Talk:Bengal famine of 1943

Strange claim

"During the British rule in India there were approximately 25 major famines spread through states such as Tamil Nadu in South India, Bihar in the north, and Bengal in the east; altogether, between 30 and 40 million Indians were the victims of famines in the latter half of the 20th century"

The above sentence surely seems wrongs. If the meaning of the sentence is supposed to be that between 30 and 40 million Indians died due to many different famines during the period of British rule, then the very last part of the sentence should not be referring to "the latter half of the 20th century". Perhaps this should be "the latter half of the 19th century", that is, 1800's, or "the first half of the 20th century", that is, 1900 to 1947.Lathamibird (talk) 06:53, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Shipping section UNDUE

Yes, shipping was tight for GB, but when Wavell put his foot down and used his connections to pressure GB into supplying aid (the Statesman photos made a difference too), the aid came mostly from the Punjab.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:19, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Hardly 'UNDUE'. Many commentators consider the failure to import was very important - India usually imported 2m tons of grain. The 200,000 tons eventually imported was not enough and came too late for many of the starving. You cannot ignore this just because some well-fed people chose to believe that there was plenty of grain available and imports were unnecessary. It needs verifiable facts. These have however been removed and replaced by inaccurate quotations referring to different periods. AidWorker (talk) 11:20, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Undid large-scale edit with vague edit summary "restoring"

• I just undid a very large-scale edit with the vague edit summary "restoring". Restoring what? The cite format was changed, entire sections were removed, etc. Was this a restore to a version from literally years ago?  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 16:26, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia and "genocide" in this particular case

Some editors, and at the moment this specifically refers to 73.202.190.56 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), are eager to increase the general level of social justice in our world by using Wikipedia as a forum for telling the world that this particular famine was a "genocide". That may be a noble goal, but there are two or three problems with using Wikipedia for that purpose. The goal of Wikipedia is Verifiability, not truth. If you can find reliable sources that label this famine a genocide, then you can add that info. Please note that blogs are not reliable sources in this particular case (in most cases, actually). Personal web pages are not reliable sources either. No, you must find a book or journal article by a well-known publisher etc., and even then there are some exceptions, because some sources are more reliable than others.

But wait, there's more. Even if you do find a reliable source that calls this particular famine a case of genocide (and I have looked for months and haven't seen any that would state it so baldly), then you still can't label the famine a genocide if you only found one source that says so but several sources that do not. That would be placing undue weight on the one source that you personally believe in your heart is correct..

This particular famine is extremely, extremely complex. World-class experts like Amartya Sen and Cormac Ó Gráda have argued about it, as also have many other relatively less famous (but still reputable) scholars on a long, long list. So this topic is very debatable. And even among those scholars debating it, "genocide" is a word that is probably too strong for most scholars to be willing to use.

The number of books and articles that cover this topic is huge. So Wikipedia cannot just ignore all this debate and unilaterally make a statement that is so controversial. We must cover a nuanced topic in a nuanced (and balanced, and verifiable) manner.Simple declarations of "genocide" are very, very far from providing a sufficient explanation that would be suitable for a Wikipedia article.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:02, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Please add sources to end of intro

Add this immediately after last sentence of intro

{{sfn|Nightingale|McDonald|Vallée|2006|p=707}}<ref>{{cite book |first=M. |last=Davis |title=Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World |publisher=Verso |location=London |year=2001 |isbn=1-85984-739-0 |page=9 |url= |ref=harv}}</ref> Add this to References section * {{citation |title=Florence Nightingale on Health in India |last1=Nightingale |first1=Florence |last2=McDonald |first2=Lynn |last3=Vallée |first3=Gérard |isbn=978-0-88920-468-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=amE1cz1fkIkC |year=2006 |publisher=Wilfrid Laurier University Press |location=Waterloo, Ont }}

Information is valid but must be properly cited

(Taking a deep breath) Hi Libdems23. Welcome to Wikipedia. I am very familiar with Florence Nightingale's speech etc. I hope I can bring you up to speed on the state of this article. In a few words, it is massively inadequate. However, this topic is nearly as deep and complex as any non-technical article I have ever seen.

I am working on a complete top-to-bottom rewrite in my personal userspace. NOTE this rewrite is MONTHS from being finished... You are invited to read (but not edit) that rewrite here: User:Lingzhi/sandbox. You are invited to comment about the rewrite here: User talk:Lingzhi/sandbox. As for your concerns: Look down toward the bottom of the rewrite, and you'll see there's a section titled "Debate over primary cause". That's where I'm gonna put the opinions of scholars about why the famine occurred. there are three main schools of thought: it was England's fault because they were incompetent and overwhelmed bunglers; it was England's fault because they were heartless and/or racist, and it was no one's fault but the result of natural disasters. All three will be given their due voice. Here is a very important point: Wikipedia cannot choose among these explanations in this case, because the scholars themselves disagree. We can only report the consensus view, and if there is no consensus, we report each view and say there is no consensus. So... please do be patient... I hope this helps.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 10:07, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

(Taking an even deeper breath) I'm glad you're familiar with that one source, but there are a dozen more where that came from confirm the same point. I understand that it's important to include all viewpoints on a complex disaster such as this one, but equating the view that this was simply an unavoidable "natural" disaster is analogous to blaming racial disparities between African-Americans and white Americans on "natural" conditions, not on institutional discrimination. While there is a large quantity of academic sources supporting the former hypothesis, they were mostly published before the late 20th century, similar to explanations of the Bengal famine not being the responsibility of the British government. I'm sure you can see why it'd be problematic to provide equal share of the wiki and legitimacy to such opinions of African-Americans, even if such conclusions haven't been drawn about foreigners until recently. Additionally, delineating the different explanations of British responsibility in the way you mentioned isn't necessarily helpful, as most sources I've come across (including on the wiki page) include basic apathy and and resultant incompetence, (along with the fact that, erm, the British were already committing brutal human rights violations in order to continuing colonizing India, and how that relates to the overall good administration of the region) as part of the overall reasoning of why the British willfully had this disaster happen. In other words, I think it's unwise to differentiate the general racism with the apathy/incompetence, when the latter is an aspect of the former. As I've already mentioned, I can provide numerous (more) sources to support these views and others like it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Libdems23 (talk • contribs) 22:09, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

First, the reason to distinguish between them is because the literature itself explicitly draws that distinction and explicitly argues over it. For example (highlights added):

Sen and others have described the famine as the product mainly of bureaucratic bungling and accompanying market failure. I see it instead as largely due to the failure of the British authorities to make good, for war-strategic reasons, a genuine food deficit.

— Ó Gráda, 2009 pp. 190–91

In the context of Britain's war in Asia, the Bengal Famine cannot be understood merely as the story of a particularly grotesque form of 'collateral damage' (as it sometimes has been); it must also be understood... as the direct outcome of intentional policies and priorities that many, including high officials in the colonial government, fully recognized would bring dire hardship (and even starvation) to the people of India. In their fight against imperial Japan, Britain and its allies were willing to sacrifice Bengal in order to pursue war elsewhere, as well as to regain their lost supremacy in Asia... The Bengal famine was no 'accident' of war-time 'bungling', but rather was the direct product of colonial and war-time ideologies and calculations that (knowingly) exposed the poor of Bengal to annihilation through deprivation.

— Mukherjee, 2015, pp. 251–52

The key point is that we cannot filter the literature through the lens of our own perceptions of Truth and emphasize Truth as we see it (that would be a violation of WP:NPOV); we can only report what the literature says... the whole body of the literature, I mean.

Second, it's not the case at all that I'm only familiar with one source. Glancing at the "Bengal" directory/folder on the computer I'm using at this moment, I see...hmmm... 129 pdf documents... but let's assume some of those are duplicates and say OK maybe 110 or so. And I have read them. Some of them I have read repeatedly. I'm not bragging or trying to say I have some superior degree of authority. I'm just trying to bring you into this conversation fully informed about its participants.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:14, 2 December 2016 (UTC)