Talk:Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus/Archive 6

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The language of the exodus

Raliv Galiv ya Chaliv has a huge number of English translations such as "assimilate, die or leave" [1], "be one among us, flee, or be decimated" (from Our Moon Has Blood Clots), "convert to Islam, leave the place or perish" (from the book Kashmir: Its Aborigines and their Exodus) "convert, die or escape", "join us, die or flee" etc. I can't seem to find anything about it other than a line or two here or there about it and that too in recent references. There doesn't seem to be any scholarly analysis with respect to this particular slogan. There could be many reasons for this. The parent topic for this slogan/threat in the context of this article falls into the larger language of the exodus (of the oppressor, oppressed, bystander) and there is hope that this could be worked into the article. DTM (talk) 14:23, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, there were very few independent observers in the Kashmir Valley at that time. This particular slogan was not mentioned by any source in 1990, as far as I could search.

The closest I can find from 1990 is this:

At night, Muslim mosques broadcast messages from loudspeakers telling all Hindus to leave Kashmir. "Leave your ladies here," the broadcasts ordered. "We want Kashmir without you but leave your ladies here."

-- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:05, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

References

Mass revert

Fowler&fowler: no issues, I'll make one edit a day if that helps those watching this article in reviewing the changes. I did not see too much activity here in April, the last edit being on 7th. I am interested more in the structure of this article, than content (which I minimally changed in my 18 edits), and which you say is already in hard-won consensus. If there are specific structure-related discussions in the archives, you can point me to them. Jay (talk) 23:50, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

A few edits a day is fine with longer edit summaries. All at once, they become difficult for people to monitor. I'm busy elsewhere, but there are others watching here. Also, not that you did, but please don't remove quotes within references. They have been left there to use in a later rewrite of rest of the article, that is, in an inversion of what a lead typically is. The sources in the lead are scholarly and up-to-date. Thanks! Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:00, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Or if the edits involve structural changes, you could post on the talk page and wait for a few days for people to respond. Thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:02, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

"hard-won consensus" - you are using this everywhere you edit Fowler. DTM (talk) 12:44, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Really, everywhere? On Darjeeling at FAR, which is what I have been editing the last few days? Or just those articles, where I removed the poor edits you had made earlier. Let us not go down that road. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:55, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Also, if you have no issues, @Jay:, why have you titled the thread, "mass revert?" Why is the "mass" needed? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:12, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

What is the concern with the word? Wasn't it a mass revert? Jay (talk) 14:20, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

If you remove a 20-word ungrammatical sentence a word at a time in 20 edits, it is no different from removing the whole sentence in one edit. If I revert your action, I restore the previous edit. In the first instance it would be called a mass revert; in the second it would be a plain old revert. A description better suited to a talk page discussion (and therefore to its title) would be "Restoration of an ungrammatical sentence." In other words, it is better to reference the content of the reversion, as best we can, not the form. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:00, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

The 20-word example is not suitable here. The edits were distinct, not part of a whole. However, they were reverted en masse with reason Way too many changes by someone who has played no role in the hard-won consensus on this page (and I did not oppose that action). Jay (talk) 06:14, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

I am suggesting that how you view your edits is not the same as how I viewed them. There are editors who make a single run through an article making edits similar to what I saw, including the addition at the end of the sentences, "The apathy on the part of the government and the sufferings of the Kashmiri Hindus have been highlighted in a play titled 'Kaash Kashmir'.[cited to a blog] Such efforts or claims have lacked political will as journalist Rahul Pandita writes in a memoir.[cited to a Wall Street Journal review]" in an article whose lead substantially uses Mridu Rai's article (Rai, Mridu (2021), "Narratives from exile: Kashmiri Pandits and their construction of the past", in Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (eds.), Kashmir and the Future of South Asia.) and quotes from it with a view to someone rewriting the individual section. As for "en masse" used adjectively, the article's very lead sentence had a long, tortuous, and much cited history. You could have characterized the revert in the title simply, "Revert of my edits," or precisely "Revert of my 18 edits" Anyway, not a biggie, was curious though. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 08:13, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the diff you saw: when I am reviewing, and I see that a combined diff has too many changes beyond a simple review, I review them edit by edit. But as you said you are busy elsewhere, and it's difficult to monitor, no complaints. Jay (talk) 06:39, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Self-contained

@Kautilya3: regarding Don't trim the lead please; it is meant to be self-contained, I did not understand the concept of a self-contained lead. Can you explain? Jay (talk) 07:04, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

The lead is always supposed to be self-contained. But, in the present context, the lead and the body have no relation to each other because the lead is based on scholarly sources and the body on essentially op-eds. The idea is to rewrite the body using scholarly sources. If you have the time and energy, you are welcome to do it. However, do not move stuff out of the lead. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:38, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

The lead is always supposed to be self-contained: This is a repeat of your edit summary I quoted, and which I said I did not understand. Can you explain what you mean when you say that the lead is meant to be self-contained? I did not find this concept in WP or WT namespace, so I assume it is your personal opinion. Jay (talk) 18:25, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

The lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic. MOS:LEAD. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:21, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! Now that we have got this sorted out, what has "stand on its own" got to do with your requirement of do not move stuff out of the lead? MOS:LEAD says significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article. Anything additional can be deleted or moved to the body. I have a list lined up for moving stuff out of the lead, and anyone can copy (not move) it back to the lead as a summary, or I'll do it myself where possible. Jay (talk) 07:02, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

That kind of moving can only be considered after the body has been rewritten by taking into the scholarly sources that are cited in the lead. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:22, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Why so? Jay (talk) 19:20, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

@Jay: You did not find that approach in the various spaces you cared to look because very likely you have no experience editing India-related articles. Your edits bespeak a history of 15K edits of everything but content, the latter of a few stubs. That philosophy has governed the creation of major articles on WP India, including the FA India, WP's oldest country FA, now 17 years old; it has done so from the time of Nichalp, arb and admin, who led to drive early on for more India-related featured content on WP. I suggest that you make no unilateral action, i.e. for which you have not garnered a consensus. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:17, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Are you saying that major India-related articles have not followed the MOS of lead, but started as lead-heavy and then grew body-wise? Jay (talk) 19:20, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Of course, they have not. Dozens. It includes some major FAs that are WP's jewels. Dozens, in addition, wait to be improved. Wikipedia does not move ahead by following rules. It does so by the talents of people who write. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:35, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 8 May 2022

Death are 4000-5000. Not 40-50 deaths... Please correct it. 2409:4052:4D95:E7D3:0:0:7D0A:C610 (talk) 20:41, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. MadGuy7023 (talk) 20:48, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 16 May 2022

The No. of Kashmiri Pandits died in 1980-1993 is around 40,000, along with few muslims also by the terrorists, who wanted to make kashmir a free country with the name Islamic republic of Kashmir.

Many were led to flee, many were slaughtered, and many were converted, by the terrorists Bitta karate and his accomplish. Gargshivam482 (talk) 07:55, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. TrangaBellam (talk) 08:55, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 20 May 2022

3000-5000 Hindu killings and forceful Exodus of Hindu pundits in violent environment. Vmvick (talk) 01:10, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:16, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Error

Firstly it's not exodus. it's mass genocide by Islamic terror and also number of people killed are over than thousand. Please update 157.42.246.0 (talk) 12:07, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:09, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 23 October 2022

actually more than 5000 kashmiri pandits were killed and 500000 were sent out of valley please improve it some muslims fkers changed it please 🙏🙏😢 Aadarsh129.3 (talk) 16:49, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Kautilya3 (talk) 17:21, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Kautilya there is a lot of evidence of a specific community or ethnic group called Pandits being targeted in the exodus. It is indeed the Exodus of "Kashmiri Pandits" calling it Hindus is very generic. Can you call the Exodus of Jews as merely Exodus of the Middle eastern slaves from egypt ?

But the estimates are not as high as Adarsh claims it is somewhere of the order of 100K - 140K (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/8/2/kashmiri-pandits-why-we-never-fled-kashmir)

Though they were massacred it is true https://books.google.co.in/books?id=InAwDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Book

https://books.google.co.in/books?id=HdtTDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT9&pg=PT9#v=onepage&q&f=false

Research Paper:

https://ijcrt.org/download1.php?file=IJCRT2011142.pdf

Newspaper Now:

https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/chandigarh-news/32-years-of-mass-exodus-kashmiri-pandit-s-wounds-remain-raw-hearts-crave-for-homeland-101642632684725.html

https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/exodus-of-kashmiri-pandits-january-19-jammu-and-kashmir-304487-2016-01-19 Metacritical(talk) 02:26, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 19 October 2022

In the opening sentence, Change : "The Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus or Pandits....," to "The Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits who belong to Hindu Priest caste ..."

This reads better, also a specific community was targeted in the exodus not the entire Hindu population. Metacritical(talk) 00:50, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit extended-protected}} template. Kautilya3 (talk) 22:26, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 26 November 2022

It was the Genocide of Kashmiri Hindus, not Exodus 2406:3003:207B:8B4:F644:9439:4F11:E743 (talk) 14:16, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: see FAQ Cannolis (talk) 19:19, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Count of casualities

Will appreciate if someone has access to better sources on the locus. Thanks, TrangaBellam (talk) 20:27, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

The infobox was produced after months of wrangling. I don't want to go through this again! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I missed out removing the count of 80 from the infobox. I am afraid that Manoj Joshi is no scholar or even Praveen Swami-esque. TrangaBellam (talk) 21:39, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

But both are quoted by scholars. I went through the sources with a fine-toothed comb then. I agree with K3 that its best not to open that can of worms. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 09:06, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 13 December 2022

plz give me rights to edit this Aadarsh129.3 (talk) 03:32, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: this is not the right page to request additional user rights. You may reopen this request with the specific changes to be made and someone may add them for you. Cannolis (talk) 04:23, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 20 December 2022

The main heading of this content should be “Genoside of Kashmiri Hindus” instead of “Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus”. Kaushik dutta 21 (talk) 03:23, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

 Not done. Please see the FAQ at the top. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 03:43, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Misrepresentation of sources

The last sentence of the first paragraph claims "[it is] widely considered inaccurate, aggressive, or propaganda by scholars", yet the cited source (Rai in Bose & Jalal) describes some leader of an organisation, who is not a scholar of any sort calling it such, without affirming this claim by itself. I believe this is a misrepresentation of the source and the qualifier ought to be removed.

Aside from that source misrepresentation, the lead section should be taught as a case study in gaslighting in psychology courses. I will go rant on the doglapan of describing Gujarat riots, which had no appreciable demographic effects, as "ethnic cleansing" while describing this event, which nearly wiped out a group from its native soil, as a "migration" which should not be "aggressively" claimed as an ethnic cleansing some other time on Twitter. 117.194.205.198 (talk) 04:37, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

yeah i agree with you, this article is presented in a manipulative and biased way RamaKrishnaHare (talk) 11:16, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 21 February 2023

Remove the word propaganda from the last sentence of the lead paragraph. That is, change The descriptions of the violence as "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing" in some Hindu nationalist publications or among suspicions voiced by some exiled Pandits are widely considered inaccurate, aggressive, or propaganda by scholars to The descriptions of the violence as "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing" in some Hindu nationalist publications or among suspicions voiced by some exiled Pandits are widely considered inaccurate or aggressive by scholars.

Justification: Citation 35 (Mridu Rai) actually says: among those who stayed on is Sanjay Tickoo who heads the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (Committee for the Kashmiri Pandits' Struggle) [...] he rejects as 'propaganda' stories of genocide or mass murder that Pandit organizations outside the Valley have circulated. The propaganda label is not used by the source in its own voice, but quotes an activist instead, thus it cannot be said scholars have used that label. 117.194.201.41 (talk) 09:22, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit extended-protected}} template. Kautilya3 (talk) 10:14, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Three days ago I had made the topic above this one, pointing out the need for this change. Since no one has objected, I can only assume there is an implicit consensus for this change. 117.194.201.41 (talk) 10:50, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

No, you cannot assume that. The present text is consensus text that was arrived at after a lot of discussion, which you can find in the archives of this talk page.

Unless you can produce reliable sources that counter the claim of "propaganda", you won't be able to convince any one that there is a problem here. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:26, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

User:Kautilya3, how is previous discussion relevant when the word is a misrepresentation of the sources!? It is a basic source-text integrity issue, you can't handwave it away pointing to some previous discussion. The onus to prove that the word is valid would be on the ones supporting its inclusion—it is not me who has to produce a source actively denying the propaganda claim. Was this met? Did the discussion include any justification for how the word is valid despite the source not actually supporting it? 117.194.201.41 (talk) 11:32, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Both Evans and Mridu Rai have acknowledged that propaganda was generated by Pandit organisations outside the valley. Have you read those sources? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:05, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

I have read Evans and skimmed through Rai. I don't see it. If it's there, please quote that directly instead of quoting material that does not support the assertion. 117.194.201.41 (talk) 12:14, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

@Kautilya3, I agree with the IP. It will be easier for everyone if you could quote the supporting material to support the assertion. Razer(talk) 21:24, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

@Razer2115 i too agree with IP as it can be seen that the article is written in a biased or manipulative tone, it lacks neutrality. I think this complete part should be removed from the first paragraph, it is a mere mispresentation of unreliable sources. RamaKrishnaHare (talk) 11:22, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

This idea of saying Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus is a Genocide or ethnic cleansing is aggressive and propaganda by Hindu Nationalists should be changed

In both the cases of 2002 Gujarat riots and Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus, the number of displaced are about 150,000 (controversial but let's take for now). but still in the gujarat riots are genocide "these events had met the "legal definition of genocide," or referred to them as state terrorism or ethnic cleansing. and saying kashmir exodus a genocide is a propaganda by Hindu Nationalists and Hindu pandits "The descriptions of the violence as "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing" in some Hindu nationalist publications or among suspicions voiced by some exiled Pandits are widely considered inaccurate and aggressive by scholars.". I am asking why??? Why this selective sympathy for one community and hate for the other when seemingly both have suffered upto an extent? Similarly The documentary made on Kashmir Genocide The Kashmir Files "presents a fictional storyline" , "the events leading up to it as a genocide, a notion that is widely considered inaccurate by scholars", "the storyline attracting criticism for attempting to recast established history and propagating Islamophobia." and "Theatres across India have witnessed hate speech against Muslims, including incitement to violence due to the movie. (i have marked all the as it is references from Wikipedia's articles in quotes in green text).

Please consider changing the general trivializing thought given in this article that the exodus of kashmiri hindus in not a genocide or ethnic cleansing but a propaganda given by hindu nationalists. this thought disrupts the neutrality of Wikipedia. because if i will edit that than it will certainly get reverted. RamaKrishnaHare (talk) 23:17, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

 Not done. Wikipedia is written by summarising reliable sources. Please read the policy links posted in your welcome messages. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:53, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Confusion regarding actual number of people killed and what period of time we are considering to count killed.

@Fowler&fowler i didn't knew you wrote the lead or whole article and i don't even know you. but the amount of research you have did in making of this article is appreciable. The number of sources are also of a good amount and could have taken you a large amount of time to cite. When i POV tagged the article, i didn't meant to objectify your qualifications or studies, for me the article don't reflect a neutral tone.

now, the actual matter i want to discuss. The source to support claim of 30-80 being killed say a community organisation, stated that thirty-two Pandits had been killed by militants since the previous autumn. but the very next line also say The plausible figure amounted to a third of about one hundred targeted killing by JKLF militants since 1989 autumn, considering this line, why not 100? and take a look on what i came accross this suggests 250,000 population fleed.

and this source how does it indicate 30-80 being killed, there is no way to verify. and why does the book summary say 20,000 people were killed?

References

RamaKrishnaHare (talk) 20:49, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, the figure apparently got inserted into a Reuters story. It doesn't matter to us because, as per WP:NEWSORG, newspapers are ony reliable for news, not history. I am however disappoined with Reuters for its sloppiness. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:12, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

And the Manoj Joshi book summary says 20,000 people dead. It doesn't say 20,000 Hindus dead. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:14, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

• @RamaKrishnaHare: Thanks for posting. First of all, let me say that I have a lot of empathy for the Pandit predicament. My grandparents were refugees of the Second World War. They had to walk away from home, belongings, heirlooms in the bank, and whatnot. One small bag of luggage per family member was allowed. But their lives were intact, and many others were not so lucky.
• Now, about the Pandit exodus. I note first that there has been a change in the article since the third week of March 2022, when I left it. I am not able to discern in the time I have whether significant text has been removed or merely rearranged. I might come back and take a look later.
• The figures of "at least 30" (Braithwaite et al) and "32" (Bose, 2021) are close enough. Both consider the exodus to have begun sometime in late January 1990 and substantially ended by early March of the same year, i.e. in a handful of weeks barely more than a month. Bose, says that 32 is approximately a third of the total number of 100 killed by JKLF (which included police and semi-regular armed forces as well as Muslims that were caught in the crossfire. Manoj Joshi, who is a journalist, and in my view, not as rigorous at Braithwaite et all or Sumantra Bose, has the number 80 over a longer period. A better formulation than 30—80 killed, would have been: "The Pandit mortality at the hands of the Valley's Muslims has been estimated to be 30 and 32 in two sources over a period of migration of five weeks. A third source has estimated mortality of 80 over a migration period of six months." It is longish, but more accurate.
• As for the total number of Pandits in the valley, it has been known from the time of the first British census of 1871, that the Pandits constituted 5% to 6% of the Valley's residents, the remaining being Muslims. We also know that roughly 20% of Pandits, many of which were landlords, left the Valley in the late 1940s in the wake of anticipated land reforms and redistribution by Sheikh Abdullah's government. So, it is not complicated to double-check using some realistic demographic assumptions that the calculations of Alexander Evans or those reported in Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf's widely used textbook on Modern India—that there were approximately 120,000 to 140,000 Pandits in early 1990—is reasonable. Evans might have said 150,000. The sociologist Madan, a Pandit himself who did his fieldwork in a Pandit village (I think), estimated that 150K of a total population of 200K had left. Christopher Sneddon in his latest book, Independent Kashmir (?) of a couple of years ago, and published by Edinburgh University Press, arrives at a similar figure by doing simple arithmetic on the census data. I'd say a total Pandit population of 140K in 1990s is consistent with British census data and reasonable demographic assumptions (during the period 1951 to 1991).
• I don't remember where we said this, but the five or ten-year mortality for Pandits was 567 (or thereabouts). In contrast, the same for the Valley's Muslims was in the range of 50,000, most killed by the Indian state. A large number of scholars support this number. Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:01, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  PS The one thing that has perplexed me is that there are almost no pictures of the Pandits leaving the Valley. Granted, cell phones were not around in 1990, but cameras were and you'd think pictures, even videos would be around. 100 in a population of 100,000 is not that outlandish, but very few exist. Not even ten, if that. Even my grandparents took a few pictures, once they had reached the safety of their ship. For this reason, I myself have never been able to shake off the suspicion that the Indian governor, Jagmohan, was not in some remote way involved in the Pandit migration, i.e. not that he organized it as some Muslims imagined, but he might have either stoked the flames of panic, and also given reassurances that if the Pandits left quietly and allowed him to deal with the Muslims, they would be back to their valley homes in no time at all, with government jobs, pensions, or economic support during the interim. There were almost no reports of this migration during that period in India's newspapers. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:18, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  We say in the article: "Several scholarly views chalk up the migration to genuine panic among the Pandits that stemmed as much from the religious vehemence among some of the insurgents as by the absence of guarantees for the Pandits' safety issued by the Governor." The problem for us is that 30 years later we can't reconstruct what body language accompanied the governor's pronouncements, or the lack thereof. They can make all the difference. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:33, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  Yeh truly shocking aye that no journalist picked up even a whiff of what was happening in Kashmir during that period. We need to put an end date in the box though or people may think it is still continuing with the recent targeted killings and fleeing families. The Indian state though has done a good job in preventing the likes of the Moplah and Noakhali riots. May the law prevail!

  Unending ordeal: The Hindu Editorial on the continued civilian killings in Jammu and Kashmir - The Hindu

  Hindus in Kashmir Desperate to Flee Amid Spike in Attacks - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Fayninja (talk) 07:33, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  that NYT article is from a few months ago about the hundred odd Pandits who have returned Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:39, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

  There certainly aren’t many (or perhaps any) images of the exodus in motion, i.e. of masses of people on foot or in trucks etc, but there do exist pictures (and videos) of them in relief/refugee camps and of their abandoned homes in the immediate after of the exodus. See this video, for example. This recent video also throws some light on their life post-exodus, and the lives of the few who remained but were unfortunately killed in a massacre. UnpetitproleX (talk) 12:44, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

  There’s also this video that looks at another massacre. UnpetitproleX (talk) 12:48, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

  The camps are not the issue. There are academics who have done their field work in the camps that we cite. They are all agreed that the exodus was very quick, took place in the dead of night, often either without the knowledge of neighbors or accompanied by handing the keys to the neighbors with the understanding that the return would follow soon.

  All this lends some credence to the suspicion that the Indian federal government by various reassurances (e.g. awarding pension during the absence) had given rise to the strong feeling that the absence was to be temporary.

  A 100,000 people spread out in towns and villages of the valley left at a time in which there were reporters aplenty. That Barbara Crossette, who, for example, could give the nitty-gritty on the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, unfazed from feet away, had very little on the exodus, and nothing on the violence, strains credibility. I know some of the foreign reporters who were in South Asia during this time. Ten years later, for example, they traveled up and down Orissa during the cyclone, sometimes arranging for funerals as the Hindus were not even touching their dead neighbors either from shock or ritualistic inhibitions. Very hard to believe they had no clue.

  The bottom line, though in terms of WP policy, is that we have the best scholarly sources. I am happy to challenge anyone to take them to RS/N if they think other accounts trump WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:35, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

  That indeed is curious, especially because 1990 was the bloodiest year as far as Hindu civilian casualties are concerned—this despite the fact that village massacres involving several dozen non-Muslims killed in one go by militants weren’t yet a thing. That no foreign correspondent was aware of these attacks seems unlikely, but I’ll take your word for it. UnpetitproleX (talk) 18:19, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Jagmohan continues to get blamed by all kinds of commentators, quite unreasonably in my opinion. The Newstrack video reports make it quite clear that his problems were gigantic and the state was quite underequipped to do anything. Giving "security guarantees" to Pandits was quite unimaginable. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:44, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

But India was a land of greater freedom of the press then, not to mention a large number of foreign correspondents there. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:39, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Please show both of the views in number of casualties of kashmiri hindus in the lead paragraph.

In the death section of Infobox, the first version of number of deaths of kashmiri hindus vary from 30-80 however only 30 is written in lead paragraph and the second version suggesting 217 to 223 killings is deliberately hidden. i think both of the version should be mentioned in the lead paragraph to provide information giving weight to both sides, and should be left on viewer to decide. In accordance to WP:NPOV and WP:LEAD.

so i kindly request the extended confirmed users to change the line “and about 30 were killed.” to “some scholars say about 30-80 were killed while Indian Home Ministry and Government of Jammu and Kashmir records 217-219 fatalities and other scholars say about 228 were killed.” or i have a second suggestion if you think previous one was long. “some scholars say 30-80 were killed while Indian Home Ministry records and other scholars say that about 217-228 were killed”.

thanks for your time. RamaKrishnaHare (talk) 07:18, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

 Done I have put both of the sets of figures in the lead. The article sucks because we don't have enough competent NPOV editors who can write such a page. Kautilya3 (talk) 19:49, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

I want to thank you from bottom of my heart for all the efforts you've put in to make this article WP:NPOV. This issue is persistent in many articles related to India and to be accurate, hindu-muslim conflicts. I am looking forward to improve those. thanks again RamaKrishnaHare (talk) 05:37, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Fowler&fowler undid one of the two edits that came out of this discussion, saying "220 killed" was four-year data. That is a superficial observation. Praveen Swami gives a year-by-year table, and we see that there were zero killings in 1988, a miniscule number in 1989 and the vast majority (177) were in 1990. And we can be sure that they happened before and during the exodus. The year after (1991) was a small number again (34) because the majority of the Pandits had left.

Omitting this number constitutes WP:POV because it downplays the threat the Pandits faced, and paints them as having been unnecessarily paranoid. No go! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:30, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

You ask, how can you compare five week figure to 4 years. You don't have to. You can remove the 30-80 figure. I retained it as per the Wikipedia policies of WP:NPOV but it is obvious that these scholars didn't do their homework. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:19, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

• Kautilya3: Per WP policy, the WP:ONUS for changing a year-long consensus wording that included only the 30–80 deaths, is yours.
• A discussion that begins with one post: "... thanks for your time. RamaKrishnaHare (talk) 07:18, 3 March 2023 (UTC)" and ends with the very next 14 hours later: " Done I have put both of the sets of figures in the lead. The article sucks because we don't have enough competent NPOV editors who can write such a page. Kautilya3 (talk) 19:49, 3 March 2023 (UTC)" is not consensus.
• Swami thinks the exodus was near complete by Autumn of 1990. See page 166 of India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad: The Covert War in Kashmir, 1947-2004: "... directed at the Kashmiri Pandit community, leading to their near-complete exodus by the autumn."
• Autumn or Harud in the Valley lasts from mid-September to the end of November, so we are talking 10 or 11 months.
• In contrast, in footnote [1] in the article's lead sentence, we cite five sources:

• Bose, Sumantra (2021), Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-century conflict, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 373, ISBN 978-0-300-25687-1. Quote: "In February–March 1990, the bulk of the Pandits (about 90,000–100,000 people) left the Valley ..."
• Rai, Mridu (2021), "Narratives from exile: Kashmiri Pandits and their construction of the past", in Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (eds.), Kashmir and the Future of South Asia, Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series, Routledge, pp. 91–115, 106, ISBN 9781000318845. Quote: "Beginning in January 1990, such large numbers of Kashmiri Pandits ... left their homeland and so precipitously that some have termed their departure an exodus. Indeed, within a few months, nearly 100,000 of the 140,000- strong community had left ..."
• Hussain, Shahla (2021), Kashmir in the Aftermath of the Partition, Cambridge University Press, pp. 320, 321, ISBN 9781108901130, The Counter-narrative of Aazadi: Kashmiri Hindus and Displacement of the Homeland (p. 320) Quote: "In March 1990, the majority of Kashmiri Hindus left the Valley for "refugee" camps in and outside the Hindu-dominated region of Jammu. "
• Duschinski, Haley (2018), "'Survival Is Now Our Politics': Kashmiri Pandit Community Identity and the Politics of Homeland", Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 172–198, 179, ISBN 9781108226127. Quote: "Although various political stakeholders dispute the number of Kashmiri Pandits who left the Valley at that time, Alexander Evans estimates on the basis of census data and demographic figures that over 1,00,000 left in a few months in early 1990, while 1,60,000 in total left the Valley during the 1990s"
• Gates, Scott; Roy, Kaushik (2016) [2011], Unconventional Warfare in South Asia, 1947 to the Present, Critical Essays on Warfare in South Asia, 1947 to the Present, London and New York: Routledge, ISBN 9780754629771, LCCN 2011920454. Quote: "Some left after losing kith and kin to Islamic militants, others after receiving death threats, but most departed in utter panic between January and March 1990—simply to preempt death. Of the more than 150,000 Hindus, only a few are left in the valley."

There are another four in footnote 2:

• Kapur, S. Paul (2007), Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia, Stanford University Press, pp. 102–103, ISBN 978-0-8047-5549-8. Quote: "When the Kashmir insurgency began, roughly 130,000 to 140,000 Kashmiri Pandits, who are Hindus, lived in Kashmir Valley. By early 1990, in the face of some targeted anti-Pandit attacks and rising overall violence in the region, approximately 100,000 Pandits had fled the valley, ..."
• Braithwaite, John; D'Costa, Bina (2018), "Recognizing cascades in India and Kashmir", Cacades of violence:War, Crime and Peacebuilding Across South Asia, Australian National University Press, ISBN 9781760461898. Quote: " ... when the violence surged in early 1990, more than 100,000 Hindus of the valley—known as Kashmiri Pandits—fled their homes, with at least 30 killed in the process. "
• Kumar, Radha; Puri, Ellora (2009), "Jammu and Kashmir: Frameworks for a Settlement", in Kumar, Radha (ed.), Negotiation Peace in Deeply Divided Societies: A Set of Simulations, New Delhi, Los Angeles and London: SAGE Publications, p. 292, ISBN 978-81-7829-882-5, 1990. Quote: Estimated 140,000 Hindus, including the entire Kashmiri Pandit community, flee the valley in March."
• Hussain, Shahla (2018), "Kashmiri Visions of Freedom", Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 89–112, 105, ISBN 9781107181977. Quote: "In the winter of 1990, the community felt compelled to mass-migrate to Jammu, as the state governor was adamant that in the given circumstances he would not be able to offer protection to the widely dispersed Hindu community. "

All nine think the migration was complete by the end of March 1990.

So, how do the journalists Praveen Swami who thinks the migration lasted well into November 1990, or Manoj Joshi who thinks it ended by the end of June 1990 stack up against the nine academics?

• Swami, moreover, gives mortality for all Hindus in the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, not Pandits under pressure in the valley.

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:32, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

You know very well that scholars build on each other's work (what you have called an "echo chamber" in other occassions). So it makes little sense to give a long list of echos. Which of these are really independent corroborations?

So, your contention is that the exodus finished by March, and therfore only the deaths that occurred before that point are of relevance? The other people were killed for what reason? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:29, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Of course. The deaths that occurred after the exodus should be documented on some other page, not here. Swami in any case is counting Hindu civilian deaths in the entire state, not just the Valley. I have no interest in the reasons if those deaths did not occur during the exodus or prompted the exodus immediately before. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:29, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

I applied “echo chamber” to the Indian media, not to scholars published by the major academic presses of the English speaking world. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:33, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

I know you have used the term "echo chamber" to mock journalists, but it is the same phenomenon here. Mridu Rai cites Sumantra Bose's first book on Kashmir, The Challenge in Kashmir, probably written based on his PhD work. There is no citation or evidence whatsover for his claim that "Most of the exodus" (not all) occurred in February and March. India Today reported on 31 March that 10,000 Hindu families had departed. The Wall Street Journal reported on 9 November 1990 that 50,000 Hindu families had left. So what does "most" mean? He also mocks Kaul and Teng for having said "260,000 [Pandits] had to run for their lives". When I went to double check Kaul and Teng, I found that they wrote "260,000 people had to run for their lives". And their number is commensurate with the number of registered refugees in the Jammu Division (242,758 in November 1990). I really have no idea why Bose had to substitute "people" by "Pandits" in order to knock them down based on his own vague impressions devoid of any hard data. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:10, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

You are welcome to take this issue to RS/N and make the case that all this trumps WP:SCHOLARSHIP, that scholarship is not reliable as the scholars, some such as Mridu Rai or Sumantra Bose whose books have been cited hundreds of times on Google scholar, copy one another without vetting the results, just as reliably journalists do while attempting to meet a deadline. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:36, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

This is not a matter for RSN because we are discussing issues of WP:CONTEXTMATTERS, in evaluating whether a source has the require accuracy for the encyclopaedic claims we are making, that too in the lead paragraph. It was a significant shock to me that the entire narrative was built based on Sumantra Bose's Challenge in Kashmir, published in 1997, and he cites absolutely no evidence for his claim that exodus was substantially complete by 15 March 1990. The date comes from a trip by a human rights group to the Valley at that time, who reported various figures. He picked up the figure of about 30 killings that had taken place till then, but he ignored their figure of 17,000 families having fled to Jammu by then. The total number of families registered in Jammu is 46,525 35,459 according to Maheshwari's data. By no means was the exodus "substantially complete" by 15 March 1990. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:50, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

• If scholars furnish the larger estimate in the context of this exodus, our article should give it proportionate prominence too alongside other estimates. Naturally, that would entail giving it representation in the lead. It's a question of relevance and due weight, and one would but conclude that Praveen Swami, an eminent authority on Kashmir subjects, establishes both. MBlaze Lightning (talk) 14:42, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Praveen Swami does not actually discuss the Pandit issues much. He is focuse on the militancy in the Valley. But he does provide a table of data from the Home Ministry, showing deaths in the Valley of people belonging to various groups. He says this is the most accurate data available.

But I see other scholars subtly questioning Sumantra Bose's hegemonic narrative. For example, Ankur Datta writes:

Approximately 100,000 to 140,000 Kashmiri Pandits had fled the Kashmir Valley by the end of 1990 (Bose, Challenge in Kashmir 1997: 71).

So, even though he is citing Bose, he is no accepting the claim that the exodus was "substantially complete" by March 1990. He also cites his own data later on:

On 7 March 1990, it was reported that 6,000 families had arrived in Jammu and awaited assistance from the state at the premises of the Sanatan Dharma Sabha, popularly known as Geeta Bhavan. According to unofficial estimates, a total of 19,000 families had come to Jammu (Kashmir Times 1990c: 3).

My position is that it took till the end of 1990 for the exodus to have been complete, by which time some 200 odd killings have taken place. This is the figure that the OP had asked for, which I support but Fowler rejects. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:07, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

No no. Datta is quoted in the article. He doesn't disagree with Sumantra Bose, just being cautious there. I have just returned home and don't have much time, but I'll look at the sources in a few minutes. This is not an argument between people's opinion, but that between sources. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:12, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

On Uncertain Ground: Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir, by Ankur Datta, OUP, 2016, Print ISBN-13: 9780199466771

(page 53) the exodus remains caught in ambiguity. We know that mass flight took place over a period of a few months in a single year and that the traces remain in abandoned houses and land, shop spaces, and perhaps an abandoned temple here and there. ... Yet the question remains: what happened?

Few does not even mean six. It means two, three, or four, typically. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:20, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

(p 63) By the month of March in 1990 the exodus was noticeable, with large numbers of migrants arriving in Jammu. The Pandit exodus represents an acute refugee movement, which takes place at a time of great political upheaval (Kunz 1973: 132). However, the experience of the flight of the Pandits is difficult to characterize. Some migrants acted as part of a reactive fate group responding 81: 44), while others tried to exercise some agency amidst the constraints. Pawan, a young Pandit whose family came from northern Kashmir, pointed out that most families left Kashmir on their own:

Never trust Kashmiri Pandits. I mean do not take what they say as the truth. I will tell you what happened. When people left Kashmir, they left without telling anyone. They never told their neighbours even if their neighbours were also Pandits. One day you will see a family. The next day you see that the windows are shut and there is a heavy padlock on their front door. One by one, families started to leave. When my father saw everyone leaving, he decided that we should leave as well. Like others, we pretended as if it was all fine and left when we felt nobody would be watching.

Datta has the same doubts as I do. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:24, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

This is the most damning:

(p.61) While most accounts of events in Kashmir featured militancy and demonstrations against the Indian state, few references are made to the Pandits. The slogans the Pandits refer to have never been reported or recorded officially at the time and suggest a gap between what was recorded and what the Pandits describe. Rather, news reports of 19 and 20 January 1990 instead focus on ‘mob violence’, casualties due to police action, and large numbers of arrests (Kashmir Times 1990a: 1, 8).

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:28, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

And it's not just Datta, Sanjoy Hazarika had this to say in the NYTimes, long before Messrs Bose or Datta's opinions saw the light of day: "Hindus Who Fled Kashmir Bitter Over Fate" Sanjoy Hazarika Sept. 15, 1991 :

The Hindus fled Kashmir in trucks, buses and private cars, virtually empty-handed except for the clothes and goods they could hurriedly pack and the cash they had in the house or money that could be quickly withdrawn from banks. Most of the exodus took place between January and March 1990, as panic swept the community and the authority of the militants grew. The Government is continuing a crackdown against the militants.

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:32, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

• Siddhartha Guha Ray, Associate Professor of History, Vivekananda College, Kolkata University, in his book, Paradise Lost: A Contemporary History Of Kashmir 1947-2020, Setu Prakashani, Kolkata, 2022, excerpted in Outlook] quotes Sumantra Bose extensively. Ray ends with, 'Bose arrives at the definite conclusion, 'The number of Pundits actually killed is the dozens, not thousands' " Sumantra Bose is a major scholar on Kashmir, who has taught at LSE now for a quarter century. He is the author of half a dozen books on Kashmir. He is not going to damage his professional reputation (see reviews of those books by other major scholars) by making such a drastic statement lightly. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:56, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I mean even the Hindu nationalist think-tanker (see credentials at the end) lapses into this:

On the evening of 19 January 1990, pro-Pakistan sloganeering started from mosques in the Valley and mobs started gathering. Posters came up, asking Hindus to either convert to Islam and join the separatists or leave their homes. Thousands of Hindus left through the night. According to a report by Jammu-Kashmir Study Centre, a Delhi-based think-tank, by March 1990, more than 90 per cent of the Hindus residing in the Valley had left their homes.

• OK, I'm done. There is nothing in this thread. It should be closed. Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:58, 18 March 2023 (UTC) Updated Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:57, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Not really. Even if a hundred people believed and propagated misinformation, that doesn't make it true. The New York Times itself reported in July 1990:

More than 50,000 Hindu refugees who have fled the growing Muslim fundamentalism in Kashmir live in Jammu camps.

Somehow people came to believe right from 1991, that all the exodus happened in the first few months. But it isn't true. Loads of reports from 1990 disprove that claim, including the very source that Sumantra Bose cited (which said 17,000 families). Instead of checking the facts, scholars and news reporters have been reproducing misguided rumours and hearsay. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 01:51, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Please stick to one argument, e.g. Ankur Datta.

As for that NYTimes article, it is unvetted agency feed. Where is the byline?

Sanjoy Hazarika was writing the articles in 1990,

• e.g. January 29, 1990: India Tells of Foiling Uprising in Kashmir
• e.g. August 7, 1990: Indian Soldiers Seize 12 Leaders Of Kashmir's Militant Separatists
• e.g. Sept. 12, 1990 20 killed in shootout in Kashmir

Only hard sources please such as those I have added to the lead. Also, no conjectures about past events based on WP:OR on motivations. WP:SCHOLARSHIP does not allow us to engage in that. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:39, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Not a personal attack but sorry to say Fowler you are very stubborn, you seem to give very baseless arguments to remove legible contents which do not support your personal political inclination like "you did not wrote lead" (to Kautilya) ,"You can't dicker with the precise lead." and "Do you seriously think I brought all my academic abilities to bear to write a biased lead?". i mean to say you do not WP:OWN the article, whatever is accurately sourced and verifiable should be added to the article. even in previous consensus many people suggested good additions to the article but you seem to ignore and if anyone else do it, you just revert. If you have any conflict of interest than accept it and move on, let other editors give their constructive contributions to the lead, just because "YOU" wrote it doesn't mean it cannot be edited anymore. RamaKrishnaHare (talk) 10:40, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

References

Academic source removed

Any particular reason why Rekha Chowdhary is not reliable for this article, and has been removed from the lead? UnpetitproleX (talk) 16:21, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Her book is is very poorly written, full of errors and POV, as I remember it from the time of writing. I will post something here on the weekend. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Is that your own personal assessment, or is it a published review? If it is not the latter, I’m afraid it is useless to us, because wikipedia is not written based on original research, and unpublished personal reviews of books, such as yours above, are OR. UnpetitproleX (talk) 12:57, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

As for full of errors and POV, I can personally identify a number of errors and POV in just the excerpts of Kanjwal’s book (not Kanjiwal, btw) cited here, but a book review by the likes of Zutshi, or Rai, or even Chowdhary—whose detailed work on Kashmir is certainly not ill-regarded in academic circles—is of more value for wikipedia. UnpetitproleX (talk) 13:12, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Her book, based in part on a University of Michigan Ph.D. thesis, has been published by Stanford University Press in their series "South Asia in Motion" series, which includes some well regarded works, such as Rotem Geva's book on Delhi during and after the Partition and Sanjib Baruah's on India and the Northeast. It was published a few months ago. A review in a scholarly journal is not likely to be published immediately. As for Chowdhary, I have only found one review, in a political science journal I had never heard of. Chowdhary is published by Routledge, which has somewhat lower standards than major university presses. As far as I am aware, the likes of Mridu Rai, Chitralekha Zutshi, historians both, or Sumantra Bose, Sumit Ganguly, political scientists both, have not reviewed Chowdhary's 2016 book. It did have some useful material, but it was unrelated to what she was being cited for in this article. The rest on the weekend. I have to go. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:23, 20 September 2023 (UTC) Updated Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:30, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Again, your wikipedia-posted personal assessment of her Routledge published book will not be the basis for declaring the work unreliable or unusable. What she was being cited for is also not exceptional material, for it can also be found in Behera (2006) and Hussain (2021). UnpetitproleX (talk) 09:10, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Per WP:ONUS, you need to tell us what it was you were attempting to add, why it is of due weight, and why Chowdhary constitutes a reliable reference for it. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:25, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

• I have been through Kanjwal's dissertation — and have my own issues — but it is evidently better than Chowdhury's, a rather poor and sadly derivative work. What is the precise content that is under contestation? I understand why "personal assessment of her [Chowdhury's] Routledge published book [might] not be the basis for declaring the work unreliable" but every year, scores of academic monographs are published on Kashmir which can be manipulated to support whatever pet theory one wishes to purvey. Accepting every RS is an untenable position for this topic-area and a recipe for chaos; so, we need to enforce stringent controls — being published by an university press, stature of author etc. — even if they are not always accurate as yardsticks. TrangaBellam (talk) 09:47, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

  Even with such controls, Chowdhary, with her history of being published by reputed publishers, won't be considered an unreliable scholar. UnpetitproleX (talk) 12:55, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

  The content being disputed, removed here, is this:

  What added to their perceptions was the presence of various newly founded militant organisations with their fundamentalist agenda. Apart from seeking to apply Islamic codes on Kashmiri society and imposing moral codes on Kashmiri Muslims, these organisations also sought to pressurise the Kashmiri Pundits into using symbols to identify them-selves as ‘Hindus’. Some of these organisations also started a campaign using mosques and street posters to ask Kashmiri Pundits to leave Kashmir. Irrespective of the fact that mass of Kashmiri Muslims were not influenced by these fringe organisations and empathised with the Pundits and even offered to protect them in case of any untoward incident, at least in the initial phase, the factor of ‘fear’ was very strong.

  UnpetitproleX (talk) 13:04, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

  See also Behera (2006):

  One such alignment has developed among the Kashmiri Pandits, a target of militant Islamists in the early 1990s, when the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) imposed an Islamic code of conduct on the Valley. Cinemas, beauty salons, and shops selling liquor and videocassettes were closed, and Hindi movies banned. Muslim women were ordered to wear burkas and Hindu women to stop wearing a bindi. People in the transport business were no longer allowed to carry unveiled women in their vehicles, while tailors in Srinagar were warned against stitching any Western-style garments that departed from the traditional attire of Kashmiri women and were kept busy making burkas. The Jamaat-i-Islami, in particular, targeted the Pandits as “Kafirs—the Batta, (Infidels—the Pandit) the first symbol of India in Kashmir.”

  UnpetitproleX (talk) 13:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

  @TrangaBellam: and @Kautilya3: regards the actual content being disputed. UnpetitproleX (talk) 07:31, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

  Another thing that was removed was the mention of threats carried in letters, posters etc. for which Chowdhary was added as a reference. Chowdhary, again, is not the only one to mention these threats. See, for instance, Hussain (2021):

  Stories of Kashmiri Pandits, branded as “informers,” and killed in their own homes or in their alleys, and survived by grieving wives and children, had a tremendous impact on the psyche of the minority community. Their fears were heightened as religious slogans merged with the cry for independence emerging from the mosques of Kashmir. Certain militant groups even wrote threatening letters to the Kashmiri Hindu community, asking them to leave the Valley.

  UnpetitproleX (talk) 13:22, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

References

"Kashmiri Muslims" and Muslims in Kashmir Valley

Snedden has some issues, as does Rekha Chowdhary, but Chowdhary's are by far the worse. I think I may have mentioned this at the time of writing two years ago. For our particular topic, for example, Snedden uses the 19311941 (corrected Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:28, 20 September 2023 (UTC)) Census and quotes it:

The Muslims living in the southern part of the Kashmir Province [i.e., not in Muzaffarabad District] are of the same stock as the Kashmiri Pandit community and are usually designated Muslims; those of the Muzaffarabad District are partly Kashmiri, partly Gujjar and the rest are of same stock as the tribes of the neighbouring Punjab and North-West Frontier Province districts.

which seems to be strange language, i.e. "Muslims living in the southern part of the Kashmir Province ... are usually designated Muslims" (as opposed to?)

The term Kashmiri Muslim, as I understand it refers to the Muslims that live in southern Kashmir. See for example: the 1941 Census, and it says more logically:

The Muslims living in the southern part of the Kashmir Province are of the same stock as the Kashmiri Pandit community and are usually designated Kashmiri Muslims; those of Muzaffarabad District are ...

Also

• Zutshi, Chitralekha (2018), "Contesting Urban Space: Shrine Culture and the Discourse on Kashmiri Muslim Identities and Protest in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries", in Zutshi, Chitralekha (ed.), Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge University Press, pp. 51–69, ISBN 978-1-107-18197-7, LCCN 2017035554, End note 5 (p 68): ... Kashmiri Muslims were also divided into various castes, such as Shaikhs, Saiyids, Mughals, Pathans, Gujjars, Bakarwals, Doms and Watals, not to mention the main sectarian division between Shias and Sunnis. For now I am changing "Kashmiri Muslim" to "Kashmir valley's Muslims." Will fix this sometime in the next week. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:28, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

That’s a separate issue, for which Chowdhary is not relevant, because she was not cited. I have split this into two so that this confusion doesn’t arise again. UnpetitproleX (talk) 12:26, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Snedden’s table, which has been partially cited here, makes a clear distinction between Kashmiri and non-Kashmiri Muslims in Kashmir Valley:

All Muslims in KV [Kashmir Valley]: 1,369,620
Kashmiri Muslims in KV: 1,110,327
Other (non-Kashmiri) Muslims living in KV: 240,129
Unidentified Muslims living in KV: 19,164
Kashmiri Hindu Pandits living in KV: 76,171

Close to 20% of Muslims living in the Kashmir Valley were not of Kashmiri ethnicity. That remains the case to this day. Thus "the remaining 94 to 95% of the population [of Kashmir Valley] was Kashmiri Muslims" was clearly incorrect. It was corrected by another editor, Plumeater2, the correction then reverted by you, then corrected again by me, then reverted again, corrected a third time by me, reverted again and then corrected. UnpetitproleX (talk) 12:42, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I don’t see how "the remaining 94% to 95% were Kashmir valley’s Muslims" is drastically different from, let alone better than, "the remaining 94 to 95% of the population [of Kashmir Valley] was Muslim" which you reverted three times. The need to repeatedly revert other editors’ contributions or to demand they make talk page posts for minor edits like these is very WP:OWN behaviour. UnpetitproleX (talk) 12:53, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I reverted you because you were confidently declaiming in edit summaries, " a large minority of Kashmir Valley’s Muslims (between 10–15% today, probably a similar or larger number then) are non-Kashmiri: mostly Gujjars," whereas Zutshi, a trained historian of Kashmir, says (also quoted above), "Kashmiri Muslims were also divided into various castes, such as Shaikhs, Saiyids, Mughals, Pathans, Gujjars, Bakarwals, Doms and Watals, not to mention the main sectarian division between Shias and Sunnis" In other words, Kashmiri Muslims is not a precisely well-defined term as Kashmiri Pandit is. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:41, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

PS Also Whitehead, another trained Kashmir expert, does not make a distinction between Muslims living in the Kashmir valley and Kashmiri Muslims; otherwise why would he use "Those?" (quoted below): "Those Kashmiri Muslims with ambition tended to migrate to towns in Punjab to seek their way in the world." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:47, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

That Whitehead doesn’t mean Muslims of Kashmiri ethnicity by 'Kashmiri Muslims' is your assumption, and one that’s not based on strong evidence either. Many Kashmiri Muslims did migrate down the Jhelum to Punjab—not just West, but also central Punjabi towns such as Amritsar, where they lived until partition. That’s why you have a large community of Muslims with Kashmiri last names such as Butt, Dar, Lone etc in West Punjab today. UnpetitproleX (talk) 08:54, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Until you describe what Kashmiri Muslim means in the quote of Zutshi above, you’re wasting your time and mine. Kashmir Valley’s Muslims is just another way of identifying those Muslims who had lived in the valley for centuries either as permanent residents or seasonal migrants. Regardless of which status they had of the two, they constituted between 93 percent and 95 percent of the valley’s population and were eaten out of house and home by the Dogras, the Pundits piggybacking on the Dogras, and before that by the Sikhs who were the worst exploiters. That is the only reason that Muslim numbers are mentioned; in other words, they by their stark differences of income and population from the non-Muslims, provide the context for the depth of emotion felt by the Muslims in the 80s and 90s.

I recommend that you not waste my time Wikilawering, be it OWN or any of the others from the master list of my detractors. If you do that again both vacuously and perniciously, I will be posting on the user talk pages of some administrators, especially when all you have done is come riding into the leads of articles of which I’m the chief author and attempt to play Gotcha. I’m not the only one who has noticed Islamophobia in some of your edits, or the need to put down Muslims by various tacks, e.g. in 1947 Amritsar train massacre Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:56, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I will not be engaging with any of your harassment. You have been asked multiple times by me, and by multiple other editors, including multiple administrators, to change your behaviour. Please keep your WP:ASPERSIONS and WP:INTIMs to yourself. As for the Amritsar train massacre article, you still haven't responded on my post at Talk:1947 Amritsar train massacre, where I asked why the sources on that page have been used in a cherrypicked manner. You said you would respond after 16 August; it is 27 September today. I am waiting. UnpetitproleX (talk) 12:40, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Finally, as the editor who introduced Sneddon's latest book in this article's citations, I am also aware of the errors in the book. I have just pointed out the error in the crucial quote above. The Census of 1941 defined the term "Kashmiri Muslims" (loosely) to be Muslims living in the southern part of Kashmir Province. But other authors (Zutshi, Whitehead) do not. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:50, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

PS See Andrew Whitehead's chapter, "The Rise and Fall of New Kashmir," in the same volume, in which he says:

Jammu and Kashmir was slow to feel the new political breezes blowing after the First World War, namely nationalism, liberalism and socialism. The Kashmir Valley was geographically and intellectually isolated. There were in the 1920s no newspapers to speak of, no political parties and no secular intelligentsia of consequence apart from those who relied on the patronage of the ruling princely family. The schools administered by the Maharaja and the handful established by Christian missionaries disproportionately served the small and privileged Hindu minority in the towns. Across the princely state, Muslims outnumbered non-Muslims by three to one – in the Kashmir Valley the ratio at this time was thirteen-to-one – but few Muslims held positions of any importance in the Hindu Maharaja’s administration. Those Kashmiri Muslims with ambition tended to migrate to towns in Punjab to seek their way in the world.

That's the first time he uses the expression "Kashmiri Muslim." Obviously he doesn't mean "Kashmiri-speaking Muslims," for what advantage would they have linguistically migrating down the Jhelum to West Punjab? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:28, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

PS2 13/14 = 92.86% Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:31, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I have always seen "Kashmiri Muslim" mentioned as an ethnicity separate from Indian Muslims. They had their own saints and preachers, who were unconnected to the rest of the subcontinent.

That having said, I don't support any blanket ban on any scholars or publishers. Rekha Chowdhary is a perfectly respectable scholar. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:28, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

The problem here is that a claim is being made at least by implication, that

"the Kashmiri Muslims are not as overwhelmingly populated in the valley as is made out to be. They are only 80%, not 95%. The remaining Muslims in the valley are not Kashmiri Muslims."

There are two reasons for not giving credence to this notion. a) The term "Kashmiri Muslim" is not as clearly defined as is Kashmiri Pandit.

The quotes above of both Chitralekha Zutshi and Andrew Whitehead (who take Kashmiri Muslim to mean the Kashmir valley's Muslims) attest to the lack of clarity. b) The main reason to mention the populations is that with the exception of a very small Muslim elite, the Muslims of the valley irrespective of mother tongue and Islamic practice were exploited for the major portion of Dogra rule, and by its end they had an awareness of their numbers.

That is the reason I have added Christopher Snedden's latest book in footnote 68. He says,

Based on figures in the 1941 Census, Muslims living in the Kashmir Valley comprised a third of all J&K-ites, 44 per cent of the state's entire Muslim population, and 94 per cent of the Kashmir Valley's population. More specifically, people 'describing themselves as Kashmiri Muslims' comprised over 80 per cent of all Muslims living in the Kashmir Valley. The other 20 per cent were Muslims who called themselves Sheikhs, Gujjars, Hajjams, Hanjis, Syeds, etc., all of whom presumably would have identified closely with Muslim Kashmiris, particularly if it was a binary Hindu or Muslim 'equation' or choice. These Muslims in Kashmir, of whom about 90 per cent were of the Sunni persuasion, had 'the confident perception of a majority community'. Whoever could successfully woo them would be well placed to receive their political support in the accession or any future plebiscite.

In other words, as I've stated above, all Muslims in the valley (with the exception of a small Muslim elite) had been dominated by a miniscule Hindu elite. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:20, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

CVs on the internet don't mean a thing, especially not in a controversy-ridden topic such as Kashmir. I will take another look at the book and post there in the coming days why citing her is not due. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:28, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Post "here," I meant. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:29, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

She has not been cited for the population figures at all. UnpetitproleX (talk) 12:09, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: The section regarding Chowdhary is above, her cite is unrelated to this section. UnpetitproleX (talk) 12:43, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

The only person making that claim is you. I changed the text to '95% were Muslims', not '80% were Kashmiri Muslims, not 95%'. That's all you. And I thought the main reason behind mentioning population figures was to give the readers a background on the historical demography of the Kashmir Valley? UnpetitproleX (talk) 12:17, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Here is the first edit of @UnpetitproleX::

• edit with the following edit summary,
• "(ce, more in confirmation with the sources cited.)"

Not only did they appear two years too late in an article in which the consensus was extremely hard won, not only did they pay no heed to the cautionary WP:Lead fixation or posting on the talk page first, but they did not read the very sources that were already there with the merest of attention, for they changed,

"the Pandits, who believed that Kashmir's culture was tied to India's,,"

to

"the Pandits, who prided themselves on their Indian identity,

without changing the sources, the foremost of which was Metcalf and Metcalf's A Concise History of Modern India, Cambridge University Press, 2014 (a book that is used in all the major South Asia departments: Penn, Chicago, Columbia, Berkeley, UCLA, SOAS and Cambridge), and whose citation had, in addition the following quote:

The imposition of leaders chosen by the centre, with the manipulation of local elections, and the denial of what Kashmiris felt was a promised autonomy boiled over at last in the militancy of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, a movement devoted to political, not religious, objectives. The Hindu Pandits, a small but influential elite community who had secured a favorable position, first under the maharajas and then under the successive Congress governments, and who propagated a distinctive Kashmiri culture that linked them to India, felt under siege as the uprising gathered force. Upwards of 100,000 of them left the state during the early 1990s; their cause was quickly taken up by the Hindu right. As the government sought to locate 'suspects' and weed out Pakistani 'infiltrators', the entire population was subjected to a fierce repression. By the end of the 1990s, the Indian military presence had escalated to approximately one soldier or paramilitary policeman for every five Kashmiris, and some 30,000 people had died in the conflict.

In other words, they did not read M&M and went straight for the second source Shahla Hussain who says, "The rise of insurgency in the region created a difficult situation for the Kashmiri Hindu community, which had always taken pride in their Indian identity."

This is not the first time UnpetitproleX has done this. If I revert their edit, then I'm the bad guy. They do this over and over and over and over again. Sloppiness and dickering ad nauseam. I will not be wasting my time further on them. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:18, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

The same with Chowdhary. I reverted the edit. Her viewpoint, I maintain, does not have due weight. The WP:ONUS is on you to show that it does. Read WP:TERTIARY for how textbooks are useful in the determination of weight. That is one of the reasons that M&M, Tim Dyson, Talbot and Gurharpal Singh have been used.

They are all textbooks used in the world's major universities. Chowdhary's is not a text book. It has not been vetted for due weight. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:50, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I did read M&M, which you've paraphrased as "believed Kashmir's culture was tied to India's," but that is not what M&M says. UnpetitproleX (talk) 07:11, 29 September 2023 (UTC)1

I will not be engaging with the continuous personal attacks, which multiple editors, administrators among them, have asked you to drop, but I will also not take the insults and aspersions lying down, will tag @Johnuniq: in hopes of some sort of moderation, per this comment of theirs. UnpetitproleX (talk) 07:27, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Fowler&fowler's comment at 20:56, 24 September 2023 above is very inappropriate. However it seems isolated (at least recently on this page) and not severe. The current wording at Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus#Background is "the remaining 94% to 96% were Kashmir valley's Muslims, overwhelmingly followers of Sunni Islam". Is there a proposal to change that? To what? I imagine the answer is in the above but, sorry, I can't readily see it. Johnuniq (talk) 08:09, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

There is no proposal. The phrasing and the sources that back it are all mine. I have found all the reliable sources on this page.

Their MO is to follow me to pages in which I am the chief contributor and find one word in one phrase to tweak, usually in the lead, usually in a manner that smacks of Islamophobia, hatred of Muslims, or hatred of Pakistan.

The secondary MO is to bait me so that I eventually say something inappropriate (while they faithfully chant WP's platitudes) and they can drag me to AN*. I've seen it one too many times. It is relentless and there is nothing Wikipedia wants to do about this. I'm tired. They have written nothing textual of value on Wikipedia. Nothing. (I say "textual" because they do good work on Featured Pictures).

They appeared first arguing with me and RegentsPark on Talk:Himalayas but as Pankykh (talk · contribs). Then Panky* disappeared and Unpetit*X appeared, arguing with me on the same page, attempting to continue the same argument and thereby hint at more consensus for the same POV than there really was. But the MO was the same. I voiced my suspicions directly to Unpet*X. But they went unacknowledged or were outright denied. My suspicions were eventually verified by RegentsPark. But despite RP's very clear recommendation, Unpet*X had to be dragged kicking and screaming to actually admit the existence of Panky* on their user page. Please examine the manner in which they have announced that alternative account on user:UnpetitproleX. After 17 years on Wikipedia I wouldn't know how to be so evadingly slick.

This is not a content dispute. This is a form of hounding. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:19, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: There is no proposal to change this wording; multiple (other) edits have been undone in one go. The main issue is highlighted in the above, previous section (see here).

The comment may appear isolated, but this editor has a long, long history of repeatedly using insults, WP:ASPERSIONS and WP:WALLSOFTEXT to descredit me or to derail my RFCs or other discussions started by me. Just see their comment right above, for instance, where they accuse me of all sorts of things. Or the discussion where I originally asked you to moderate. Or this FPC nomination of mine they tried to derail. It is not an isolated instance of insulting commentary they've used against me, it is a persisting issue. If it was a stray comment, I would have ignored it. It is not isolated. That said, all of this is not appropriate for discussion on this talk page. I understand that. It would be great if they can too. UnpetitproleX (talk) 12:01, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

You are not the only one on WP whose questions I answer on talk pages. Pretty much daily, I begin editing on talk pages. No one gets an easy pass, but nowhere am I being rude. See

• Talk:India#Telecommunications_&_space_services_of_India from last week,
• Talk:Delhi#Reverts_by_User:Fowler&fowler from a few days ago, or
• Talk:Bhagat Singh (this morning).

Finding reliable academic sources is what I have not only been doing on WP, but in my entire career. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:53, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Sorry to be of not much use but I have a couple of points. First, everyone here probably knows that an article talk page is the wrong place to discuss other editors. The alternatives (WP:ANI or better WP:AE for this contentious topic) are not easy because it's hard for onlookers to decide what should be done with low-level bickering and off-color remarks. The take-home message is that one day this will be at a noticeboard and people will count the numbers of times each editor said something bad and anyone above a certain threshold is likely to be sanctioned (therefore, everyone should remain squeaky clean although that begins to look like civil POV pushing after a while). Second, it's pointless discussing something without a clear and actionable proposal when there is a dispute. Third, Fowler has made claims above about other editors (claims that should not be on this page). I have no idea about those claims but anyone wanting to be squeaky clean should make sure their edits do not follow a pattern that would fit the claims. My previous offer was to help negotiate disagreements but that can't happen until there is a clear and actionable proposal. Johnuniq (talk) 04:21, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Civil POV pushing (CPOV hereafter) is the nub of it. Didn't realize that user:Raul654 had written it long ago. Tipping my hat in thanks and admiration.

Aware that this is not the proper venue, I'll keep it short. Increasingly, on South Asia pages, I not only see CPOV, but also signs of sharing of evidence and of optimal CPOV responses. Editors who can barely string one sentence of English, not to mention have barely arrived on WP, can characterize my behavior as violating a rule, which they are able to not only Wikilink and but also elucidate with examples of my other misbehaviors. So when on judgment day the counting is done no sin of mine will be left unaccounted. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:23, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

PS Admins can be helpful in the way that you have been Johnuniq when you explain how penalties are awarded at ANI, AN, or by ArbCom. They can be helpful to a lesser extent in dispute resolution. But ultimately, in my experience and view, there is only one way to get rid of CPOV. It is what an IP had written on a barnstar they they had given me long ago: Let the obscurantist trolls feel the heat of knowledge. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:39, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: The content dispute is in the above section, which I'm guessing is difficult to follow because it has now been overshadowed by this. I will move it down here in a new section so the actual issue can be discussed. As far as I'm concerned, this section can be closed. UnpetitproleX (talk) 07:57, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Loss and erasure

In this edit, I've added a sentence that makes the sentence about the KP's in exile writing memoirs more comprehensible. It is cited to Ankur Datta's chapter in the very recent (June 2023) Palgrave Handbook of New Directions in Kashmir Studies. It has a quote for aiding in the main body expansion.

• Datta, Ankur (2023), "The Blank Space Between Nationalisms: Locating the Kashmiri Pandits in Liberal and Hindu Nationalist Politics in Relation to Kashmir and India", in Duschinski, Haley; Bhan, Mona; Robinson, Cabeiri deBergh (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of New Directions in Kashmir Studies, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 365–380, ISBN 978-3-031-28519-6

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:38, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Content dispute

• The content being disputed, removed here, is this:

  What added to their perceptions was the presence of various newly founded militant organisations with their fundamentalist agenda. Apart from seeking to apply Islamic codes on Kashmiri society and imposing moral codes on Kashmiri Muslims, these organisations also sought to pressurise the Kashmiri Pundits into using symbols to identify them-selves as ‘Hindus’. Some of these organisations also started a campaign using mosques and street posters to ask Kashmiri Pundits to leave Kashmir. Irrespective of the fact that mass of Kashmiri Muslims were not influenced by these fringe organisations and empathised with the Pundits and even offered to protect them in case of any untoward incident, at least in the initial phase, the factor of ‘fear’ was very strong.

  UnpetitproleX (talk) 13:04, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

  See also Behera (2006):

  One such alignment has developed among the Kashmiri Pandits, a target of militant Islamists in the early 1990s, when the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) imposed an Islamic code of conduct on the Valley. Cinemas, beauty salons, and shops selling liquor and videocassettes were closed, and Hindi movies banned. Muslim women were ordered to wear burkas and Hindu women to stop wearing a bindi. People in the transport business were no longer allowed to carry unveiled women in their vehicles, while tailors in Srinagar were warned against stitching any Western-style garments that departed from the traditional attire of Kashmiri women and were kept busy making burkas. The Jamaat-i-Islami, in particular, targeted the Pandits as “Kafirs—the Batta, (Infidels—the Pandit) the first symbol of India in Kashmir.”

  UnpetitproleX (talk) 13:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

  @TrangaBellam: and @Kautilya3: regards the actual content being disputed. UnpetitproleX (talk) 07:31, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

  Another thing that was removed was the mention of threats carried in letters, posters etc. for which Chowdhary was added as a reference. Chowdhary, again, is not the only one to mention these threats. See, for instance, Hussain (2021):

  Stories of Kashmiri Pandits, branded as “informers,” and killed in their own homes or in their alleys, and survived by grieving wives and children, had a tremendous impact on the psyche of the minority community. Their fears were heightened as religious slogans merged with the cry for independence emerging from the mosques of Kashmir. Certain militant groups even wrote threatening letters to the Kashmiri Hindu community, asking them to leave the Valley.

  UnpetitproleX (talk) 13:22, 27 September 2023 (UTC) Copied and pasted from above section per this comment. --UnpetitproleX (talk) 08:14, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

  The problem is not removed content, but added content. It doesn't help to parade sources. The lead of the article had been stable for quite some time. You added something. I reverted it because the reliable content relating to the topic was already in the lead. Per WP:BRD and particularly WP:ONUS (which is Wikipedia policy), you need to tell us what exactly were the sentences you had added in the lead and why there are WP:DUE.

  Again, please don't parade sources. Tell us what the text was you had added, i.e. don't hide it in links. And tell us why what was there was not enough and why what you had added has due weight in the scholarly literature. 13:55, 2 October 2023 (UTC) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:55, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

  PS And tell us where in the lead you had added it, include both the sentence before and that after. It is not our job to decipher mysterious links. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:57, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

  PS I have changed the section title "Removed content" which is not accurate to "Content dispute." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:07, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

  Please note that your quote cited to Shahla Hussain [4] (Hussain) above is a small part of the much longer quote already appearing in citation [41] (in the stable version of the lead). Please tell us what special meaning or emphasis can be extracted from the reduced quote that requires a second sentence. Please also note that the lead is written in Summary style. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:17, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

  Please also *do not* add new sources. We need to first discuss your text addition in light of the attribution you had originally supplied and whether that attribution made the text due. Only then can we discuss new sources. The academics of this world were not twiddling their thumbs during the pandemic. Quite a few new ones have appeared. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:46, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

  Summing up the above: please note that the stable lead alone has 58 citations to major scholars of Kashmir and the first two paragraphs of the Background section have another 20. (The lead has citations, moreover, because it was written with a lot of care and consideration to be the WP:NPOV and WP:DUE template for the rewriting of the article. The lead is not the summary of the article. There were quite a few editors watching me do it. The lead was in turn used in discussions and editing of Kashmir Files. I have done this sort of writing of lead-as-template in many WP articles, such as: Sanskrit, Mughal Empire, Brahmi script, 2020 Delhi riots (at the request of Kautilya3), Varanasi, Indus Valley Civilisation, Subhas Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, … to name a few. It is that sort of lead. Sometimes people request my help for such lead writing in controversial articles.) Most citations have extensive quotes. Please make sure you have read them all before you attempt the defense of an addition. We can then consider that addition of text (in a specific place in the lead) to be a proposal and decide whether it fits coherently and cohesively with the prose organization of the lead and more importantly whether it carries due weight in the scholarly literature. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:31, 2 October 2023 (UTC) Clarifed with emphasis, explanation, and corrections. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 08:30, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

  I will add something here soon. UnpetitproleX (talk) 06:49, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

  Please be aware that I might also take five days to acknowledge it and longer to respond. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:55, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

  Noting that neither user:Kautilya3 nor user:TrangaBellam have responded to user:UnpetitproleX's ping of ten days ago (29 September 2023). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:38, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

  Actually, K3 has responded on UnpetitproleX's user talk page and essentially asked them to refrain from editing the lead, to preferring editing the main body (which is what I had written the lead for anyway). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:44, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Removal of ethnic cleansing

I agree with the sentiment that this wasn't a genocide but the phrase "ethnic cleansing" is removed now too? why? this was an ethnic cleansing not just a simple migration 2409:40E1:2E:E097:A8FD:44CE:3AD8:ADA5 (talk) 10:29, 18 February 2024 (UTC)