Talk:Hinduism

Conversion

Do we really have to maintain an empty section called "Conversion"? and that too in an article on Hinduism? Nothing could be more oxymoronic. I have taken the liberty of removing the section and hopefully it will remain removed. There is only one god, everything and everyone is part of that god and vice versa. So there is no such thing as a conversion. This does not mean that one can not adopt Hindu practices. Anyone can as long as they don't think that they have "converted" to Hinduism as that will pretty much defeat the purpose of being a Hindu :-). The section titled "Spread of Hindu practices" seems relevant though and I hope it doesn't start talking about conversion in disguise.

Rajiv Malhotra as source

Rajiv Malhotra is not WP:RS; he's a polemicist, who has no scholarly credits; on the contrary. See the response on Being Different in the International Journal of Hindu Studies 16 (3). At best he can be cited as "According to Rajiv Malhotra"; which would be WP:UNDUE in the main article on Hinduism. Sorry.
Nevertheless, I've left one sentence which is sourced by RM:

"Dharma as derived from the Sanskrit root dhri means "that which upholds" or "that without which nothing can stand" or "that which maintains the stability and harmony of the universe." Malhotra, Rajiv (13 June 2011). "Dharma Is Not The Same As Religion". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 24 April 2015.

This seems to be common knowledge, though it may need to be checked. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:17, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

I took that one out too, because there is a dedicated subsection for dharma. That and some new additions were out of place/undue or repetition. Etymology of the word dharma should go into its own article, if it isn't there. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 21:02, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@User:Joshua Jonathan It would be a sweeping statement to make when you say that we should be barred from including Rajiv's work in Wikipedia because he is a polemicist and thus his writings are not WP:RS. There is only one editor in the Being Different article who is calling him a polemicist - here is the excerpted text from the article:
"Robert A. Yelle is highly critical of Malhotra's approach. According to Yelle, 'there is little, if any, original scholarship in the book. It is the work of a polemicist"
Here Yelle is attempting to invalidate Rajiv's arguments, thus it would make sense to see why Yelle is desirous to buoy his points above Rajiv's and thus take recourse to label him as a polemicist. Thus, at best you can say "According to Yelle, Rajiv Malhotra is a polemicist" And here again for the sake of argument, it would equally be correct to say Yelle is also a polemicist. And thus to draw a conclusion on Yelle's stance, who is also a polemicist by the same logic, and claim that Rajiv is not WP:RS does not seem right to me. You see the flaw in your argument. As seen in my original edit, I did say that it was Rajiv who spelled out the contrast between "religion" and "dharma". Though, all said and done, I only submit to the WP:UNDUE argument. It makes sense that it falls under WP:UNDUE and thus doesn't make the cut in this article. Cheers and Happy-editing! Kapil.xerox (talk) 04:31, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

No, I don't see the "flaw" in the argument, and it's not a "sweeping statement." I only see that Wikipedia has a policy to use reliable sources, and that Rajiv Malhotra is far from being a reliable source. Not only because he's "polemicist," which means that he's got a disregard for differing opinions, but basically because his presentation of the facts is incorrect. And that's because he's not aiming to give a neutral or scholarly overview, but to give a specific understanding of India, in which there is ample room for differences within India. He's got a political agenda, and that's what makes him an unreliable source. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:00, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Respectfully to both of you, it is sources that are labelled as reliable or not, not authors. Can somebody state which source is being talked about, and how it satisfies the criteria of WP:RS? Cheers, Kautilya3 (talk) 09:16, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

@User:Kautilya3 - The source that is being discussed here is the Huffington Post where Rajiv posted the article "Dharma is not the same as Religion" Here is the link to the article itself: click_here. Huffington Post, to my best knowledge, is one of the most reliable sources of information and is well known for its thorough fact-checking editorial review team. Authors like Ken Robinson, whose TED talk was one of the most viewed, regularly post on Huffington Post. (For instance his most recent article on "The Creative Classroom" was "primarily" posted on Huffington Post. See link: click_here ). I am not sure if there is a grey area in my knowledge of WP:RS policy whose wording could fall into a kind of Wikipedia policy along the lines of WP:UA meaning "Unreliable Author" regardless of whatever source is being used by "UA" that User:Joshua Jonathan is referring to that I am still unable to see. My main motivation for adding the difference between an English equivalent and a Sanskrit terminology is to elevate readers understanding that sometimes subtle and sometimes huge differences exist between the two. Thus, it is an injustice when a Sanskrit terminology is watered down with a non-translatable English equivalent and failing to explain the difference in my view does not merit an article. On the side-note, Western scholars/thinkers may be sensitive to view Rajiv as a polemicist but his work is essentially a Purva-Paksha which is another Sanskrit concept foreign to many of them and is in no way even near-polemic. User:Joshua Jonathan clarifies that it (the article) satisfies WP:RS since Rajiv Malhotra is a polemicist, as pointed out by scholars in the International Journal of Hindu Studies - hence a "UA" - Unreliable Author. Kapil.xerox (talk) 04:52, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Kautilya3, you're right, of course, that authors are not sources. Nevertheless, there are better sources than articles by Rajiv Malhotra. The criticisms of the authors of the IJHS go further than only "polemicism." Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:50, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

@Kapil.xerox: See WP:NEWSORG. Newspaper opinion columns are not reliable sources. However, if the author is an established scholar who has had plenty of publications in peer-reviewed journals, then we can accept their opinion columns as being RS. Rajiv Malhotra hasn't had any peer-reviewed publication in Hinduism as far as I know. So, his opinion columns can't be cited. I might add that David Frawley, Subhash Kak etc. also fall into the same category. They need to publish in peer-reviewed journals in order for us to take notice. Cheers, Kautilya3 (talk) 06:39, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Looking at the big picture, I see that Rajiv Malhotra and his movement have been critiquing the Western scholarship of Hinduism as being wrong or missing the point. That is perfectly fine. They are entitled to their views and welcome to put them forward. If the scholars accept their criticism and change their views, then we can represent such changes on Wikipedia. If there is debate about those issues in scholarly sources, we can describe that too. But these things would be only minor footnotes in the main article. The right place to put those debates would be in the articles dedicated to those debates. Such debates might be "notable" even though they are not "reliable." Cheers, Kautilya3 (talk) 07:05, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

This review by Anantanand Rambachan of Malhotra's Indra's Net gives an impression of the structural distortions Malhotra incorporates in his works. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:41, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Quick comment: Malhotra may be an important enough voice to quote on contemporary Western scholarship on Hinduism (is there a relevant wikipedia article?), although even in that case it would be best to use secondary sources to cite what he has said, and his opinions will need to be attributed. However, Malhotra is certainly not a good source on Hinduism itself, and I don't see why we would need to cite him in this article given the numerous far superior sources that are available. Example, Patrick Olivelle and Alf Hiltebeitel have recently edited and written, respectively, whole books devoted to the concept of Dharma; why would we cite Malhotras column in Huffington Post for that?! Abecedare (talk) 16:07, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

No, we don't have an article on Western scholarship on Hinduism. I don't think we need one either. But there is an article on Rajiv Malhotra and there are articles on each of his books. His critiques and counter-critiques can go there. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:06, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Rajiv Malhotra is WP:RS, he just needs to be included with his name. Delibzr (talk) 11:56, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

The book Breaking India is extensively sourced from western academic books and papers.VictoriaGrayson^Talk 12:49, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

POV Neutrality

I think this article needs a reboot. On top of the unresolved issues above, I think it needs to do more to avoid segregating Northern and Southern cultures. Someone should attempt to write the article without talking about 'aryans' or 'dravidians', and make a seperate section or article explaining the controversy behind the history of hinduism. TimothyBaker2 (talk) 09:31, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

All the mentions of "Aryans" and "Dravidians" are from scholarly sources. In fact, most of them direct quotes. I don't see any problem with them. If you have a specific issue, please mention it. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:42, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

I just think it could be done better. "Scholary" sources doesn't equal "Neutral" sources, and while I'm pro-india on this matter, I think the best way to solve this is to avoid talking about the aryan/dravidian divide as much as possible, and explain said divide in a seperate section or article, or just limit it to the historical section of Hinduism. I'm reading this article going "no" "no" "false" "ridiculous" and finding that google is my friend; it's not that this article's facts can't be sourced, it's that there are alternative sources too.

I also think the article fails to explain the alternative views behind the history of hinduism. Some would consider many of the artifacts found in Happaran to be a sign that Hinduism is of majority Dravidian origin, while evidence also exists that there was no migration.

But here the term 'Aryan' was just coined by the British Historians in order to divide and rule. The term 'Arya' exactly means- a noble one.

The Aryan migration theory is false. But there was a migration for sure. It was within the subcontinent. After the downfall of Indus valley civilization and the river Saraswati dried up, the river side civilizations in the West couldn't sustain. So people largely migrated from the West of India to the East side giving rise to a civilization on the banks of river Ganga.

That means 'aryans' are not a race. Also the word Dravida is derived from the word 'drava' meaning liquid. This was more prominently mentioned in Vedas. That is people who most significantly reside in the water bound regions of India.

TimothyBaker2 (talk) 07:26, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

I refer you to WP:RS, and WP:NPOV. WP:NPOV will explain that neutrality comes from what reliable sources say. According to WP:RS, scholarly sources are generally considered the most reliable. 'Scholarly sources' are exactly equal to 'Neutral' sources.--regentspark (comment) 12:31, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

new religious sects claiming to be hindu

Sai baba, Brahrishi, BAPS, etc all these new hindu sects claiming to be hindu. Can there any legal action taken to prevent them from pretending to be hindu sects? clearly there is a conflict between muslim sufi philosophy and hindu philosophy so why are these sects allowed to propagate themselves as hindu? BAPS is claiming to be krishna wtf???