Talk:1966 anti-cow slaughter riot

Latest comment: 4 years ago by BlueMoonset in topic Doubts

Doubts edit

Paging Vanamonde93 for advice:-

  • Copland, Ian (April 2014). "History in Flux: Indira Gandhi and the 'Great All-Party Campaign' for the Protection of the Cow, 1966–8". Journal of Contemporary History. 49 (2): 410–439. doi:10.1177/0022009413515535. ISSN 0022-0094. JSTOR 43697306. notes:-
  • The withdrawal of the SGMS members did not, however, lead the government to disband the Committee. Letting it muddle on allowed Indira to maintain that she was still committed to finding a solution to the cow problem. Reconstituted after the federal poll of March 1971, under the chairmanship of retired judge G.K. Mitter, the Cow Protection Inquiry Committee finally delivered its report, without fanfare, in early 1973. (The New York Times, (19 March 1973).)

  • The committee was given six months to submit its report. It began actively, had numerous meetings and met a large cross-section of society. But it never actually submitted a report. Questions would keep getting asked in Parliament and the answers would be of the usual “the matter is under examination” type. Finally, after 12 years of its existence, Morarji Desai wound up the committee in 1979 when he was Prime Minister.

How to tackle the discrepancy? This is an episode, which's hardly covered in any significant detail by post-colonial scholars (as Copland alludes to) and accessing old newspapers in India to dig stuff up, is a Herculean task (at-least for writing a WP article). WBGconverse 13:29, 24 December 2019 (UTC)Reply

I'm unfamiliar with this committee; tracking down old Indian newspapers is next to impossible; could you try to track down the NYT source that Copland cites, though? In the absence of further evidence, we could just mention the discrepency (a priori, I would trust Copland slightly more, but not much more, with respect to minor factual detail). Vanamonde (Talk) 18:20, 24 December 2019 (UTC)Reply
I have a pdf of the times in question, email for it. I think Copland may have made a mistake, because it says that the committee was expected to give a report in September (1973). buidhe 06:21, 25 December 2019 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, it seems that Jairam Ramesh was correct. An Indian Express report dated July, 1976 reports that the committee (formed nine years back) was scheduled to submit an interim report. A '78 TOI report in library-archives repeats similar news. Obviously, Copland was wrong in deducing that the committee had submitted its report in 1973. WBGconverse 07:37, 25 December 2019 (UTC)Reply
  • Also, Copland in Pg. 430 mentions

    the fact remained that the voters had delivered an unprecedented rebuke to the ruling party, and that some electors who had previously voted Congress had chosen to redirect their support to the parties of the Right. The BJS, an openly Hinducentric concern, had alone captured 77 parliamentary seats. Patently there were issues the Congress needed to address.

  • Which election is Copland talking about? In the immediate beforemath and aftermath, he deals with the '67 elections but Jan Sangh managed to only get 35 seats; typo?! WBGconverse 13:41, 24 December 2019 (UTC)Reply
"Rebuke to the ruling party" suggests that it was the election after the emergency was lifted. I don't know how he can tell how many seats the BJS had won because it had merged into Janata. He probably tracked the pre-merger party affiliations. That is very useful info and should be added to the election page somewhere. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:55, 25 December 2019 (UTC)Reply


The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by BlueMoonset (talk) 04:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)Reply
Many issues still to be addressed, and no response from nominator despite many pings; closing as unsuccessful

5x expanded by Winged Blades of Godric (talk). Self-nominated at 14:22, 26 December 2019 (UTC).Reply

This is not a review but that lead is way too long. per WP:LEAD, it should be a summary of the article, not a point by point description of the event. The maximum number of paragraphs is generally four. Another useful link to read: Wikipedia:How to create and manage a good lead section. Cowlibob (talk) 19:30, 26 December 2019 (UTC)Reply
Cowlibob, trimmed. WBGconverse
  •   What this needs is a full review by a reviewer, not a response from the nominator. Thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 20:29, 16 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
Winged Blades of Godric This is not a full review but rather a quick check, but the "clarification needed" tags haven't been addressed. In addition, the hook says that the riots were the most violent since "independence", but the article seems to instead specifically say that they were the most violent since the partition riots. Maybe the hook could be clarified to reflect that instead? As I am generally uncomfortable reviewing articles about ethnic conflicts, I'm afraid that I may not be able to give a full review, but I'm willing to give suggestions if necessary. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 12:05, 15 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • @Winged Blades of Godric: This is now the oldest remaining unreviewed active DYK nomination, and the third-oldest active nomination overall. There have been no comments from you here since January. If you still wish to continue this nomination, please respond and address the issues raised as soon as possible. If there is no forthcoming response within the next week, the nomination may be marked for closure. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 06:33, 23 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
General: Article is new enough and long enough

Policy compliance:

Hook eligibility:

  • Cited:  
  • Interesting:  
  • Other problems:   - Non-neutral use of the word, "mob."
QPQ: Done.

Overall:   Positive points: On 19 December the article had 6,518 bytes, on 26 December (nom date) it had 33,708 bytes. It was therefore expanded 5x in good time. The copyvio detector is timing out at the moment, so I have given the benefit of the doubt. The source for the hook has a paywall, so I have taken that in good faith. The nominator appears to have two DYKs, so I understand that there is no need for a QPQ here. Negative points: (1) I agree with above comments that the leader needs to be rewritten and shortened. (2) A number of citations require corrections (newspaper article titles missing). (3) The article needs to be checked for neutrality, e.g. the use of the words "mob" and "saints" in the leader, and the words "tremendous," and "brazen," in the main text. (4) There are questions/tags about verification and neutrality in the Cow slaughter and religion section. Conclusion Overall, I fear that the article in its present form may appear to show disrespect to those who revere cattle. The hook might well be good clickbait, but the use of the word "mob" may be likely to offend a large section of the people of the Hindu faith. With all these problems, and the fact that the nominator has not responded to the above comments, in my opinion this nom should be closed as suggested above. Storye book (talk) 18:47, 24 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

Several sources have a weird title "ACTUAL ARTICLE TITLE BELONGS HERE". This should be fixed and updated with... the actual article title. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:39, 27 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Headbomb: I have already said that in the above review. I have now put it in bold so you can see it, but it's not the most important thing in the review. Storye book (talk) 10:16, 27 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
  •   The previous review ticked everything except neutrality so I'm taking that on good faith. There has been no attempt by the nom to address any of the neutrality issues raised, or indeed to edit the article in any way. The "clarification needed" tags have not been addressed and, in addition, the article has since acquired a "failed verification" tag and a pov tag (in sections unrelated to the previous issues). In short, the article has gone backwards while under review. I'm ignoring the comment about missing fields in references. That is not necessary for a DYK – it is only necessary that the source is identifiable, and hence verifiable. SpinningSpark 13:26, 30 March 2020 (UTC)Reply