all, maybe railways could go. So LAND is very important. And so is INFLATION. in fact, you cold sum up this whole article by saying the following "It mighta been the spores, maybe, but most experts think HIGH INFLATION killed people with NO LAND. Plus the governments huge screwups with Denial Policies and prioritized distribution. Plus Greenough's abandonment thesis. But mainly INFLATION and NO LAND.
• So those two -- inflation and landlessness -- interacted to set famine loose. Once the demon was loose, everything became a deadly game of dodgeball, dodging death:

1. The provincial govts of other provinces said, "Screw this! We're not watching inflation kill our populace like it is for the Bengalis!" So the other provinces selected their own populace for life and the Bengalis for death, via trade barriers. Linlithgow let them do it, for reasons that are unclear. Wavell did not.
2. The UK govt said, "Screw this! We're not lettin' our factories, defense-related and defense-support industries close down!" So the UK govt selected (mainly) the urban population of Bengal to live and the rural population to die, via prioritized distribution (certainly) and shunting grain to those areas (probably?).
3. The rural landowners said, "Screw this! I'm not watchin' my family die!" So the rural rich selected themselves to become richer, selected the rural middle class to become poor, and selected the rural poor to become corpses, through increased land purchases, grain market manipulation, and abandonment of the patronage system.
4. The male heads of household among the rural poor said, "Screw this! I'm not dyin'!" So they selected the wives and children to die, through abandonment. But it didn't always work out that way, because females always hve higher survival rates during famine, for a very large number of reasons (their bodies withstand it better, they can sell or better yet barter sex, they are given preferential treatment during aid handouts, etc etc). Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 10:37, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

I'd add another causative factor: the political situation within Bengal. I've only got primary sources (and lengthy ones at that), but they make it clear that, for example, throughout much of 1943 the newly-appointed ruling party there hid the truth about shortages and exports:

https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.32605/2015.32605.Bengal-Legislative-Assembly-Proceedings-1943-Vol66-Pt1#page/n171/mode/2up

David Trochos (talk) 16:35, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

How to resolve the NOR disagreement

@Mr rnddude: thank you for your post at 07:09, 5 March offering to help check the article. I'm opening this thread to avoid getting it mixed up with "children buried alive" posts.

I helped to write the NOR policy years ago, and it's clear to me that this article contains OR, including in the form of SYN violations. How much, I don't know. Checking is very time-consuming.

Checking for OR is not as simple as confirming that the text is supported by the source. It's also making sure that the source is appropriate, and that all the sources together in the sentence or paragraph don't amount to something those sources would not support and/or were not about. You wrote above that the use of this medical source to support "Statistics for malaria deaths are almost certainly underestimated, since the symptoms often resemble those of other fatal fevers ..." was not OR. But that's a classic OR violation.

Part of the surreal quality of this talk page has been that a famine expert is mocked, an expert on India is told he's another Essjay, and someone who helped to write the NOR policy is told she doesn't understand it.

What can we do to reach a mutual understanding of OR before proceeding with the checks? Here is the policy once again (I've added bold to the points that have been disputed on this talk page):

The phrase "original research" (OR) is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist. This includes any analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not stated by the sources. To demonstrate that you are not adding OR, you must be able to cite reliable, published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and directly support the material being presented.

SarahSV ^(talk) 02:12, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

• Two points: first, please recall, I don't make this stuff up and I don't get it from nowhere. Before you start screaming OR, consider the possibility that I can (with time!) find the original references where this information crossed my consciousness. Those would all be about the famine.
• Second, you were suggesting before that only articles "about the Bengal famine of 1943" are usable. Well, that is a direly strict interpretation of "directly related to the topic". is it the case that the words "Bengal" and "famine" and "1943" must all be in the title of the article or book? is that what you are in fact suggesting? I wouldn't want your personal definition of "directly related" and "directly support" to be taken as the only possible definitions or interpretations.
• So I will start with the fever now. It's very likely that I will may find more later. I actually don't expect you to agree or concede a point—ever— unless I eventually find a quote which is quite nearly word-for-word identical to our article text. But perhaps other editors may not always share in your interpretation. I'll underline a few things:

We realise that the figure of malaria mortality are likely to be inaccurate, and more inaccurate in 1943 than in 1944. For the certain diagnosis of malaria, which may be confused with other fevers, a blood examination is necessary and the proportion of cases in which this was done was of course infinitesimal. (Famine Inquiry Comission 1945a, p. 119)

There is no doubt that cause of death data are not accurate... However, statistics for categories such as cholera, smallpox, plague are generally thought to have been relatively reliable because of their very distinctive symptoms. Fevers - under which normally most deaths are classified - seem to have been a catch-all category in the sense that several diseases which cause temperature are likely to have been included under this heading. As the Sanitary Commissioner of the Bombay Presidency in his annual report for 1894 writes, "..in every case where fever occurs as a symptom of the illness which terminates in death, this death is recorded as due to fever. On that count, a certain degree of misclassification of deaths between fever and dysentery/diarrhoea seems possible...However, malaria is generally taken to have been the most important component of the fevers category...Since the early 1920s "fever" began to be divided into different sub-heads, viz., malaria, enteric fever, measles, relapsing fever, kala-azar, and other fevers. PAGES 41-42 of Maharatna, Arup (1992). The demography of Indian famines: A historical perspective (Ph.D.). London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom).. reprinted as Maharatna, Arup (1996). The demography of famines: an Indian historical perspective. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-563711-3.

 Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:19, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

"is it the case that the words "Bengal" and "famine" and "1943" must all be in the title of the article or book? is that what you are in fact suggesting?" No. But the source, or part of the source, must be about the Bengal famine of 1943. You write "X was an underlying cause of the famine," then use a source that discusses X, not one that discusses "X was an underlying cause of the famine." SarahSV ^(talk) 06:07, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

• Well then I'll use those two, plus any others I might find in my computer later. Those were the easiest ones to find. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:25, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
• To clarify, SlimVirgin, the Ghedin et al. source isn't supporting anything. All of the material is sourced from the FIC. The only thing it's doing is providing an example of a disease which has similarities to malaria, in this case leishmaniasis. If it's a problem, remove the source. None of the text is dependent upon it anyway. I recognize the reason it was added, but I don't see any laymen readers opening it up reading it and having any clue why it's there. Unless Lingzhi has an explanation, I can't really proffer one. Mr rnddude (talk) 11:34, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
  • leishmaniasis is the same as kala-azar, which is explicitly mentioned in Maharatna (given immediately above) and also I think in others among the Bengal famine articles as well. I don't remember why i chose to use that cite instead of Maharatna and other famine-related articles; maybe i thought it was more modern or more authoritative or something. I dunno. but the two points are 1) i wasn't making stuff up or pulling it from far afield, and 2) given time, which may mean weeks (because I do have a life outside Wikipedia) i can certainly replace any sources SV describes as too far afield with sources that are famine-related. Can do. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:01, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

• @Mr rnddude: I opened this section to discuss our disagreement about how to interpret the NOR policy. That medical source is just one example. If the sentence were supported by 50 other sources, it would make no difference; using that source is a classic OR violation.

Similarly, there are other examples of non-famine sources being used as sole supporting sources to make points about the famine, so when checking sources please make sure (a) that the source is discussing the famine, and (b) that what the article says is what the source says (but not so closely that there is a close paraphrasing issue). Also, ideally (c) make sure that the source is the most appropriate. I see tertiary sources in the text, which is odd because there's no need in an article like this, and a lot of "A said", when really it's "A reported that B said", or even "A reported that B reported that C said".

Re: "i can certainly replace any sources SV describes as too far afield with sources that are famine-related". I'm not going to spend months pointing out every example. Lingzhi, you know which sources are not famine-related, and which sources (famine-related or not) don't fully support the text. For example, when the article discusses "underlying", "proximate" and "primary" causes, we need famine sources that use those terms and list the causes as the article lists them.

There's no need to rush to fix any of this. It's better done slowly and well, and that will give other editors time to can catch up on the reading. I'm currently doing that. I hope Mr rnddude and perhaps others watching might consider it too. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:38, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

• • No, actually, I don't know. I believe that "Mukherji, Saugata (1986). "Agrarian Class Formation in Modern Bengal, 1931–51" is the article which you somehow interpreted as being unrelated to this topic. I'm pretty sure that's the one, wasn't it? From my perspective, it is dead-square-center related to the cite we discussed. It's bengal. It's the correct time range. And agrarian relations are one key aspect to understanding the famine. So no, I don't know... I'll try to take out a few that seem very un-SV approved. It will be relatively easy to identify a few in the early going (specifically, stuff about diseases). But there are many many sources about "the history of India" and other things like " Encyclopedia of World War II"...oh, another kind of case: "Dhillon, Pradeep A. (2014). "Examples of Moral Perfectionism from a Global Perspective". Yes, I can very easily see how someone would look only at the title and say "Huh? How on earth is that related?"... but the body text very specifically discusses Chittaprosad's banned Bengal Famine book... And so on. Should I mark it on my calendar to argue about those two kinds of cases in the eventual FAC? Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:29, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Are all the sources in the section "Rural credit and land-grabbing" discussing the famine? When you say the "underlying causes of the famine include inefficient agricultural practices, over-population, and de-peasantisation through debt bondage and land grabbing", what famine-related sources list these issues as "underlying causes". When you say "Proximate causes involve local natural disasters – a cyclone, storm surges and flooding, and rice crop disease", what famine-related sources list those issues as "proximate causes". When you discuss the different kinds of inflation, what famine-related source discusses them and uses the same terms?

What is the relationship between the nationalist movement and the civil unrest and the famine, according to the famine literature? You wrap up the section with "The disorder and distrust that were the effects and aftereffects of rebellion and civil unrest placed ... constraints on the Government of India that contributed to later famine-driven woes", but you don't say what the constraints were and it's not clear whether your famine source discusses all the issues the section does, because it's supported by a smorgasbord of different types of source. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:16, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

• That's helpful. In general, academic writing proceeds from general to specific and (often, but not always) then back to general. [One Wikipedia example of this is the WP:LEDE.] Following this standard practice, I very often put a general statement or two at the beginning and/or end of a section (or even perhaps a paragraph), to help the reader conceptually organize the details that follow. So you want me to source every damn detail in every damn general statement. OK, will do... oh, more, sorry. You wrote: ".. serves to reach or imply a conclusion not stated by the sources." It is my contention that the larger points of this article are absolutely never in violation of that principle. I actually did find two genuine errors in the past few days: one where I myself fucked up many months ago, and one where a copy editor ended up completely altering the meaning of my words. I simply deleted them. But those were not major points of the article at all, just extra details.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:52, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

If this were academic writing, academic reviewers would wonder why you had sourced it this way too.

Rather than using such a large spread of different source types, please settle on a smaller number of the highest quality secondary famine sources, and stick to summarizing them, plus the primary sources they use. For a Wikipedia article as contentious as this, especially if you want to get it through FAC, every single sentence and part thereof must be sourced to an appropriate source. Every conclusion must be a mainstream famine source's conclusion, and everything implying that X was a cause must be stated as a cause in the famine literature. An additional burden is that the article must reflect the majority and significant-minority views as found in that literature.

See WP:FACR: "In addition to meeting the policies regarding content for all Wikipedia articles ... it is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature" (bold added). Not a survey of some other literature. I would remove the tertiary sources; they can be useful for some issues (anything contested, for instance, where you need to see the broad consensus), but in this article I can't see any reason to use them.

When writing citations, follow WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT. Don't cite Das 1949, p. 72, unless you've seen it yourself. If you aren't able to check it directly, write "Das 1949, p. 72, cited in X", but bear in mind that secondary sources make mistakes, so reading the primary source yourself and citing it directly is always better, so long as you stick to WP:PRIMARY: "to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source".

If you want to add multiple sources after a sentence (e.g. a secondary source to support a primary), consider writing something like <ref>{{harvnb|Smith|1945|p=1}}; also see {{harvnb|Jones|2018|p=2}}.</ref> This makes things much easier for readers and reviewers, because it signals that we don't have to read both sources. Or if we do have to read both, then <ref>For the first thing, see {{harvnb|Smith|1945|p=1}}; for the other thing, see {{harvnb|Jones|2018|p=2}}.</ref> Either that or unbundle and add the refs directly after each point. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:27, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

It's quite obvious that a lot of effort has been put into this article in both construction and verification of this article, and kudos to all editors for that. I must however air a concern from discussion I noted above regarding sourcing. My understanding is wikipedia sourcing guidelibes provide for a preference for secondary sources over tertiary sources. This fact appears to have been inaccurately grasped. Secondly, I understand certain editors who have not identified themselves publicly are being accepted as country expert on the basis of their contribution history and previous claims, which I believe is against wikipedia guidelines. I focus particularly on edits earlier specifying gowler and fowler as "expert". Having edited and collaborated with f&f (with due respect to him for his contributions), I do find it difficult not to highlight that inconsistencies of selective representation and interpretations exist in his/her work, as much as I'm sure exists in the work of many others in wikipedia including my own. Lastly SV you claim to be an expert (please do not take this as a doubt on your RL professional status) but if you do not identify yourself as such to verficiation, then I am afraid that lends precious little weight of your views or interpretation of sources compared to that of any other editor. Having contributed to constructing WP:NOR should not offer any greater weight in interpreting it compared to any otger project member.rueben_lys (talk · contribs) 07:25, 7 March 2018 (UTC) rueben_lys (talk · contribs) 07:25, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Rueben lys, I agree about the preference for secondary sources over tertiary sources. There is no WP guideline requiring experts to identify themselves. Finally, I haven't claimed to be an expert; as you can see from the thread below, I'm at an early stage of the reading. If you mean "expert" in relation to identifying OR, yes, I'm able to spot it, a skill I intend to press into service. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:03, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

speculation

I'm gonna collect the stuff about speculation together into a paragraph whenever I have time, in the next few days or week or so. I would also like to compare my orig version to existing to see if errors have been introduced (I did find one huge one and maybe just found another), but that would take a long time. Someday soonish. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 16:13, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Citation style

Part of the sourcing problem may lie with the citation style and particularly the bundling. I like bundling, but it can make things harder for reviewers, and it means that OR/unsourced can slip in inadvertently. I would like to see each point clearly sourced, even if it sometimes means multiple refs within a sentence. Or it should be make clear within the bundle which source supports which part of the text: for x, see A; for y, see B.

With a lot of sentences, it isn't clear why they need multiple sources. For example:

"... the effects [of the early crisis] were muted as rural poor were able to draw upon various survival strategies for a few months."{{sfnm|1a1=Corbett|1y=1988|2a1=Greenough |2y=1980 |2pp=205–07}}

That doesn't say anything of substance, yet it has two sources; the former with no page number and therefore pp. 1099–1112; the latter over three pages. (The substance is in the form of a quote in the footnote that follows the sentence; it would be better to summarize that and move it into the text.)

Another problem is the mix of citation styles: some short refs in footnotes, some parenthetical referencing. It means that when we scan the references section (currently called Notes), we can't see what was used and how often each was used. Also, this looks odd: "'It was soon obvious ...' wrote Bhattacharya (2002b)". SarahSV ^(talk) 05:55, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

• In a carefully prepared statement, Lingzhi wrote: No fucking way I'm changing or agreeing to change a damn thing". Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 06:02, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

A second style was added without discussion, so now we have sentences with both:

"Some sources allege that the Famine Commission deliberately declined to blame the UK or was even designed to do so;{{sfnm|1a1=Ó Gráda|1y=2008|1p=39|2a1=Rangasami|2y=1985|2ps=. Cited approvingly in {{harv|Osmani|1993}} and {{harv|Mukerjee |2014|p=71}}.}} however, {{harvtxt|Bowbrick|1985|p=57}} forcefully defends the report's accuracy."

SarahSV ^(talk) 21:46, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Citation style again

Lingzhi, please stop adding more bundled references. Bundling is usually okay, but in this article, because it has become so contentious, the way you are writing the bundling is a bar to checking the sources. For example, these four sources:

{{sfnm|1a1=Famine Inquiry Commission |1y=1945a|1p=181 |2a1=Mahalanobis |2a2=Mukherjea |2a3=Ghosh |2y=1946 |2p=339|3a1=Islam|3y=2007b|3p=56}}

support: "Bengal's inability to keep pace with rapid population growth changed it from a net exporter of foodgrains to a net importer." Does a reviewer need to check all four for different parts of the sentence, or do they all support it?

As I wrote earlier: "If you want to add multiple sources after a sentence (e.g. a secondary source to support a primary), consider writing something like <ref>{{harvnb|Smith|1945|p=1}}; also see {{harvnb|Jones|2018|p=2}}.</ref> This makes things much easier for readers and reviewers, because it signals that we don't have to read both sources. Or if we do have to read both, then <ref>For the first thing, see {{harvnb|Smith|1945|p=1}}; for the other thing, see {{harvnb|Jones|2018|p=2}}.</ref> Either that or unbundle and add the refs directly after each point."

You're now adding additional sources unnecessarily, without saying in the note what the second source is for, and removing the Famine Inquiry Commission, [1] which is a fine source (arguably the best source) for anything uncontentious. SarahSV ^(talk) 07:15, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

• oh Fuck. i was removing Famine Commission 1945a because F&F made a huge fucking hissy fit about not using primary sources (oh wait, didn't you say that too?) even tho he added tons of text that he cited to that source (oh wait, didn't you do that too?). I do not want to get to FAC (for the third time, for no fucking reason) in a few weeks from now and have some...Valued Editor.. immediately say "Oppose way too many Primary Sources.".. as for bundling cites, "John is from France"^{[1][2][3][4][5]} looks way way way too sophomoric and cringe-inducing for my taste... I can tr to put them to the point in the sentence where they go, but "John^[1][2] is^[3] from^[4] France"^[5][6][7] is just as crapulous....and by the way, this article is not contentious; people have, for various reasons, chosen to contend over it... not at all the same thing Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:34, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

The article isn't close to ready for FAC. To be frank, the best thing you could do for it at this point is take it off your watchlist for a few months to gain some distance.

No one that I can see has suggested removing primary sources for straightforward issues, and I've shown you how to write bundled references with "for x, see y", but when I did it, you removed it. The article is contentious because the topic is, and because you made sure the rewrite was as contentious as possible. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:26, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

The article is 95% ready for FAC. I will add 2 or at most 3 sentences about each of the following: speculation, forcible repatriation,sex/age/occupation/geographic distribution of mortality rates (there's some there already), and a sentence of intro text in "Famine, disease, and the death toll". I will double-check all the bundled references, removing the weaker ones, and relocating some if need be to earlier in the sentence. And just because you (SlimVirgin) are contending over an article does not make it contentious. i will certainly not "get distance". It will be done and sitting in FAC in roughly 1 month, and will take that long only because I have things to do in real life. Thanks for your input; many of those [who?] tags etc. are very helpful... by the way, I copied every sentence with 3 or more bundled cites to User:Lingzhi/sandbox. I'll be using that to verify each and every cite. Sometimes I will delete a few, and perhaps sometimes move them.. On that page I will keep a very clear/detailed record of every instance moved, deleted or verified. I won't check the ones with two or fewer cites, at least not now... thanks! Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:10, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Someone other than you has to be able to check them too, and not only those with three or more in the bundle. The page is a public resource, open for editing. But as things stand, it is difficult to verify a lot of it because, over and above the usual problem of finding a source, we often have to track down than one because of your choice of citation format. Therefore, it needs to change. You might also want to consider that the FACR require either footnotes or Harvard refs, not both. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:20, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

[W]e often have to track down than (sic) one because of your choice of citation format – you'd have to track down more than one source for statements that use more than one source either way you look at it (bundled or unbundled). I don't see a reason to track down all three sources if you can confirm the material in one, though on that note, you also don't need to put more than one source next to a statement that can be sourced from one source. I think it would be a good idea to remove redundant citations where possible. In any case, CITEVAR allows editors to format citations in many different ways, and BUNDLE allows for citation bundling (even prefers it to citeoverkill). I'm not sure what the issue is. I've been looking at the same bundled citations as everyone else, and have had no issue parsing what comes from where so far. I'm also not sure why FIC would be preferable over Dyson and Weigold. Unless Dyson and Weigold are unreliable sources, then isn't it better to have the secondary sources there instead of a primary source? I avoid primary sources at all costs where possible personally. Mr rnddude (talk) 08:45, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Note: I've been working on other articles and also just working recently. I'll just be leaving the occasional note here or there for at least the next few days. Mr rnddude (talk) 08:48, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Can you say more about why multiple sources are needed to support simple points? For example, four sources support: "Roads were scarce and generally in poor condition ..."{{sfnm|1a1= Famine Inquiry Commission |1y=1945a |1p=8 |2a1=Natarajan |2y=1946 |2pp=10–11| 3a1=Mukerjee|3y=2014 |3p=73 |4a1=Brennan |4y=1988 |4p=542 & 548, ''note{{nbsp}}12''}} SarahSV ^(talk) 07:11, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

• Sometimes, as you have noted, it is because half of the details are in one source and half in the other. in other cases it is because I was afraid someone would complain. For example, "monetary inflation" (let's call it MI)... the way the many sources describe the inflationary environment is a textbook case of MI, but only one or perhaps two actually explicitly use the term "monetary inflation". I was afraid if I describe the case as MI without an explicit example of it being labelled , people would scream WP:OR. And sometimes the source is a "primary" source, and i was afraid people would scream WP:PRIMARY... and so on. there were other reasons that I do not remember at the moment. if you want me to chop it down to only 1 i often can, but then if someone screams PRIMARY or OR I will be unhappy.... Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:30, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Original research

Lead and "Rural credit and land-grabbing" section

Can we have a source for this [lead sentence], please? "The underlying causes of the famine include inefficient agricultural practices, over-population, and de-peasantisation through debt bondage and land grabbing." SarahSV ^(talk) 04:46, 1 March 2018 (UTC); edited 01:26, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• When I wrote it I put small summaries at the top of large sections; you'e probably quoting from one of those. Each point should be exhaustively cited in its respective discussion, or at least they were when I wrote it. Who knows now. There is a similar little summary on the first page of chapter XI (about page 97, which is about 152 or so in the pdf) in:
• Das, Tarakchandra (1949). Bengal Famine (1943): As revealed in a Survey of the Destitutes in Calcutta. Calcutta: University of Calcutta.
• BTW.. I seem to recall that the pdf copy I have has much clearer imgs than the one archive.org.. they are statesman imgs, so maybe we can use some of them, but Nikkimaria won't let us use too many I think... Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:54, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

I'd like to see a citation for those issues, including depeasantization, as a cause of the famine. I can't find it in Das. Also, in the section "Rural credit and land-grabbing", are most of the sources used to support that section discussing the issues in relation to the 1943 famine? (I can see that not all are; at least one predates it.) SarahSV ^(talk) 06:05, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Depeasantization pre-dates the famine, which is precisely the point: this section discusses the confluence of historical forces that collided with WWII inflation etc. [greenough makes a similar point, I'll try to find it] [OH and I think Das DOES discuss depeasantization, but doesn't use that term] Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 06:13, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

The section needs sources that discuss those issues in relation to the famine. Otherwise who is saying they matter to it? If no one, then it's OR. Ditto with every other section. One of the criticisms of the two expert editors was that the article contained significant OR. To counter that criticism, everything has to be sourced tightly to authors discussing the famine. SarahSV ^(talk) 06:16, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Unfucking say that. Expert editors???? What fucking expert editors???? Fowler&Fowler? Fuck. AidWorker? Fuck. experts my fucking ass.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 06:21, 1 March 2018 (UTC) One has expertise on India in general and is an experienced editor. The other is a subject-matter expert. Both said independently that there was pervasive source misrepresentation and OR, including in the form of SYN violations (which I think is exacerbated by the bundling). That section—"Rural credit and land-grabbing"—does look like OR. To show that it isn't, it needs sources that discuss the issues in relation to the famine. If it really isn't OR, that shouldn't be a problem. I'm sorry to write these things. This is an excellent draft, but to take it to the next level, it needs some work. SarahSV (talk) 06:32, 1 March 2018 (UTC) No, you have absolutely sero-point-zero idea what you are talking about. None. Zero. AidWorker is fucking banned. F&F edits India stuff, who gives a flying fuck? he is not an expert on this. No. Fucking. Way. You are gonna pull this crap, mainly because you are 100 percent oblivious. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 06:36, 1 March 2018 (UTC) You posted personal attacks against them too. I can't see the point. All it did was discourage them even though they were the only two with any expertise. (And AidWorker isn't banned.) Re: the "Rural credit and land-grabbing" section, without sources who point out the connection of those issues to the famine, it's original research. That goes for every other section too; it has to be the sources who decide what mattered to the famine, not Wikipedia editors. SarahSV (talk) 06:51, 1 March 2018 (UTC) What's unsourced? Did you actually read the article? Everything is sourced sourced sourced and sourced. If it isn't then it was changed. I did find a massive change today which said something massively different than what I said earlier. And F&F is w ikipedia editor, unless he wants to reveal his true ID as Paul Greenough or Amartya Sen or Cormac O'Grada, then he's just essjay. And AidWorker is banned. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 06:55, 1 March 2018 (UTC) Where do you get the idea that AidWorker is banned? He's a subject-matter expert. His problem was that he hadn't learned how to write in the way WP needs, but he could have been brought on board as a collaborator. Look, I know this is a frustrating process, but this is an important article, akin to The Holocaust. No single person can take that on board. It's fine for one editor to take over for a while and do a rewrite, but at some point you have to let others in, and where two of them have expertise (yes, expertise), it makes no sense to shut them out. SarahSV (talk) 07:08, 1 March 2018 (UTC) Not to intrude, but, where did you get the idea that AidWorker is a subject matter expert? I'll flip sides here for a moment and say unequivocally that AidWorker is not banned and has never been blocked. His blocklog is clean. Mr rnddude (talk) 10:01, 2 March 2018 (UTC) I run the risk, seriously run the risk, of a block warning from some lurking admin or other if I reply at length. So let aidworker give his own credentials. Quote: "I have prevented famines." Holy shoot, how dare I speak in the same forum as someone with ... those abilities? Full quote: "Yes, I have read the sources, very carefully indeed, and I have a much deeper understanding of what they say than the editors. And I have a vastly greater theoretical knowledge of the subject than the editors. And I have prevented famines. So I point out that this page misrepresents what is in the sources, repeatedly and systematically, as is my duty." Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 10:43, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

depeasantisation, defined

Depeasantisation is one word for a long definition. The process is described in multiple sources, but not many of them use that term (but I can find more if you wish). Both the trm and the long definition are highlighted below. Source is below the quote:

Specifically in Bengal, the organised sectors of commerce and industry which largely belonged to ex- patriate British interests, tightened their control over the domestic markcet at this time. Such policies, along with the general market situation, combined to push traders and pro- fessional moneylenders in the countryside almost entirely out of their normal business. Certain other factors which will be referred to later, were also responsible for this virtual disappearance of the prevailing mode of credit. What is more important, however, is that the poorer or marginal cultivators who had borne the brunt of the pressure of a sharp fall in agricultural prices were at the same time left in a critical position, because of this sudden withdrawal of the traditional source of credit. What has been characterised as the 'depeasantisation' of a large number of cultivators in eastern India3 now started in right earnest. Rich and propertied sections of the agricultural population increasingly took over the role of creditors in the countryside. Unlike professional money- lenders who were interested mainly in raising the rate of interest on their loaned out capital, agriculturist creditors used their hold over a multitude of indebted peasantry to dispossess them of their small holdings; and then to resettle the very same people on the same plots of land with inferior rights and in a much greater degree of bondage to the creditors. 

• Mukherji, Saugata (1986). "Agrarian Class Formation in Modern Bengal, 1931–51". Economic and Political Weekly: PE11–PE21+PE24–PE27. JSTOR 4375249.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 11:14, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

That source isn't discussing the famine. Material has to be based on sources that discuss the famine; otherwise, it's a WP:SYN violation. SarahSV ^(talk) 00:04, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

• I have depeasantization in "Das, Debarshi (2008). "A relook at the Bengal Famine". Economic and Political Weekly." Which appears, if at least the title is correct, to be about the Bengal famine. NOR is a sticking point only in your imagination. I will find more sources later. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 16:13, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Unfortunately this conversation is spread across sections. You said that Mukherji, Saugata (1986). "Agrarian Class Formation in Modern Bengal, 1931–51". Economic and Political Weekly: PE11–PE21+PE24–PE27. JSTOR 4375249.   is not about famines. You also said "find a source that says what you want it to say". You are wrong on the first count and I'm anotherquote (this one crystal clear) for the second. From that same source, page PE-21:

In agriculture, the whole system had been based, from the beginning on extraction on absolute ground rent which was realised by depriving the cultivating population of not only their legitimate share of profit, but also eating into their wages. Not only was there no contradiction between the spread of an exchange network with the extraction of absolute rent, the entire process was made possible by the prevailing system or mechanism of exchange relations. The logical outcome of this was periodic recurrence of famines, culminating in the greatest of them all-the Bengal famine of 1943. 

 Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 16:28, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

WP:NOR

As this has become a sticking point, quoting the policy might help (bold added):

The phrase "original research" (OR) is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist. This includes any analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not stated by the sources. To demonstrate that you are not adding OR, you must be able to cite reliable, published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and directly support the material being presented.

The section on synthesis says: "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. Similarly, do not combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source." SarahSV ^(talk) 00:17, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

• I'm on a cellphone so may make strange typing errors. The depeasantization of Bengal had been a concern long before the famine, tho not under that name. The FIC famine inquiry commission report explicitly discussed this issue in the context of the famine,but again not here that name. Since the report mentioned it, it ha of course been discussed by others since. I can find references a few hours from now. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:49, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

• The section "Rural credit and land-grabbing" seems to be based on sources not discussing the famine. Everything in the article has to be from the famine literature, which is vast so there's no need to go outside it. The article should use the vocabulary used by the modern sources. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:08, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

• I'll be happy to change a word or two and perhaps add one sentence a few hours from now. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:24, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
• I have already demolished-- yes demolished-- your SYN charge. I had to do so because you slapped a SYN template on the page. Your response to the search you forced me to undertake is to accuse me of cherry picking. Not a persuasive reply on your part. In the light of those sources that explicitly tie the famine to what you say is SYN, take down that template. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:13, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• You've removed the SYN template. Please read Help:Maintenance template removal, specifically WP:WNTRMT. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:57, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• @SlimVirgin: I just now noticed this reply (immediately above). There's a problem with using WP:WNTRMT against me. That page says the template can be removed "when the issue is resolved". I found and posted on this page a quote that very directly made exactly and precisely word for word the point you are arguing against (and calling SYN). If you argue against "water is wet" (calling it SYN) and I find a cite that says precisely and explicitly "water is wet", then the issue is resolved.. the alternative definition of "resolved" is "when SV says it's resolved". Which could be, when... never? This puts all power in your grasp in clear contradiction of the reliable sources. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 11:42, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

depeasantization, land grab etc sources

• Throwing a template on a page is not persuasive to anyone but newcomers. You should know that.
• I have already established that depeasantization has been argued as a precursor/cause of the famine (and in fact it continued through the famine and exploded because of the famine). If other people make the argument, the argument is not SYNTH.
• "In this context it has been implicated that the emergence of the rich peasant in agrarian Eastern Bengal coincided with soaring poverty which culminated in the great Bengal famine of 1943 and that the rich peasants were well placed to further expand their base of domination by buying up the holdings of the victims of the famine of 1943 (this is from Iftekhar Iqbal (2009). Return of the Bhadralok: Ecology and Agrarian Relations in Eastern Bengal, c. 1905-1947. Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 43, No. 6, pp. 1325-1353.. specifically p. 1327. Iqbal cites this to several sources, starting with [Sugata Bose, Agrarian Bengal. Economy, social structure and politics, 1919-1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) pp. 162-64] Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 23:11, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
• Das, Debarshi. "a relook at the Bengal Famine." Economic and political weekly (2008): 59-64: p. 60... sorry, big quote:

It stands to reason therefore that if one has to examine the dynamics of price rise during a famine, one cannot ignore the consumption credit market or the market for land. But in the case of the- Bengal famine, one must be advised against treating the entire province as a single homogenous unit. As Bose (1990) notes, in eastern Bengal the structure of the agrarian economy was much different from what was prevalent in western or in the northern and extreme southern Bengal. Agrarian economy of eastern Bengal was much more commercialised. It was a "peasant smallholding society" where jute, a cash crop, dominated along with paddy. The zamindars did not wield much leverage over the peasantry. Indeed they were facing a severe rent crisis in the first half of the 20th century due to a series of tenancy legislations passed in the late 19th century.6 Chatterjee (1986) notes that petty jute cultivators were heavily dependent on lean season loans from traders, who also kept the price under tight monop- sonisti control. Traders, moneylenders and landlord-moneylenders were tied inextricably with the local exchange economy. Monétisation and links with the world capitalist economy were strong. The "peasant smallholding, demesne labour complex" which was more prevalent in western Bengal, and the rest of India with variations, was conspicuously absent in eastern Bengal. In western Bengal jute cultivation was insignificant. The landlords exercised control over the peasantry through landholding or credit operations. Beginning from the late 19th century a process of "depeasantisaiton" was on in western and south-western Bengal. Small peasants were getting inexorably indebted to the 'jotdars' (big farmers-cum moneylenders),7 losing ownership of land and becoming share tenants - usually at 50 per cent share of the harvest - in their own land [Chatterjee 1986]

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Lingzhi (talk • contribs)

Have you read the paper, or did you search for the word and read only that paragraph? In that paragraph, Das is discussing the late 19th century. If you want the article to say that depeasantization was an "underlying cause of the famine", you need a source that makes that argument. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:22, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• Sources connect the two. SYN means making a connection where none exists. I have shown scholars connecting them. You begin to appear evasive.. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:27, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Then cite a famine scholar, with a page number, who says what you want the article to say. I'm not saying that it's wrong; I'm saying that it's unsourced.

And this isn't only about depeasantization. That whole section is a problem, and perhaps other sections too. Fowler said you had created a script that searched for key words in texts, and that you had constructed the article that way, rather than reading sources cover to cover. Is there any truth in this?

There seems to be difficulty sometimes supplying page numbers. For the new paragraph from Greenough 1982, for example, you supplied a page range that covered an entire chapter. It is making the article difficult to review. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

{{quote|In agriculture, the whole system had been based, from the beginning on extraction on absolute ground rent which was realised by depriving the cultivating population of not only their legitimate share of profit, but also eating into their wages. Not only was there no contradiction between the spread of an exchange network with the extraction of absolute rent, the entire process was made possible by the prevailing system or mechanism of exchange relations. The logical outcome of this was periodic recurrence of famines, culminating in the greatest of them all-the Bengal famine of 1943. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lingzhi (talk • contribs)

Another example

From the section "Famine, disease, and the death toll":

Malaria parasites were found in nearly 40% of blood samples examined at Calcutta hospitals during the peak period, November–December 1943, and in nearly 52% in the equivalent period in 1944.{{sfnm|1a1=Famine Inquiry Commission |1y=1945a|1p= 116 |2a1=J. Mukherjee|2y=2015 |2p=194}} Statistics for malaria deaths are almost certainly underestimated, since the symptoms often resemble those of other fatal fevers,{{sfn|Ghedin |Zhang|Charest|Sundar|1997|p=530}} ...

The last source, Ghedin et al. is "Antibody response against a Leishmania donovani amastigote-stage-specific protein in patients with visceral leishmaniasis", PMID 9302200, a medical primary source that has nothing to do with the famine.

I can't find anything on p. 530 that supports the text, and in any event it's not about the famine. All sources not about the famine need to be removed. SarahSV ^(talk) 06:21, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• Your interpretations of various policies intersect only marginally with reality. Or more simply, you are quite completely wrong. Take diseases for example: those diseases caused many fatalities during the famine. Multiple and multiple sources say so. So that specific disease is extremely obviously germane to the topic of this famine. And I am introducing no thesis here, just saying something like "this disease is associated with crowding" or "this disease is waterborne or aiborne". And you say, no sources not about the Bengal famine can be used to cover that point? Wow. i mean just wow. hat has very little intersection with reality. I am stunned. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 10:11, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Well for once I could see all the relevant material and make up my own mind about the text. I'm dealing with the second sentence since that's the contested one. The entire sentence is sourced from FIC p. 119. (1) "Statistics for malaria deaths are almost certainly underestimated ..." comes from We realise that the figures of malaria mortality are likely to be inaccurate, and more inaccurate in 1943 than 1944. (2) "... since the symptoms often resemble other fatal fevers ..." is from For the certain diagnosis of malaria, which may be confused with other fevers.... (3) "... and because only a small proprtion of the victims were medically examined" comes from ... a blood examination is necessary and the proportion of cases in which this was done was of course infinitesimal. The purpose of the Ghedin et al. source, as far as I can tell, is to provide an example of a disease which can be confused with malaria: Diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis cannot be made solely on the basis of clinical signs and symptoms because of its resemblance to other causes of febrile splenomegaly such as malaria, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis, to name a few. You can call Ghedin unrelated, but OR is a bit of a stretch. Mr rnddude (talk) 11:22, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• Let's get to the crux of the biscuit here: "All sources not about the famine need to be removed.". there is no other, more polite term. All I have is.. OK I could go with "blather" or "poppycok" or even warmer "horse feathers". Wikipedia could not exist if that... I won't call it a rule because it's imaginary.. if that *utterly unfounded suggestion* were enforced. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 14:08, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are supposed to be tertiary sources, not secondary sources. They provide a summary of the relevant secondary literature. Primary sources, especially in contentious areas, are used only if those secondary sources use them, and are used in the way those secondary sources use them.

This article should provide a summary of the scholarly and other high-quality secondary literature on the famine, and it should summarize the underlying causes as presented by those sources, in accordance with WP:DUE and WP:NOR.

Instead we have Lingzhi (2017) offering his own opinions about causes and consequences, dipping into the famine secondary literature, other secondary literature, other tertiary literature, primary sources about the famine, primary sources about something else, sometimes entirely unsourced, sometimes cited so that no one can work out what the source is, or cited with such large page ranges that you have to set aside an evening to check one sentence.

The "works cited" section reads like one of those long chain-restaurant menus, with every food combination you can think of. We should offer instead a smaller menu of high-quality, on-topic sources that have been summarized well. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:23, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• That may be one of the funnier things I have ever read on Wikipedia, though unintentionally so.
• Look, I am not at all saying that there are zero-point-zero errors in this article. That would be miraculous, indeed. In fact, I haven't been editing this heavily for a very long time (maybe six or seven months? not sure) due to burnout, but I am ready to go through it carefully again now to weed out small errors, wrong page number, wrong source (some people wrote several books, there are several people named Mookerjee/Mukherji/Mukherjee, etc.; mistakes are very possible), etc.. But there are no better sources than the ones I have here. The experts here are A. Sen (who won a Nobel Prize for this), Greenough, S. Bose, O'Grada, Mahalanobis, Maharatna, Dyson, etc. They are all fairly well covered, though I would never say that improvements are impossible. [In fact, it would be miraculous if nothing could be improved]. The Extremely Vocal Minority Position is Bowbrick, who is very nearly scoffed at, and yet is covered here because many many many sources mention him in a nearly-perfunctory way then drop him. Tauger presents the more respectable opposition, but still clearly a minority view. His work is covered somewhat more at length, IIRC. There are 2 sections that I want to review very carefully because they cover very complex, complicated and nuanced material: the land-grabbing section (which you have already attacked, thank you for your help), and the Debate over Causes section. There is also, regrettably, some information that was in my original draft that has been excised by other editors, most especially the bit about who died and why (artisans, etc). Perhaps three sentences, or even four, on that topic can be re-inserted. So to make a long story short, I am not gonna stand on a soapbox and say that God wrote this article. It was written by a fallible guy who spent an entire year (yes, an entire year) processing large amounts of information (I have 375 "Bengal Famine" pdfs on my hard drive, tho maybe 10 or 15 might be duplicates), sometimes was tired, sometimes made mistakes, etc. When I originally took it to FAC, I was expecting the FAC to last months, and these things to be mostly ironed out. But past is past. And yet. And yet. Though there clearly must be room for improvement, your little editorial blurb there is borderline humorous. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:59, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, you've included good sources, but you've also included others. There's been an "any port in a storm" approach to sourcing.

I know that mistakes and citation problems are the norm, and the usual response to pointing them out is "oops, thanks". Instead anyone challenging this is attacked. Look at "children were buried alive". An obvious red flag, unsourced and no source exists for it. When I removed it, you restored it and argued. When you finally did remove it again, it was under the guise of satisfying my "urgently-pressed worldview".

Twelve months part-time reading isn't enough to have gained a deep understanding. There's always a danger on Wikipedia of becoming the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. Complying with the content policies, especially in contentious articles, can help to build a strong scaffolding and stop editors wandering inadvertently off-piste. This article would lose a lot of its problems if it stuck closely to the mainstream famine literature. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:31, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• Can we stick to the topic it hand? The general discussion isn't going to resolve anything. SV, are you satisfied that the above query has been resolved? Or at least that the statement is sourced. Since you were challenging it. Mr rnddude (talk) 03:45, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• I wasn't responding to your question about Greenough, so why move it here? I have gone ahead and rectified it. Mr rnddude (talk) 04:02, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

"Children buried alive" again

• You've pointed out one — one — example where two things happened: 1) yeppers, the source really did give an explicit case of that, and 2) my position is that generalizations are reasonable, and your position is that they are not. OK, after deliberation, tie goes to the more conservative position (yours, in this case), so delete it. In that specific case, and after thought, I reluctantly agree that the more conservative position is probably best. You can't take one case (or even a few cases!) where my interpretation of the text was a bit of an over-generalization and turn this into "Lingzhi (2017)". In this instance, it is you who are the one over-generalizing [about me, about this article]. Two over-generalizations don't make a right... OH PS: "This article would lose a lot of its problems if it stuck closely to the mainstream famine literature." That's funny. Again, it's an over-generalization... It does stick close. Extremely close. Like a hair in a biscuit, actually. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:47, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

If you're still defending that, we have a big problem here. The sources discuss one woman who went mad and tried to bury her son alive. She was stopped by a passer-by. That means it didn't happen. You summarized that as "children [note: plural] ... were buried alive". You offered two sources. One made clear that it had been stopped; the other didn't mention it.

When I pointed that out, you replied: "Your comments and (regrettably) edits both seem very much on a mission to defend the nobility/integrity of the famine victims. You are selecting the outcome before engaging the literature. Please invest significant time reading before you decide what approach to take." Then you restored it.

Now you're saying "1) yeppers, the source really did give an explicit case of that, and 2) my position is that generalizations are reasonable". But what you're describing is deliberate source misrepresentation. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:20, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• I find it difficult to reply in a somewhat-professional manner. "Deliberate source misrepresentation"? Uhhhhh. No. An honest false step in interpretation & summarization from a fallible human being, which I just honestly admitted. "We have a big problem here"? You can't sell apples from an empty cart, SV. if you can find POV in this article— real POV, not just a false step in interpretation— then do so. As for POV, as I have repeatedly stated and will state again for the record, there are two (or perhaps four, if one can be finely granulated) main POVs: 1a) It's a man-made famine. the British (especially Churchill) are evil. 1b) It's a man-made famine. The British were half-incompetent and half-desperate to protect their own interests when the World War had them in reasonable fear of an existential threat, and when they were distributing global resources in amanner that protects their own best interests. 1c) It's a man-made famine, but it wasn't the British, it was provincial government, perhaps in league with 1d) those rich agriculturalists and rich rice traders who probably (this POV goes) manipulated the markets and may have hoarded grain. 2) It was not a man-made famine. mainly, it was the spores, but also the cyclone. The consensus position -- very very very clearly -- is that it was a man-made famine, but different scholars debate over 1a, 1b, 1c etc. Tauger is the main guy holding up position number 2. Unfortunately for him, even tho he may in fact be the one who's more right than others, there just wasn't any hard evidence of the scope of the spore infestation collected. So if you wanna call me anti-British, it's a hard sell. If you wanna call me any POV, it's a hard sell. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:41, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

You're changing the subject from source misuse to POV. This matters, because if you've treated sources throughout the way you treated "children were buried alive", we have a big problem on our hands regarding what to do about this article.

When I first saw that sentence, I assumed it was an error and removed it without even mentioning it. I assumed good faith. I raised it later only as an example of the kind of thing I was finding; it bothered me that no one had removed it because it was such an obvious red flag. (Why would parents dying of hunger, people with no strength left, start digging holes to do something as unimaginably cruel as burying their children alive?) That's why I checked the sources and found they didn't say what you were saying.

Then you started defending it, and restored it. Now you're still defending it, arguing that you were "generalizing" from the source, and that "generalizations are reasonable", including when the source says: a passer-by stopped it; the child was not buried alive. That goes beyond "generalization". SarahSV ^(talk) 03:00, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• You have found a single case where I erred. I am not defending it, in fact, I am agreeing that your conservative position is the preferable one. Can you extend this single case across the entire article? That... seems.. to be a stretch. If you can do so, then do so, and stop jumping up and down and waving your arms and shouting into a bullhorn, presuming that arm waving constitutes proof... OH PS (sorry to add more) All I had to do to make that sentence kosher was add Greenough (1982) cites cases in which. Five words. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:31, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

If you're not defending it, that's fine, but you were until a few minutes ago. And the fact that you call accuracy "conservative" suggests that you're still defending it. This isn't the only example I've found; it's just the starkest. Here is Biplabi's account, 5 August 1943, care of Mukerjee 2010, p. 151, of one woman who tried to bury her son alive:

In Sapurapota village of the 17th Union of Panskura Thana a Muslim weaver was unable to support his family and, crazed with hunger, wandered away. His wife believed that he had drowned himself in the flooded Kasai River. Being unable to feed her two young sons for several days, she could no longer endure their suffering. On 7/23 she dropped the smaller boy torn from her womb, the sparkle of her eye, into the Kasai’s frothing waters. She tried in the same way to send her elder son to his father, but he screamed and grabbed on to her. The maddened mother had lost all capacity for love and compassion. She discovered a new way to silence her child’s searing hunger. With feeble arms she dug a small grave and threw her son into it. As she was trying to cover him with earth a passerby heard his screams and snatched the spade from his mother’s hand. A kagmara (low-caste Hindu) promised to bring up the boy and the mother then went away, who knows where. Probably she found peace by joining her husband in the Kasai’s cold torrent.

SarahSV ^(talk) 03:35, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• On which page does "Greenough (1982) cite cases in which" children were buried alive? SarahSV ^(talk) 03:37, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• Look. The family bonds were snapped. Parents did cruel things to their children. Children were abandoned, the sources say again and again and again and again. People sold their children as household servants and sold them to pimps. Is that unimaginably cruel? Yes. Why would parents do something so unimaginably cruel? Um, that would be "Because they were starving to death". I was trying to flesh out the point that the famine drove people to desperation and yes cruelty and yes against their own children. i thought greenough ws a point I could reasonably cite in that way. If can find sources that families did not break and did not do cruel things to their children, add them. Cruelty. Was. Done. Did I make a mistake in how expressed the point? yes. It could have been worded better. You are trying to take my one editing mistake and turn it into, "Oh this is a nice outline, thanks, now turn it over to people who can take it to the next level." Presumably "people" prominently features an editor named SlimVirgin, though I guess you refrained from saying that. Well, no, this is not a nice outline, it's a 95% done article. we could add back in the stuff about who died and why. You added several very helpful (I am not being sarcastic) tags about "who said this?" etc. that I am eager to track down, but I am not able to do so. You alleged SYN and even went to the drastic extent of slapping a template on the article; I destroyed your argument. What else did you allege and I destroyed? Seems like there was something else. But whatever. If you can find a better way to say "cruelty was done" then do so. If you can prove no cruelty was done, then do so. Stop with the sweeping accusations of either POV or incompetence or whatevr cocktail of bad stuff you are accusing me of. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:50, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• I didn't mean "turn it over to people who can take it to the next level", as though you should be excluded. If you want to do the work, fine, but you don't seem to realize how much it needs. It's currently a personal essay. It needs to be turned into an encyclopaedia article that summarizes the mainstream famine literature. Any Bengal famine expert should not get any surprises reading this: should not wonder why something is missing or barely used; should not see sources she has never heard of and wouldn't use herself; should not see factors emphasized that the mainstream sources don't mention or dwell on. As for SYN, it's obvious and you shouldn't have removed the tag. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:07, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• "personal essay"? Now that is the very definition of a sweeping generalization!You have established that I made one error in one sentence, which I have explained reasonably, and which is not a thesis but a supporting point of a thesis. And that thesis is everywhere in sources. So yeah, personal essay. prove it to everyone else on Wikipedia. From sources. prove evry section is a personal essay. I await your evidence. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:02, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

What's happening here feels like propaganda. No matter what I say (and others have said previously), you keep repeating the same thing. So no progress is possible. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:14, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

The one upsmanship is getting to absurd levels. Both of you need to stop, otherwise progress will remain impossible. Assume some good faith here. SV, this article has 336 individual citations littered at every corner. Finding a couple errors and then extrapolating it to the entire article to call it "primary", then "OR", then "personal essay" and now finally "propaganda" is ridiculous and rightly draws Lingzhi's ire. Lingzhi has put in a year of effort into this one article, you haven't put in a month. This article has existed for over a decade, you've been editing for over a decade, where have you been this whole time if you're so knowledgeable?
Lingzhi, the combative attitude is certainly not going to deter SV and is probably encouraging her own annoyance and/or anger. If you two can't even pretend to play nice, then this article isn't going to receive a single improvement to it. It will remain in development hell. So assume that SV is actually trying to improve this article.
Feel free to criticize my failing as well. By no means have I extended my full good faith to SV. Though that attitude was as a result of her telling Lingzhi to shut up. I've written quite biting comments that certainly put off SV from interacting with me. Mr rnddude (talk) 06:36, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Note: I do want to help out, as I can, in getting this article to FA. It's well outside of any knowledge I have, but if there's an issue I can help suss out (for example the one above where I could read the sources and check them against the material) I will. Mr rnddude (talk) 07:09, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• @Mr rnddude: As I said above, I have 375 sources. I am extrememly certain there must be errors in there somewhere; it would be impossible for there to be none. So choose a section you're interested in & I'll send whatever I can find (even tho I have so many, sometimes I didn't name the files well, and it takes me a long time to find one). Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:43, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• Lingzhi, the controversies appear to be in sections 3 and 4 (possibly onwards). Nobody seems to have an issue with the timeline from section 2 or the background in section 1. It seems a waste to focus on them, so I'll start in the introductory paragraph of section 4. I have FIC, and Bedi is available online; but would need Greenough 1980 pp. 200–230, O Grada 2009 pp. 59–63, and Mukerjee pp. 170–190 & 240–250. I'm using larger page ranges than used in the article to ensure I catch everything. Cheers, Mr rnddude (talk) 08:40, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Source request (Greenough 1982)

Lingzhi, you wrote above: "All I had to do to make that sentence kosher was add Greenough (1982) cites cases in which. Five words." Please give a page number. The sentence in question: "Children were dropped down wells, thrown into rivers or buried alive." SarahSV ^(talk) 05:21, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• Not what you're looking for, but, another example of an attempted live burial. From Bedi 1944 p. 57: It kept alive a handful of babies found on the streets and in the destitute homes but it was working with regularity and there was a homely atmosphere about the place. "Look at this little fellow" said Barbara, "he's as black as a teapot, but such a darling. His mother tried to bury him alive to save him from the agonies of starvation, and we just managed to save him. She ran away, fearing punishment, but we are trying to find her". It's quite evident that people did try to bury their children, alive or otherwise. Mr rnddude (talk) 10:29, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• Tks. pls keep a record of whatever you find. I suppose we could say "anecdotal evidence suggests". but SV will move to strike it due to WP:PRIMARY. hey, if you verify/confirm any references, keep record of all of them somewhere., preferably in your user space. that will be helpful for the eventual third fAC. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 11:46, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• Wilco. I'll start jotting down material and source as I confirm them on a spare userpage. Mr rnddude (talk) 11:56, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

• That example above is the same one. Several sources discuss it. Please note the difference between: "News report: Police say there was an attempted rape of a woman at the 2018 Emmys." Wikipedia: "Women were raped at the 2018 Emmys."

Lingzhi, please give the page number from Greenough 1982 so that I can look it up. SarahSV ^(talk) 00:11, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

sharecropping, diminishing land holdings, income inequality, class famine

Just a heads-up: I've had this journal article on my hard drive for a two weeks but had not gotten around to reading it. I'n reading it now and so far it seems quite helpful, e.g. in a section titled "The Bhadralok, the Rich Peasant and Social Construction of the Famine of 1943":

The staunch resistance by the bhadralok against the restoration of any form of entitlement to the sharecroppers is consistent with the process of transfer of land and occupancy rights from actual cultivators. The process would have lost all meaning for the bhadralok should the sharecroppers, who included both landless and land-poor, be legally empowered to fight back for their rights and entitlements to land. The status quo that the bhadralok was able to maintain, however, proved disastrous for the land-poor and the landless who became the major victims of great Bengal Famine of 1943.

One of the two well-known facts relating to the Bengal famine of 1943 is that it was considered a 'class famine' in which mostly landless labourers and sharecroppers suffered.64 Another fact is that the famine victims emerged mostly in the villages but the famine death rates appeared to be higher in the towns and cities, particularly in Calcutta. As far as social organization of agrarian production was concerned, these two issues seem to have been closely connected with the position of both rich peasants and bhadralok in the agrarian relations.

Will add more in the section that SV says should be deleted later. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:34, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Which government

I'm not ignoring all those [which] tags on the word "government. They are on the to-do list. Just offhand (tell me if I miss anything). there are certainly 2 entities, but maybe the second is not so monolithic. There is the (appointed, British) Government of India and the (elected?, Indian?) Provincial Govt., but key members were appointed British ie Pinnell, Herbert, etc:

1. the (British) Government of India denied foreign aid
2. the (British) Government of India enacted the "denial policies" (boats and rice) which disrupted markets
3. the (British) Government of India carried out prioritised distribution, in effect selecting the rural landless to bear the ravages of famine while protecting the workers supporting the UK military effort
4. the (British) Government of India Bengal government set up feckless price controls which created the black market
5. the Bengal provincial government did not declare famine
6. the Bengal provincial govt banned exports from Bengal (which was a Good Thing)
7. other provincial govts set up trade barriers against Bengal (which was understandable, since e.g. traders from Bengal spread the inflation to Orissa, but was still a Bad Thing overall)
8. however, the (British) Government of India as embodied in Linlithgow did not STOP the provincial govts from setting up those barriers, tho it clearly had the legal authority to do so... later on, Wavell did so, and it helped the situation considerably Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 18:04, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

• the biggest problem with this "who did what" line of questions is that it makes the Indian govt look good, because the provincial govt (mainly Pinnell) committed most of the screw-ups. But you see, it hides the fact that the Indian government did nothing even though it could have. Specifically, [quoting from text I added then deleted, and now will try to re-add]:
  • Viceroy Linlithgow held special powers under the 1935 Government of India Act to intervene in provincial matters to resolve crises; these powers certainly permitted him to set the inter-provincial trade barriers aside. Linlithgow's near-constant refusal to use this power may have reflected reluctance to take actions which might jeopardise future efforts to manage the impending independence of India within a Constitutional framework. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:48, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

in Bengali

I won't clutter up your new FAC with this: but I have been meaning to ask, is it possible to get a non-transliterated "(Bengali: pañcāśēra manvantara)"? i.e. original script? Am I being pedantic in saying that this is not in fact "Bengali"? Outriggr (talk) 01:15, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

yes the original script is atop the page Talk:Bengal famine of 1943/attribution... (oh wait the page is blanked but it's in the history e.g. here) but another editor said that some wikiproject or other has a rule not to put it on articles... so... whatever. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:41, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Famine Commission

In case it's helpful, Ian Stephens wrote in his book Monsoon Morning (1966, p. 171): "[T]he Famine Commission's report ... [was] as complete, painstaking and balanced an account of what happened, and why, as will ever be achievable."

I found this podcast about Frederick Lindemann interesting. Madhusree Mukerjee is interviewed. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:31, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

98% yes and 2% no. Which is to say, yes, everything written in it can be taken as absolutely 100% WP:RS, and is in fact taken as such without question by academia, after taking into account some well-known gaps in the available knowledge both then and now. its unreliability is only in what it does not say. It never mentions forcible repatriation and... uhh.. another political issue which escapes my memory right at this moment... ah yes, the offers of aid from america etc. It also never really takes up the question of available shipping; it just asserts (very briefly) that shipping was unavailable. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 19:55, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Death total

Many sources put the number of deaths much higher, at 4.3 million or more. (2A00:23C4:6390:AE00:2CF3:4DB8:29C0:8F62 (talk) 20:17, 13 April 2018 (UTC))

I've wondered the same about the death toll. We use Ó Gráda's figure of 2.1 million, but it's not clear why. SarahSV ^(talk) 20:28, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

At the very least the lede should note the figures are disputed. (2A00:23C4:6390:AE00:2CF3:4DB8:29C0:8F62 (talk) 20:37, 13 April 2018 (UTC))

Article clearly states ... unless someone removed the statement... it's academic consensus. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 23:37, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Ó Gráda states that 2.1 million is the scholarly consensus (footnote A), but is he right? Who else agrees with that figure? SarahSV ^(talk) 23:44, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

• No one has published a disagreement. More to the point, no else needs to publish their agreement. If Ó Gráda says that Dyson/Maharatna's figures (not Ó Gráda's figures) are academic consensus, then Wikipedia doesn't argue with him. If you check the dates, I think none are more recent. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:29, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

• Can you cite someone other than Ó Gráda to show that the 1991 Dyson/Maharatna figure is the scholarly consensus? It would be better, in my view, to refer to the range of estimates. SarahSV ^(talk) 14:07, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

• We have a cast of thousands (of researchers from various fields) producing estimates. And some of these estimates.... well... let's charitably say they... are sometimes somewhat less attached to any real data than other estimates. My firm goal is to to narrow this down as drastically as possible... So to settle on a resolution... I found Devereux (2000, pp. 5-6) [source available upon request, of course] using a range between Dyson and Sen, and Devereux is a big name indeed: "For example, Dyson (1993) has challenged Sen's (1981) widely quoted figure of 3 million deaths for the Great Bengal Famine, reducing it by one-third to 2.1 million. Rather than attempt to arbitrate on this controversy, both figures are presented in the table [Table 1] as an upper and lower bound." So I propose we use a range, but only the range between Sen and Dyson as specified by Devereux, and cite the range to Devereux. I furthermore reserve the right (of course!) to go back to Dyson's 2.1 million if I ever find any other impeccable WP:RS that clearly states that Dyson's numbers are consensus.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:22, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

• The article should offer the range of the mainstream sources, whatever it is. We can't decide that 2.1 million is the preferred figure and hope to find more sources to support it. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:12, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

• We didn't decide. O Grada decided. Let's get that straight. However, since Devereux ducks the issue a little by giving a range, that gives us permission to use the same range -- and only that range, no others.. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:24, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

• Devereux 2000 gives just two figures, Dyson's and Sen's. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:36, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

(←) Exactly. And those are exactly the same two numbers I'm gonna put in the infox, the lede, and the footnote, explaining that Devereux chose the range, we didn't. I have chores to do very soon but I might get it done now. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:12, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Banik 2007 (p. 291) says 1.5 to 3 million. That's in The New Famines, edited by Devereux. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:20, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

But 1.5 is FIC and 3 is Sen. And Sen is our upper bound now... Everybody now agrees that FIC is low. PLus FIC is mentioned in the footnote, where it belongs, because it's wrong but is historically significant. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:29, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Bear in mind how unreliable the figures are; 2.1 to 3 million suggests a precision that just doesn't exist. Mukerjee 2010 (p. 267), quoting an unnamed observer: "[The government of India] "were very keen on amassing statistics—they collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But what you must never forget is that every one of these figures comes in the first instance from the Chowkydar (village watchman), who just puts down what he damn pleases." SarahSV ^(talk) 04:41, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

• Yes but that quote is about crop statistics. Sen is a Nobel prize winning economist. Dyson is a world class demographer. Devereux is a famine expert and he thinks it's OK to use Sen and Dyson as the range. I feel safe. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:57, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

  Please indent your posts and respond to the points raised. Johnuniq (talk) 05:01, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

  Please find a nice quiet place to meditate on the meaning of life. Moreover, I did respond. the fact that you didn't understand it doesn't really licence you to say I didn't. Thanks. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:17, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

You didn't respond to the point that "2.1 to 3 million suggests a precision that just doesn't exist".

I'm concerned that Mukerjee attributed that quote ("they collect them, add them," etc) to an "observer" in a way that implied it was connected to the famine. She wrote (Mukerjee 2010, pp. 266–267):

The death registration figures were highly unreliable for another reason, however: in Bengal the usually illiterate village chowkidar collected all such information. One observer had commented that officials of the Government of India were "were very keen on amassing statistics—they collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But what you must never forget is that every one of these figures comes in the first instance from the Chowkydar (village watchman), who just puts down what he damn pleases."

The quote from the "observer" apparently comes from Some Economic Factors in Modern Life (1929) by Josiah Stamp, 1st Baron Stamp (1880–1941). According to his Wikipedia article, it's called "Stamp's Law" and stems from a story told by Harold Cox. Lingzhi, what made you think it had to do with crop statistics? SarahSV ^(talk) 01:19, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

• Listen. Whatever is good enough for academia is certainly quite a bit more than good enough for us here at Wikipedia. .. It's certainly OK to add one sentence, "Blah blah blah records weren't precise." I have seen such and will be happy to find one and add it. let me take on a cautionary tone here: There is a far greater type of error lurking in the background in this discussion. If you push too hard for this "There's no precision", you let in estimates that no scholar believes. [That's especially true since nationalists will press for the highest imaginable numbers]. No one believes 4 million. No one believes... what was his name, not Greenough, I can find it... there's another estimate that is way too high... Even Greenough is too high for experts these days. Consider: Greenough is a socio-historian, not a statistician, economist or demographer. Madhusree Mukerjee is a journalist. No one takes anything higher than Sen's 3 million seriously. Period. [I don't mean to aggravate you, but it's very pointless to add Greenough's calculation methods, because... no one takes those numbers seriously.] So the short version is, and I must emphasize this, we are not safe to go anywhere at all lower than Dyson's 2.1 or higher than Sen's 3 million. However, it's OK to add a sentence about imprecise records. I will find and add one. But we should be very afraid of letting just any estimate get a prominent place... Perhaps this will help you understand: Dyson and Mahartna have no disagreements or quibbles with Sen's methodology. the difference between their total and Sen's is that Sen did not have access to complete records for the province of Bengal; these records were uncovered later. Sen uses records from differnt sources and different regions and does some serious massaging of the data before he even begins calculating totals. He had to do it that way. But with the better data, the estimate goes down by one third. But because Sen's estimates have been so very very accepted for such a long time, and because his methodology is sound after his initial data manipulation, and because... well, because he's "SEN", the Nobel prize winner... his estimates are still taken as an upper bound... so i will add a sentence about bad data. but we can take the details about Greenough's methodology out, please. Thanks. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:11, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Please don't keep changing that footnote. The estimates you're removing are still referred to by more recent RS. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:12, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I kept Greenough's estimate, as per your wishes. His methods are very irrelevant for Wikipedia's purposes.No one is going to duplicate his research, and if they did, they would surely refer to his original research rather than our humble little Wikipedia article. That footnote is already huge because I've added more to fulfill your requests etc. Strike that. I'll let you have your way, in a sense: I'll split that footnote into two footnotes. You can add Greenough's method, but for the record: I am letting you do it under protest. It is clearly and absolutely pointless clutter, and arguably a mild case of WP:UNDUE because no one else's methodology is mentioned. It highlights his methods over others'. But you know what — whatever! If you wanna shove it in there, knowing it is pointless, and WP:UNDUE, and you really do not care that it is pointless and WP:UNDUE, then go right ahead. Wait a few minutes for me to split the notes... Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:28, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

(ec) But you've just added pointless text to it. Lingzhi, please stop the ownership. The article has problems, including basic copy-editing and organization issues, things missing, and misunderstandings. I'm still waiting for books to arrive and for an academic review, and you suddenly nominate it for FAC, pinging only wiki-friends that you think will support you. It would be better to focus on producing an excellent article than getting a gold star. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:31, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

• i count three accusations there: 1) Ownership, 2) pinging friends, 3) care more about star than excellent. Retract all three accusations immediately. Let's see 1) Ownership. Nope, I am adding things you want. I also said you can keep Greenough's methods, though i protest. And hell, if you wanna shove whats-his-name's HUGE estimate back in there, go ahead... but I will find several sources which explicitly say his estimates are full of crap, and I will add those after his estimate, because it is our duty to do so. 2) Gold star. What kind of a moron would work for two years for a stinking gold star? I can get a gold star in 2 weeks with some pop culture article. no one works for two years for a gold star. 3) Pinging friends. Have you been read the FAC? Nick's review is very far from friendly. It may even be mildly hostile. I repeat, "Retract all three accusations immediately" Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:37, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

You didn't ping Nick. You pinged people that you thought would support. You didn't ping me, even though I told you I was doing the reading and looking around for an academic review. So why are you so keen on the star? Why not forget about FAC, look at this as an excellent first draft, take a break, and come back refreshed to produce a final version? If you were to do that (not look at it for a few months), I think you would see for yourself where it needed to be improved. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:07, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

please check again. i pinged Nick repeatedly... to the point of being annoying... and the most recent one was very recent indeed, today or last night... Plus I left a message on his talk page, agin in danger of being mildly annoying. I have pinged Brian once in the entire FAC. 9That was recently too). I left a msg for him too. As for not pinging you, you haven't commented on the FAC. if you had unaddressed comments, I would've addressed 'em and pinged ya... I am trying to get the FAC to move forward... as for gold star, puh-lease. I have six already, and more to the point, people who have known me for years know I despise gold-star-seeking. ask Sandy, forex. She's seen me in full rant mode on that issue. Others have too.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:19, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

See, you're doing here what you've done throughout. You nominated it for FAC and you pinged four editors you thought would support you. You didn't ping me, even though I had recently been involved, was (and am) faithfully making my way through the reading, and was looking for an academic review. You shouldn't have nominated it. It's only stable because I'm not actually reverting you, but I'm reverting you in spirit. It needs a scholarly review before it's nominated, because none of your reviewers (except for me, and Fowler if he returns) will have done the reading. And a review of this without having done the reading is pointless. So my question stands: why the focus on the gold star? Why do you keep nominating it? SarahSV ^(talk) 05:33, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

To be fair, considering that WikiProject India has 92 FAs, while WikiProject USA has 1,132, WP:BIAS says it's important for the page to have a gold star, whatever the motive of the nominator  :) —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 07:48, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Doesn't that link show 819 current US FAs? Looking at the first 100, it's remarkable how almost all are obscure micro-topics, especially storms, roads and milhist. The shorter Indian list seems much better in that respect. Or are you counting the even more obscure lists. Still, your point stands. Johnbod (talk) 15:49, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

(←) These accusations are specious. Retract all accusations immediately. Go to FAC and Oppose if you like, but do so in view of WP:WIAFA. Stop making accusations. Stick with facts, not negative speculation about my actions and motives. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:52, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm not speculating about your motives. I'm asking, and I'd appreciate a response. This situation has used up a lot of volunteer time. There have been serious personal attacks, an attempted outing, at least one editor driven away, and four nominations (one milhist, three FACs). Instead of all that, it would make sense to let it be fixed. SarahSV ^(talk) 06:10, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

• Fix what? You haven't raised any WIAFA points. Zero. the first FAC failed solely because the nomination wasn't done "the Wikipedia way", whatever the fuck that is. The second nom was withdrawn voluntarily to cut down the length. There was never even one WIAFA point raised in either FAC. Not one. The MILHIST failed because MILHIST said (speciously) this isn't MILHIST, and also because "this wasn't done the Wikipedia way" again. So please do not feel validated by mentioning past history. This article stands or falls by WIAFA, or else WIAFA is meaningless. Thanks... and oh yeah, retract your accusations. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 06:35, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

• For the record, I don't accept that Lingzhi pinged me in the hope of my support at FAC; my editorial involvement is such that any support from me would probably be disregarded anyway by the coordinators. It was at my request that the second FA was withdrawn, on the grounds of excessive length and inappropriate detailing of material, and I was largely responsible for the subsequent length reduction by about a third. It was thus entirely right, given my heavy previous involvement, that Lingzhi should let me know that he was returning to FAC. Whether this move was premature or not I can't say, but I don't accept for a moment that his motive was to claim a quick gold star – that would be utterly alien to his character. I shall, however, continue to contribute to the FAC itself, insofar as I can be of assistance there. Brianboulton (talk) 14:25, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I am writing this comment, started yesterday, in response to the comment about Lingzhi pinging me, among others—a comment that could be read as suggesting that I have a conflict of interest, and that Lingzhi was hoping to seek my support because I'm a "friend". Neither of these things is true, and I find the implications in bad faith. Lingzhi pinged me because I had, prior to the nomination, conducted a "source review", of a certain type that is valued at FAC—per recent discussions about the lack thereof on the FAC talk page. On the FAC page, I summarized the findings of that source review, to "check that box" on the FAC page. None of my edits to this article have been substantive from a content point of view, and I only recently started interacting with Lingzhi to any degree. Even if I had a conflict of interest, which I don't, I have taken no action which would be a violation of that conflict at FAC, and I don't appreciate the intimation that I was pinged so that I would Support the article's nomination. I have in fact a long history of staying away from the FACs of people I "know". Outriggr (talk) 01:18, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I didn't say anything about "a quick gold star". But the stated aim of the rewrite was to bypass the normal editing process and obtain a gold star.

Talk:Bengal famine of 1943, 1 December 2016: "I am working on a complete top-to-bottom rewrite in my personal userspace. NOTE this rewrite is MONTHS from being finished ... You are invited to read (but not edit) that rewrite here: User:Lingzhi/sandbox. You are invited to comment about the rewrite here: User talk:Lingzhi/sandbox.

Talk:Bengal famine of 1943, 8 April 2017: "After one full year of work and more than 4,200 edits, the top-to-bottom rewrite from User:Lingzhi/sandbox was just pasted in. ... From here the article will go immediately (as soon as I am finished typing this) into Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/A-Class review. With luck, it will go from there to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates."

Editors who objected to the rewrite were subjected to serious personal attacks; one was an expert on famine who was treated with contempt and an attempted outing (although Lingzi got the name wrong). Since then, in the space of a year, we've had four nominations, although it has been explained clearly on talk that the article isn't ready. The result is an article that's hard to read, poorly organized, written by an author who has skimmed the literature but is missing a lot of background. Look at the confusion about what "the government" refers to; the apparent belief that the British Secretary of State for India is based in India (which I tagged, but the tag was simply removed); little to nothing about the Indian civil service, who died, who didn't die, how certain groups were protected, and what the long-term consequences of the famine were. Sources are used poorly, cited unclearly; important sources are included in works cited but barely used. It would take hours to write up all the problems.

What we need is for the article to be opened up for normal editing.

I started doing the reading so that at least one editor/reviewer would be familiar with the sources in case Fowler&fowler didn't return, and I've started asking around for an academic reviewer. Now I find that the article has suddenly been nominated again. As for the notifications, pinging only those four clearly violated WP:CANVASS. The top three contributors to talk: Lingzhi (385), Fowler&fowler (155), SlimVirgin (134) (and mine are recent). But look who gets pinged: Mr rnddude (43), Ceoil (36), Brian (8), Outriggr (2). SarahSV ^(talk) 02:45, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

But there might be good reason for not pinging the three biggest contributors you named: one was himself, one had disappeared, and one was you—who surely didn't need pinging!  :) —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 15:48, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

• I am prepared to field constructive comments in line with WIAFA. All personal attacks uniformly ignored. Cheers. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:52, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

• Btw, Lingzhi, I never go round to mentioning it but the stuff I have looked at can be reviewed at User:Mr rnddude/Research. There's a few things that you might want to look into. I wrote a response to SV above, but have scrapped it as pointless. Mr rnddude (talk) 15:05, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

• Thanks! I am not ignoring you or Outriggr or Ceoil or Brian or anyone (I won't ping 'em 'cause I'd get accused of canvassing), but in truth I am juggling a half a dozen balls here, and the people who raise the most points on the FAC or the talk page (that would be Nick-D and SV) are the ones whose input kinda naturally takes up most of my attention. I apologize if I have neglected you etc. Cheers! Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 15:31, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Deleted Chattopadhyay's estimates. Explanation & apology. We can restore with additional info, if desired

• I apologize for deleting Chattopadhyay's mortality estimates. I just kinda did it reflexively because I've seen them disrespected so widely. I wasn't thinking. I am sorry. I apologize.
• Here is the text I deleted: "K. P. Chattopadhyay, an anthropologist at the University of Calcutta, estimated in 1944 that 3.5 million famine-related deaths had occurred in 1943.[8]"
• If we wish to restore that info, we certainly can. In that case, however, we should probably also add the following: The FIC report describes his methodology dismissively: "Professor K. P. Chattopadhyaya, Department of Anthropology, Calcutta University, made an estimate of the total mortality in 1943?-3.5 million deaths which has received wide publicity. This was based on surveys of sample groups in the worst famine areas, in which the mortality rate was 10 per cent, and it was assumed that-two-thirds of the population of the province were equally affected by the famine. The method of investigation followed cannot be accepted as statistically sound; to estimate the provincial death rate from a sample of this nature is unjustifiable." And for modern criticisms of Chattopadhyaya's figures see A. K. Sen, 'Famine Mortality: A Study of the Bengal Famine of 1943', in E. Hobsbawm, ed., Peasants in History: Essays in Honour of Daniel Thorner, New Delhi, 1981; A. K. Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford, 1982 (especially Appendix D, 'Famine Mortality: A Case Study'); and Paul R. Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal, The Famine of 1943-44, Oxford, 1982. These criticisms cited approvingly in Dyson & Maharatna, 1991. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 11:35, 18 April 2018 (UTC)