Talk:Kashmir/Archive 5

This is an archive of past discussions about Kashmir. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

←

Archive 3

Pro-Indian Bias

It seems that more space is given to pro-Indian views. There is a need to balance this article.

Here is an example:

Article labeld ‘Terrorism in Kashmir’ is biased and represents pro-Indian View.

For example “India says that over the last two years, a militant group, Lashkar-e-Toiba has split into two factions: Al Mansurin and Al Nasirin. Another new militant group reported to have emerged is the Save Kashmir Movement. Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (formerly known as Harkat-ul-Ansar) and Lashkar-e-Toiba are believed to be operating from Muzaffarabad, Azad Kashmir and Muridke, Pakistan respectively.[6] Other less well known groups are the Freedom Force and Farzandan-e-Milat. A smaller militant group, Al Badr, has been active in Kashmir for many years and is still believed to be functioning.”

How much space are you going to provide to explain Pakistani point of view?

There is also a huge list of anti-Pakistani films and books in this article as well.

Maakhter 05:56, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks.

Given the nature of the subject matter I agree with the above concerns. The page should be as balanced as possible.MarkStreet

I agree. And also, Kashimir is 'not' part of India or Pakistan.

It is stated in the article that "Pakistan launched a guerilla onslaught meant to frighten its ruler into submission. Instead the Maharaja appealed to Mountbatten[13] for assistance" This also clearly not NPOV. So i changed it to "When he hesitated to do this, the muslims of Kashmir with help from the Pakistani government launched a war against their Maharaja". Hope that other will also point out and rectify the biased information from this article. Regards , Jawwad —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joji pk (talk • contribs) 10:17, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Transliterations...

Before I made the edit, there was only the Urdu transliteration of 'Kashmir' so I put in a Hindi transliteration as well, logically because India has claims to Kashmir and Hindi is one of India's governing languages (the other being English). I also put in the Gurmukhi transliteration, but now I think that that was unwarranted.

I am trying to be as politically and factually correct as possible here. Maybe we should put the Chinese characters in too because, according to this article, they have some claim to Kashmir as well.

Any thoughts?

--Yoshiroshin 03:23, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Request to El C

You need to explain what you are doing. What does it mean, "No wholesale reverts?" I have written most of this article (at least the lead, history, and demography). In two days you make some changes, some of which are inaccurate. Reverting to a previous page is hardly a wholesale revert. Please revert to a stable previous page and then explain what you propose to do; otherwise, I will get admin help. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 12:45, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Please refer to WP:OWN. I'm trying to avoid some of the idiosyncrasies that plague the Kashmir sets of articles. I don't see why we need to go into such detail in the lead. I am an admin, incidentally, and was requested to protect these pages. I'm editing them, instead. No text was lost, just moved around. You cannot have so much detail in the intro, esp. one that repeats what is in other sections word-for-word. El_C 12:50, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll be back in 24 hours, since I used up three reverts and, clearly, you feel you have some special entitlement to this page. You do not. El_C 12:55, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

No I don't feel I have any entitlement; just that I have written a careful and neutral account from academic sources. Agreed that there was redundancy that needs to be pruned. Demography is normally not an important part of a country or region page, but it is in Kashmir. Tell me what you want to do, and I'm happy to help you. As it stands, the script in the lead sentence has Hindi and Gurumukhi (introduced no doubt by some POV warriors) which are not even spoken in the Kashmir region; the scripts should be just Kashmiri and Urdu. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 13:03, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I've been trying my best to give a facelift to the Kashmir sets of articles ^[1][2] and this is the first resistance I encountered. And all my changes here are reverted for what, for having removed a detailed demographic account which I moved to its own section? Such an account is highly unconventional for a lead section, to go into such length (the history, too, was shortened). Maybe a sentence or two, at most. El_C 13:04, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

There might be idiosyncrasies that plague other Kashmir-related articles, but this is the only one I have helped write. I can't imagine others have anything similar. (The History article might, as some of the history from here was copied there.) I am trying to keep this page as neutral as possible. That is why I removed all the dotcom external links which are mostly partisan. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 13:10, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the overemphasis on the demography in the lead is, in itself, less than neutral. Again, I stress that, unlike for Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, I hardly did any writing here. I mostly just moved text around to make the lead more conventional and accessible to our readership. And I removed the "long been Muslim" bit, because I don't see how that helps as an introductory sentence (too vague; can be misinterpreted to be polemic). As for the Hindi, does the Indian government not use it as the official language in Indian Kashmir? Maybe that can be qualified. But I'm open to debate on that. El_C 13:14, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I am fine with removing links and what not, but this entry, too, suffered and continues to suffer from idiosyncrasies. El_C 13:14, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

It's good that you are trimming the history section, but you need to end it in contemporaneous settings. So brief summary instead, sure, and definitely if anything is duplicated from eleswhere, but don't just leave the reader hanging at 1965.^[3] El_C 13:19, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Look, obviously this is your field, not mine, and I am willing to go quite a long way to back you up on the content front, so long as you work with me. I just am trying to advance the point that the introduction be kept as simple as possible. El_C 13:33, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, let me rethink the demographic bit again. Let's talk about it in 24 hours. As for the languages, I'm pretty sure that the official languages of Indian Kashmir are Kashmiri and Urdu. The central government in India uses English to communicate with a state whose official language is not Hindi. I'm guessing too that Urdu is the official language of the Pakistani region; if any language needs to be added, it would be Chinese or Uyghur the language of Xinjiang the region of China that borders Aksai Chin (and of which Aksai Chin is presumably a part). Fowler&fowler «Talk» 13:35, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good, thanks. I'm willing to follow your lead on the languages front. I'll remove the Hindi as well, then (also from Jammu and Kashmir —twas added today). You don't actually have to wait 24 hrs, unless of course you want to. El_C 13:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The official language of Indian and Pakistani Kashmir is Urdu, so their is no need for Hindi and Kashmiri. Noor Aalam (talk) 16:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

That is indeed true. I just checked and the official language of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir is Urdu, not Kashmiri. However, we need to consider that this article is about the region not about the administrative units (of different nation-states) that make up the region. The administrative units have there own pages (Jammu and Kashmir, Northern Areas, Aksai Chin etc.) and there the official languages (Urdu, Chinese) would be appropriate. However, for this article, the majority languages actually spoken in the region should be listed, and those would be Kashmiri (most widely spoken in Indian Kashmir), Urdu (spoken more in the Pakistani areas), Uyghur (spoken in Aksai Chin). Fowler&fowler «Talk» 18:05, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me; feel free to add them, then. El_C 22:21, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I have added Dogri and Kashmiri which account for 28.5 and 7.8 percent of the population of Jammu and Kashmir respectively (source a). Speakers of both of these languages speak Hindi as a second language (source b, source c, source d). Furthermore, it is the official language of the entire Union of India (source e). However, I have not added Hindi since its addition is currently a point of contention. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 23:40, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Redundancy in Kashmir-related articles

I guess we should also address the question of redundancy. There are a number of Kashmir-related articles:

I notice for example that some of the history of the years 1820-1947 that I wrote for this page is also there on the History of Jammu and Kashmir page and the Jammu and Kashmir page. So, definitely some pruning is in order.

First, the name "History of Jammu and Kashmir" is problematic, since the name itself is recent. "Jammu and Kashmir" is the name of the state in India. In British times, (although the Maharaja of the princely state sometimes referred to it as "Jammu and Kashmir") the British referred to as "Kashmir and Jammu" (at least my copy of the Imperial Gazetteer of India begins its article on "Kashmir and Jammu" with, "The territories of the Maharaja of Kashmir and Jammu may be roughly described as ..." Before British times, the region was never united, and consisted of different kingdoms. Therefore, in my opinion, the name of the history page should really be "History of the Kashmir region."

Second, what about redundancy? Well, what does another tertiary source like Britannica do? Well, they have one article "Kashmir" (which is the equivalent of the Wikipedia article "Kashmir region"). That article has a general overview section on "Land and People" (WP: Demographics, Geography), a detailed section on the pre-1947 history of the region, and another overview section on the Kashmir dispute and where things stand today.

Britannica also has articles on "Jammu and Kashmir," "Azad Kashmir," etc. (what I call the modern "administrative units" above). So, for example, the "Jammu and Kashmir" article has the following sections: 1. Introduction, 2. Land (The plains, The foothills, The Pir Panjal Range, The Vale of Kashmir, The Great Himalayas zone, The upper Indus River valley, The Karakoram Range), 3. Animal life, Settlement patterns, 4. People (The Jammu region, Kashmiris of the vale and highlands, Ladakh), 5. Economy (Resources and agriculture, Trade and industry, Transportation and tourism), 6. Government and society, 7. History (but no content, it says, "The history of Jammu and Kashmir state is given in the article "Kashmir".) 8. Additional Reading

So here is my:

Proposal

Merge Kashmir region and History of Jammu and Kashmir into one article Kashmir region, which has a) detailed history until 1947, b) overview of the Kashmir dispute, and c) overview of geography and demographics for the entire region.
Remove the detailed pre-1947 history from Jammu and Kashmir, Northern Areas, Azad Kashmir, and other "modern administrative units" articles. In other words, the Jammu and Kashmir article would focus only on the geography, demographics, government, society, economy of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and would refer to the Kashmir region article for its pre-1947 history. (Similarly for Northern Areas etc.)
Keep the detailed history of the (post-1947) Kashmir-conflict in the History of the Kashmir conflict (or Kashmir conflict) article, but again refer there to the Kashmir region article for the pre-1947 history.

So, the list of Kashmir-related articles would become:

Kashmir region (land and people overview, detailed pre-1947 history, Kashmir dispute overview)
Kashmir conflict (also History of the Kashmir conflict) (Detailed article on the conflict)
Jammu and Kashmir (State in India, only post-1947 details)
Azad Kashmir (State in Pakistan, only post-1947)
Northern Areas (State in Pakistan, post-1947)
Aksai Chin (region in China)

Articles 2)- 6) refer to 1) for the pre-1947 history. Article 1) refers to the others for details of geography, conflict, economies, etc. How does that sound? Fowler&fowler «Talk» 21:03, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

At the risk of sounding repetitive: good, it sounds good. El_C 22:25, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Those changed transliterations, El_C

Directed to El_C specifically actually:

When I came to the page I saw only the Urdu name for Kashmir so I added Hindi and Gurmukhi.

I soon realized that a Gurmukhi transliteration was really not needed so I replaced it with Chinese Simplified.

Apparently during your flurry of edits and reverts, the Chinese Simplified disappeared and the Gurmukhi returned. It was not my intention to leave the Gurmukhi on there so that's that, but as for the Hindi transliteration, I put that in there because Hindi is one of the governing official national languages of India (the other being English) and India has some official claim to Kashmir like Pakistan and the People's Republic of China. This is also why I wanted the Chinese Simplified to be on there as well.

If your reason for removing the Hindi name has something to do with Hindi not being spoken in Kashmir, then the Urdu name should be removed as well because according to Fowler&fowler, Urdu is not spoken in Kashmir either.

look here > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kashmir_region#language

So either put back the Hindi and Chinese Simplified, or remove the Urdu.

--Yoshiroshin (talk) 04:18, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I had actually forgotten what I had written myself in the link you provided! So, thanks. The lead sentence now only has the scripts of the significant native languages of the region. Urdu is not a native language (mother tongue, first language), even though it is the official language of both Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmirs (neither is Hindi). So the lead sentence now begins with: Kashmir (Balti: کشمیر; Dogri: कश्मीर, Kashmiri: कॅशीर, کٔشِیر; Ladakhi: ཀཤམིར; Shina: کشمیر; Uyghur: كھسىمڭر) Note that Ladakhi is written in the Tibetan script. I've tried to write "Kashmir" in Tibetan as best I could. Same in Uyghur, where I managed to find an online English-Uyghur keyboard. Please correct if I've made mistakes. And the same too with Balti and Shina, which are written in the Urdu (Perso-Arabic) script, but might have a different pronunciation for "Kashmir." Fowler&fowler «Talk» 09:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree, though I didn't realize we were going to have six languages. Thank you both! El_C 15:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

So, I removed Urdu from (Indian-administered) Jammu and Kashmir, but I also see it in (Pakistani-administered) Azad Kashmir and Northern Areas — I mean, in one case, listed as a major language, as well as transliterations everywhere else. So where do we go with Urdu, and what are the latest pertinent figures. And also, we could use these (transliteration/s, figures) for Aksai Chin. El_C 16:01, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, (Indian-administered) Jammu and Kashmir, (Pakistani-administered) Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir, and (Chinese-administered) Aksai Chin are administrative units. In other words, (even though disputed) they are provinces or states or regions in these various countries. So, for them, (I'm guessing) whatever convention is followed for states or provinces should be followed. Judging from other Indian or Pakistani or Chinese provinces, it is the official language that is mentioned. So, my take is that for Jammu and Kashmir, Azad Kashmir, and Northern Areas, where the official state language is Urdu (even though it is not the native language of most people), Urdu alone should be mentioned. For Aksai Chin, I'm not sure, but the official language is likely Chinese (which too is not the native language of most people). (This, btw, is a complicated issue! For example in Jammu and Kashmir, even though the official language is Urdu, all state communication between different districts is conducted in English, since most people don't speak Urdu. Apparently even the "fluent" Urdu speakers in Kashmir speak only a broken sort of Urdu, when judged by the standards of the Urdu sophisticates of the subcontinent.) This is the best I can come up with, but I'm open to suggestions. Sorry! Fowler&fowler «Talk» 16:30, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

If, btw, you want the break-down of the native languages by region, then it would be: Jammu and Kashmir (Kashmiri, Ladakhi, Dogri), Northern Areas (Shina, Balti), and Aksai Chin (Uyghur). Fowler&fowler «Talk» 16:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Also(and I don't want to be difficult or anything like that, just trying to be politically correct), for the article "Azad Kashmir", it has the Urdu name. That is good. For "Jammu and Kashmir", it itself says that is the Indian-administered Kashmir area, so why is only Urdu there? I would think that Hindi would be there, or is there something about Indian language politics that I do not know?

Also for "Aksai Chin", I think the Traditional Chinese is in the leading sentence, when it should be Simplified Chinese, because of the PRC.

Once again, I'm not trying to be picky or difficult, I'm just pointing this out while trying to be as polite as possible...and I could be wrong too.

Suggestions?

--Yoshiroshin (talk) 18:32, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, if you have any questions on Tibetan or Perso-Arabic script transliterations, I'm not the one to ask either. Sure, literal Tibetan would be easy to write but I don't know about the up-down rules, and my computer is ill-equipped to handle Tibetan script anyway (the Tibetan in the leading sentence to my computer looks like Tibetan symbols in random places). As for the Perso-Arabic script (specifically the adaptation for Urdu), I'm looking to understand and learn that as well, but it will take a while before I get around to it. I know more about the India scripts, than I do the others.

And as for my first comment, I'm just talking about the other separate articles, but as for this article, I don't see any problems with it now (with regards to names anyway).

--Yoshiroshin (talk) 18:44, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, it is true that Jammu and Kashmir is a state in India, but its official language is Urdu alone. So, that's why, IMO, Urdu is sufficient. Pages for other states in India, say, West Bengal or Karnataka, have only the official state languages, (Bengali and Kannada respectively), not Hindi. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 19:41, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I think all these complexities about the languages should appear in the articles. El_C 04:06, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Kashmir redirect

Why does "Kashmir" redirect to this article? If the Kashmir region is the most common use of the term (and I think it is), this article should be placed at "Kashmir" since the dab "region" is implicit. If, somehow, it is decided that Kashmir is too widely used a term to allow the region to hold prime spot, then the dab page should be moved from Kashmir (disambiguation) to just Kashmir. Axem Titanium (talk) 01:07, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The link Vale of Kashmir redirects here. But this article is about the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir as it was before 1947, Vale of Kashmir is a very small valley in the centre of it. It should only be about the Valley of Kashmir if is being titled Kashmir, i.e the area that forms the districts of srinagar, pulwama, baramulla, kupwara, anantnag and badgam. This atricle is so misleading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.231.135.159 (talk) 04:07, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Nice game played by Pro-Pakistan element

Its seems to be a nice game played by pro-Pakistan elements on Wikipedia: I had written the para about Kashmir's accession to India with FULL web references from authentic sources, but sometime later I see that the references mysteriously disappeared. They were replaced by demand for "facts". Already Fowler&Fowler had tried to label that para as "irrelevant" despite its high relevance. Why? In order to delude and fool the world community into believing that the accession of J&K to India was never ratified by the people of Kashmir or their representatives! Of course, by slyly hiding these facts. This is very strange, deceiving, and unhealthy game. Anyways, I have added the references again. I also added Hindi/Sanskrit to Dogri list because despite all the noise, Hindi is widely spoken in the Jammu region; Urdu itself is simply a variant of Hindi with different script; and Sanskrit has been the cultural language of the Valley since time immemorial, and the very name Kashmir comes from Sanskrit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Magicalsaumy (talk • contribs) 04:19, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

The languages in the lead sentences are the languages spoken natively by a plurality of people in each of the subregions of Kashmir: Gilgit, Baltistan, Ladakh, Asayquin (Aksai Chin), Jammu, Kashmir Valley, and Poonch/Azad Kashmir. We are not listing official languages here—those belong to the pages of the administrative subunits like Northern Areas, Jammu and Kashmir etc. We also can't list every dialect, otherwise the list would be prohibitively long. We also can't list second languages. Urdu is spoken natively by 12 million people in Pakistan and all of them are in Sind. (See Ethnologue:Languages of Pakistan). Similarly, Hindko (Northern or Southern) is not spoken by a plurality of people in Azad Kashmir (see above link again for both languages). The proper names for the dialects of Pahari-Pothohari spoken in Azad Kashmir are Poonchi and Chibhali. (See Ethnologue:Pahari-Potwari, See also, C. P. Masica, Indo-Aryan Languages, Cambridge University Press.) Same for Hindi, it might have syntactical similarities with Urdu or Dogri, but it is a different language. If you disagree, try pleading your case on the Urdu language and Dogri language pages. Lastly, this page is not pro-Indian, pro-Pakistani, or pro-Chinese. It is simply striving to be accurate. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 13:19, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Dear Magicalsaumy, According to Ethnologue, Dogri is a dialect of Western Pahari and not of Western Hindi. Very best regards, Fowler&fowler «Talk» 08:02, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

If F&F continues to push his POV, I'd better ask him to write his own separate article called Kashmir according to F&F. This is not the personal website of him.Cygnus_hansa (talk) 00:36, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, Fowler & Fowler likes to push an anti-Indian POV at all costs in numerous articles across the board on Wiki. He even played a hand in getting me banned for constantly stating that the events of 1857 are commonly known as the First War of Indian Independence in India. Either way, it is common knowledge across the world - even in Pakistan that Pakistan has been constantly promoting terrorism in Kashmir for several decades based on their "thousand cuts" policy after the ignominy of 1948, 65 and to a lesser extent in 1971. So what seems to be the issue here? DemolitionMan (talk) 06:41, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Issues

Peacock terms/POV

Famous sufi saint Bulbul Shah was able to persuade the king of the time Rinchan Shah who was prince of Kashgar Ladakh, through his intellectual power to adopt Islamic way of life and the foundation of Sufiana composite culture was laid when Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists were co-existing in the atmosphere of love and brotherhood.

Sultãn Sikandar Butshikan of Kashmir (AD 1389-1413) is often considered the worst of these.

"Many of the Brahmins, rather than abandon their religion or their country, poisoned themselves; some emigrated from their native homes, while a few escaped the evil of banishment by becoming Mohammedans."

With the help of his able officer, Zorawar Singh, Gulab Singh soon captured Ladakh and Baltistan, regions to the east and north-east of Jammu.

When he hesitated to do this, Pakistan launched a guerilla onslaught meant to frighten its ruler into submission

Meanwhile, elections were held in Indian Jammu & Kashmir, which brought up the popular Muslim leader Sheikh Abdullah, who with his party National Conference, by and large supported India.

India claims those areas, including the area "ceded" to China by Pakistan in the Trans-Karakoram Tract in 1963, are a part of its territory, while Pakistan claims the entire region, excluding Aksai Chin and Trans-Karakoram Tract.

I agree. This is mostly fluff introduced by various people when the responsible editors are not paying attention. Will fix. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 22:37, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Sources

The Princely State of Kashmir and Jammu (as it was then called) was constituted between 1820 and 1858 and was "somewhat artificial in composition and it did not develop a fully coherent identity, partly as a result of its disparate origins and partly as a result of the autocratic rule which it experienced on the fringes of Empire."

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Although there was a clear Muslim majority in Kashmir before the 1947 partition and its economic, cultural, and geographic contiguity with the Muslim-majority area of the Punjab (in Pakistan) could be convincingly demonstrated, the political developments during and after the partition resulted in a division of the region.

"Indian soldiers entered Kashmir and drove the Pakistani-sponsored irregulars from all but a small section of the state.

These are just some examples of the issues with this article. Now, do not remove the tags unless these and other issues, not stated here, are addressed. I am not here to do a peer review so look for other problems in this article. If you repeatedly take off the tags from the article, I will have to take action. Further more, removing the tags is not going to solve the issues with the article. Thank you. --→ Ãlways Ãhëad (talk) 21:09, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Dear UnknownForEver (talk · contribs), Don't know what you are talking about. All the sentences listed in the "sources" sub-section are in fact sourced. There is nothing wrong in quoting Britannica; it does say that. As for the previous sub-section, yes, there is some needless vanity, which I will shortly remove. What it requires is a post here, not three banners on top of the page. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 22:27, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Several of the claims in the article are quoted. As with quotations, they are supposed to be referenced even if it is referenced in the next sentence or at the end of the paragraph. Britannica is quoted, but it is not cited at the end of the sentence. --→ Ãlways Ãhëad (talk) 00:16, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

No, quotes are cited at the end (when the quotation marks appear again), not at the end of every sentence within the quotation. The Britannica quote is cited at the end. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 02:34, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm....those are some long quotes: "Indian soldiers entered Kashmir and drove the Pakistani-sponsored..." is quoted but does not state where it is being quoted from. Same with "somewhat artificial in composition and it did not develop a fully coherent identity, partly as a result of its disparate origins and partly...". I think the quotes should be removed or information on where the quote is coming from, inserted. Also its best to use a quote template for the Britannica reference since its long. --→ Ãlways Ãhëad (talk) 02:46, 27 May 2008 (UTC)