Talk:Freedom of religion in India

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Biased and does not present the whole picture on relious freedom in India. July 25, 2005

Gandhi Statement

According to his article, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi once said: "Yes I am. I am also a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist and a Jew," when asked whether he was a Hindu. It appears rather unlikely that:

"Gandhi opposed the Christian missionaries calling them as the remnants of colonial Western culture[2]. He claimed that by converting into Christianity, Hindus have changed their nationality.[3]"

If this wasn't properly referred, this would have already been deleted. I think that we need a full (sourced) citation of what he said. Zara1709 (talk) 20:09, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

IP user's vandalism

A good amount of referenced material has been removed/replaced by IP user 47.102.212.108 in November 2008. Can someone work on reverting those changes? Else this article does not stand as B-class one now.--GDibyendu (talk) 13:20, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

This page is an unfunny joke...

It has been edited with such a severe bias that after reading it one gets the impression that it is the 80% Hindu majority of India that is regularly persecuted by the 20% minorities with half a dozen different religions, even though the reality of the situation is a stark contrast. Please fix it, or just add it to the catagory of "contemporary dark humor" and be done with it. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.152.72.165 (talk) 07:48, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Needs attention and cleanup

This article has been subjected to multiple unmonitored POV additions and not one of them has any regard for the entire page as a whole; because of that, it now reads like a collection of conflicting biased statements and lacks any flow or proper organised structure. A page of this importance really needs additional watchers and interested contributors. I'll try to do some basic clean up and fill in any missing gaps. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:16, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Needed Edits

I believe the article is uninformative and at worst completely misguided. It currently suffers from the following,

[1] The article switches tense sometimes between paragraphs in the same section.

[2] Talks about unnecessary details, for instance "... Freedom of religion is established in tradition as Hinduism does not recognise labels of distinct religions ..." This is an encyclopedia not a sermon. Even if we included this statement,This is politely put- nonsense. There isn't a central authority to Hinduism unlike other faiths; there is no way to verify this statement.

[3] Says pretentious things "India is the birthplace of four major world religions: Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism ... " What is major? Number of followers ? Jainism and Sikhism aren't major religions of the world, in that context.

[4] The history section is misplaced and frankly wrong. Buddhism was the state religion of Ashoka's reign, Islam of the Sultanate and Mughals.

Note the article is about Freedom of religion in India, not the subcontinent.

[5] The laws against conversion section is too big. Wikipedia isn't a compendium of laws. Mere mention that special protections exist is enough with a few examples being cited as news articles.

[6] The section Cases of religious violence is completely misguided and presumptuous. Wikipedia is not a news reporter. I fail to see the connection between hate crimes and the ability to practice my own faith. Why is this part of this particular article?

I have made these edits already but they've been reverted twice -ostensibly under the pretext of protecting information. I'd like to listen to arguments why the article must be retained in its current form.

Nanasid (talk) 21:34, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

It doesn't have to remain in it's current form but your proposed version is significantly worse. Only the first sentence (already existing) and last paragraph (using already existing sources) are properly sourced. The middle contains unsourced synthesis. As to your specific points:

1 - So fix the grammar.

2 - It's sourced.

3 - You're quibbling over a word. The text can be replaced by text in India (a featured article): "Four world religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism—originated here, whereas Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived in the 1st millennium CE and also helped shape the region's diverse culture"

4 - The entire section is wrong because of one disputed fact?

5 - Notable rulings affecting the topic should be discussed in prose.

6 - This section should discuss how hate crimes (or anything else) directly prevent freedom of religion.

Ugog Nizdast, any time to devote to this? Maybe get Wikiproject India involved? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 23:34, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Don't have much time these days but I've make sure to work on it if no one else has, by the time I'm free for this since I've tagged it. After looking at the state of it, I remember posting on the WP:INB for it to be watchlisted by anyone.

Such mass blanking is really not warranted. Yes, of course there are significant problems on current version of the page. What's needed to do is weed out the unsourced POV statements which have been added in-between paras over these years, rewrite, trim down and summarise content which have their own main page. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:15, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

=

I've fixed the grammar. I haven't copied random pieces of text. The sentence on civil law is accurate. I can easily provide many sources from news articles or even public parliamentary proceedings in India. I find working on the wikipedia website a chore, so I could not attach more references before accidentally submitting and reloading and so on, I'm sorry about that.

The broad structure of the article must be the current state of laws and notable cases to restricting the freedom to practice any religion (of which there are none). The proper place for other information is another article on the evolution of religion(s) in the subcontinent.Please look at the Britannica entry, if you so wish.

I must repeat, I believe encyclopedias must be precise not verbose collections of fact (like the CIA Factbook), much less opinions being peddled as fact. I have deliberately removed content that is unnecessary. The History section, I do not believe should be a part of this article.It's too broad to be dealt with one section.

Nanasid (talk) 14:44, 25 June 2014 (UTC)