Talk:Meera Nanda

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Reminder, criticism is not forbidden, but it should be well-sourced. Andries (talk) 16:59, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

It is quite well-sourced. Please read WP:ATT. The article cited is in the same source in which Nanda made her revisionist claims earlier (open magazine). While it is not appropriate to source some of the more vitriolic criticisms of Nanda on the internet (blogs etc that do not satisfy WP:RS or WP:BLP), please do not engage in Vandalism by removing well-sourced text from reputable publications.14.139.223.67 (talk) 06:26, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I do not think that Koenraad Elst is well-sourced. He is highly partisan.Andries (talk) 09:48, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

So is Nanda. It's interesting that you object to citing Elst in the article on Nanda, but have no objections to Nanda's attacks on Elst cited in his wp article. In any case, partisanship is not relevant to WP:Notability. Given how widely Nanda's attacks against Indians are lobbied on here in wp. Given how you are well aware of this, I can't help but think that some serious bad faith editing is going on here on your part.14.139.223.67 (talk) 09:55, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

The relevant policy is WP:BLP. Andries (talk) 12:27, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Sourced criticisms do not violate WP:BLP. Please read the policies you actually cite. For instance, the BLP page says

"Criticism and praise should be included if they can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, so long as the material is :presented responsibly, conservatively, and in a disinterested tone." From what I see, the material from open magazine is secondary, and it is presented in a disinterested tone (the text does not take a position against the subject, merely cites the response of another commentator in the same periodical where Nanda published her attack piece. Furthermore, it says "Care must be taken with article structure to ensure the overall presentation and section headings are broadly neutral". This has also been met, since the criticisms are towards the very end, and the beginning of the article offers positive reviews of her work by William Dalrymple. Again, no WP:BLP violation has occurred here. Perhaps your objections simply involve a case of Wikipedia:I just don't like it rather than a BLP issue.117.194.192.102 (talk) 18:13, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

I removed criticism from Koenraad elst's website. I am quite sure that this is not reputable enough for criticism of a living person. I am not sure about the rest yet. Andries (talk) 06:22, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Criticism of Meera Nanda needs to be well sourced, even if Meera Nanda is partisan. Andries (talk) 07:16, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

A complete elimination of criticism will be a gross violation of WP:NPOV, considering that the open magazine article is an extremely well-sourced criticism, and highly notable, since Nanda herself wrote the original article in that magazine.117.194.198.192 (talk) 13:04, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Tagged for bias

We can't just have a "criticism" section. Need to summarise all reviews of her books from a NPOV. Kautilya3 (talk) 01:37, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Respect wp:BLP guidelines

@Humanism two: Most of your addition here [1] is undue in a BLP article. The correct way to write a page on a writer is to summarize scholarly reviews of substantial pieces of work and, as part of that, criticisms can also be included. You can't fill up a whole page with criticisms, that too by non-scholarly sources. You also can't cherry pick what you want to summarize like, for example, the article in The Hindu. The summary has to be balanced and cover the entire body of work. I suggest that you self-revert all your editions and do further research on the subject before you start editing the page. Kautilya3 (talk) 09:49, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

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Michel Danino

An IP has included and reinstated a supposed critique of Meera Nanda published as an Op-Ed in New Indian Express. I reverted saying it is not an WP:RS. The reinstatement justifies it by saying that he is a member of the ICHR.

Unfortunately, being a member of ICHR does not by itself make one a scholar. Normally, only scholars are appointed to the ICHR, but the present government made lots of political/ideological appointments, acknowledged as such by scholars. I can dig up references if any one needs them.

So to claim that Danino is a scholar, there must be evidence of some other kind. Any peer-reviewed publications? Any book reviews in journals? Without such, as far as we are concerned, he is just another columnist/ideologue.

Meera Nanda's Frontline column was based on her latest book. Danino is welcome to write a proper book review and publish it in a respectable journal/magazine. Then we might include his criticism. Not until then.

Pinging Vanamonde93, Joshua Jonathan, Ms Sarah Welch for their views. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:59, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

@Kautilya3:, @50.131.221.95: Not WP:RS. But on Meera Nanda's views on zero, pythagorus theorem etc, a better summary could be based on this and such peer reviewed sources. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 13:05, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Kautilya and Sarah Welch are quite correct: an Op-Ed does not count as a reliable source, and cannot be used to evaluate due weight. Vanamonde (talk) 13:08, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Sarah and Vanamonde. The Goonatilake review is not for the present book though. Nanda responded to her criticisms in her earlier response. She did admit some weaknesses in her presentation, which she hopefully rectified in her present volume. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:11, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Michel Danino is a converted westerner who beliefs in indigenous Aryans... Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:56, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Kautilya3

Michel Danino is a published author with a visiting appointment at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, an Institute of National Importance . You can see his list of publications at his home page. Apart from the books he has authored or translated, he has also edited high school text books published by the Central Board of Secondary Education.

Many of his works were published between 2004 and 2014 while the previous government was in power (if that should matter). And that includes the high school textbook he edited, which was published in 2013.

To claim that a person who was deemed good enough to edit high school textbooks by multiple governments, and is a member of the ICHR is not scholarly enough, to put it mildly, is outrageous.

The purpose of having a section on critics is to include opinions which provide a more balanced perspective. This is especially important, if the subject of the page has made claims which generate strong disagreements. Danino's op-ed questions very specific claims which Nanda has made. As Ms Sarah Welch pointed out there are other peer-reviewed sources which also question Nanda's views on the topic Danino touched upon.

Vanamonde I would understand if Wikipedia only allowed references to peer-reviewed articles. But that is not the case. Very often academic journals are behind pay-walls (like the Goonatilake paper linked above) which defeat the purpose of linking to them. More importantly, Kautilya3 did not remove other content which referred newspaper reports. Why? The fact that Nanda responded to criticism and even admitted some weakness in presentation, clearly shows that the criticism has some merit. So why should it not deserve a line on her wiki entry?

The intellectual Talibanism on display here reeks of censorship more akin to a communist country and not befitting the free world. The last time I checked Trump was losing; but his spirit of sending his opponents to jail seems to be alive here.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.131.221.95 (talk • contribs)

@50.131.221.95: Please no attacks on specific editor(s) or the community, per WP:TPNO guidelines. @Kautilya3/@Vandamonde93/etc are among the experienced and reasonable editors here. An Op-ed is neither RS nor appropriate for an encyclopedia, particularly in "Biography of Living Person"-space articles. An encyclopedic article is not a soapbox, for any and all sides. A peer reviewed, or equivalent WP:RS, on a person's work in a BLP article is a fair threshold. Try WP:RX resource center of wikipedia for help in accessing articles you are unable to: they are able to help in quite many cases, if you are polite and specific in your request. Susantha Goonatilake's journal article cross examines Meera Nanda's views on Pythagoras, zero and other claims, and a carefully written summary from Goonatilake would be appropriate for this article. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 23:26, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

What's the relevance of Danino's critique:

"Michel Danino points out severe distortions in her writings regarding the origins of the Pythagorean_theorem and the number zero."

Not to mention the non-neutral language: "points out severe distortions". Are there "distortions"? Let alone "severe"? Or are there points Danino disagrees with? In which case, we should say

"According to Michel Danino, there are flaws in Nanda's writings on [etc]".

The hyperbole shows the intention of the writer, I assume.

How about the source: New Indian Express, In defence of Indian Science, 13 October 2016.

Funny, the day it's being published an unknown IP refers to it. From that article:

"A recent case in point is Meera Nanda, who has been for some years on a self-appointed mission to expose all claims to knowledge by (let us lump them together, as she does) Hindu enthusiasts, nationalists, right-wingers or Hindutva activists. Her latest contribution, “Hindutva’s science envy” (Frontline, August 31), blames in a vast sweep “the current crop of Hindu nationalists and their intellectual enablers” for being the progeny of thinkers like “Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya, Vivekananda, Dayananda Saraswati, Annie Besant (and fellow Theosophists), Sarvepalli Radhakrishanan, M.S. Golwalkar and countless other gurus, philosophers and propagandists” — doubtless a most despicable crowd!"

Whereafter follows a critique of her writings on "early Indian knowledge of the Pythagoras theorem, and India’s claim to be “the birthplace of the sunya, or zero." That's a clear strategy of disreputing your opponent: take out a little pieze of info, and use it to cast doubts. I'd rather read the critique of Nanda herself; that seems much more interesting and better informed. Danino should respond to the real points. But given his publications in the Sarasvati river, I doubt he will.

As long as his critique is not published in a peer-reviewed journal, but as an "opinion," and his critique is not situated in its context, but presented as 'pointing out severe distortions', then it's not worthy of inclusion here. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:01, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Ah, right: Nanda's Hindutva’s science envy is a critique of Malhotra... Anyway (sigh), from that article:

"At least a millennium before Baudhayana was even born, Mesopotamians had figured out the relationship between the sides of a right-angle triangle described by Pythagoras’ theorem."

Danino's response:

"Even if conceding that the Mesopotamians did know that general form, as is likely, does this badly puncture the Indian text’s “priority”? Not necessarily, since the Shulbasūtras enshrine a geometrical tradition much older than the texts themselves, as Datta and Seidenberg demonstrated. How much older is a matter of speculation in the absence of clinching evidence."

Great critique: the tradition is older than the texts, so we were first. Hmm... doesn't the same argument apply to the Mesopotamians? Who built the first civilisation? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:17, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Her article on yoga, Not as old as you think, is a good article, wirth reading. She's right there, by the way. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:41, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

As I always say, all Hindu nationalists should read Wikipedia first. Our article does a pretty good job of explaining the history. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:14, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Zero

On zero, however, I think Meera Nanda's analysis is incomplete. I don't see her mentioning the Bakhshali manuscript or the knowledge of the place-value system (with dot) in Syria in 662 CE. These pieces of evidence point to the possibility that, even if Indians used Brahmi numerals in inscriptions, they were probably using place-value system in calculations. Just looking at inscriptions is not enough. Secondly, the decisive influence of Brahmagupta in defining zero as a mathematical concept is also not acknowledged. We don't see much evidence of this influence within India, but it was quite important in the Middle East. See History of Hindu-Arabic numeral system and 0 (number)#History. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:22, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Ok, she does discuss the Bakhshali manuscript (couldn't find it earlier because of spelling differences). She says:

Augustus F. R. Hoernle, the Indian-born Indologist of German descent who first studied the text, dated the work to the 3rd or the 4th century CE. But that date has been questioned by later historians, notably by Takao Hayashi in 1995 who places the mathematics contained in the text to be as late as 7th century. If Hayashi is right – as claimed by a general consensus among scholars – then the earlier date for zero in decimal place value is ruled out.

She doesn't give a citation for Hayashi. But his encyclopaedia article says:

The above points suggest that the Bakhshālī work (commentary) was composed not much later than Bhāskara I (the seventh century).

The subtle change of wording from "not much later than" to "as late as" suggests to me that she is being less than objective here.

She does note that shunya-bindu was mentioned in Vasavadatta, which she believes "was writen around the 6th century". (p.83). But our sources say 385–465 CE. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:57, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

References

Either way, Nanda's article, her thesis, and her arguments, should be presented first before a critique of them is being offered. But then, why focus on single articles, and not on her books? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:38, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Reception section

I changed the section title "Criticism" to "Reception". Please help by including scholarly reviews of the writer's works. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:19, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

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Edit I removed from the section on Hindu nationalism for examination

"Nanda notes the popularity of yoga exercises in the west, and the discomfort of Indians with this popularisation, who "blame Americans and other 'decadent' Westerners for reducing their spiritually rich tradition to mere calisthenics." Yet, she questions the idea that yoga is a "timeless" and "eternal" practice, which lies at the heart of Hinduism. She has criticised the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) for

The purist Hindu position ... that all yoga, including its physical or hatha yoga component, is rooted in the Hindu religion/way of life that goes all the way back to the Vedic sages and yogis.

Nanda notes that the yoga asanas do not have Vedic origins, and were treated with disdain by the 19th century Hindu elites, including Swami Vivekananda. She further notes that the separation of the physical practices from their cultural background started in India, not in the west, when Indian nationalists tried to counter western influences and

... hatha yoga took on many elements of Western gymnastics and body-building, which show up in the world-renowned Iyengar and Ashtanga Vinyasa schools of yoga. Far from honestly acknowledging the Western contributions to modern yoga, we Indians simply brand all yoga as 'Vedic,' a smug claim that has no intellectual integrity.

HAF rebutted her claims in a reply which pointed out that even the few sources she mentions in her book such as Mark Singleton, have themselves not made the claims that she ascribes them to. HAF also presented a brief outline of the recorded history of yoga, which aimed to disprove her arguments.

Her critique has been rejected by the Hindu American Foundation. Swaminathan Venkataraman, of the Hindu American Foundation, alleged that Nanda harboured "hatred" for Swami Vivekananda, and that she feared the emergence of an articulate Hindu voice bringing Hindu perspectives into the public sphere. Rajiv Malhotra criticised her for denouncing Indian culture and painting Hinduism as anti-scientific while allegedly praising Protestantism as scientific.

However, Nanda has pointed out that her criticism was equally applicable to all "resurgent religious-political movements" not only among Hindus, but also Christians and Muslims. The Bush White House's recruitment of Christian evangelicals and corporate scientists to shape policies on issues such as open support for Biblical Flood geology and stem cell research was very similar to the state support for Vedic astrology by the Hindu nationalists."

What does this have to do with Hindu nationalism? Can someone check the sources to make sure they are secondary and also that the wording isn't pov.Doug Weller talk 17:50, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

References