Talk:Bengal famine of 1943/Archive 3

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REPORTS AND LITERATURE ADDED

I've added a section on news reports and publications and included information on books written about the 1943 famine. The book--Hungry Bengal-- by Chittaprosad also includes many, many sketches drawn from life. These are available in several places on the internet, but I'm not sure how to include them. If anyone has the expertise to do this, please do so. It's an undisputed eyewitness account of the famine and deserves a place in any truthful record of the famine. Thanks. Anhilwara (talk) 15:02, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Bias?

I was reading the "Famines and democracies" part, and i know most of things said is probaly true, but it seemed pretty biased against the British, since it near enough suggested that when the british gone, the indian just magically had enough corn to feed everyone, whill in reality in 1960 they nearly had a mass famine, and the only reason it did not happen was due to a new type of corn.

"In 1961 Borlaug was invited to visit India by M. S. Swaminathan, adviser to the Indian minister of agriculture. India was on the brink of mass famine. Huge shipments of food aid from America were all that stood between its swelling population and a terrible fate. One or two people were starting to say the unsayable. After an epiphany in a taxi in a crowded Delhi street, the environmentalist Paul Ehrlich wrote a best-seller arguing that the world had “too many people”. Not only could America not save India; it should not save India. Mass starvation was inevitable, and not just for India, but for the world.

Borlaug refused to be so pessimistic. He arrived in India in March 1963 and began testing three new varieties of Mexican wheat. The yields were four or five times better than Indian varieties. In 1965, after overcoming much bureaucratic opposition, Swaminathan persuaded his government to order 18,000 tonnes of Borlaug's seed. Borlaug loaded 35 trucks in Mexico and sent them north to Los Angeles. The convoy was held up by the Mexican police, stopped at the border by United States officials and then held up by the National Guard when the Watts riots prevented them reaching the port. Then, as the shipment eventually sailed, war broke out between India and Pakistan.

As it happened, the war proved a godsend, because the state grain monopolies lost their power to block the spread of Borlaug's wheat. Eager farmers took it up with astonishing results. By 1974, India wheat production had tripled and India was self-sufficient in food; it has never faced a famine since. In 1970 Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for firing the first shot in what came to be called the “green revolution”."

[1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.6.174.160 (talk • contribs) 21:04, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

The Economist magazine's truly despicable conduct during that famine means it cannot be used as a reliable source to claim a case of bias. It followed the doctrine of Adam Smith in the wealth of nations. Smith wrote, "famine has never arisen from any other cause but the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconvenience of dearth." This was in relation to the Bengal famine of 1770 (caused by the East India Company) and the line was followed up to the later famines by the Economist.
In British India, according to the most reliable estimates, the deaths from the 1876-1878 famine were in the range of 6-8 million and between 1896 and 1900, were between 17 to 20 million. According to a British statistician who analysed Indian food security measures in the two millennia prior to 1800, there was one major famine a century in India. Under British rule there was one every four years.
Indeed, soon after the British conquest of Bengal in 1757, British policies led to the Great Bengal Famine of 1770 where, in certain regions up to a third of the population died. India has not suffered from a serious famine since the British left
See Mike Davis in his Late Victorian Holocausts
—SlaineMacRoth 18:57, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
About the argument that India didn't have a famine after the British left: that's true. But Bangladesh did. The earlier famines occurred in what is now Bangladesh so it's not that surprising that India didn't suffer another after. In 1974, however, over 1 million people died in the Bangladesh famine which implies that your argument is misleading. India, as a political entity, might not have had a famine, but the area that had famines previously did. this further implies that the region is somewhat susceptible to famine rather then it being an intent of British policy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.192.79.162 (talk) 16:56, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

The article's attack on Amartya Sen seems tendentious and belligerent; is there really no one who supports Sen's account? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.91.78.233 (talk) 05:03, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Bengali famine, Sen, Bowbrick

[moved from Rjensen talk page] You state in your edit summary: Bowbrick is an established expert at Oxford = a RS in the field and his papers qualify as RS regardless of website. Actually, the papers themselves refer to him as "independent consultant", and looking at his website doesn't exactly inspire confidence either: [2] ("What Peter can do for you" etc.) There's SOME relevant qualifications QUALIFICATIONS but not quite enough to describe him as "an established expert at Oxford", unless I'm missing something.

More generally the article is atrocious. Sen is relegated to a crappy little paragraph whose whole purpose seems to be to let Bowbrick (and others) take potshots at him, plus of course a good dose of very POV original research. I'm willing to bet there's some serious WP:COI going on here, in addition to your typical Wikipedia obsession of pushing one's views, however fringe they are.VolunteerMarek 00:47, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Bowbrick is a well-established British expert on food, which is the the topic at hand. He for many years was a researcher at the Agricultural Economics Institute, Oxford & published numerous articles in leading journals (such as Oxford Development Studies Oxford Agrarian Studies, Agricultural Administration, etc] He had quite a debate with Sen in 1986-7 and published his critiques in a major scholarly journal (see Bowbrick, P.(1986),'The Causes of Famine: A Refutation of Professor Sen's Theory', Food Policy, v 11 (1987) for example; it has been cited by scores of scholars making it a RS--indeed his debate with Sen has been the topic of another scholar;s article (George Allen, "Famines: the Bowbrick-Sen dispute and some related issues" Food Policy, Vol 11 (No 3) (1986)] Bowbrick is now retired (hence "independent consultant"), but he has posted some of his papers online which is useful for Wiki readers. The issue was Sen's argument that there was plenty of food, and Bowbrick's argument that the food supply was down. As for the treatment of Sen, you should upgrade it rather than complain about conspiracies. Keep in mind that all edits have to be impartial. Rjensen (talk) 06:05, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


In fact Nobel Prize of economics 1998 was awarded to Amartya Sen who had collected a large amount of data from the Bengal famine of 1943. [| Award Ceremony Speech], nobelprize.org

Bowbrick's own website says [| Peter Bowbrick on Famine]

Bottmline is that Browbick's position does not hold per are many sources and his position is completely in minority. Sen's theory has been awarded Nobel Prize too which is much more recognized globally than some few minutes of calculator's calculations that Bowbrick refers to. His rebuttal has got no such acknowledgement other than Wikipedia.111.91.95.40 (talk) 13:26, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I think that pretty much captures the essence of the problem here.Volunteer Marek 01:56, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I think you have missed the point. Wikipedia is about verifiable evidence, and this article has 41 primary sources, which carry infinitely more weight than what any modern commentator thinks, as well as 22 commentators, most of whom spent far more time on this than Sen, months or years rather than days. There is a vast amount of evidence (not Bowbrick) that the yield statistics at the time were meaningless. There is a vast amount of evidence (not Bowbrick) that there was widespread hunger in the production districts. There is a vast amount of evidence (not Bowbrick) on interference with the supply system. There is a vast amount of evidence (not Bowbrick) showing that the Bengal Government had the same diagnosis as Sen. And any competent agricultural economist will do the calculations to see how much more people would have to eat to cause a famine in the way postulated by Sen – it is a simple calculation, not a matter of counting citations. Sen got nearly all his facts for his from the Famine Inquiry Commission report, though he was accused of misstating more than 30 of them and neither he nor anyone else has denied this – he avoided the issue in his reply to Bowbrick. His “causes of famine” were lifted verbatim from the Famine Inquiry Commission (without acknowledgement!) but he had not read the report carefully enough to realize that both the FIC and Braund had presented them as hypotheses to be tested – and the ones Sen based his arguments on were rejected as being completely contradicted by the evidence. Not by one modern commentator, but by a mass of contemporary evidence and analysis. But the point of Wikipedia is that it identifies the controversies and the sources: if you have the population statistics and consumption statistics, it takes 5 minutes to see if a famine could have been caused in the way Sen says. It takes you 2 or 3 hours to see whether Sen or Bowbrick is right on what Sen’s sources really said. The article does not take a position on this: it is up to you to do the work and draw your own conclusions.AidWorker (talk) 13:51, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

No, you have missed the point despite the fact it was already explained to you before. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a research journal. What we use is secondary sources not primary sources. We do not engage in original research. 41 primary sources do not carry more weight than modern commentary. This article is currently one big exercise in original research.Volunteer Marek 14:42, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

As I made very clear in response to your previous,garbled, explanation, economists dealing with famine use primary and secondary differently from Wikipedia: the sources here meet Wikipedia criteria. As I made very clear, your personal definition is different yet again, stating that the Famine Inquiry Commission report is a primary source according to Wikipedia definitions, when Wikipedia would call it secondary or tertiary.

And, contrary to what you say, when all contemporary statisticians agree that the food availability statistics were worse than meaningless and Sen says they were dead accurate, we do not say that because he is a later commentator he must be right. Facts are sacred: if commentators produce conclusions contrary to the facts, we do not change the facts.

The article meets Wikipedia criteria exactly. “Research that consists of collecting and organizing material from existing sources within the provisions of this and other content policies is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia. Best practice is to research the most reliable sources on the topic and summarize what they say in your own words, with each statement in the article attributable to a source that makes that statement explicitly.” (Wikipedia:No original research). And yes all through it are references to what Wikipedia defines as secondary sources, many of them outstanding work by top academics.

At any time perhaps 1% of economists have the specific professional skills that would make them competent to make a judgement on a contribution to the economics of famine: the other 99% are no more competent than I am to select the Nobel Prize winner for physics. So the fact that the 99% chose Sen 25 years ago does not in any way give his arguments special status – even ignoring the new evidence and new analysis since then. AidWorker (talk) 16:29, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Everyone is agreed that one of the key issues is the reliability of Indian rice production data. Dewey appeared to have written the completely authorative study of this, but I would not cite this until I had checked that it was not faked, as so much academic research is – faked evidence here encourages governments to adopt the same disastrous policies as those used in Bengal in 1943. So I acted strictly according to Wikipedia guidelines: I spent some weeks finding, then verifying sources he used. I cited those I checked in the normal way, and those I could not locate as “cited by Dewey”. This is using a reputable secondary source to avoid cherrypicking, and checking primary sources. All Dewey’s research, not mine. I also used another reputable secondary source: the Famine Inquiry Commission report, which reported a different set of statistical evidence given to it, which happened to agree with Dewey, and I checked that this was verifiable. Again, not my research. Again, not based on cherrypicked primary sources. And so on with all my editing. AidWorker (talk) 10:27, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

First cut it out with the personal attacks. Second, I don't really care about your opinions as to what economists are doing wrong, nor your opinion of Sen or of his work. What I care about is what actual reliable sources say. The point is that this whole article is just original research based on your own idiosyncratic interpretation of primary sources. That is not within Wikipedia policy. And it's also why this article is mostly crap.Volunteer Marek 16:11, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I note that you believe that you know all the ‘actual reliable sources’, and that you know and understand what all the ‘actual reliable sources’ say, and that what is on the page does not conform to their interpretations. Alternatively, you believe that you know that all the heavyweight researchers cited, Tauger, Dewey, Bowbrick, Mukerjee, Famine Inquiry Commission etc., etc. as well as the giants of the Indian statistical revolution, have got it wrong in the primary sources they cite and their interpretation of the sources. I note that, either way, the implication is that any source that does not confirm your prejudices is, ipso facto, not a reliable source. I note that you believe that anything that does not confirm your prejudice is “crap”.

I, on the other hand, continue to adhere to Wikipedia policy, that I have to check that what I put on the page is confirmed by a verifiable source, and that I have to reference that source. I continue to adhere to Wikipedia policy that I cite the original source where possible, not say that commentator X says that Y says that Z. I continue to put interpretations I disagree with on the page, after checking that the researchers have accurately reported what is in their sources. I continue to mention that there were and are differences of interpretation – Wikipedia cannot pretend to be the final arbiter. And I refuse to remove verifiable facts cited by the heavyweight researchers and their interpretations of them on the grounds they conflict with your prejudices. That would be faking. And faked evidence on famines kills people.AidWorker (talk) 11:53, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I note that you believe that more space should be given to the ideas of Amartya Sen, and that criticisms of his work should be removed or toned down, and that you believe this in spite of being aware that it has been suggested in academic papers that he systematically misstated the facts in the sources he cites, and that neither he nor anyone else has challenged the evidence produced to support this suggestion. I note that you refuse to check whether he or his critics have cited the sources correctly. I note too that your wish to remove contemporary sources which you term “primary sources” will have the effect of removing the very sources that Sen is accused of misrepresenting.

Can we stop this ‘primary source’ nonsense. Volunteer Marek states that the report of the Famine Inquiry Commission is a primary source and should not be cited on this page. In fact, individual civil servants such as Braund wrote their versions of what happened, which were a mixture of primary and secondary according to Wikipedia guidelines, “A book by a military historian about the Second World War might be a secondary source about the war, but if it includes details of the author's own war experiences, it would be a primary source about those experiences.”( "WP:PRIMARY"). Their division, then their Department or Ministry reviewed the submissions of the individual civil servants and checked them for accuracy and consistency before preparing a Departmental or Ministerial submission (a secondary source). The Famine Inquiry Commission reviewed and compared these (often conflicting) submissions, and compared these with the submissions of other, non government, organizations and individuals (again, usually secondary sources) to produce its highly critical report, which is a tertiary source according to Wikipedia’s definitions. Similarly Dewey’s research is secondary (“A secondary source provides an author's own thinking based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event. It contains an author's interpretation, analysis, or evaluation of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources.”) or tertiary. While the results of a single statistical survey are clearly primary, a datum, the reviews by the statisticians, comparing different surveys, different methodologies, different designs, etc. are secondary or tertiary. The various Departmental Reports, Parliamentary reports, etc. are secondary or tertiary.

If a statement in a recent paper is not supported by primary or secondary sources, or if it is contradicted by the sources cited, the paper is, at best, a primary source for this. This is so even if much of the rest of the paper is secondary or tertiary. That is why it is incumbent on editors to CHECK the sources. AidWorker (talk) 14:15, 7 February 2013 (UTC)


It is a serious abuse of process to flag a page with warnings of bias and use of primary sources and leave the flags up for eighteen months without providing justification. In this case we have a bald assertion by someone not familiar with the literature that the page is biased, though it clearly covers all aspects raised by the various experts. The complaint appears to be that the page does refer mainly to the only author the critic appears to have heard of. We also have someone stating that sources are “primary” without having read them. It takes careful reading and checking of the source cited to decide whether a statement in a paper is primary, secondary, tertiary or just invention. And it would be misleading and improper to cite a tertiary source for a survey, say, cited without criticism by most people writing on the subject. Accordingly, I have removed the flags. AidWorker (talk) 10:26, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

No, it is not. The abuse of process is the fact that the issues highlight above have not been addressed. The article overwhelmingly relies on primary sources and on Wikipedia editor's (yours) interpretation of these. It also cherry picks sources and omits others. It relegates significant contributions to the study of the famine (by Nobel prize winner, among others) to a section daftly entitled "Revisionists". The article still has problems. If the flags have been up for eighteen months, it's because no effort has been made in those eighteen months to address any of the problems highlighted by the flags.Volunteer Marek 14:19, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
Here is an example of the problems which are rampant throughout this article: [3]. The IP actually is right on this (I very very rarely say that!). The sentence is "He rejected the calculations of The Famine Inquiry Commission, Afzal Husain". This is in reference to Sen's work from the 1970's. It is sourced to... all the primary source from 1945. That doesn't make any sense. How can sources from 1945 support something that hasn't been said yet?!? And of course what secondary sources ARE actually used in that paragraph are cherry picked to be critical of Sen.Volunteer Marek 01:37, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

inaccurate!

I agree with the above - reflects a bias that runs COUNTER to the academic consensus, which is in fact reflected by Sen (labeled a "revisionist" in the text.) He's a Nobel Prize winner, including for this work on famine.

Bayly, 2006 on Bengal:

It is difficult to imagine a clearer breach of trust and duty than the treatment of Indian refugees from Burma in 1942, huge numbers of whom were allowed to die quite needlessly on the routes out of the country or in Assam. Again, how can the three million deaths that occurred during the Bengal famine of 1942–43 be teased into a history of imperial virtue? It is true that the British government was at this moment preoccupied in the struggle with Nazi Germany, a fact that must stand on the credit side in any moral judgment. Yet the suffering in Bengal could easily and rapidly have been averted in 1943 by strong action from the London and Delhi authorities, as it was when the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, began to push for action in 1944.

[1]

Mithra26 (talk) 00:33, 4 June 2013 (UTC) While I share many of Bayly's emotions on the disastrous way in which the famine was treated, my emotions and his are irrelevant. Wikipedia demands verifiable facts. The verifiable facts in the article, from reputable secondary and tertiary sources, are absolutely damning about the inaction of the governments involved. Facts are also far more likely to convince people than emotional outbursts.AidWorker (talk) 11:41, 7 June 2013 (UTC)


On Faking and Cherry Picking

Volunteer Marek says indignantly “How can sources from 1945 support something that hasn't been said yet?!?” He must be the only person in the world who does not recognize that an argument may be contradicted or suported by evidence or analysis produced earlier, in this case contemporary evidence and analysis. But he has previously given us some inkling of his relationship to the truth.

Volunteer Marek accuses me of cherry picking. In fact, as previous discussion has shown he has been pressing for the suppression of a wide range of publications that do not support his pet argument, even secondary and tertiary sources that are considered of key importance by everyone including Sen, like the Report of the Famine Inquiry Commission. I, on the other hand, have been at pains to present the wide variety in the serious literature (including arguments that I personally do not consider convincing) which is the reverse of cherry picking. So again Volunteer Marek is wrong.

Volunteer Marek is indignant that the article uses the term “Revisionists”. Wikipedia says, “In historiography historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of orthodox views on evidence, motivations, and decision-making processes surrounding a historical event. Though the word revisionismis sometimes used in a negative way, constant revision of history is part of the normal scholarly process of writing history.” Sen’s work was quite consciously revisionist as he repeatedly claims, and attracted attention purely because of this.

When two orthodoxies clash like this, Wikipedia must say where they clash. Bowbrick and Tauger are the only people to analyse Sen in depth documenting what exactly the disagreement is. It is necessary to mention one at least of the previous orthodoxy, the Famine Inquiry Commission, which is also Sen’s main source (almost his only one). It would be quite improper to cite papers which do not tackle this clash between Sen and the previous orthodoxy here. Volunteer Marek is entirely wrong to suggest that this is cherry picking.

Sen’s claim that the Bengal crop forecasts over ten years were so extraordinarily accurate is crucial – without it he has nothing to say. So it is necessary that this is presented with the available evidence on the accuracy of this claim, the assessment by contemporary statisticans and administrators.

It is outright faking, using the technique of suppressio veri, to suppress the fact that Sen has been accused of misrepresenting the facts in his sources in more than thirty instances, and that if these misrepresentations were removed, his thesis would vanish. The claims by Bowbrick, Tauger, Goswami, Dyson and Maharatna etc that Sen has misstated the evidence in his sources are of fundamental importance (and there are other examples in the literature). We know that Sen did not challenge Bowbrick on this, when the journal editor told him that if he did, the journal would publish the original quotes and let the readers draw their own conclusions. And nobody else has put their reputation on the line by challenging the critics.


It is outright faking to cut out the most obvious weaknesses, that Sen assumes that some of the Bengal population ate two to six week’s normal food every day, or that when the Bengal Government had the same view of food supply as Sen did, and acted on that view, 1.5-4 million people died of starvation and two thirds of the population went hungry. It is outright faking to suppress the fact that all contemporary statisticans found the crop forecasts Sen relies on meaningless .

Faking information here will lead to wrong decisions being made in future famines, and to many extra deaths. So would Volunteer Marek desist.AidWorker (talk) 11:41, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Need rewrite

I just came here and feels that the article needs some work. I am not sure where to start though. We should make the points of how British government was more interested in war efforts than supplying food to India in the later stages of Famine. -sarvajna (talk) 13:59, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

The statements on the article that the neutrality of the page is questioned are because some people passionately believe Amartya Sen's(and the Bengal Government's) view that there was plenty of food available in Bengal, and object to references to the evidence that Bengal was desperately short of food and needed help from the rest of India and probably the world, and, indeed they removed some evidence. i.e you cannot believe both Sen and Mukerjee. So the section you suggest may well be enlarged and restored, citing serious researchers who have examined the evidence. However, it is dependent on whether there really was enough food available.AidWorker (talk) 18:42, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

1943 a bumper crop ?

I'm a little confused here. If the figures given are accurate, 1943 ranked 5th out of the 6 years (1938-1943) given. Unless they were all bumper crops, how does coming 5th out of 6 make 1943 a bumper crop ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ppauper (talk • contribs) 16:21, 30 November 20aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa05‎ (UTC)

Came on this topic researching something else. I have no answers but I have this to offer from TECHNICAL REPORT 60, RICE BLAST EPIPHYTOLOGY(U), Thomas H. Barksdale, Marian W. Jones (1965):

Many statements about yield loss caused by rice blast can be found in the literature;...

When a percentage loss figure for a certain area is given, it is usually not clear how the estimate was made (and to what extent political considerations may have entered the estimating procedure). There have been few scientists reporting

about the techniques of estimating loss.

71.47.124.243 (talk) 14:54, 20 January 2014 (UTC)lol

On Das and Time Magazine

I have removed the very long paragraph on Das. There is not space to put review articles on all contemporary research - this would make the article book length. Nor is it the function of Wikipedia. A lot of good research gets a footnote, and some people would prefer that it is not mentioned at all! I suggest the editor puts it on his own web site on the famine, or consults the references and asks someone like Bowbrick who does put contemporary research on the web to do so, and that he checks that Delhi University and ISEC (also in the references) have copies of the papers – ideally he should do all of these. Someone has cited an article in Time, a popular magazine, whose latest issue leads with a claim that an American pop singer is the most influential woman in the world! Reliability zero. Please confine references to reputable sources.AidWorker (talk) 13:08, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Somebody actually needs to do a complete purging of all the biased sources.Could you do it with a copy of this article in your own sandbox and show me how it would look like?Guru-45 (talk) 00:15, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Possible copyright problem

This article has been revised as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. Diannaa (talk) 17:03, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Further Burmese Exports deliberately refused ?

German wiki states that offers by Subhash Chandra Bose, leader of the Indian National Army, of ongoing food trade were deliberately refused to not increase the popularity of Azad Hind. Unfortunately the sources there are quite scare. Maybe somebody wants follow that story and include it in this article if necessary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Friedrichson1717 (talk • contribs) 17:09, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Bias

Of COURSE the neutrality of this article is disputed! Anything in colonial history will be controversial, because the colonized have a fundamentally different view than the colonizers. It is important for Wikipedia to feature both sides. Insisting on ONE view will NOT serve the interests of scholarship. Secondly, this "dispute" may never be resolved because there just isn't relevant data, including that on government decision-making. Third, the article is restrained in that it leaves out certain authors' accusation of genocide, directed at Churchill Sooku (talk) 21:06, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Gross misrepresentation of a historical event

Birittain's and Churchill's role in particular has been wiped out. Find the links here. very easy to google them.

http://www.tehelka.com/remembering-indias-forgotten-holocaust/ http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2031992,00.html http://www.ibtimes.com/bengal-famine-1943-man-made-holocaust-1100525 http://your story.com/2014/08/bengal-famine-genocide/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.154.196.70 (talk) 13:01, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

See WP:FRINGE. Here's a quote from that first article:
It took Adolf Hitler and his Nazi cohorts 12 years to round up and murder 6 million Jews, but their Teutonic cousins, the British, managed to kill almost 4 million Indians in just over a year, with Prime Minister Winston Churchill cheering from the sidelines.
That's a great, unbiased source for us to use, isn't it? IgnorantArmies (talk) 13:51, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
And you're actually saying Wikipedia should regard Gideon Polya (a biochemist) as an expert on this subject? Would that be the same Gideon Polya who wrote:
The racist Zionists (RZs) in their lying, murderous, ends-justify-the-means prosecution of the ongoing Palestinian Genocide have been the World's worst anti-Semites and holocaust deniers for a century.
and has been published on Jew Watch? IgnorantArmies (talk) 13:58, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

This is such a badly written article which absolutely no mention of Churchill and the role of British Govt. on the famine which killed us like flies. Can anyone suggest me how can we correct this article and put some real perspective on this?

This is such a badly written article which absolutely no mention of Churchill and the role of British Govt. on the famine which killed us like flies. Can anyone suggest me how can we correct this article and put some real perspective on this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.237.215.58 (talk) 12:14, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

This article was written in a convoluted fashion in order to avoid effecting a stain on the reputation of Churchill and the Allied wartime government. If this article were properly written, then Hitler and his Evil Nazis would not look so bad by comparison, which is an absolute no-no. 71.169.179.144 (talk) 04:41, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
The Famine happened due to a combination of natural disaster, war and incompetence, amongst other factors, the notion that the British Government policies compared unfavourably to the systematic and deliberate extermination policies of the Nazis is beyond ridiculous. You may well hate the British Empire, many do with varying degrees of justification, however that isn't a reason why Wikipedia should allow fringe revisionists to spout spurious nonsense.141.8.46.27 (talk) 12:33, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
It doesn't matter how people die, either by a Nazi death camp or due to the callous indifference of the British Raj towards the people of India both are comparable crimes against humanity. There were many occurrences of famine during British times stretching all the way back to the actions of the East India Company, however since independence and despite the enormous size of the present day Indian population incidence of famine have been rare and when they did occur it was on a much smaller scale than during British rule. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zubinix (talk • contribs) 12:56, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
Of course it matters how people die. One was systematic destruction and the other was due to circumstances and incompetency, it's like comparing murder to manslaughter and saying they are equivalent because people die without taking the differences between them into account. It's a ridiculously biased position to take and Wikipedia isn't supposed to be biased. Also to compare incidents that happened previously in India to modern India is a spurious argument, post-war India has access to logistics and technology that weren't available in either a World War or in earlier centuries. 141.8.46.27 (talk) 19:51, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Revenge reverting

This is revert by Toby72 is just revenge-reverting (and should be sanctioned) because we have a disagreement elsewhere. Quite petty. But just to substantiate the OR tag, here is the previous discussion [4] which never got resolved.Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:26, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

In fact, it's exactly the opposite. This edit by Volunteer Marek was probably just revenge drive-by tagging & wikihounding because we have a disagreement elsewhere—[5]. I have edited this article just a few days before. Volunteer Marek did not make any edit to this article for several years.
WP:TAGGING — It is best to provide the fewest number of the most specific possible tags. Placing too many tags on an article is "tag-bombing", disruptive, or may be a violation of Do not disrupt Wikipedia to make a point.
This article has 4 "neutrality tags" and 2 "original research" tags. Is it really necessary to have 6 tags? -- Tobby72 (talk) 22:19, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Biased Article

This article seems to take the western sources as credible while rejecting every other account of the story. It is difficult to believe that western sources will implicate themselves in mass murder as is the case with absolutely any entity in power. Whether the British government intentionally allowed 4 million people to die or not is not as important as the fact that those 4 million people were British subjects and they starved on Britains watch. Last I checked no one was starving to death in Britain. This was at the very least criminal negligence. It is however difficult to leave it at that since the man in charge of Britain at that time, Churchill, hated Indians. Forget ordinary Indians; that man wished death upon a man like Gandhi. Having a man like that at the helm when 4 million people starved to death will no doubt give credence to the argument that they were neglected and left to die as they were subhuman and expendable. Finally, all of the references that exonerate the British primarily come from the time of the war and are of British origin. That in itself is enough to dispute the neutrality of this article. You wouldn't after all trust an article on Stalin that was written almost exclusively by the Russians would you? Especially if that article implicates your country in mass murder, even if it was simply out of negligence. Brits will be hard pressed to prove that they did everything in their power to alleviate the suffering because there isn't anything to support that claim.

People will always nitpick on such articles because after all who wants to be accused of mass murder? But here's a thought. If it happened on your watch then you are responsible. Period. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.88.90.228 (talk) 20:35, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

  1. ^ Moral judgment: empire, nation and history Source: European review [1062-7987] Bayly, C A yr:2006 vol:14 iss:03 pg:385
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