Talk:Gavari

Re Gavari Background template alert
User:Utcursch Took note of your template message at Gavari Background and unsuccessfully followed a number of Inclusion Policy links to try and understand what you were referring to. Could you please clarify it a little more?

In the meantime, the justification for the detail offered here is twofold. First and most importantly, Gavari’s roots and themes and characters cannot really be understood without it. It is a totally unique tradition in India - only practiced by one small sub-population of Bhils in one tiny section of the country - and many of its dramas and songs are about Mewar history and the Bhils' critical role in its survival. None of this is common or easily linkable knowledge. 93% of India's Bhils have never heard of Gavari and most townsfolk in the Mewar region don't know about it either, let alone in the world outside.

Second, it’s difficult to “spin off” the contextual detail on Gavari’s background because it hardly exists anywhere in an accessible form. When we refer to Catholic/Protestant rites and traditions it is easy to spin off such details, because they were born out of the West’s "Christian civilization" and the background church history is pretty vernacular knowledge by now. There are countless sources to link to for that content even in Wikipedia, but indigenous cultures in India and in general don't have that luxuriant knowledge base.

Despite the fact that Bhils one of India’s largest and oldest indigenous communities, the Bhil peoples’ page here is virtually a stub and not a useful explanatory link since so very few Bhils outside Mewar know anything about Gavari at all. Interpolating its history there would be totally irrelevant to the vast majority Bhils or those interested in their common heritage.

Similarly, history refs on the Mewar page are almost entirely drawn from upper caste reactionary accounts that glorify the Kshatriyas’ role and totally marginalize the infra-caste Bhils. Until India finds its own Howard Zinn, there are only small corners like this section where a more objective history can be suggested.

And it does make a difference. Since Gavari has been an entirely oral tradition and most Bhils practicing it remain unlettered, most of the writing about this tradition has been by urban outsiders who usually only characterize it as rustic “Shiva worship” or "merrymaking" by carefree tribals.

Bhil youth in government schools are bullied in general for their poverty and sub-caste status and specifically in the autumn for their truancy to join or witness Gavari's “foolishness”. Indeed local Bhil leaders complain that many gov school teachers continue to call Bhil kids bhilura, which is equivalent to the N-word here. And as you can imagine, this ignorance and prejudice make those who don’t drop out ashamed of their tribal traditions and roots.

And as mentioned, Mewar’s orthodox Hindu histories are dismissive as well and only speak of Rajput glory and call the Bhils "faithful servants" at best if they mention them at all. It's important that the world and Bhil youth in particular understand the real history and meaning behind Gavari or the “educated youth” will increasingly shun the whole amazing tradition and it will continue to decline. Indeed local papers are reporting fewer troupes than ever this year and the local government's big "multi-year" "Rediscovering Gavari" promotion was casually defunded and abandoned after just one year.

Wikipedia has the power to bring Gavari's significance and the Bhils’ own proud background to light, and they truly both need that support right now. I know Wikipedia has no "activist" mission, but accurately depicting the form, content, arising and endangerment of meaningful and previously unknown phenomena has to be one worthy encyclopedic goal. And if that presentation has positive influences on the phenomenon described and the people involved, who can really complain?

So these are some of the reasons for including this material here – it offers invaluable context and is organically related to Gavari culture at every level.Eklingdas (talk) 04:16, 12 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia articles are not magazine articles. If users want to know more about Bhils or Mewar, they can follow the links to those articles. If you feel that the Bhil / Mewar articles have inadequate content, please fix / expand those articles.
 * Most of the content in the "Gavari Background" section is WP:COATRACK material. Looking at the article history, I see that has expressed similar concerns. You can seek a third opinion at WT:IND or another noticeboard, if you disagree.
 * On a sidenote, there are also several WP:OR problems with this section (and the rest of the article). Often the references do not mention Gavari or directly support the content. This is an example of synthesis, and not acceptable. utcursch &#124; talk 04:51, 12 August 2017 (UTC)


 * utcursch: Thanks for the continuing help along our learning curve here, but a central difficulty still remains re the scarcity of relevant info in the sections on Bhils and Mewar. As noted Gavari is only relevant to about 7% of Bhils and I am not a Bhil authority or competent enough to adequately beef up their entire article, just so a detailed subsection on Mewari Bhils would not seem out of place or irrelevant. Similarly, the history cited in the Mewar article is riddled with intervening (and increasing) caste bias & propaganda; and trying to equilibrate the record would invite a lot of fundamentalist RSS troll combat that we're witnessing more and more and more of here; and I'm afraid I really don't have the time or stomach for. Re Pepperbeast's "concerns", he also declared most of the Gavari category photos from four different photographers to be "scanned and stolen" and demanded their deletion without offering any evidence at all. I don't know his agenda or issue with Gavari, but would not count him a neutral or reliable arbiter. Finally, have started re-examining/refining/removing relatively problematic references as you cautioned and hope to have those sorts of things improved or corrected before too long. Any further constructive suggestions on any of these issues, especially the politicized history minefield, would be appreciated. Eklingdas (talk) 17:01, 20 August 2017 (UTC)


 * If the Mewar or Bhil people are full of "Caste bias & propaganda", please fix those articles. Content forking is not a solution. What prevents the alleged "fundamentalist RSS trolls" from editing the Gavari article?
 * As for Pepperbeast, looking at his/her contribution history, I'd assume good faith here. Anyone would find it suspicious that a group of new users, who have made no other edits, suddenly upload a number of images, most of which are less than 600x600 in resolution, and are missing camera metadata.
 * If you want to seek another person's advice, you can do so at Help desk, Teahouse, Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics, or maybe even request a peer review of the article at Peer review. utcursch &#124; talk 17:53, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Lead Section
Interested editors - I am proposing a relatively minor change to the lead section, but looking at prior discussions, I think it prudent to air my intent here on the talk page.

The lead section of the article current reads like a news-style lead or "lede" paragraph, which is not recommended for WP articles (see WP:MOSLEAD).

I intend to modify it to be straightforward description of what the festival is (along the lines of Navratri or Easter), which are better aligned with WP:MOSINTRO. Specifically, I intend to delete subjective descriptions and peacock terms in the lead, best exemplified by this sentence: "Among all the world's folk performance traditions, it is quite unique, especially with respect to its epiphanous energy, scale, duration, ascetic rigour and inspirational messaging as well as its still mysterious provenance and genesis."

I look forward to comments on discussion on my proposed edits.Deccantrap (talk) 17:32, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm 100% comfortable with further edits. I didn't really write any of this-- just did a first blat of editing the original draft. I think it could use some more serious work, and a re-write of the lede would be a good place to start.   Pepper Beast    (talk)  22:02, 5 May 2019 (UTC)