Talk:Anarchism in India

Justification
In wikipedia, there is a separate category named Category:Anarchist movements by country. There are articles like Anarchism in Brazil, Anarchism in France etc., which depict the anarchist movement on that particular countries. Hence the need of this article, which describe anarchist movement in India. Otolemur crassicaudatus 13:44, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Har Dayal
Appears to be relevant to this article, who wants to work it in? Murderbike (talk) 06:38, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I have added some info about this from the article.Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 13:44, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 07:41, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Copyvio
I just removed a whole lot of copyvio (from https://raforum.info/article.php3?id_article=3225&lang=en)... might still be more, as I haven't checked the other sources. If so, we might be looking at nuking the article. (not watching, please ping) czar  07:38, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Vedic Anarchism
I have added an Original Research tag to the section. There are a number of factual statements in the section but they don't seem to justify inclusion here, such as ''The ashrama system empowered individual freedom and independent expressions. Based on the biological age, the needs and behavior of individuals are categorised as Student life (Brahmacharya), Householder life (Grahastha), Retiring life (Vanaprastha), and Renouncing life (Sannyasa).'' The conclusions in the section seem to be those of the editor, not from properly cited secondary sources. See WP:OR.

I also removed an incorrectly cited statement from Hegel claiming that C.F. W. Hegel finds that this system ensured the whole of India and her societies not yielding to despotism, subjection, or subjugation of any rulers. The source book actually has Hegel claiming that In India, therefore, the most arbitrary, wicked, degrading despotism has its full swing.

Please help improve this section. If it cannot be redeemed it may make sense to blank it out and rewrite from scratch. Ujwal.Xankill3r (talk) 10:46, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd like to know where the term "Vedic Anarchism" comes from in the first place. I found a 2017 article titled Vedic Anarchism by the Indian anarcho-capitalist scholar Jaimine Vaishnav and a 2015 article titled Modi, Kejriwal, Naxals, and Vedic anarchism, but the inclusions of "Vedic Anarchism" in this article clearly predate these - going back to 2013 with the creation of the section by 117.192.117.37 and a number additions by Cuziyam. I have found substantial amounts of books and journal entries identifying links between the Vedas and anarchism, enough so that I think the section does have its place, but would need a re-write. I'd also hesitate to label the Janapada system "anarchism" without attribution, given the connotations of labeling such an old organizing tradition as inherently "anarchist" without explanation, so the language may need to be neutralized.--Grnrchst (talk) 19:11, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the links! When I initially came across this article and tried fixing it I saw a number of issues that I did not have the time to research properly unfortunately. I tried looking up the books the editors here had cited for labelling any of these systems (Janapada, Village Based Society) as anarchist systems but couldn't find them. A lot of the stuff in the section depends on the term Vedic Anarchism but the section itself fails to define it. I remember searching for the book cited for this section specifically but I could only find which is by a different author. Can you share the books you found? At the very least if they are good scholarly material (hopefully from historians) we can add them to the Further Reading section of the article and reduce this section to a stub. Ujwal.Xankill3r (talk) 04:52, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
 * For example -
 * From The Gentle Anarchists page 29: "Doctor agrees that passing references to an ideal stateless society are to be found in Vedic, Buddhist, and Jaina literature, but these, he argues, represent no more than allusions to a mythical "golden age" contrasted with man's present sinful lot."

--Grnrchst (talk) 10:23, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
 * From Buddhist And Vedic Studies page 29: "It was a reaction against such dogmatism in philosophy and ethics that there arose several heterodox philosophies which not only denied the authority of the conservative ethics of the Upanişads but even went to the extent of declaring moral scepticism, moral nihilism and moral anarchism."

Non-government philosophy in ancient Hindu thought
This whole section is non-sensical. Although there appears to be a reference, I do not understand how it makes sense(even if cited) to include the divine rights of kings in an article about anarchism. Hindu society is stratified along the lines of caste and assuming that if it was even flexible and based on profession, it's fair to say that this does establish that a power difference exists. I think this whole section and possibly the Vedic anarchism needs to be removed. A lot of this article is based on ideas that claim to be anarchist but wouldn't hold up to scrutiny in a general anarchist beliefs of people such as Kropotkin, Bakunin or de Cleyre. This serves as a naive misrepresentation at best and an ignorant attempt at worst. Thundersparkf (talk) 14:11, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think the best thing to do would be to consult the book cited, which is accessible via the Internet Archive, and see if the section can be rewritten to make more sense. This might be as simple as putting "Adi H. Doctor argues that..." at the beginning, or might entail a complete rewrite. For what it's worth, the sentence on the divine of right of kings makes sense to me: I read it as distinguishing between ancient Hindu thought, in which a stateless society is described, and mainstream or modern Hindu thought, in which a stateless society remains a possibility but is not foregrounded to the same extent. I could be misreading it though. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 14:37, 15 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I understand what you're getting at. The concept of king implies the existence of kingdom, and by extension, a border. And a border needs to be enforced. So that would bring the need for a state. Moreover, the author mentions that it is a " time tested and successfully established anarchist model of the ancients", which would mean that either this model would be relevant to anarchists over the world considering it's more successful than Paris Commune or Zapatistas or it would mean that society would have maintained traits of anarchism at least. History and varna system and untouchability prove the latter wrong. And to convert it into "Adi H. Doctor argues that..." wouldn't be fair without also providing a counter argument. And as far as I've looked, if only found the same arguments regurgitated again and again. Would it be fair to give weight to a seemingly misaligned view because it has a citation? Thundersparkf (talk) 15:28, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think it would definitely be due weight to give a concise summary of Doctor's argument, unless multiple reliable sources explicitly disputing his argument can be found. If the argument was obviously, egregiously outside of the mainstream there would certainly be an issue of weight, but this doesn't strike me as that sort of case. Without having read the book, Doctor's argument strikes me as idiosyncratic and probably outdated, but by no means so far from the mainstream that we shouldn't include it at all. Bear in mind also that what we include in this article might of necessity be based on more obscure or idiosyncratic viewpoints than those we'd use in other articles: we probably wouldn't cite Doctor in the Hinduism article or the anarchism article, because the idea of a strong connection between anarchism and Hinduism isn't widely held in each of those broader fields, but in this narrower article (or another like anarchism and religion, for example), less widely-held viewpoints carry more weight. But all this is assuming that there aren't good sources directly contradicting Doctor; I could be wrong on that. It might be worth consulting anarchism Wikiproject or another relevant Wikiproject to get more eyes on this. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 15:54, 15 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I decided to look up stuff on the book and found this article on libcom . Look at this bit - "Doctor concludes: 'If one can single out any country in which the political philosophy of anarchism was placed in a coffin, the coffin tightly packed and nailed, and then buried full six feet deep, then that country was ancient India.'" I think the author of the cited book is actually arguing that anarchism in ancient India was more or less non-existant. The editor of the section may have just failed to present the point properly. I think the statement after that on Satya Yuga is just the view of the Doctor that anarchism in ancient didn't exist. As such I'm not sure it should be included in the article. We need to read the book to make sure though, the article that I found might itself have summarised it incorrectly. Ujwal.Xankill3r (talk) 17:53, 15 January 2021 (UTC)


 * and the section is itself directly copied from this external source . A previous editor has pointed out a different violation on the page and had probably deleted it. Delete the section and completely rewrite if needed? I don't know what the proper process for copyvios is. Ujwal.Xankill3r (talk) 18:00, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, in that case best to just get rid (as I've now done). If it could be rewritten in someone's own words that would be ideal, but we might be waiting a long time. I'll add the Doctor book as further reading just in case though. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 18:18, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Seems like the best option for now. Ujwal.Xankill3r (talk) 18:19, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Cool thank you. Thundersparkf (talk) 03:02, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Restructuring and expansion
Other than the work that still needs to be done to the Vedic anarchism section - neutralizing the language, sourcing content and removing original research - I think this article is in desperate need of restructuring. This article currently is divided into sections which focus on specific individuals and their relation to anarchism, where I think in order to bring it more in line with other articles that cover anarchist movements in certain regions (e.g. Anarchism in Bangladesh, Anarchism in China, etc.), this needs to be restructured and expanded into a broader overview of the movement as a whole. I would be happy to get started on this myself, using the sources listed as Doctor (1964), Ramnath (2011) and Ostegaard, Currell (1971), just wanted to bring up the prospect here in the talk page before initiating the process.--Grnrchst (talk) 10:53, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Vedic anarchism
Alright, the complaints about the Vedic anarchism section have been up for years at this point - it's time to just WP:TNT the thing. If someone wants to rewrite it in a way that doesn't use sources published that predate Queen Victoria (yikes!), please do. Something from this century would be a nice stretch goal... -- asilvering (talk) 07:05, 9 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Most of the section was pretty much all original research, so I'm not too worried about losing it. The only thing I would contest is the removal of the last paragraph, which I sourced from Doctor (1964), a work specifically about Indian anarchism. So I have reincorporated that into the article. Grnrchst (talk) 10:27, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Agree that the paragraph citing Doctor shouldn't have been removed. Your other additions look good too. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:34, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks @Grnrchst! -- asilvering (talk) 19:25, 13 April 2022 (UTC)