Talk:1947–1948 Rajouri massacre

From the AfD discussion

[Copied from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1947–1948 Rajouri massacre]

Many Wikipedia articles are referred to as a "Massacre", even with as few deaths as 10-30 (nowhere close to 30,000 of which many are refugees). Also, the article fits the definition of massacre, exactly like the article 1947 Mirpur Massacre. Below are many reliable sources (note that many of these have not been used in the article 1947 Jammu Massacre, so it is a distinct event) to a Massacre in Rajouri, either using both words in the same sentences (eg. "Massacre of Hindus and Sikhs in Rajouri") or explicitly referring to the event as the "Rajouri Massacre":

http://www.jammu-kashmir.com/archives/archives1999/99february23.html

https://ikashmir.net/pakraid1947/rajouri.html

The term "Rajouri Massacre" used in the title: https://www.dailyexcelsior.com/tearful-homage-martyrs-1947-massacre-rajouri/

Used in the title again: https://www.dailyo.in/politics/pakistan-indian-army-azad-jammu-kashmir-rajouri-massacre-1947-china-pok/story/1/13643.html

https://www.satp.org/satporgtp/publication/faultlines/volume1/Fault1-Bloeriatext.htm

A Panun Kashmir (organisation of displaced Kashmiri Hindus) and the paper Kashmir Sentinel release which talks about an article in the Indian Express in 1947 which clearly refers to it as the "Rajouri Massacre" (PDF) http://www.panunkashmir.org/kashmirsentinel/pdf/2007/nov2007.pdf

https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.242704/2015.242704.Socio-economic-Roots_djvu.txt

Feel free to add these links as references to the article. I see no need to remove such an article.

Hindian1947 (talk) 01:32, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Hindian1947, please fill in WP:Full citations for these sources so that we can discuss their reliability. Remmeber the requirements of WP:HISTRS for historical events.

On the main page as well, you need to provide full citations. Also provide below the pages from where you copied content from so that we can go look for the original sources. Your copying has clobbered them. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:56, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Framing

I'm a little concerned about the framing of this article. As far as I can see there's widespread coverage of atrocities committed by Pakistani raiders during their invasion, but coverage of a specific killing of Hindus and Sikhs only, in Rajouri, is harder to come by. Even this source, of which much was made at the AfD, only refers to the killings obliquely, describing the version of the incident in this article as being a "widely held narrative", and it stops short of endorsing that claim. There's clearly some substance to this article, but I'm concerned we're not framing it appropriately. There's also OR concerns: the cited sources did not support the version before my adjustment a few minutes ago. @Kautilya3 and Hindian1947: as participants in the above discussion. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:35, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

I would suggest framing the article around Mohita Bhatia's scholarship and then, merge it somewhere.

I had removed a bunch of sources and content, supported by them. Firstpost is OpIndia, in making: ran a disclaimer about their editors having concluded DGH to be a Hinduphobic event! Then, there is a GOI publication. Another one is a hagiography by one former CoAS, who is also a minister in the Modi Cabinet. There is also an opinion editorial. The last one is a mil-hist book by Lancer. TrangaBellam (talk) 22:44, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that 30,000 non-Muslims were "killed, abducted or wounded" according to the Indian Army, and only "1% of the Hindus survived" according to Bhatia's source (p. 84). So this was a major disaster, but one which practically everybody ignores. At the moment, we have to depend on newspaper recollections. They are not as bad as you seem to think.

I think Vanamonde93's objection is to all the spiel preceding the "Background" section, which is certainly off-putting. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:59, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

My opinion is that they are all massively exaggerating. You cannot depend on opinion-editorials etc. to cover partition conflicts. Or use sources by Indian Army without attribution.

If such are the inclusion standards, we will have a thousand massacres of Hindus across the country which should have decimated the entire subcontinental population. Mohita Bhatia, quite cleverly, looks only at the differential production of narratives and chooses to not confirm the veracity of these recollected accounts. If scholars have ignored a major disaster, so do we. TrangaBellam (talk) 07:07, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

My objection is specifically to the idea that the sources cited here show evidence of a targeted killing rather than an indiscriminate massacre. Exaggerated or not, the killing was obviously horrific, but we need to frame it correctly, and we need to focus on the high-quality sources for that. I've trimmed the lead further, and the extra description should stay out until we find evidence of a religiously targeted killing. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:06, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Any and all killings are horrific irrespective of casualties - my point was about the part. sources. I have not seen any high qual. source except for M. Bhatia. TrangaBellam (talk) 16:26, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Sources

I'm concerned about the reliability of several of the sources used here, including dailyo.in, dailyexcelsior.com, and satp.org. What makes these reliable? Vanamonde (Talk) 15:07, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Daily Excelsior is a popular newspaper in J&K; at least, it used to be in the 80s. However, op-eds contained within are hardly reliable. TrangaBellam (talk) 16:24, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Agreed re: Op-Eds. I'll wait a bit for further comments, but then I will likely dump these three. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:48, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

For Op-Eds, we depend on the reliability of the author. KD Maini is apparently a former KAS (Kashmir Administrative Service?) officer [1] and also spent some time at IPCS [2].

I don't see any Daily O source used.

SATP is a widely used source for India-Pakistan conflict issues. Sudhir Bloeria is a frequent author on such issues [3]. The page cited has a biographic line at the bottom.

But what I am not getting is what content you are worried about. Nothing here is controversial here as far as I can see. Some of it, I may have written in other pages, that Hindian copied over here. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:58, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't see how an Op-Ed from an administrative service officer is in any way reliable for contentious material. If the content isn't contentious, it should be easy to source it to better sources. There is a dailyo source used; it's the very last one at the moment. I'm also quite unconvinced about SATP; their website says "SATP has been set up to counter the progressive distortions regarding, and the international community’s neglect of, the wide range of terrorist movements within South Asia, and particularly in India", which suggests a degree of advocacy to their approach. Bloeria is also a government official, not a scholar. My point is these sources might be okay for filling out detail, but not for framing the article. We need sources with rigorous editorial oversight for that. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:11, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

If you propose to use KD Maini, because of being a KAS cadre, what about using works by Khalid Bashir Ahmad? This is walking down a slippery slope.

I have read one of Bloeria's works and it is absolutely poor. Might be a reliable nat sec guy but historian, he isn't. TrangaBellam (talk) 20:19, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

If you can state what content is bothering you, I can find alternative sources. (I wouldn't rule out Khalid Bashar Ahmad by virtue of IAS, but on the material he puts forward.) -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:35, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Going back to Vanamonde's points, SATP is cited in scholarly sources often enough. And it is not as if the mainstream media doesn't do "advocacy" [4]. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:02, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

What the BBC does is entirely irrelevant; the point is that unreliable sources cannot be used simply because they support content we believe to be accurate. Regardless, this article now no longer describes the massacre itself, only the background and the aftermath. Do we have RS discussing the massacre in their own words? Vanamonde (Talk) 15:41, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

• Incidentally, very similar problems exist at 1947 Mirpur massacre, where, once again, we have claims of a religiously targeted killing (rather than an indiscriminate massacre) with a generous sprinkling of dodgy sources. That likely merits our attention also. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:41, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

  @Vanamonde93, you forgot to merge this article into 1947 Jammu massacres per Talk:1947 Mirpur massacre. TrangaBellam (talk) 05:42, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

  Didn't forget, haven't had time to deal. I want to go through the scholarly sources to distill what reliable information there is, write that paragraph, and then do the merge/redirect. Vanamonde (Talk) 05:58, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

  @TrangaBellam: done now, further revisions welcome. Vanamonde (Talk) 02:59, 23 October 2022 (UTC)