Talk:Manilal Dwivedi

Serious bouts of illness

I have gathered some data from Suhrud's work which gives a timeline of disease Manilal suffered from.

Timeline of Syphilis

1877, first term of college — Manilal realised that he had developed ulcers on his penis. (He notices: "I did not know that the disease is called syphilis or that its consequences will be bad"). He did not treat it and the ulcers healed on their own. Some time later he suffered a sever attack of rheumatism. (Suhrud, p. 116) In 1881, he experienced chancres on the penis. For one year the syphilis lay symptomatically latent in his body. By the beginning of 1882, he had a relapse. Secondary lesions erupted all over his body. Perticularly painful were cysts on his feet and hands. Manilal had to suffer the pain for almost one and a half year, after which he got some relief. (Suhrud, p. 118) 1886 — Syphilis which was latent so far resurfaced in 1886. The doctors diagnosed it as syphilis tertiary. This time it affected mucous membranes, (Suhrud, p. 123) especially the nosal sinuses. The lesions which appeared were deep and painful. The ulcers corroded the nostrils. This ulcers affected his respiratory tract. First the tonsils were affected. One tonsil got corroded so did the soft plate. He lost his ability to speak, could not swallow any food. His condition became critical. He was taken to Bombay and then to Nadiad for treatment. For almost one year he suffered.(Suhrud, p. 124) By 1888, his health had started improving, with the help of artificial plate his speech had also improved, and he resumed his job at Bhavnagar. The ulcers in his nose and throat became more painful and he had to be taken to (Suhrud, p. 124) Bombay for treatment. By January of 1889, he is hopeful that the treatment will cure him completely. By June that year his health improved considerably, so did his speech. (Suhrud, p. 125)

Regards. --Gazal world (talk) 14:57, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: I also want your help in writing some 3-4 sentences from above data. So we can add it into article, and justify the sentence in the lead: "serious bouts of illness". Thanks. --Gazal world (talk) 14:10, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you very much Nishidani for adding relevant details into article. This is now 'resolved'. --Gazal world (talk) 20:19, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Next FAC

Gazal world, I've finished another read through and made minor tweaks. I had a look at the text about education in India at the time, per Fowler&fowler's suggestion, and I don't think it's necessary. It's true it would help understanding but there's a huge amount of context necessary to understand any article about Indian culture during British rule, and I think this can be deferred to other articles.

I think this is ready to nominate again. For transparency, I would suggest that when you nominate you should mention Fowler&fowler's concerns and link to his comments here on the talk page, so that other reviewers can decide if they agree. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to support at the FAC -- I've done too much work on the article. I'll watch the FAC and will chip in if I can help. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:58, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

As my concerns have been mentioned here and my posts above are spread over number of threads, I'll make a short list of what I think are the major issues in the article in a section below. This way the reviewers can read them in one place. Please give me an hour, or thereabouts. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:48, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks — I know you’re busy at the moment but it would be helpful to FAC reviewers. There’s no hurry, though; FAC reviews typically run about a month these days. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:26, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Fowler&fowler's concerns

• 1. It is never made clear what level of notability Manilal Nabhubhai Dwivedi (MND) has in the fields of Hinduism, Indian philosophy, Yoga and mysticism by the standards of today. I broach this topic in this section above. He does not appear much in the major scholarly books of today.
• 2. The biography of MND by Thaker is an old fashioned polite biography, bordering on hagiography. It repeats legendary accounts of early life spun very likely by MND or his friends and acquaintances. Some can be seen in the collapsed text "First paragraph" in the same section above.
• 3. There is very little concrete detail about MND's writing, art, or poetry, and what there is sometimes looks like name dropping or list-making. An example is the paragraph beginning, "Manilal based his poetry collection on ..." in Manilal_Dwivedi#Literary_works. It prominently mentions and illustrates a Gujarati poem, Amar_Asha#Lyrics (tr. Immortal Hope). A source, an encyclopedia of Gujarati literature compiled by Manshuklal Jhaveri, is cited. And the source itself says:

Jhaveri on MND's poem, "Hope that knows no death"

Manilal's main contribution to Gujarati poetry, however, is a number of gazals written in the style of Persian Sufis. Though they are marked by a misuse of Persian words and by words of incomplete predication, they have caught the spirit of ... Through these gazals Manilal has sometimes preached the tenets of Advaita Vedanta through the means of Sufi terminology (p 102) sometimes he expresses his utter disappointment in love; or his unquenched thirst of true and sincere love; sometimes baffled by the inscrutable ways of Kismet (Fate), which tosses man between joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappiness, he asks it, 'Where do you lead me by this betrayal, O Fate?', and sometimes he describes the potency of love which makes one feel at the top of the world, or renders one oblivious of everything else. Manilal's gazal beginning with the line, 'Somewhere amidst a million disappointments, lurks Hope that knows no death.' is a gem of Gujarati poetry."

Little indication is given anywhere of MND's knowledge (if any) of the Persian- or Urdu languages, let alone their poetry traditions. (See postscript at the end). For me, this is doubly problematic as it seems to mimic a portion Alexander Pope's long poem Essay on Man (III, first two stanzas until "Hope springs eternal ...") which MND had studied for his English (part B) at Bombay University's Elphinstone College (see Question 8 in the exam). This is the conundrum here: if I point out Pope, it will be considered OR, of course, but how is a topic in Gujarati poetry that (at least in translation) has many precedents in English and Urdu poetry, to be evaluated when the source itself is vague?

• 4. In contrast, there is now an excessive amount of detail of the progression of his venereal disease(s). He is not really notable for VD, as thousands of people in India in his peer-group who visited prostitutes very likely had similar histories.
• 5. The main flaw as I see it after re-examining the article is that the only critical biography and a good one, written by Tidrip Suhrid (based on a Ph.D. thesis) has not been used except perfunctorily and what is taken is bowdlerized in the paraphrase. Notable omissions are (see Chapter 3 of the book):

• a No mention is made of his "homoerotic" activities in childhood and adolescence, which were confessed to amid much denial in his autobiography (Suhrid p. 104 and conclusion quoted below).
• b No mention is made of the abuse (verbal, physical, emotional) meted out by him to his wife No mention is made of his utter disregard for his children. (Suhrid pp. 107–114) Btw, a marriage arranged by parents, in which one party, the bride is four years old, should not be described as, "In ---, he (Manilal) married ..."
• c Only sanitized mention is made of the abuse of other women, and of at least one couple.
• d Suhrid sums this up as:

  "The early experience of homoerotic desire is significant. A culture which sees such desire as a feminine trait is likely to arouse a deep sense of insecurity in men. One possible way of contending with femininity could be hyper-masculinity ... The form that hypermasculinity takes in Manibhai is not mere suppression of feminine self but a free play of masculinity that is unbound by any norms of rectitude."

• e No mention is made of Suhrid's criticism and evaluation of MND's writings. There are at least a couple of dozen pages in a 99-page chapter devoted to them.
• f Very little is mentioned of (Suhrid's description of) MND's views on feminine morality which seem anachronistic by late-19th century Indian educated upper-caste standards, his implacable opposition to the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856, (Suhrid pp. 127–140) the Age of Consent Act, 1891, which raised the age of consent for sexual intercourse for girls from 10 to 12, or his vilification of Dr. Rukhmabai, a pioneering physician and women's rights activist in India (Suhrid pp. 141–144). The lead, for example, merely states that he participated in debates on social reform; the Manilal_Dwivedi#Social_reform_and_educational_writings section speaks in very general terms.
• g. Something actionable I'm sorry I don't have enough time to go through Suhrid carefully, but how about summarizing Suhrid accurately and comprehensively in the article, the good, the bad, and the ugly? It would make MND's biography more plausible. The pdf is already linked above. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:09, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

PS Finally an illustration: The ghazal is an Arabic poetic form which found its ultimate home in the Urdu language in South Asia (via the Persian language). As C. M. Naim has remarked in his article on Urdu literature in Britannica, "The poems of Ghālib and Mīr represent the best of the Urdu ghazal; and the Urdu ghazal, as an anonymous wit has remarked, is the Muslims’ greatest gift to India, after the Tāj Mahal." To post a picture (File:Amar Aasha by Manilal Dwivedi.jpg) of a handwritten Gujarati ghazal by MND is fine, but some context needs to be added, some indication given that these early efforts at ghazal writing in Gujarati in the late-19th century were undertaken in imitation of a 400-year-old tradition of Urdu ghazal writing, see here and here (and File:Mirza Ghalib 1969 stamp of India.jpg and File:Majaz 2008 stamp of India.jpg.) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:38, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

• @Fowler&fowler: Thank you very much for your detailed comments. I will address all the issues shortly. --Gazal world (talk) 20:46, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks for your comments. We have been waiting for it for so long and finally you dropped your comments. Regards,-Nizil (talk) 05:45, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

FYI, I will address all these issue next year (probably in January). I am bit busy in my college work. I have withdrawn my 2nd nomination. Thanks. --Gazal world (talk) 14:03, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Manilal's biography written by Thaker in Gujarati-language is more critical, well-researched, and well-detailed. Can I use it for FA ? --Gazal world (talk) 21:20, 15 October 2020 (UTC)