File talk:BritishIndianArmy.jpg

These are not Muslim soldiers. They are Sikh soldiers as anyone can guess from their turbans.

These Soliders are 100% Sikh. The Sikh population was scattered evenly between present day Pakistan and India before both countries were partitioned in 1947, so it is likely this photo could have been taken in Pakistan. Parihav (talk) 21:06, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually the photo caption does say "All Hindustani Musalmans", simply wearing turbans does not make someone Sikh, otherwise what about these chaps? Pahari Sahib 00:57, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Comeon guys anyone can tell these are Sikhs. Who ever wrote them muslims he or she did very unjustice to these sikh. We all should know in British times or current times there is no such thing Muslim Regement in the Indian Army. Thanks Amarjit Raju Las Vegas —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.253.20.82 (talk) 22:14, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Coming across this picture, it does seem to appear that at least some of the soldiers are Sikh: the style of some of the turbans is typical Punjabi Sikh, although some appear to be different and the quality of the image leaves absolute identification difficult. The caption may simply be mistaken (although this is often unlikely). Pahari Sahib is correct to object to the intimation that a turban wearer is automatically Sikh; however, the style of the turban is very characteristic of the race of the person wearing it, and they are often very distinguishable from one another. Thus, I'm not so sure it should be stated exactly what religion these soldiers are without knowing when this photo was taken, where exactly, and of what regiment. Krea (talk) 21:18, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Most of these comments violate Wikipedia's No Original Research policy. The source says they are Muslim and unless anyone can find a reference that specifically says that this picture is not of Muslim soldiers, we have to accept the image as being correct. Your opinion about the style of turban etc. is just that an opinion, not a documented fact. Dabbler (talk) 14:25, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Your opinion about the style of turban etc. is just that an opinion, not a documented fact.

Except that it isn't. Turbans aren't just a headdress that is interchangeable in India, they are a mark of class, community, race and religion, and that is to some extent common knowledge in those communities. Whether any of that is as strongly documented as this encyclopaedia requires, there you may technically be right. I can find one reputable source here, "Colonialism and its forms of knowledge: the British in India" (Princeton University Press, 1996) by Bernard S. Cohn. On page 123: "Indians were given 'exotic' headgear: the Sikh turban as previously discussed, and each of the major martial races had their distinctive turban in terms of wrapping and color." and on page 110: "By the late nineteenth century a standardized Sikh turban, as distinct from the turban of the Punjabi Muslims and Hindu Dogras." Both references in that book refer to identity in the British Indian Army. There's another reference made by the UCL anthropologist Victor Buchli in "The material culture reader" (Berg, 2002) here: "a pagri (turban) made -- Marwari, Rajasthani, Punjabi, Gujarati, Ratlami (styles of pagri)" on page 99, and "One photographer, H.S. Chadha...offers a client most of the national styles of turban (Rajasthani, Punjabi, Gujarati)." on page 91. There are some other interesting sources in this Google Scholar search, but I couldn't access the desired quote in order to check it in context.

Now, there are any number of reputable sources that intimate what style of turban is unique to which race or religion, which you can search for yourself online: Sikhnet is one of the larger Sikh websites, and this Seattle Times article is fairly ubiquitous I think. To be fair, none of these explicitly state that that particular styling is unique to that race or religion, and perhaps none of these are too trustworthy in isolation, but they are numerous and consistent.

I doubt there is a written source that refutes the assertion in this picture that these are Muslim soldiers, but it takes no originality on my part to claim that these soldiers do not appear to be Muslim: I take the sources that claim that Sikhs and Muslims wear different style turbans and identify those in this picture as those attributed to Sikhs by other sources. Granted, that's not particularly strong evidence and would not be anywhere near enough to put doubt on a credible source, but what makes you think this picture is credible? Who wrote the caption? In what context? Do you know? I simply want more information on this picture before blindly copying what it says. Bear in mind that I have not inserted any new information, I have only taken out something that I believe is credibly questionable, and in no way whatsoever important to the picture or the articles in which it is used. Krea (talk) 01:24, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

We have a primary source which states that these soldiers are Mussalmen. Until you have sources which state that these particular soldiers are not Mussalmen but Sikhs then we have to accept that the primary source was closer to the actual event than we were. We also have to consider that military uniforms are just that uniform and military, not what these men might have chosen to wear in civilan conditions. As far as I know Indian Army regiments (e.g. 27th Punjab Regiment) were not based solely on religious or ethnic lines but on geographical areas. The sub-units (e.g. battalions or companies) of a regiment may have been more segregated but the regiment could contain men of different religions. The uniform of a regiment was the same for every soldier in the regiment. A Sikh design of turban may have been chosen by a British officer for the uniform of a regiment containing Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. The primary source states these men are Muslim. Dabbler (talk) 11:05, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly how stringent the requirements for the turban were now or back then, but I doubt the military would have demanded that every member of the unit wear the same style. The Sikhs would definitely have been liable to take offence to any non-Sikh wearing a Sikh-style turban, considering the raison d'être for the Sikh turban. Maybe the Rajputs would have too, and certainly (in my opinion) anybody would have felt uneasy wearing a turban in the style of another religion or race. Hell, Jatt Sikhs don't like wearing Tarkhan Sikh turbans -- and make no mistake they are all Sikhs. Like I said, this is a deeply embedded cultural thing, which has everything to do with identity; frankly, gang culture is a good metaphor. I doubt the British officers would have demanded something so culturally suicidal, especially in the context of the politics of the region. This is probably true everywhere: I recall some news story about Muslim US Army soldiers being unhappy that New Testament references were etched onto their guns, if I've not been misled. If these soldiers are Muslim, then it's more likely that the style of the turban is indeed theirs and the picture is simply lacking in the quality or detail to make this clear.

Concerning the picture as a primary source, well, that doesn't have any bearing on veracity if we can't determine the context or bias of the source. I could write that the sky above my house turned a brilliant purple and orange colour throughout Christmas day and it would be a primary source, but that wouldn't justify anybody quoting my claim as truth just because I provided a primary account of the matter. So, again, who wrote the caption? Were they a primary source? We don't know anything about this picture, besides who took it. Who's to say it wasn't from a biographer? or a researcher of Indian Army life? Neither of these scenarios would make the caption writer a primary source as to the religion of these soldiers. All we know is that these soldiers are claimed to be Muslim by persons unknown. I'm happy for that to be stated, but not that they are -- not just Muslim, but Sikh, or anything. Krea (talk) 01:27, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Generally one major reason for a military uniform is to take people from disparate backgrounds and form them into a united and cohesive unit proud of their distinctive uniform and who will support each other against the enemy. I do not know of a single regimental uniform which allows the troops to accessorize with their own personal non-uniform components. Isn't it strange how all the old photographs out on the net just happened to manage to capture only soldiers of the same cultural background who happened to be wearing the same headgear? Dabbler (talk) 11:18, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'd insist the uniform dress code is ultimately to suppress the individuality of the soldier and engender an environment of group mentality so that orders are followed the more easily -- essentially the same process as hypnotism -- but I guess that's just another way of saying the same thing. Yes, the military in general likes its soldiers to appear the same, but it does not require them to be arbitrarily identical. There's no evidence that the British Army ever demanded that soldiers in the same regiment wear identical style turbans.

Isn't it strange how all the old photographs out on the net just happened to manage to capture only soldiers of the same cultural background who happened to be wearing the same headgear?

Every picture I've seen has been of a small group (20-30 max.) of soldiers of the same religion. It follows that they would have the same style turban. How does that support your hypothesis? You'd have to find a picture of two people who are racially or religiously different who are wearing the same style turban. Having done a cursory search of old photos, that would be a difficult thing to determine seeing as the quality of these photos aren't very good. Would such a photo even exist? Regiments, let's not forget, are large groups of soldiers; the practical fighting units would have been much smaller brigades formed from the regiments. Do we know that such brigades were mixed race? I'd think they'd have been composed of people of the same race or religion; photos of these would then, "coincidentally", have been of people wearing the same style turban. Actually, there's a very good picture here, seventh picture down ("The Guides proved that day..."), of different styles of turbans. Of course, that picture in no way proves anything any more than any picture of soldiers wearing identically styled turbans does. Incidentally, the fourteenth fifteenth picture down ("Indian Officers of the 9th Bengal Cavalry...") also corroborates everything that I've said so far: that each race/religion wears their own characteristic turban, that units were mostly uniform-race, and that in such units where races and religions mixed the soldiers wore their own characteristically styled turbans. However, that source also needs to be examined properly before we can state anything definitively.

Looking at our picture again, they may indeed turn out to be Muslim; certainly, there are elements of the turbans that appear to look non-Sikh, or at least unusual. But then again, they look very different to Muslim turbans and very much like Sikh ones. For example, some of the soldiers' ears are exposed. That's unusual for Sikhs, but very characteristic of Muslims. This indicates that they may be Muslim (although nothing prohibits a Sikh from exposing his ears, and this may have been done for auditory purposes). However, some soldiers' ears appear to be covered, which would be even more unusual for Muslim turban wearers, thus indicating that they are not Muslim. These turbans are also uniformly tied in the same direction: if you look at turbans from the front (wearer facing you), you'll notice that the cloth on one side of the head runs under the cloth coming from the other side of the head as they meet at the front of the head. For Sikhs, it is always the same side whose cloth runs over the other side -- the wearer's right hand side. This is because of tradition, although you'll find some western-born Sikhs tie it the "wrong" way round. Muslim turban wearers, I believe, usually have turbans that wind either way. For 22 turbans, it's unlikely that they all happened to have tied it in the same direction unless it were systematic. Having said that, they may indeed have been Muslims who tied it uniformly in the same direction for the sake of a nice picture seeing as they're clearly posing for it, for one thing. Finally, there's also the fact that Muslims in India do not traditionally wear beards; only the Sikhs do -- that's actually the strongest evidence, I think, that these soldiers are not Muslim, and it has nothing to do with their turbans! Nothing is totally conclusive, but I privately think these soldiers are Sikh. In any case, I insist, again, that the only thing that can be said is that these soldiers are claimed to be Muslim by an unknown commentator. I would also remove the word "Muslim" from the British Indian Army page (rather than writing "a group of Indian soldiers claimed to Muslim..." or something akin to that) since it makes no difference to that article what religion these soldiers are. Krea (talk) 22:18, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I am really not too bothered whether or not the soldiers in question are Muslim, Sikh or British dressed up in turbans (see here). My objection was to people stating that despite the caption, they were not Muslims as described based on their personal impressions and interpretations of the turban style not on some reliable source which is the Wikipedia standard. Generally Indian regiments came in several different recruiting strategies. Some were ethnically based (Gurkhas etc.) some were location based (e.g. Punjabi or Bengali regiments). While regiments were sometimes of mixed religion etc., these may have been segregated in the smaller units of battalions or companies. So a mixed regiment might have Hindu or Sikh or Muslim companies all wearing the same uniform. Dabbler (talk) 12:00, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Neither am I concerned what religion they are. Why would anyone be? I posted above because I came across the picture and thought "man, I can't believe these guys are Muslim. There has to have been one hell of a mistake here". I'm trying to be accurate. I may well be wrong, but as long as I'm satisfied that there is evidence that I'm wrong, then I'll be happy. I've posted some reasons as to why I privately think these soldiers are actually Sikh, but I'm not making that claim in any article because I could not find anything that would back that up in any strong way. To go from "the caption says these soldiers are Muslim" to "these soldiers are Muslim" you are implicitly reporting to the reader that the caption is correct, and that requires evidence. Usually, information on the source allows us to make this decision because we can evaluate the bias and professionalism of the source. Here, however, we have nothing. What book, or printed publication, was this taken from? Who wrote it? What was it about? In the absence of this, there's enough soft evidence to stop us from reporting that the caption is true. Compare: can we state that these are actual soldiers and not actors? Yes. There is no evidence to the contrary, whilst the source website implicitly states that these are from the Indian Army, has other pictures that would make deception unlikely and Fred Bremner is elsewhere reported to have taken photos of the Indian Army. This is enough evidence to say to the reader: "not only do we report that this caption claims that they are soldiers, but because of this evidence, above, we also aver it to be true; hence, we will say 'these soldiers...' and not 'these soldiers, as claimed by the source...'". This is a case of Wikipedia:Verifiability is it not? Krea (talk) 23:02, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Also, come to think of it, why does the copyright notice state that this is a Pakistani work? Does the modern state of Pakistan hold ownership of works created in what was formerly India? Furthermore, I'm fairly sure that copyright is not where the picture was taken, but from the country that published the material. That is, whatever printed publication this picture is from (presumably a book), it's copyright is under the country in which that work was published in. Surely there's far more chance that that is England, rather than Pakistan or India, right? Krea (talk) 23:10, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Can we agree to have the caption in the British Indian Army article without any reference to the religious beliefs or otherwise of the soldiers involved? I have just done that as someone again changed the caption to read Sikh, but I would like to have some sort of agreement documented here. Dabbler (talk) 16:42, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely! Until either there are strong, reliable sources claiming these soldiers are Sikh (or indeed, any other religion) or something can be learned about the source that would put confidence in its assertion that they are Muslim, we should be careful to not attempt to make claims about the religion of these soldiers ourselves as editors, either by leaving the religion absent when not pertinent or by making clear that the religion is as claimed by the source and not necessarily reported in confidence, at the editor's discretion.

I'll also put up an objection about the copyright notice on the Wikimedia page...later.

And Happy Christmas/Hanukkah/Holidays! Krea (talk) 23:48, 24 December 2011 (UTC)