Talk:1947 Mirpur massacre

Merger proposal

I propose that 1947 Mirpur Massacre be merged into 1947 Jammu massacres. There's not point of having two articles. Or remove the Mirpur massacres from the Jammu massacres. One or the other. PAKHIGHWAY (talk) 23:06, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree. It doesn't make sense to categorically remove any mentions of the Jammu massacre in this article despite the strong connection between the two and then shoehorn a detailed synopsis of the Mirpur massacre in the other article. Von oberstein (talk) 01:09, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

I disagree. Certainly until the Jammu massacres stops being a cover up for genocide. The 1947 Jammu Massacres are factually highly inaccurate with unverified sources and relying on the accounts of biased people. They try to cover up the obvious genocide conducted by pakistan army and islamists where the factual outcome is clearly seen with the demographic changes - Indian Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh with practically the same demographics inc muslim population, whilst pakistan/islamists murdered 99% of non-muslim population - especially in pakistan occupied jammu, kashmir, gilgit and baltistan where they number <1% — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C4:570D:7C01:18FA:DBC4:75C8:1037 (talk) 17:16, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Neutrality concerns

The article relies heavily on Snedden's sources, but do not accurately represent what he has to say. For instance, the killing of 20,000 Hindus and Sikhs is something Snedden describes as unconfirmed (in both his cited volumes), whereas we present it as fact. It's patently obvious that in this case at least there was religiously targeted violence (of all sorts, but in Mirpur in this time-frame, of Hindus and Sikhs); but the scope and perpetrators are not something we have consensus on, and a more careful discussion is necessary. I will attempt to fix this soon, but I have real life commitments, and therefore tagging in the hope someone else will address these. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:25, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

You mean, if Snedden doesn't know what is going on, we have to pretend that we don't know either? That is a fine principle of neutrality! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:33, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

You know damn well that's not what I said. And if you're "fixing" this by reverting to a last clean version, the least you could have done was to remove the self-published nonsense and the source by Balraj Madhok, who is in no way shape or form a reliable source. The footnote issue also remains. Vanamonde (Talk) 21:13, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

I really don't know why I have to tell you this: lulu.com is a publishing house for self-published work. They do not in any way check the content they are publishing. If the articles in the appendices are useful sources, citing them directly is quite sufficient. Vanamonde (Talk) 21:28, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Sorry, I was working offline.

I think the 20,000 killed figue is from Das Gupta, but I will have to check again. Snedden's expertise is in AJK sources. His coverage of Indian sources is quite poor.[1]

Regarding the Lulu.com book, we are only taking appendices that have been reproduced elsewhere. I have now given a link to the full source. So you can check. Cheers, Kautilya3 (talk) 21:34, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

The academia.edu link is to the lulu.com publication. It has no value. If an original text exists to check it against, the original text needs to be cited; if it doesn't, the citation should be removed. Vanamonde (Talk) 21:45, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Well, this is Wikipedia. We depend on being able to access the sources. Otherwise, the content will corrupted and we will never know. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:55, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

We cannot rely on lulu.com for verifiability. This is pretty basic, I'm not sure why you're disputing it. Vanamonde (Talk) 23:03, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

There was undoubtedly a massacre but the count, stated in Wikivoice, beggars belief. And the accompanying citations are unsatisfactory. Jyoti Bhushan Das Gupta had sourced the figure from a book by Balraj Madhok, ex supremo of RSS in Kashmir; in a footnote, Gupta opined that Madhok could be correct since GOI claimed to have rescued only 3600 refugees from the city.

Snedden, in both of his works, note that these figures are unconfirmed. Ram Sharma had authored ahistorical polemics on how Islam invaded peaceful Kashmir etc. Hardly someone to trust in these areas. Khalid Hasan published Gupta's (who would edit the Lulu book) narrative, as emailed to him, in good faith. Our referencing misleads a reader to believe that it is Hasan, who supports the figure of 20,000. It might be imp. to note that Hasan had tried to corroborate Gupta's narrative with exisiting sources but failed.

As Vanamone93 stated accurately, unreliable sources cannot be used simply because they support content we believe to be accurate. We need better sources - academics who have actually bothered to dig into archives and investigate the ghastly event for what it is, than parrot others. TrangaBellam (talk) 23:16, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm not even saying it's an unbelievable figure, just that we can't be basing a statement in Wikipedia's voice on source misrepresentation (Snedden), utterly unreliable sources (Madhok) and eyewitness accounts (several). Those need reworking, removal, and attribution, respectively. Vanamonde (Talk) 23:41, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Khalid Hassan has also cited Yusuf Saraf saying there were 20,000 people. We know how many people made it to India. So you can do the math. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:05, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

In comparison, Kotli was evacuated and 9,000 civilians were rescued. That roughly equals the Hindu/Sikh population of the Kotli tehsil (by the 1941 census). The Mirpur tehsil also had similar number of minorities. Plus it would have also taken minorities from the Bhimber tehsil, since Bhimber fell to the raiders very early (even before the accession). And the Bhimber tehsil had a whopping 56,000 minorities, So even without any West Pakistan refugees coming in, Mirpur's own minority population would far exceed the 20,000 figure we are talking about. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 02:02, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Maybe, but that's OR. We still need a reliable source discussing it in the source's own voice. And you have absolutely not justified the use of lulu.com, a publisher so questionable it's on the spam blacklist. I will be removing it and replacing the citations with ones to the original works. If you still disagree, take it to RSN, or see what uninvolved admins have to say. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:24, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Vanamonde93, let us delete this page. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:37, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

I think the best option is to merge this (as well as Rajauri) in a master page on tribal invasions of the '47-48 war. TrangaBellam (talk) 18:05, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind a merger: Kautilya3, could you elaborate? Vanamonde (Talk) 21:38, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

When Tyler Durden created the 1947 Jammu massacres page, with my moderation, we also included two small sections on Mirpur and Rajouri. Later on, these two pages got created by other parties. All three pages are 'attack pages' as far as I am concerned. None of them describes the context in which the violence occured and the complexities of the violence. Nobody has strong enough a heart to look into these details. The Jammu violence was propagandised by Pakistan and now the Kashmiris. So we hear about it. India didn't propagandise (or even publicise) the Mirpur and Rajouri violence. But the same kind of issues are present in all of them. The Jammu massaares page contains the same kind of 'misrepresentation' of Snedden that you complain about here. In a way, we are representing the popular memory, moderated by scholarly literature.

The Rajouri page can stay, because I have enough sources and I can expand it. But for this page, I don't have any sources. So it is best to delete it, and it can be recreated if and when decent sources become available. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:58, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

I think there's enough source material to write a heavily pruned article, which I can work on. One that uses only the secondary sources, and does not get into the details of victim numbers (or does so with attribution). Vanamonde (Talk) 15:02, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Sure, if you wish. It is not my page and I don't have any claim over it. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:43, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with this proposal of writing a stub. TrangaBellam (talk) 20:05, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Why? The neutrality issue is addressed by accurately representing the source material. There isn't too much of it, so a merger is viable, and I'd be okay with it in principle. But for a merger there needs to be a target, and I'm not seeing a good one at the moment; besides, that would still need to be a merge, not a backdoor deletion of content by redirecting. Vanamonde (Talk) 23:06, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

I disagree an average reader will be better-served with a stub on the massacre, divorced from contexts. Above, Kautilya3 wrote, When Tyler Durden created the 1947 Jammu massacres page, with my moderation, we also included two small sections on Mirpur and Rajouri and I support restoring the status quo ante. TrangaBellam (talk) 07:36, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm fine with a merge to 1947 Jammu massacres, but the sourcing issues I discussed above need sorting. We cannot rely on eyewitness accounts for figures reported in Wikipedia's voice. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:24, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

So let's flesh out a section each from the two articles, and we can merge it back to the parent. TrangaBellam (talk) 16:07, 29 March 2022 (UTC)