Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Bengal famine of 1943

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Bengal famine of 1943

Nominator(s): Lingzhi (talk)

Bengal famine of 1943 (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

• Featured article candidates/Bengal famine of 1943/archive1
• Featured article candidates/Bengal famine of 1943/archive2
• Featured article candidates/Bengal famine of 1943/archive3
• Featured article candidates/Bengal famine of 1943/archive4

No one is really certain how many innocent Indian peasants died, but the most recent and authoritative estimate (2.1 million deaths) is more than double the total combined military and civilians WWII deaths of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US. No one agrees on what caused it – some blame a cyclone and floods, fungal infestation, the fall of Burma, or Winston Churchill personally. What scholars do agree on, however, is that the Bengal famine of 1943 is emphatically a wartime famine.

The article is large, but it merits the size. Thank you for your time and trouble.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 12:01, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk)

• "Bengal's rice output in normal years was barely enough" (and other quotes): WP:INTEXT has been disputed a bit, but I think we can live with it. If it isn't important to mention who said something, then the exact wording probably isn't all that important, either. - Dank (push to talk) 18:13, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Dank, as I mentioned on your talk: There are some quotes that I strongly think should be left as quotes. The example that comes immediately to mind is about not being able to bury the dead, but others are that type as well. But there are other quotes that are not so...personal... that I feel could be converted to paraphrase. I gave two examples (copied from Clarrityfiend's comments) on your talk page as well... As a rule of thumb, think "vivid, personal" versus "dry, impersonal".... I can try to convert a few to paraphrase, but you are welcome to do so as well. Thanks!  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 22:55, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
    • That's not what I'm saying ... I'm fine with the quotes. But the guideline WP:INTEXT recommends that if you quote, or even paraphrase, it's best to mention who you're quoting in the text, rather than relying on the citation to do that. - Dank (push to talk) 23:28, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
      • I think that providing the names of the witnesses and contemporary commentators would add excessive (and more importantly, unhelpful) detail/info. In a somewhat similar (but far more egregious) case, I'm looking at an article right now where the nominator is basically saying, "F*ck the guidelines, it isn't explicitly forbidden, so I'll do whatever I want, ha ha."  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 23:52, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
        • Not my call, I'm just doing my job. - Dank (push to talk) 23:57, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
          • Sorry, I certainly don't mean to give you trouble.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:00, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
            • No trouble. - Dank (push to talk) 00:09, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

(←) Dank, I tried to chop down the thicket of quotation marks a little. May do more tomorrow.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:20, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

• "24–Parganas", "24-Parganas", "24 Parganas": consistency.
  • fixed tks
• "This killed 14,500 people": I'm not sure what "This" refers to.
  • fixed tks
• Check throughout for repetition.
  • yes, the famine codes bit.
• In reviews where I can't sign off on INTEXT, I also can't sign off on the use of quote marks in general.
• Support on prose per my standard disclaimer. These are my edits. - Dank (push to talk) 18:55, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Dank, so forex we have:We couldn't bury them or anything. No one had the strength to perform rites. People would tie a rope around the necks and drag them over to a ditch." So are you saying I need to add One survivor said, before the quote? Or even give the survivor's name (it was just a survivor, non-notable otherwise)? And if so, do you think that helps...?  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 21:52, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
    • Generally, other reviewers handle this. Well done. - Dank (push to talk) 22:26, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
• @Lingzhi:@Dank: I've only just become aware of this. I have some general advice. This article is certainly very well written, and I don't expect many issues of syntax and style (beyond some prose niggles). I have only very, very, cursorily read the article. My first thought is this: It was developed in a sandbox and introduced into mainspace in one edit. It took the author a year to write it. The others who were editing the article earlier, who, granted, were doing a poor job, need to be given a chance to criticize it on the article's talk page for a reasonable length of time, a couple of months, perhaps. It needs to be advertized in WT:INDIA and WT:BANGLADESH. Should it really come first for a military history review, and so soon after it was introduced? In an academic field as contentious as the Bengal famine of 1943 (BFo1943), there are many salient issues, which are not likely to receive scrutiny in such a venue. This is in part because BFo1943 is only obliquely military history. In fact to cast it as military history is to buy into a POV out there that exceptional war time conditions allowed the famine to fly under the radar of British responsibility. My second thought is: it is packed with details, but yet strangely sanitized in both in prose and pictures, making the article vulnerable to accusations of missing the forest for the trees. If I were to use an image pattern recognition program to guess the article's topic, it is unlikely to come up with "famine." (Aside: I've lately been adding images to Timeline of major famines in India during British rule which I created some ten years ago (as I did all the famine articles in it, with the exception of the two Bengal famine articles); contrast some of the images in the timeline with the ones in this article.) It is the same with the prose. I perfectly understand Wikipedia NPOV, DUE guidelines, but, still, we are looking at a famine in which there were at the very least an estimated 1.5 million Indian deaths, a significant proportion from starvation. Yet not a single Briton died from starvation. I've lately been struck by this fact. It is the same with all the other famines between 1770 and 1943: some 50 million Indians died in famines. That's a lot of millions. Yet not a single Briton in India did. It could not have happened in a European settler colony of Britain (Australia, NZ, Canada, South Africa, or for that matter these here the United States). I'm not suggesting even remotely that the article take on the polemical tone of a Mike Davis or Nick Dirks, or even the quantitative slant of an Amartya Sen, but I have the sense that your tone is too muted. I could very well be proved wrong upon a more detailed reading, but that is my first reaction. Lingzhi, you've done an admirable job, and I congratulate you, but I think this is not the time for any review that assigns an imprimatur of Wikipedia quality. It really needs to simmer for a while, and it needs to be advertised in other venues. I'm sure we can take care of the occasional IP trolls. Again, I'm thrilled that you've done this, and I'm looking forward to reading it in the coming weeks when I find the time. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:30, 20 April 2017 (UTC)