Talk:The Battle for Sanskrit

Multiple issues

Please: writing an encyclopedia does not mean copy-pasting quotes. Especially if only quotes from the author and affiliated sources are being used. No NPOV, no context from neutral sources. And yes, indeed, this is an example of tagging new "articles" - better said, scrapbook-pages. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:27, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan Who's problem is it if none of Malhotra's critics are writing reviews of his books? HemaChandra88 (talk) 18:15, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

That's a good question! At least, you could summarize those "reviews," and make clear that the reviewers are sympathetic to Rajiv malhotra. See also the next thread, "Reception." NB: I appreciate the change of tone. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:56, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Reception

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Books/Non-fiction article Reviews / Commercial and critical reception / Criticism / Analysis / Reception:

"include facts (with a cited source), and the opinions of notable people that have been published in some form. The section should be reserved for critical analysis of the book by notable, published critics."

That clearly excludes people like Koenraad Elst. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 16:45, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan please explain, how. HemaChandra88 (talk) 18:12, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

@HemaChandra88: Koenraad Elst is notable for his, let's say, pro-traditional interpretations of Indian history and religion. Nobody expects a, let's say, 'neutral' review by him. "Critical analysis of the book by notable, published critics" first of all means, regarding this book (for example, the criteria may be different, I suppose), scholars, writing reviews in scholarly journals. If there are no scholarly sources, then, I guess, newspapers and magazines and the like. If no such publications are available, then maybe Koenraad Elst could be mentioned, but with mentioning the context, that his, his 'pro-traditional interpretations of Indian history and religion'. Or something like "The book attarcted a lot of attention by Hindutva/nationalist/name-an-alternative writers, but was ignored/n.a.a. by the scholarly press."

Maybe more important for now is to give a synopsis, in a more or less neutral way (more or less; I don't ecpect miracles in this regard), so readers get an impression what the book is about. I hope this helps? NB: I've already searchng several times for reviews; so far, the book seems to be ignored by (western) scholars. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:50, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Avoid propaganda

@HemaChandra88: Please see WP:WikiProject Books for how articles about books should be structured. Your best is to follow that structure. Use WP:THIRDPARTY reliable sources, and avoid propaganda put out by the author and the publisher. Your reinstatement of the so-called "Synopsis" section [1] is no good. This is not synopsis, it is promotion. - Kautilya3 (talk) 19:05, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

@Kautilya3, fair enough. I'll update it with a 100 words summary. Does it have to be sourced? If I write one, would that be okay?HemaChandra88 (talk) 20:22, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Summaries don't need to be sourced, provided they are objective and factual. However, you can also take material from here:

• Bibek Debroy, Home Alone, OPEN Magazine, 26 February 2016.

- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:45, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Ah, you did find some more. Funny, despite the "battering," I do sense a lot of respect from Rajiv Malhotra for Sheldon Pollock. I haven't read the book though, yet. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:54, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Ehm... "fair enough," but the website-promo is still there? I also think it does not belong there; it's meant to sweep the sales. Readers can as well go to the website; they don't need Wikipedia to read this. We should provide an extra! Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 21:07, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Primary sources

WP:PRIMARY:

"Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved. They offer an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on."

Srinivasan and banerjee are definitely primary sources, participating in Malhotra's Battle. This is supposed to be an encyclopedic article, not an advertisement for the book. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 16:21, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

A primary source is a document from an event or period of history:

"Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved. They offer an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on."

A primary source would be a Sanskrit document from 1300.VictoriaGrayson^Talk 17:04, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Srinivasan and Banerjee are combattant's in Malhotra's Battle. Besides, the other issue is not solved either: no context has been provided. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 21:20, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

See RS noticeboard.VictoriaGrayson^Talk 21:34, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Marxism, Liberation Philology, and targetting "alienated social groups"

This edit changed

"Being influenced by Marxism, it aims to empower alienated social groups such as dalits, women and Muslims in their struggle against oppressive cultural forces."

into

"He presents how it is influenced by liberation philology and use it to denigrate the subject by specifically targeting alienated social groups."

with the following edit summary:

"typos and minor copyedits"

That's not a minor copy-edit; that's a substantial change, which left an incomprehensible sentence:

• "Marxism" is a clear explanation, while "liberation philology" begs for an explanation, even the more since the linked article Philology says nothing about "liberation philology";
• "and use it": is "it" American Indology, or "liberation philology"?
• "use it to denigrate the subject": which subject is being denigrated here, and by who? Is Sanskrit being denigrated by American Indologists, or is liberation philology being used by Malhotra to denigrate American indologists?
• "specifically targeting alienated social groups": why the removal of dalits etc? This is vague and uninformative. And how are these groups being targeted? Are they attacked? And how is Sanskrit (I guess that this is what "subject" refers to) being denigrated by targetting "alienated social groups"?

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:31, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Link dropper

Just leaving a review here for anyone to update the article with..

• https://www.academia.edu/22413957/Book_Review_not_by_me_The_Battle_for_Sanskrit_by_Rajiv_Malhotra

Crawford88 (talk) 04:43, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Thnaks. The review is by Shrinivas Tilak; also available at battleforsanskrit.com: http://battleforsanskrit.com/shrinivas-tilak-review/ . Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:49, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Book meets basic criteria.

Swarajya is biased source which I agree but it’s reliable and nowhere mentioned that for notability it should be unbiased. Also, it’s not associated with author of book. Book has created enough momentum of approaching language through dharma shashtras and so called Acharyas as Malhotra describes. Book has been discussed with Sheldon Pollock’s interview here. This source tells about to start new moment so that ‘outsider’ can’t translate so called holy scriptures. Another source which says the book has stopped work of one library. This is more than enough to have page. — Harshil ^{want to talk?} 18:54, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Meh. I will open a merge proposal. ∯WBG^converse 10:00, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Merge

I propose that this article be merged to Rajiv Malhotra — the author of the book — for the following reasons which evidence non-conformance with WP:NBOOK:

• I cannot find any review in any academic journal or MSM except the cited articles from Rediff and Open.

• Of the two, the former — whose author has written for Voice of India among similar publications — is junk.

• Of the used sources, only the afore-cited review lends to the notability of the book.

• Indiafacts.org, Jankriti International Magazine, sandeepweb.com etc. are not reliable.
• Trivial namedrops can be found in the cited article from Business Standard (or InsideHigherEd and HTMint) which covers the author's usual antics/tirade against the biased (sic) Academy.

• ~15 citations per GScholar (not 32) in seven years, do not show that the book had any meaningful impact in scholarship. Neither do I know that this book is used for any course in any reputed university.

• The author appears to agree, accusing scholars of ignoring his book

• The book did not win any major (or even, minor!) award.

TrangaBellam (talk) 18:38, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

• Suspicious, now changed to Keep Of course not many here like Malhotra's views, but that does not excuse cancelling him. Please do the proper tagging, per Wikipedia:Merging, and at least notify the India project. I note that when you did the undiscussed conversion to a redirect (which I reverted), you simply redirected it, so blanking the page, not even removing the "main article" link to here. Not winning awards is no reason for effective deletion. Pollock's complaints about it themselves strengthen notability. Maybe an Afd would have been better. Johnbod (talk) 19:02, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

  There is no policy that mandates discussion before an unilateral redirect or merge. Please do not cast aspersions either. And, if you had clicked on the hyperlink to NBOOK, you would have known that a criterion for meeting notability is winning an award of significance. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:04, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

  A criterion, but not a necessary one! Johnbod (talk) 22:38, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

  Pollock's complaints about it themselves strengthen notability. - Nowhere has Pollock commented on the book, to the best of my knowledge. Malhotra mentioned the book in a petition to remove Pollock from heading the Murthy Classical Library; accordingly, the book was name-dropped in a few articles on the controversy. We cover the controversy, in details, both at Sheldon Pollock and Rajiv Malhotra. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:11, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Merging: "No permission or discussion is needed if you think the merge is uncontroversial; just do it (but it might get reverted). Otherwise, the merge should be first proposed and discussed, as detailed below...." If you thought this was uncontroversial, you were obviously wrong. Plus you have made no attempt to actually merge the much longer material in this article into the other article, just sticking a redirect on and moving off to edit something else. This is (unfortunately) within the rules, but pretty underhand, so don't complain about "aspersions" if tou get called out on it. As you say, we cover the controversy at the other articles, but we don't cover the book itself in any detail at all, which this article does. It seems to me that this is the appropriate way of doing things. Johnbod (talk) 22:31, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

• If you do not like the "unfortunate" rules, initiate a RfC to convince the community and I will happily abide by. Till then, whether you feel that my tactics are underhanded or not is irrelevant. Comment on content; not on contributors.
  There exists nothing to be merged except Debroy's opinion because the rest of the sources are unreliable. Or, do you dispute that? Or maybe, you feel that the chapter-wise summaries — sourced from the book itself — should have been merged; who knows? TrangaBellam (talk) 04:58, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• I don't see a good reason to merge this. Drmies (talk) 00:46, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• Drmies In that case, where are the sources? Do you dispute my assessment of reliability of Indiafacts.org / Jankriti International Magazine / sandeepweb.com etc.? Thanks, TrangaBellam (talk) 05:00, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• I see more value in the Rediff article than you do, the Indiafacts article (well, obvious POV piece) has some merit, the Jankriti International Magazine seems to have been legit at some point. Your assessment of the three you mention was "are not reliable"--well, you need to do better than that. I think this isn't great but has some notability, and if you don't agree with Johnbod or me, send it to AfD. Drmies (talk) 05:10, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• Indiafacts is a far-right-Hindu blog; not even a news website! Jankriti has never been indexed in any bibliographic index of repute and appears to be one of the many low-tier/predatory journals that exist in India. I feel that RSN is a better venue to sort the issue of reliability because such concerns will cloud a potential AfD? TrangaBellam (talk) 05:19, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• If you start by saying "not reliable" without indicating what the problem is, and then you start yelling at everyone who's not convinced, don't be surprised if people get tired of you. I'm happy you feel things: maybe then take this shit to RSN; be my guest. That's more fruitful, because it invites other editors, and it'll show up in the record. Drmies (talk) 23:46, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

  Please, you are not being yelled at. Editors are expect to be diligent in evaluating sources with tell-tale signs of unreliability than be spoon-fed. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:06, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

No problem with merging. The synopsis is incomplete, and the reception-section doesn't add much. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:03, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, JJ. TrangaBellam (talk) 11:22, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• Keep - I would prefer the page to remain. There was another academic review I found in my files, and added it to the Further reading list. I admit that the book didn't receive a lot of attention in the media, despite my expectations, but I think it was a result of a misguided campaign against the Murty Classical Library, which sidetracked everybody from the book. But I think the book represents a legitimate point of view, which should be represented without disdain. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:09, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I hear that 250 scholars and intellectuals wrote to the publisher asking them not to publish The Battle for Sanskrit. The supporters of Malhotra then mobilised on change.org (www.change.org/p/publishers-of-rajiv-malhotra-s-books-do-not-yield-to-mafia-pressure-tactics-that-seek-to-compromise-intellectual-freedom) and persuaded the publisher. Pity that none of this was covered in the media. (If it happened today, there would have been a huge hooplah.) -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:26, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

None of this is based in policy, whatsoever. We do not keep articles because they are legitimate (or illegitimate) points of view in our eyes. For an example, I created our article on Vishwa Adluri — another intellectual from Malhotra's camp — because he had received ample coverage in reliable sources.

What you have added to the Further Reading section is not a book review. If you see the date carefully, it was long before the book was published; Taylor was responding to Malhotra's "plenary session address to the 16th World Sanskrit Conference in Bangkok" on the same theme. TrangaBellam (talk) 04:42, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I hear that 250 scholars and intellectuals wrote to the publisher asking them not to publish The Battle for Sanskrit. - Nope; this was about a different book. A bunch of scholars, led by Jesse Knutson, petitioned (change.org/p/harper-collins-india-in-view-of-the-widespread-plagiarism-found-in-rajiv-malhotra-s-book-indra-s-net-published-by-harper-collins-india-we-call-on-the-publisher-to-make-a-formal-public-apology-and-to-withdraw-the-book-from-the-market) Harper Collins to withdraw Malhotra's Indra's Net on charges of plagiarism. You can see RFY's letter, too. That did receive media coverage — Scroll.in among others — and the controversy has been covered with all relevant details in our article on the book. Joshua Jonathan, I assume that I am not misremembering the details? TrangaBellam (talk) 09:00, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

"Withdraw" is not the same as "not to publish," but I do recall Malhotra was severly criticised. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:32, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I do not recall anything on academics petitioning HC to not publish future works (TBS -?); do you? The whole petition and counter-petition was limited to Indra's Net. TrangaBellam (talk) 10:05, 7 December 2022 (UTC)