Talk:History of India/Archive 7

Lede revision and recent reverts
In the interest of clarifying the center-of-dispute that has resulted in the recent reverts, here are the two versions of the lede's first, second and last para:

The relevant diff. Many of these changes are word-smithing, tightening of prose, removal of junk-citations (eg,, ), but there are also small but significant changes in word-choice, framing etc. I see that that has raised objection about the removal of "famine and economic decline" bit from the lede. Besides that, is there any other substantive change that Highspeak or anyone else objects to? Abecedare (talk) 19:44, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for replying, and doing so with humor in your first post. The thing is that the tightening of the lead was something I did while conversing with people on the talk page.  It started with the mention of the African origin of Homo sapiens who had arrived in South Asia ca  73–65 ka. I had earlier added the bit about "anatomically modern humans" from Africa peopling India (a few months ago).  But the Africa part was removed by someone.  My first edit a couple of days ago was in response to what I was interpreting to be a burgeoning consensus for restoring "Africa" in some form and to shedding agnosticism with respect to theories of indigenous origins of Indians.  See Vanamonde's post there. While I was at it, I couldn't help reading the rest of the lead, and to becoming more and more perturbed at the sheer gumption of the bizarre formulations, especially of the Hindu-India-aggrandizement.  I mean Wotz steel (or whatever it is) is mentioned.  Indian mathematics (a page I substantially wrote many years ago) is mentioned, Tri-partite nonsense, whose evidence I cannot detect anywhere except on this page, is mentioned, but  the Muslim period is reduced to nothing except the outlandish Angus Maddison-like claims, which usually have never explained why the dirt poor Europeans were knocking on the doors of the rest of the world, inventing sextants, octants, schooners, and marine chronometers, and why plushly wealthy Shivaji's navy, the most notable of the Mughal period, never managed to expand beyond a few coracles, violently tossing about in the serene wavelets at low tide. At this point, I thought, "Well let me at least fix the British-era page, rid it of its original terminology, ..."  That is all I managed to do, before the BRD restored the "East India Company of the British Empire," or "Direct rule by Britain of the British regions of India," etc.     Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  21:32, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the additional info, F&f. I had guessed much of your though process having glanced at the edit-summaries, the previous discussions above and being well aware of how fixing/expanding one bit in an article leads naturally to reviewing and editing adjacent content. Right now, my aim is to isolate the points of dispute so that we can then discuss the merits of (only the) disputed changes individually. We can continue once Highpeak and others have had a chance to list their objections. Abecedare (talk) 22:01, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

, I have several concerns, but the note regarding the caste system as revised by Fowler is of particular concern. The caste system, which created a hierarchy of priests, warriors, and free peasants, but which excluded indigenous peoples by labeling their occupations impure, arose later during this period. It is only one hypothesis which is being presented about the caste system on the lead. Mainstream scholars are of a view there are numerous hypothesis about it: There are many scholars who are of the view that the caste system developed in the classical period or later. See this page which cites multiple scholars. Lockard gives a detailed view about it that you should read. Why should we be giving weight to only a heavily disputed hypothesis which is based on oral literature at best? This will just confuse new readers, the other version was simple and non-controversial. Exactly what is needed in the lead. (Highpeaks35 (talk) 22:57, 13 June 2019 (UTC))
 * , also, my concerns regarding "famine and economic decline" being removed is still there. Indian industry and economy was in decline during the British rule. The British rule and mismanagement also led to large scale famines, which more or less disappeared after India gained independence, from the late-1950s, large scale famines like the Great Bengal famines of the 1940s did not take place. (Highpeaks35 (talk) 23:03, 13 June 2019 (UTC))
 * Thanks Highpeaks. OK: the "caste system" sentence, and the "famine" sentence. Anything else? For now it would be sufficient to just list the relevant change and provide a brief outline of the objection. We can get into the gathering and evaluating the evidence and arguments for either side during the next step. For the same reason: F&f, you don't need to counter Highpeaks's objections yet. Abecedare (talk) 23:07, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

, here are other concerns: (Highpeaks35 (talk) 23:46, 13 June 2019 (UTC))
 * 1) After their origin in Africa, is not necessary.
 * 2) At the site of Mehrgarh, Balochistan, presence can be documented of the domestication of wheat and barley, rapidly followed by that of goats, sheep, and cattle, mentioning this one site in the lead is unnecessary. The previous version mentioned a general view. Also, Mehrgarh is not the only site that was found, Lahuradewa findings are other good examples. This highlight in the lead paragraph is unnecessary, just like listing IVC sites in the lead is unnecessary. Honestly, I don't see why there was a need to change the first paragraph. It was fine as is.
 * 3) "small kingdoms" to describe the Janapadas is WP:OR. We do not know they were kingdoms, they could have been republics, large kingdoms (Kuru or Panchala for example easily been large for that period) or just tribal realms. But, they were "state-level societies".
 * 4) which challenged the orthodoxy of rituals, I could not find the exact spot where the reference states that.
 * Thanks, Highpeaks. I'll seed discussion on these objections below. I'll club the last four in a single sub-section because I believe that, unlike the first two issues, these should be pretty straightforward to settle by tweaking a few words, if needed. Cheers. Abecedare (talk) 00:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Frankly, I have no interest in improving this pathetic apology of history written by the worst POV-pushers that graced Wikipedia. Please revert it back to the Hindu nationalist nonsense. It all happened in India. It was all done by Hindus. India was in the great golden age, so cruelly taken away by those evil Muslims and conniving British. It was a land of milk and honey with no malnutrition. Famines never happened in India before the Brits. Crop failures or El Nino never happened in India either. Sorry I made the mistake of responding to the discussion. Highpeaks35 is the worst of the worst on Wikipedia. If you are going to give him equal billing and pussyfoot around his nonsense, please go ahead an edit this page yourself. Jeez what is it with Wikipedians. They can't call an idiot and idiot. Only Jimmy Wales can. See his NY Times (Encyclopaedists Lair). Goodbye. Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  00:22, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * F&f, I don't mean to place the burden solely on you to defend any specific version on the article. Now that the issues at dispute are clearer, we all will be able to evaluate them and establish a clear consensus instead of speaking in generalities. I aim to take a look at the sources myself, although that will probably happen only over the weekend. I hope you will not abandon this article, and would hate to have played any role in that happening! Abecedare (talk) 00:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * , call an idiot and idiot, how is this not WP:NPA? I got a week block for WP:NPA, which I regret making. But, that entire statement above reeks with bias and bad faith. However, I do appreciate you hearing my concerns of the new changes. (Highpeaks35 (talk) 00:56, 14 June 2019 (UTC))

Description of caste system
Please comment on the following revision, or suggest revised wording of your own:
 * The era saw the eventual emergence of... social stratification based on caste, which created a hierarchy of priests (Brahmins), warriors (Kshatriyas), merchants (Vaishyas) and laborers (Shudras)
 * versus
 * The caste system, which created a hierarchy of priests, warriors, and free peasants, but which excluded indigenous peoples by labeling their occupations impure, arose later during this period.

Abecedare (talk) 00:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The sentence, "The caste system, which created a hierarchy of priests, warriors, and free peasants, but which excluded indigenous peoples by labeling their occupations impure, arose later during this period," is the best one-sentence summary, in idiomatic English, of the following material from Kulke and Rothermund's History of India, a widely-used undergraduate text. It is the kind of tertiary source recommended on Wikipedia for issues of WP:DUE.  (See WP:TERTIARY, which states, " Many introductory undergraduate-level textbooks are regarded as tertiary sources because they sum up multiple secondary sources. Policy: Reliable tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources, and may be helpful in evaluating due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other.")

(p. 41) Colour (varna) served as the badge of distinction between the free Aryans and the subjugated indigenous people. Varna soon assumed the meaning of ‘caste’ and was applied also to the Aryans themselves in order to classify the strata of priests, warriors, free peasants and the subjugated people. ... (pp 41-42) Social stratification in the Late Vedic period was characterised by the emergence of a hierarchical order of estates which reflected a division of labour among various social classes. At the top of this hierarchy were the first two estates, the Brahmin priests and the warrior nobility, the second level was occupied by free peasants and traders and the third level was that of the slaves, labourers and artisans belonging to the indigenous people. (p. 42) Artisans were known even in the Early Vedic period, particularly the cartwrights who were responsible for the making and the repair of the chariots which were of vital importance for the Aryans. But other crafts were hardly mentioned in those early days. In the period of settlement this changed to a great extent. Carpenters, potters and blacksmiths appeared in the texts. Various metals were mentioned: copper (loha), bronze (ayas), a copper-tin alloy (kamsa), silver (rajata), gold (suvarna) and iron (shyama or krishnayas) ... (pp. 42-43) But in India there was the additional feature of ritual impurity (ashuddha) which meant an exclusion of the Shudra artisan from sacrificial rites (amedhya). The fear of ritual impurity was carried to such extremes even in that early stage that certain sacrifices such as the Agnihotra had to be conducted with vessels made by Aryans only: ‘It [the sthali, an earthen milk-pot] is made by an Arya, with perpendicular sides for the communion with the gods. In this way it is united with the gods. Demonical (asurya), indeed, is the vessel which is made by a potter on the potter’s wheel.’ This quote from a Late Vedic text is revealing in several respects. It shows that the indigenous people subjected by the Aryans possessed great skills as artisans. Racial discrimination against these dark-skinned people also led to a discrimination against the trades which they plied. The original lack of such skills among the Vedic Aryans was probably one of the most important reasons for the emergence of the caste system, which was designed to maintain the social and political superiority of the Aryans.

Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  11:43, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment I prefer the first wording with the following changes: Change "merchant" to "commoner". Add "outcastes" (avarnas) as a fifth category.
 * More explanation: caste system is a confused concept because of the Europeans fused varna and jati. Frankly, we don't know which came first. I tend to think jati came first and varna was an attempt to streamline it. We also don't know whether varna was a reality or not. Buddhist texts don't mention it. Megasthenes mentioned 7 classes, and Al-Beruni and his contemporaries mentioned even more. So, I believe that varna was the Brahmins' imagination of what the society looked like, not what it actually looked like. The 18th century Brits imagined that the Brahmins knew the best and started all the problems.
 * The Aryan/non-Aryan business is too complicated for the lead. The Aryan population of Buddha's time was pretty mixed. Kulke & Rothermund's "colour" ideas are not accepted by the scholars of the caste system. Moreover, we only have a decent picture for the Gangetic plains. We don't know about the rest of India, where the "Aryans" were a tiny minority. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:01, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, we can't ourselves assess the consensus opinion among scholars of the caste system. Other authors of textbooks, tertiary sources, whose rationale in WP high-level articles I describe above, are not much different:

By the mid-first millennium this status was reiterated in the theory that the first three varnas are dvija, twice-born - the second birth being initiation into the ritual status - whereas the shudra has only a single birth. This was also tied to the notion of grading the purity of the statuses, theoretically according to occupation. Thus, the brahman was the purest and the shudra the least pure. Subsequently, a fifth category came to be added, that of the untouchable (now referred to as Dalit), and this was regarded as maximally polluting. A system that combined status by birth, determined by access to resources, social status and occupation, with notions of ritual purity and pollution was doubtless thought to be virtually infallible as a mechanism of social control.

Subjects of the raja of later vedic times and servants of the elite for whose protection he was selected, praja, were divided into ‘ shudras ’and ‘ dasas ’. Dasas are described as unattractive and uncultured, with broad, fl at noses and black skin, speaking a strange language and practising ‘ crude magic ’in contrast to the prestigious vedic ritual of the Aryans. However, many dasas were said to have been captured in wars among Aryan clans as well as between Aryans and non - Aryans, so it may have been only defeat that set them apart in reality, and the negative descriptions are simply the victors ’insults. Dasas were set to working the lands and tending the herds of lower Aryan clansmen and other vis. Another designation for a people despised by Aryans was mleccha, a term meaning ‘ one who speaks indistinctly ’, in later times connoting a barbarian whose origins were not in the subcontinent. Those called vis adopted the title of vaishya, which at first designated the leading households of farmers, herdsmen or merchants. The heads of such households were called grihapati in some later vedic sources and gahapati in Buddhist texts; they were sources of tribute to Aryan rajas and fees to brahman priests. Thus by the later vedic times of 1000 to 500 bce, the structural elements of the caste system were in place, summarized as well as canonically accounted for in the ‘ Hymn of the Primeval Man ’ : the four varnas (colours or castes) of brahmans, kshatriyas, vaishyas and shudras. These categories were ranked according to the amount of pollution attached to being born into one or another of them. The least polluted were the brahmans, the most were the shudras; the term varna reinforced these ranked differences: brahmans were supposed to wear white, kshatriyas yellow, vaishyas red and shudras black. Another invidious distinction made manifest by Buddhist times was that between the three highest varnas, who were considered twice - born ( dvija ), and the shudras. The former participated in a ritual ‘ second ’birth ( upanayana, initiation) while the latter did not. In addition, there were groups ranked even lower than shudras; to them was attached the stigma of untouchability, supposedly because their occupations were deeply polluting.

We cannot resort to the usual defense that that the caste system was a simple division of labor, that pollution, social control, and walling out, and their persistence over millennia, should go unmentioned. Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  16:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

A tertiary source for the persistence of caste over historical time:

But we should not take this too far. The European observers invented the term 'caste' and undoubtedly affected Indian practice and understanding; but they did not imagine caste ab initio. They applied a misleading term, compounding at least two different concepts, but they did so to describe social behaviour which they had generally encountered. Thus, over the millennia, social and political authority and behaviour have been influenced by recurrent 'caste-like' ideas. The civilizational' character of caste lies in the persistence of varna and jati over time and space within the Indian region. No one aspect defines their importance — not restrictions on marriage or occupation, not even ideas of pollution — for these may be found in many civilizations. Their role obviously is also much more than the mere existence of hierarchy. 'Caste' matters not because it is unchanging or in outline unique, but simply because of its persistence.

Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  21:21, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I have also now corrected the lead of caste, (permalink) which and I and edited seven years ago, using Andre Beteille's felicitous definition, after a long RfC, but in which many words and phrases had been taken out by what can only be defensive tinkering.  It had gone off my watchlist.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  18:18, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Description of British rule
Please comment on the following revision, or suggest revised wording of your own:
 * Dissatisfaction with Company rule led to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, after which the British provinces of India were directly administered by the British Crown and witnessed a period of rapid development of infrastructure, economic decline and major famines.
 * versus
 * Dissatisfaction with Company rule in India led to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, which rocked parts of north and central India, and led to the dissolution of the Company. India was afterwards ruled directly by the British Crown, in the British Raj.

Abecedare (talk) 00:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The first formulation is disjointed. It doesn't make clear that the rebellion was confined to north-central India, that it presaged the end of Company rule, let alone caused it.  "Crown rule in India" or "Direct rule in India" (not "Crown rule in British regions of India") is widely used terminology.

(page 92) Modern technological changes, among them canals, railways, and telegraph, were introduced into India within years of their introduction in Europe. Changes essential to the modern state, including the unification of sovereignty, the surveying and policing of the population, and institutions meant to create an educated citizenry were also, broadly speaking, introduced during the same period in India and in parts of Europe. (pp 125-6) Commercial agriculture, though it provided income to peasant growers, in many areas drove out the sturdy, low-quality grains that had provided staple foods, and in so doing made peasants dependent on food grown elsewhere. One success story was the large-scale development of ‘canal colonies’ in the Punjab, where assured water on newly cultivated soils made possible a vast expansion in the output of wheat, sugar cane, and maize. Commercial cropping characterized an increasing proportion of production for internal consumption as well as the export market. Commercial agriculture was made possible by the transportation infrastructure provided above all by the railway. By the end of the century India possessed the fifth longest railway system in the world. The preeminence of British export interests was clear in a layout that focused on routes to the ports and a rate structure that disadvantaged inland transport.


 * This reference and many others were summarized in the India page, History section in these words (I have taken out the various citations, but you can see them in the India page) "Technological changes—among them, railways, canals, and the telegraph—were introduced not long after their introduction in Europe. However, disaffection with the company also grew during this time, and set off the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Fed by diverse resentments and perceptions, including invasive British-style social reforms, harsh land taxes, and summary treatment of some rich landowners and princes, the rebellion rocked many regions of northern and central India and shook the foundations of Company rule. Although the rebellion was suppressed by 1858, it led to the dissolution of the East India Company and the direct administration of India by the British government. Proclaiming a unitary state and a gradual but limited British-style parliamentary system, the new rulers also protected princes and landed gentry as a feudal safeguard against future unrest. In the decades following, public life gradually emerged all over India, leading eventually to the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885. The rush of technology and the commercialisation of agriculture in the second half of the 19th century was marked by economic setbacks—many small farmers became dependent on the whims of far-away markets. There was an increase in the number of large-scale famines, and, despite the risks of infrastructure development borne by Indian taxpayers, little industrial employment was generated for Indians. There were also salutary effects: commercial cropping, especially in the newly canalled Punjab, led to increased food production for internal consumption. The railway network provided critical famine relief, notably reduced the cost of moving goods, and helped the nascent Indian-owned industry."
 * In other words, the description of the economy is complicated, not reducible to a few nationalistic sound bites. Best not to have anything in a tight summary.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  12:32, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Miscellany
Please comment on the following: Abecedare (talk) 00:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * 1) Do we need 'After their origin in Africa' at the start of the lede sentence?
 * 2) Do we need to mention Mehrgarh or any other similar site(s) specifically in, At the site of Mehrgarh, Balochistan, presence can be documented of the domestication of wheat and barley, rapidly followed by that of goats, sheep, and cattle?
 * 3) Are Janapadas  better glossed as 'monarchical, state-level polities', 'small kingdoms' or something else?
 * 4) Can the second part of 'Jainism and Buddhism, which challenged the orthodoxy of rituals' be improved?
 * My take:

1. We absolutely need "Africa," per Vanamonde's talk page post about not being agnostic with respect to theories of indigenous origin of Indians. As he had suggested in the discussion above, this is now a topic of wide consensus. Here is a new textbook:

Modern human beings—Homo sapiens—originated in Africa. Then, intermittently, sometime between 60,000 and 80,000 years ago, tiny groups of them began to enter the north-west of the Indian subcontinent. It seems likely that initially they came by way of the coast. And the then very different shoreline—now many metres below the sea—probably facilitated their subsequent movement. Anyhow, their numbers increased very slowly as small bands of these first modem people gradually spread around.

2. Mehrgarh in Balochistan, Pakistan, is the paradigmatic Neolithic example in South Asia, attested by dozens of references, e.g. (a), Quote: "(p 29) "The subcontinent's people were hunter-gatherers for many millennia. There were very few of them. Indeed, 10,000 years ago there may only have been a couple of hundred thousand people, living in small, often isolated groups, the descendants of various 'modern' human incomers. Then, perhaps linked to events in Mesopotamia, about 8,500 years ago agriculture emerged in Baluchistan."(b) Quote: "page 33: "The earliest discovered instance in India of well-established, settled agricultural society is at Mehrgarh in the hills between the Bolan Pass and the Indus plain (today in Pakistan) (see Map 3.1). From as early as 7000 BCE, communities there started investing increased labor in preparing the land and selecting, planting, tending, and harvesting particular grain-producing plants. They also domesticated animals, including sheep, goats, pigs, and oxen (both humped zebu [Bos indicus] and unhumped [Bos taurus]). Castrating oxen, for instance, turned them from mainly meat sources into domesticated draft-animals as well." and (c) Quote: ""Mehrgarh remains one of the key sites in South Asia because it has provided the earliest known undisputed evidence for farming and pastoral communities in the region, and its plant and animal material provide clear evidence for the ongoing manipulation, and domestication, of certain species. Perhaps most importantly in a South Asian context, the role played by zebu makes this a distinctive, localised development, with a character completely different to other parts of the world. Finally, the longevity of the site, and its articulation with the neighbouring site of Nausharo (c. 2800—2000 BCE), provides a very clear continuity from South Asia's first farming villages to the emergence of its first cities (Jarrige, 1984)." All three consider Mehrgarh as providing the undisputed evidence of earliest settled life (i.e. of agriculture and domestication of animals) on the subcontinent.  Tim Dyson, in particular, an ace historical demographer at LSE, who has made prolific and deep contributions to the demography of India.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  13:03, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

3. Not my changes.

4. Not my changes. Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  13:07, 14 June 2019 (UTC)


 * ,, , , , , and others: By copying and reducing the history section of the India page, see here, I have demonstrated what a neutral but comprehensive lead should look like.  (Of course it will need to be re-paraphrased to be disambiguated from the India page text.)  I have now reverted that version, but I hope you will have got the idea.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  14:48, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

You are doing yourself great harm, and WP much disservice, by pretending to be neutral in its face, by equating competent editors with the novices who promote it. What sources will you be examining over the weekend. These are edits that have been in the India page for nearly ten years, that were copied from there, but with Hindu nationalist spin. All the best to you. Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  00:52, 14 June 2019 (UTC) I have scratched my posts here. Apologies. Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  13:03, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

The Indian Famine Code of 1901, instituted by the British, was not only used thereafter in India, but around the world, forming the basis of the UN/WHO/FAO famine codes. The Bengal famine of 1943 was an outlier caused by many factors, among which was not only one crop failure, but the absence of the availability of Burmese rice on account of the Japanese occupation of Burma, the failure of Linlithgow's administration to take its early signs seriously, the failure of Churchill's war time government to apportion money and supplies for it during an ongoing global war, the failure of Suhrawardy's provincial government in initially combating it, the hoarding by rich Hindu grain merchants of Calcutta (the single most major reason) to drive the prices up, the squeezing of the poor Muslim peasants of East Bengal by the rich Hindu landlords of the West, which caused the Muslims to die quietly in their homes, without calling for help (read Christopher Bayly poignant account; the abandonment of their families (women and children) by Hindu rural men in order to perpetuate the male blood line by seeking their fortunes in the cities (Paul Greenough has written about this) Apparently there was no Birkenhead drill in Hinduism. Please don't write garbage about post-1947. There was a famine in Bihar in 1967 which the Indian government called a "drought." Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  00:52, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Pictures, periodization
Please note that there are 120+ pictures of Hindu-, Buddhist-, Sikh-, and Jain India, and only four or five of Muslim India!! The Hindu ones, as in this of Vijayanagara are outsize and numerous. In the Delhi sultanate section there are more pictures of putative Hindu temples razed by Muslims than there are of Muslim monuments! In the Late medieval period, there are more pictures of the alleged monuments of the Rajput resisters to Muslims, than there are of the Muslims! Is something rotten in the state of Denmark? You tell me. Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  15:31, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
 * In the British period sections, I have now reduced the size of the pictures, and also replaced outright POV choices in picture and caption with more NPOV ones.  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  13:36, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I have now considerably reduced and refashioned the periodization to reflect the majority view among historians. I have also reduced the surfeit of images, and they need to be reduced further in both number and size.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  12:46, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm now more or less done with reorganizing the table of contents and the images in a fashion that is both NPOV and in consonance with the majority of sources. The text needs work.  That will take time.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  18:30, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Origins from Africa
I think this is better than the current lead-sentence. (Interestingly, I originally tried to do that over this edit but the software behaved weirdly, removing my transposition, inserting a random bunch of nonsense and saving an earlier-typed-out edit-sum. Weird stuff. &#x222F; WBG converse 15:09, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
 * That was my thought too. My edits of the last couple of days weren't in the lead anyway. They weren't even really textual edits except here and there of removing egregious POV. Mostly, they were in the nature of reorganizing the periodization (into a more modern one) and reducing the glut of images, many of which were blatantly POV, such as this version of the Delhi sultanate section which had more pictures of Hindu temples destroyed by the Sultanate than of the Sultanate's own constructions.  (In fact, this page in the current version can be more accurately retitled, "History of Temple Destruction in India") This I changed to a more NPOV Delhi Sultanate version.  Similarly, I changed this Hindu Renaissance section  to Indian Renaissance.  And so forth.  You can see the NPOV changes I made in the pictures yourself.  Basically, as I see it, this page, which is nothing more than a Hindu nationalist attack page, has lingered on in Wikipedia for 12 years.  Wikipedians have a choice.  Fix it, at least the table of contents, and the pictures, once and for all, so that reliable content can be added; or allow it to fester for another 12 years.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  20:00, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Didn't see the fine print. Well.  It is well known that when anatomically modern humans arrived on the subcontinent, archive.org was animalling (not manning) the toll booths in littoral Gedrosia, and the Bolan- and Khyber Passes.  The officers included Indus River Dolphins, Panthera leo persica, Homo erectus, Asiatic cheetah and others.     Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  22:25, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Without touching the lead, which is the subject of a dispute, I am restoring the earlier NPOV edits—the mostly organizational ones involving the periodization and the image-related ones. Best,  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  09:56, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * . FYI, the text says The first confirmed semi-permanent settlements appeared 9,000 years ago in the Bhimbetka rock shelters in modern Madhya Pradesh, India.  but the associated image places these shelters at c. 30,000 yrs from today. --regentspark (comment) 10:16, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * That is why I haven't touched the main body of the article yet, the text that is. The rock art, as you will have seen, has horses, which arrived in India only with the Aryans, whose linguistic forebearers had domesticated them in the Central Asian steppes. So the art cannot be 30,000 years old.  There must be some other sign of human habitation which has been dated to 30,000 years ago.  I've seen than date in many places.  It will need to be fixed by examining the sources.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  10:50, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The 9,000 date is under "Neolithic." So, perhaps neolithic "semi- permanent" settlements appeared in Bhimbetka? But what does "semi-permanent" mean?  Did they have agriculture or did they not?  I doubt there was agriculture in the middle of nowhere in MP.  But there is no source.  Will need to be searched.  Perhaps you or  could look into this?  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  10:56, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * PPS I should have clarified, I did not examine all the images or their captions; just took out or replace the more egregious ones or the thickly populated ones.  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  11:01, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Bhimbetka generates a lot of pseudo-history. But this seems like an authentic statement:

-- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:40, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much! I have added the image from Fig 19 in Dubey-Pathak's paper.  It is Mesolithic, see page 19, without any embarrassing horses.  Not sure I agree with the boar interpretation there (it could be a wild buffalo, or Gaur, given its presence in the area, also I don't see the tell-tale tusks of the boar. Have kept it "wild animal."   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  13:43, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Separate Section for Rajput Kingdoms Under Late Medieval Section
The Rajputs were not regional power but different Rajputs clans were I.e sisodia ,rathore etc.Rajput kingdom was spread across entire north India not just rajasthan such as Ujjania parmars in Bihar.Rajput refers to coalition of different regional powers.some within sultanates such as Medinipur Rai firedom under Malwa Sultanate.look at india map in 13th centuary before Ghurid Invasion Rajput ruled most of northern and central india(solanki in gujrat, Parmara,chahamana and chandel in central Guhilot in North West and gahadevalas and Pratihars in north-northeast  together a vast area)(these clans were latter called Rajputs)and later Dogra ruled Kashmir and Katoch(hill kings) ruled himachal(as I said diff dynasties of diff 'region' call themselves Rajputs despite havving no relation in between them)under regional power you have limited it to Rana Sanga Mufasa19995 (talk) 16:31, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Or if you don't agree for a separate section we can rename 'Regional Powers' to 'Regional Powers and Rajput Kingdoms' where we can add reference to this . -- Mufasa19995 (talk) 16:39, 17 July 2019 (UTC)


 * It is not a question of my disagreeing personally; the Rajputs simply do not get notable coverage in the pre-1300 history of India. They get some in the Mughal years, but not enough to form a section.  The standard histories of India, such as:



do not spend enough notable attention on the Rajputs as to require their own section in a high-level history. What attention there is is more on the formation of the "Rajput" status, rather than their political history. Burton Stein, for example, has this to say:

"' Military service, however, was opened to previously forest and pastoral peoples, and many may have escaped the indignity of exclusion by becom ing martial castes and claiming the title and name of ‘Rajputs’ (from rajapu- tra, son of a king or chief). The Rajput claims were recorded in Sanskrit inscriptions that constituted, as well as recorded, community charters in Rajasthan during the seventh century, when Rajput clans began to make themselves lords of various localities. These were relatively modest records, but called ‘hero-stones’, because the stones on which they were inscribed were planted in the chief villages of one or another of the traditional thirty - six Rajput clans to celebrate some hero who had defended the settlement from raiders. Just where these Rajputs had come from and who their enemies were, however, has been controversial, because while some histori ans have assumed their Vedic antiquity as the first kshatriyas, others have insisted that they either emerged from below as tribal groups transformed themselves, or migrated from outside the subcontinent. Perhaps they even began as Hunas in Central Asia and were converted to Rajput status. Such transformations were common, and achieved by adopting titles and enlist ing brahman ritualists and scribes for the purpose. As in the south, the brahmans were rewarded with land for their services. From the processes of migration and the metamorphosis of lowly local groups into Rajputs, new communities were formed. Some of the clans – the Pratiharas, Guhilas and Chahamanas – succeeded in establishing identities as servants or sustainers of distant kings, assuming the title of ‘great neighbour’ (mahasamanta), which carried with it considerable political autonomy. By the ninth century, the Pratihara had progressed to referring to itself as sovereigns of Rajasthan and Kanauj too.'" Best regards, Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  19:25, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * As for changing "Regional powers" to "Regional powers and Rajput kingdoms," it would not be in consonance in coverage with the sources. The Bahamani Sultanate, which receives much more coverage in the history texts than the Rajput confederacy is a part of Regional powers, without mention in the sections name.  Best,  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  20:13, 17 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Sir,
 * "rajputana Confederate don't get much coverage as Bahamani Sultanate."
 * yes I agree but you seemed to have confused Rajput with Rajputana Confederacy .Some Muslim Rajput dynasties outside Rajasthan were : Sumra , Samma in Sindh and Janjua Sultanates in Punjab(source: ) they are muslim rajput states and have nothing to do with rajput Confederate ,samma like Ahom, Bahamani and Mewar were regional power but not rajputs which were spread across northern India
 * "the Rajputs simply do not get notable coverage in the pre-1300 history of India."
 * In pre 1300 Rajputs used to rule most of north india.the term "Rajput" has also been used as an anachronistic designation for leading martial lineages of 11th and 12th centuries that confronted the Ghaznavid and Ghurid invaders such as the Pratihars(Parihar), the Chahamanas (of Shakambhari, Nadol and Jalor), the Tomaras, the Chaulukyas, the Paramaras, the Gahadavalas, and the Chandelas..Although the Rajput identity did not exist at this time, these lineages were classified as aristocratic Rajput clans in the later times.
 * (This part of history(gets devoid from this high level page)
 * "Standard books do not talk much of political history."
 * Again,i agree because they understand that rajput were not limited to a region or culture but different dynasties were and different dynasty who had no relation in between them call themselves rajput,for deeds of Samma and Bundela their respective dynasties name would be used not Rajput(bundela became Rajput in 17th centuary)untill 19th Centuary the community kept on evolving Rajputs unlike diff clans of maratha and sikhs simply do not share Same history hence can't be used in same way.Mewar gets more coverage than Bahamani both were ruled by single dynasty and were regional powers but not rajputs(this includes way too many regional power).Until 15th century Rajputs did not even become an endogamous caste and even in British era, Rajput states were not a single polity — evident in different reactions to Mughals, British and Princely states Integration. Each Rajput state had different periods of rise and fall Unlike maratha and sikh.
 * And by your logic Sikh too should be included in regional power under early modern section,i again strongly emphasize for need of a diff rajput section and if not atleast remaining.regards - — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mufasa19995 (talk • contribs)


 * No,dont create a separate section for Rajputs. you have put forth some valid argument but so did the best that can be done is to create "Rajput Kingdom" section under "Regional Power" section .this would be more apt and accurate,same could be done for regional sultanates and north-east.hope this resolves the dispute.regardsSharma666

Alright as suggested I haven't created a separate section. but organized parent section under different sub categories.however still it would have been better had rajput Kingdoms got a separate section for a cluster of rulling dynasties of hindu and muslim(gujarat Sultanate,samma etc) it is not same as alikes of Ahom and reddy'sMufasa19995 (talk) 23:36, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, those sub-sub-sections, each with three line paragraphs, created with the seeming motivation of seeing the Rajputs given more prominence in Indian history, are not warranted. Also, please don't make the edits first, and then tell us here.  Gain consensus here first, and then make the edits that are agreed to.  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  09:30, 19 July 2019 (UTC)


 * common consensus ?or more like your consensus secondly I had already replied to your weak arguments,says removing subsection removes sourced and factual history instead,if telling about prithviraj chauhan etc is giving rajput prominence than limiting about rana sanga Confederate is undermining not rajput but indian history. which for whatever reason you are determined to do so.your negligence of history is every much evident when you said they didnt get enough prominence before 1300 check dates of battle of tarains and spread of chandelas and parmaras and when you compared a kingdom(Bahamani) with a short lived Confederacy.now don't remove factual history before reaching common consensus here.i don't know how many times I have repeated that the dynasties that consisted Gurjara-Pratihara empire were the one that were called rajputs later.Hope you don't delete my edits of factual history now citing "not part of common consensus"and limit this dispute to either create a separate section or not and you don't need to apologize but understand something you are keen not to: Mufasa19995 (talk) 12:17, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Do me a favour,tell me which part of it you think does not go well with "common consensus" . . In the north, the Rajput kingdoms remained the dominant force in Western and Central India. Several independent Rajput kingdoms spread and ruled much of northern and central India before muslim invasions until the Pratihar was driven from Kannauj by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1018.Followed by Ghurid invasions who were initially defeated by Chaulukyas of Gujarat at the Battle of Kasahrada in 1178 CE, forcing the Ghurids to retreat.. However in 1192 CE, the Ghurids defeated Prithviraj at the Second battle of Tarain. His defeat at Tarain is seen as a landmark event in the Islamic conquest of India taking over Delhi and Ajmer. After the assassination, one of Ghori's slaves founded Delhi Sultanate

This was followed by decline due to Hindu reconquests, states such as the Vijayanagara Empire and Mewar asserting independence, and new Muslim sultanates such as the Bengal Sultanate along muslim Rajput powers such. Gujarat Sultanateand Samma dynasty of Sindh breaking off. Rajput power again reached its zenith under Rana Sanga, who was the Rana of Mewar and head of a powerful Hindu Rajput confederacy in Rajputana; during whose time Rajput armies were constantly victorious against the Sultanate armies. But, his defeat in the Battle of Khanwa, consolidated the new Mughal dynasty in India. Mufasa19995 (talk) 13:49, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I have listed above some of the reliable, widely-read, tertiary sources on the History of India. They make less than notable proportional mention of the contribution of the Rajputs to the political history of India.  As for Prithviraj Chauhan, consider the textbook, India before Europe, which is a 300-page book about the period 1180–1750 CE in India.  The authors, Asher and Talbot, have this to say about him: "'Muhammad's two chief targets in north India were the powerful Hindu kings Prithviraj Chauhan of Ajmer and Jayachandra Gahadavala of Kanauj. After their victory in 1192 against Prithviraj Chauhan at the battlefield of Tarain, about 120 kilometers northwest of modern Delhi, the Ghurid armies immediately set off toward Prithviraj's capital at Ajmer, seizing forts along the way.'"
 * and then, on the following page, "'The sophisticated military system of their native Afghanistan was the principal reason for the success of the Ghurid armies in India. The ease of the Ghurid conquest has puzzled historians in the past, given the far greater agrarian wealth and population of the conquered Indian king-doms that should have provided them with ample resources for military defense. Hence, early twentieth-century scholars often pointed to the lack of unity among Indians as the chief explanation for their defeat. Since the concept of India as a nation was still centuries away, Prithviraj Chauhan and Jayachandra Gahadavala — Muhammad Ghuri's opponents — had no incentive to forge a united front and indeed are depicted as mortal enemies in a later ballad that champions Prithviraj. ... Recent historical scholarship instead attributes the victory of the Ghurid armies to a number of concrete advantages that gave them a distinct military edge. The Ghurids were in a better position than Indian rulers in this age of cavalry warfare both in terms of the supply of horses and of trained manpower."
 * The authors then spend the better part of a page describing the swift-horse tactics of the Ghurids, which transformed military technology in South Asia. The authors have this to say about the political history of the Rajputs during the Mughal period, although they spend considerable space on Rajput temples and architecture: "In the aftermath of the Mughal victories at Chittor and Ranthambhor, all aristocratic Rajput lineages except the Sisodiyas of Mcwar submitted to Mughal authority. Thereafter, the Rajput princes performed a dual role. On the one hand, they were inducted as nobles in the Mughal military machine and represented the Mughal emperor in whatever capacity and locale they served. On the other hand, they also acted as figureheads of their own states and maintained their own customs, religious and social, in their homelands (watan jagir). However, not until the eighteenth century was it possible for Rajput princes to expand the size of their ancestral lands, since they remained under the direct jurisdiction of their Mughal overlord."
 * Modern history writing does not focus so much on names as on historical shifts. The Rajputs, in my understanding of modern writings on Indian political history, have not caused historical shifts that would be considered notable in the compressed history that comprises this page, though they have made lasting contributions to other fields such as architecture.  Best regards,  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  14:08, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
 * PS I have written the four history sections of the FA India. That is an even more compressed history, but as you will see, the Rajputs receive scant mention. Had this page been the architectural history of India, the Rajputs would receive notable mention, and a section of their own; had this been the social history of India, they would have again received extended notable mention, as they loom large in topics such as Sati, Female infanticide, and Widow Remarriage, which has received considerable historiographical space.  This, however, is an overall and compressed history of India, with emphasis on the political.  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  14:19, 19 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I reverted a recent addition to the article that was poorly sourced, poorly written and chronologically misplaced. The sentences I reintroduced by my revert, though, (In the north, the Rajput kingdoms remained the dominant force in Western and Central India. Their power reached its zenith under Rana Sanga, who was the Rana of Mewar and head of a powerful Hindu Rajput confederacy in Rajputana; during whose time Rajput armies were constantly victorious against the Sultanate armies.) were hardly much better in terms of writing and sourcing. Can any of the page regulars take a look? Abecedare (talk) 14:30, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

poorly written,im sorry my english is bad i'm not one of the brightest students of my class,poorly sourced?none of them were generated by me but copied from respective wikkipedia pages,cited by respective page regulars and intellectual so I doubt that.Mufasa19995 (talk) 14:42, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I have replied at your talkpage since most of my notes are not directly related to the article content per se. Abecedare (talk) 15:19, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I am again requestingg that you not unilaterally keep making edits for which there is no consensus here. You seem to be jumping back to the History of India page, each time you present your rationalizations here. You need to conclude the discussion in this talk page first.  We can all collect sources here and there to make any piece of reasonable text well-sourced.  But whether the text reflects due weight is a different story.  Peter Robb of SOAS, London, has this to say about Prithviraj Chauhan (in totality) in this 414-page textbook, A History of India (Macmillan) "'The third factor, invasions, became significant again from around 1000, when Punjab, Sind and the north Indian plain were once more attacked from the west, this time by the mobile Afghan armies of the Turk, Mahmud of Ghazni. He and his immediate successors (after his death in 1030) established a Ghaznavid principality in the Punjab. It survived between 1021 and the arrival of the Ghurids in 1186; Muhammad of Ghuri was another Afghan Turk invader. He established a much wider control in north India. The Rajputs were unable to resist him, following his defeat in 1192 of Prithviraja III, king of the Chauhans, a Rajput clan based southeast of Delhi."
 * That is one sentence in a 414-page book. How will I give Chauhan space in a 16,400 word (30 page) text which is this page?  It is due weight we are talking about, i.e. proportional representation in the reliable sources.  Also pinging   Best regards,  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  14:49, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Burton Stein in his 453-page, widely-read, text A History of India does not make any mention of Prithviraj Chauhan, and he has this to say about the Rajputs at the time of the first Muslim invasions: "Spectacular conquests such as Mahmud’s were the result of the superior military might of Ghaznivid soldiers against both Muslim and non-Muslim enemies, and illustrate once more the significance of military developments. The prospect of loot for each victorious invading Muslim horseman assured that the casualties of this hazardous activity could easily be replaced by new recruits and their numbers increased by ambitious indigenous Indian converts of lowly status. The ease with which Turk horsemen pillaged northern India during the eleventh century and then set about ruling the Gangetic plain during the next century has baffled many historians. ... Yet the divisions and the cumulative waste of warfare among the largest Indian kingdoms who were then seeking to control the Gangetic plain and the difficulty of any ruler in successfully overcoming the independence and clannish preoccupations of Rajput soldiers may eventually have taken its toll.'" The historical shift here is not only the technology shift after the Muslim advent, but also the new armies united by ethnicity and religion.  Again, modern history writing is no longer about listing names, battles, ..., but about broader trends and shifts of history that humans set off in the wake of their individual and collective actions.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  15:11, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

yes sir,i won't make any unilaterally edit,no intention to disrespect decorated user like you.see I came across a book "The Last Hindu Emperor Prithviraj Chauhan and the Indian Past, 1200–2000" on indian history(not chauhan) by Cynthia Talbot published in 2015 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/last-hindu-emperor/39C2F2225202C2630BF5616A62AF4D58 I don't think modern historian has yet forgotten chauhan and many historian consider his defeat as landmark in beginning of muslim invasion's era yet not a place for him 'history of india' I respect your 'understanding' of history and I've already said what I had to and your previous threads just repeated what you had already told . Satish chandra Medieval India: From Sultanat to the Mughals-Delhi Sultanat (1206-1526) - Part One(2004)pg.19 . Heading: Rajput Kingdoms in North India(10th to12th) now this talk of much political hiatory(defeats,tactics of rajputs) The point was not actually about prithviraj but as you said earlier rajputs did not get history space before 13th centuary . https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Medieval_India_From_Sultanat_to_the_Mugh.html?id=L5eFzeyjBTQC . Regards :Mufasa19995 (talk) 15:16, 19 July 2019 (UTC) ..
 * this article has,like a small paragraph on 'Jat King maharaj Surajmal' but not a single mention of prithviraj chauhan(who is actually famous for his monumental defeat at 2nd battle,hence it wont be any good faith edit either)i don't know why it became such a big issue to mention Hindu kings of 10-13th century who confronted ghurids and ghazni. i certainly agree with you on issue of separate section but strongly disagree on your rigid stance of not mentioning hindu(rajput) kings of 10-12th whose political history

(particularly prithviraj chauhan) is certainly of more prominence than maharaj surajmal,i fancy what talbot had to say about Surajmal and several more names like him can be found moreover then why even write about sanga?i dont think many gave him a notable mention either.Sharma666 (talk) 00:47, 20 July 2019 (UTC) ..
 * "the second battle of tarain in 1192 is rightly regarded as one of turning points in indian history"pg 25 satish chandra medieval india part 1(note:as an indian history scholar i can assure you Satish Chandra is one of the most trusted historian i guess only second to Jadunath sarkar,these two are biggest name among indian historians notable mention:upendra nath day)

..
 * ,We can add this Under "Gurjara-Pratihar" along with their decay(taking ref from satish chandra book) i.e within Early medieval period (c. 650–1200 CE)section not under Late medieval period (c. 1200 – 1526 CE) as done by Mufasa19995 earlier;Sharma666 (talk) 02:59, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

To both of you. Please read WP:TERTIARY which says:


 * Tertiary sources are publications such as encyclopedias and other compendia that summarize primary and secondary sources. Wikipedia is to be a tertiary source. Many introductory undergraduate-level textbooks are regarded as tertiary sources because they sum up multiple secondary sources.
 * Reliable tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources, and may be helpful in evaluating due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other. Some tertiary sources are more reliable than others, and within any given tertiary source, some entries may be more reliable than others. Wikipedia articles may not be used as tertiary sources in other Wikipedia articles, but are sometimes used as primary sources in articles about Wikipedia itself (see Category:Wikipedia and Category:WikiProject Wikipedia articles).

Secondary sources such as the monographs Satish Chandra has written are useful for showing reliability but they do not determine due weight. Similarly, the book by Cynthia Talbot about Prithviraj and the use of his symbol in revisionist nationalists myth making is a monograph, not a tertiary source. The books I have listed above are introductory or intermediate level textbooks on the History of India, the same topic as this page. Those books give scant proportional attention to the Rajputs. There is nothing ambiguous about this. The evidence is clear over a dozen such textbooks. Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  03:33, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
 * This is as far as I go. Both of you are making the same points again and again.  I have explained my argument very clearly.  I don't see you have offered anything, other that monographs or old sources. Best regards,  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  04:02, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Arbitrary break
All the people contesting inclusion of this or that should read the discussion Talk:History of India/Archive_6 that took place at the beginning of this year. This article has grown in an unwieldy manner over the last couple of years, with everybody expanding their favourite bit of history, trying to glorify their favourite heroes. The article is at present too large, haphazard, incomprehensible and boring. Drastic surgery is needed. , being a highly experienced editor on large topics like this, has been working on cutting it down to size. I fully agree with his position that only books titled something like "History of India" should be used for assessing the WP:DUE weight for this article.

As I mentioned in the above discussion, there is room for creating separate articles on History of Classical India or History of Medieval India, which might have more details on the particular political conflicts that were important to those periods. But, once again, only broad trends of history can be covered in an encyclopaedic article. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:00, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Narasimhan et al. (2018)
Need to include New sources based on recent Genetic evidences. There are four prehistoric migrations in India. There is also an extensive study titled ‘The Genomic Formation of Central and South Asia, co-authored by 92 scientists from around the world and co-directed by geneticist David Reich of Harvard Medical School, in which ancient DNA was used. The Harappans were a mixture of Zagros agriculturists and First Indians, a wave of migrants who came from Africa into Arabia and then reached India around 65,000 years ago. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-first-indians/article25814358.ece https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/4-prehistoric-migrations-shaped-indias-population-book/articleshow/67299719.cms https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46616574 https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/beyond-stones-and-more-stones-defining-indian-prehistoric-archaeology-volume-1-review-looking-for-lost-footprints/article23333487.ece

--Shamabopanna (talk) 15:56, 7 June 2019 (UTC)


 * All such recent research should be stated with WP:In-text attribution, and not necessarily in the lead. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:08, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

There are limitations in the mathematical and statistical methods employed in molecular population genetics. There is little chance that they will be considered history or prehistory any time soon on Wikipedia. Undigested material from opinion pages in newspapers does not constitute a reliable source in Indian history. The day a widely-used India history textbook, published by a well-known internationally recognized academic publisher, carries clear and cogent statements about the migrations into India, and not simply the migrations out of Africa, I will be glad to support such edits. They do not belong anywhere in this article. In any case, this is a high-level article. It cannot admit sources that are not high-level in history, i.e. not of low historical resolution, or lacking wide acceptance in the community of historians. Best regards, Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  18:48, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Besides all your sources are clones of reviews or article by a journalist Tony Joseph, who very likely has no expert-level familiarity with the modern methods of molecular population genetics. No ancient DNA has survived anywhere in the Republic of India or for that matter in most of the Indus Valley.  Traditionally, what they have used is some partly degenerated ancient DNA from Swat, from a people who were very likely only on the outskirts of IVC.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  19:03, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Maybe you should just read Narasimhan et al. (2018). gives a good summary. And see User:Joshua Jonathan/Tools for some scholarly comments on the advances in genetic research.  Joshua Jonathan  - Let's talk!  04:05, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Fowler's misgivings are valid to some extent. We are not yet seeing collaborations between the geneticists and historians. Only when that happens can we be confident that all the information is harmonised. Tony Joseph is an enthusiastic journalist. He can write well, but if he is to be accepted as a reliable source, we need more information about his background. We also have the problem that in India, biotechnology and genetic engineering etc. are hot fields attracting loads of smart people, whereas fields like history and archaeology are in doldrums. So we have lop-sided expertise in the researchers' capabilities. Add to this Hindutva ideology, whose subscribers include some of these researchers themselves, and you have an unedifying cocktail.

However, the Reich lab is good. They came up with some brand new techniques analysing admixtures, which have been able to glean enormous amount of information previously unavailable. Michael Witzel has been talking to them and there is some back and forth going on. I think the admixture-based information is quite solid, but we should also be wary of novices reading too much into them. For example, the map given in the Narasimhan article tells a good story. But how much of this map was actually verified? Was the "Inner Asian mountain corridor" actually sampled and are we confident of the route taken by these populations? We dont' know, and they don't say. Why doesn't Afghanistan occur along the route, while we have linguistic & archaeological information that puts it there? And, the original question I asked, "where does Indra come from?". The terminology "Iranian farmers" shows their historical naivety. If they call them "Iranians", what are they going to call the Iranians that split off from the Indo-Iranians, thousands of year later? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:16, 8 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Sorry I did not see this earlier. I'm writing off the top of my head, so can't be as exact as I'd like to.  I'm addressing the general concerns, not the more particular, which K3 has already done.  The problem here, from my POV, is two-fold: (a) how reliable or robust is the work from the point of view of History, and (b) Is this work History?


 * (a) First: how reliable or robust is this work from a mathematical- or statistical POV? Pretty much all the work done in human population genetics has been done by people in fields such as zoology or genetics, who have picked up canned techniques for simulating the theoretical work of others, or in some cases have worked with applied computer programmers, who in turn have simulated earlier theoretical work using data set of the biologists.  The people who work in theoretical population genetics, Coalescent theory, or Markov Chain Monte Carlo, have by and large stayed away from such work, though in some cases they are pleased, or flattered,  that the work is being done.  These theoretical methods has its own accuracy limits.  They are not like Andrew Wiles's (eventual) proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, which is now fixed in the firmament of mathematical truths for all time.  As the theoretical methods keep improving, the applications keep changing, sometimes drastically changing.


 * These applications are also highly dependent on the data set. For example, when there was only mitochondrial DNA data for the African Eve in the 1980s and 90s, the origin of modern humans was dated to 120 KYBP (thousand years before present) in Africa.  After the Y-Chromosome data became available in the early 2000s, the date was pushed forward to 65–75 KYBP.  Sometimes the questions themselves keep changing.  For example, archaeological and artifact-based evidence had long posited the origin of domestication of the chicken to the Indus Valley.  However, the first DNA-analysis-based papers in 2004 (?) suggested that it happened in Thailand.  A few years later, some new ancient DNA was extracted from some samples in China, and the domestication was pushed back to 9,0000 years BP.  A few years still later, when all the evidence was examined by other researchers, they found that the domestication in East Asia was dead-ended (did not result in the spread of domesticated chicken to other regions); however, the clade found around the world (Africa, Europe and the New World) had descended either from the red jungle fowl of South Asia (presumably Indus Valley), and/or the gray (?) jungle fowl of South India and Sri Lanka.


 * As for ancient DNA, a recent piece of work that was similarly touted had a flaw. There is no ancient DNA to be found anywhere in the tropical regions of South Asia, which happens to be most of South Asia.  The authors found some in Swat, probably in some perennially shaded high altitude area, and probably already compromised.  Subsequently, the authors made the case that this ancient DNA together with sample of modern populations in the Indus Valley region was enough to make such-and-such predictions.  Parenthetically, as far as I am aware, the ancient DNA methods have had their best robust successes only in temperate environments, preferably even permafrost.


 * So where does that leave us with this work, or for that matter similar works in computational linguistics that employ models of language evolution to posit movement of languages in history? Given the history of the field, given that Wikipedia is a tertiary source, and therefore, conservative in what it puts out, except for contemporary events, such work simply cannot go into, of all things, a high-level article such as History of India.  I will oppose its inclusion, and, upon finding time, will take out such of this work as might have already crept in.


 * (b) A historian, by definition, is someone who has had training in the interpretation of recorded historical data, i.e written records, which are primary sources, and who then produces a secondary source based on that training. An archaeologist has had similar training in the interpretation (usually) of prehistorical data.  These scholars re neither historians nor archaeologists.  Best regards,  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  18:17, 9 June 2019 (UTC)


 * A few thoughts, since this is a literature I am fairly familiar with. First, we should completely avoid using news coverage of population genetics studies as sources. News articles are always bad at interpreting scientific studies; they are particularly bad when those studies use highly specialized methods, and when they have political implications. Primary scientific literature is acceptable as a source, but when discussing contentious science, only with in-text attribution. Scientific review articles are good sources, but solid recent reviews do not exist for this topic. So, with any given source, we need to consider what exactly it can be used for, and whether that content needs to be given weight in a given article; which brings me to the study under discussion above. As far as I can see, the paper is still only on bioRxiv; it hasn't been published in a peer-reviewed journal yet, meaning that at the moment, it's definitely not an acceptable source anywhere on Wikipedia. Even after it is published (with an author list like that, it is likely to be published soon, without too much revision), all this study can do is discuss the relatedness of the various individuals, ancient and modern, in its sample. Population genetics is excellent at determining relatedness; it is less good at determining ultimate origins (because it is limited by sample size) and poorer still at determining migration routes, which it can only do by inference. This article is an overview of the history of India. As such, a detailed discussion of population relatedness, especially with respect to historical populations, would be undue weight. So, I don't think this particular study will be of much use to this article, even after publication. That said; at the moment, this article does not discuss, at all, the ancestry of the prehistoric populations in the region; it is more or less agnostic with respect to the various migration theories. This is a bit of a problem, because while the specifics of the migrations are still in debate, the "indigenous origins" theory has been clearly debunked; there is firm scholarly consensus that anatomically modern humans also migrated into India from Africa via the middle-east and central Asia. Given that we're relying on disputed archaeological studies in that paragraph anyway, adding a couple of sentences about genetic evidence for African origins wouldn't be a bad thing at all. Vanamonde (Talk) 19:39, 9 June 2019 (UTC)


 * I concur with Vanamonde. We may word it conservatively after consensus on the wording, but we should make a mention recent research, rather than ignoring it completely. AshLin (talk) 01:52, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Just clarifying that the scholarly consensus is not for the migration of humans out of Africa via the Middle East, if by the ME is meant the Levant, or via Central Asia, but for the coastal migration via the southwest coast of the Horn of Africa, and, presumably after the briefest of sea journeys during the Ice Age, to the coast of Yemen, and along that coast on to present-day Oman from which, after another brief hop, the migrants reached coastal Iran, Pakistan, coastal peninsular India, Burma, southeast Asia, and eventually Australia—where the oldest human remains are found outside of Africa. The traditional Middle East did not figure in this migration (as had been conjectured in the mitochondrial-DNA-based-data in the 1980s and 90s, and as the first map in Recent African origin of modern humans incorrectly insinuates; contrast that with the National Geographic map).  Central Asia did not figure in this migration either.  CA was first populated according to the Y-chromosome evidence, by humans out of India or West Asia, who may not have been the earliest coastal migrants, but later ones taking a similar route.  After arrival in Central Asia, furthermore, humans split into two groups, one populating Europe the other East Asia and later the Americas.  The direct migration from Africa through the Levant to Europe happened later.  At least that was the consensus as long as I was following the research more carefully until  2010 or thereabouts.


 * We do refer to that migration out of Africa in the very first sentence: "Anatomically modern humans are thought to have arrived on the Indian subcontinent between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago," which is cited to, which in turn says: "Genetic studies indicate the arrival of modern humans into the region by 73–55 ka." The wide range of estimates, as far as I am aware, are in part the result of the assumptions in the modeling of DNA evolution.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  04:29, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see, someone has taken out "from Africa" from the original sentence. Hmm.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  04:58, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, it was there once. See here.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  05:02, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * : Its not only that Tony Joseph has written about recent Genetic evidences, there are many geneticists who have written on this aspect. There is also book Who We Are and How We Got Here by geneticist David Reich. Michael Witzel, Wales Professor of Sanskrit, Harvard University has also written extensively on that.

https://scroll.in/article/896642/from-the-aryan-migration-to-caste-two-books-offer-fascinating-insights-into-indias-ancient-past https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBuZ9Kd0yRA https://scroll.in/article/874102/aryan-migration-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-study-on-indian-genetics https://twitter.com/tjoseph0010/status/977774592143122434?lang=en History is written by geneticists based on evidence. To read about background of Tony Joseph, you can read here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Joseph --Shamabopanna (talk) 09:15, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Dear, I have here some of the papers of J. F. C. Kingman on population genetics, which form the basis of some of the present-day work on molecular population genetics both when applied to the domestication of the chicken, which I refer to above, and the ancient migration of humans. What are the chances that Tony Joseph or Michael Witzel understand even one percent of this work?  I can say confidently: zero.  They simply do not have the educational background. What is the likelihood that David Reich understands the nitty-gritty of this work?  I would say: most likely not very high.  This is not like Einstein using Riemannian Geometry in the General theory of relativity (1915).  For Einstein actually spent many years after publication of the Special theory of relativity in 1906, making up for the deficit in his knowledge by learning Riemannian geometry first from first principles.  He also applied it to a field, viz physics, in which the data sets are highly precise, the most precise of any application of mathematics.  He, furthermore, postulated an experiment—later successfully carried out by astronomers who traveled to Cape Horn in South America in 1919—for verifying the bending of light by gravity.
 * The publicity hogging scientists of today publish in New York Times first or other newspapers where the astounding claim is made that they (i.e. Reich) were mentored by Cavalli-Sforza when the latter had retired before Reich turned 18. Did they travel to Italy in C-S's retirement and spent the summer there or did they do a high school science project long distance with C-S? Are we supposed to be impressed by that?  I am astounded that you are presenting newspaper fluff as a mark of these gentlemen's scholarly acumen.
 * As they all claim to use mathematics or statistics, what is the mathematically precise statement of their claims, and what are the limitations, the error margins, the other needed qualifications? Don't dump a paper on me, or the paper's abstracts; instead paraphrase the claims of that paper in your own words as precisely as you can.  We can then have a discussion.  If you do not understand the paper, then please do not further burden the people who are attempting to make this page a more readable one.  Sorry to be blunt.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  12:03, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Even if we dont take into account research done by David Reich (geneticist), there is an extensive study titled ‘The Genomic Formation of Central and South Asia, co-authored by 92 scientists (including Nick Patterson (scientist), Viviane Slon and many scientists from Harvard, MIT, the Russian Academy of Science, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the Institute for Archaeological Research in Uzbekistan) from around the world . Did all of them don't understand the nitty-gritty of their work?

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2018/03/31/292581.full.pdf https://twitter.com/vagheesh/status/980127073758056449?lang=en Interactive data visualizer https://public.tableau.com/profile/vagheesh#!/vizhome/TheGenomicFormationofSouthandCentralAsia/Fig_1 That study shows how migrants into India from the west and north, contributed to local DNA and that aligns with recent analyses on Indo-European languages coming into the subcontinent from the northwest as well. In simple terms, the mixing of Iranian agriculturists and South Asian hunter-gatherers first created the Indus Valley population.Then around the 2nd millennium BCE, Steppe pastoralists moved south towards the subcontinent encountering the Indus Valley population in a manner that was likely to have caused some amount of upheaval.--Shamabopanna (talk) 13:37, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm aware of the coastal migration route, F&F; Yemen, Oman, and Iran are very much in the modern conception of the middle-east as I understand it... My reference to Central Asia was to the second well-recognized wave of migration, not the first. Anyhow, all I'm saying is we should not give the appearance of being agnostic with respect to "indigenous origins"; no great detail is required. Vanamonde (Talk) 12:53, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Yes, the indigenous origin debunked first in the 19th century itself, based on linguistic evidence, is now debunked again on genetic. Let me formulate something that will make the first sentence more explicit; and then perhaps include it in the India page as well. (For, there too I seem to remember the coastal migration was mentioned once, but now looks absent.)  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  13:38, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * is there any WP:RS which questions the competence of David Reich in general, based on his understanding of Kingman; and, by explicit implication, questions the value and trustworthiness of Narasimhan et al. (2018)? Joshua Jonathan  - Let's talk!  14:06, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * You tell me what they are using: rho statistic, maximum likelihood, Bayesian inference, or Coalescent theory, applied to what what precise form of high-throughput sequencing of short DNA segments, and I will tell you the limitations of their work, quite apart from the anthropological critiques or bioethical ones. Otherwise, what is the point of directing me to newspaper articles, or to your own copying and pasting across Wikipedia.  In other words, if you do not understand these papers, please do not add to the burden of those who are attempting to make this page readable.  If you do understand these papers please enlighten me by answering my question above.  Can you imagine people posting abstracts from Modern Asian Studies, Journal of South Asian studies and wanting inclusion of this factoid or that in the History of India page?  We would tell them to find a widely used textbook in the field published by an academic press that speaks to these factoids.  Thus far David Reich has not had any impact in the field of history.  :
 * Finally, let me reinsert in slightly altered form a piece of text I had earlier taken out: "Finally, why is this a big deal in India now, when some 20 years ago the Y-Chromosome results showed India to be an important stop in the first coastal migration of humans out of Africa, and not a peep of curiosity or applause was heard in India then? I can only conjecture that the new results are often misinterpreted to tickle the vanity of some Indians, who feel they are truly from the land of the Mount Meru, whether it rose majestically behind the River Saraswati in Sapta Sindhu, in Kashmir, in Chitral, in the home of the Sakyas, the Kushanas, that watered by the Dnieper in Ukraine, or the North Pole itself (as Bal Gangadhar Tilak believed). Regardless, the unlucky African students who come to study in New Delhi, who have long made their peace with the topic of skin color and race, are still periodically beaten up."
 * As for my own personal beliefs, I think the Indo-European migration was no less brutal to the native peoples of India (i.e. the earlier migrants into India) than what is conventionally claimed about later Muslim- and British conquests by modern-day Indians, Hindu nationalists or not. We don't need papers in palaeogenomics to see that.  We have only to look around to see the vast and brutal inequalities Hinduism has created in Indian society.    Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  17:10, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Please post at the bottom of the thread; otherwise, it becomes difficult to track the time order. All that has been known to linguists for over a century--that IVC language, and the Dravidian languages in general, came into India from the west and the Indo-European languages from the northwest some two millennia later.  To this, some people would add: the Austro-Asiatic languages spoken by the Andamanese and the Birhor are of older provenance.  But we never included all this in an Indian History page.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  18:12, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Lead
I have re-added diff the text about the peopling of South Asia by Homo sapiens from Africa, some of which had been removed earlier. I have also added a quote from a reliable source supporting the edit. There is wide consensus for this in the community of scholars. Some other material had been removed as well, a word here, a phrase there. That too I have restored in the first two paragraphs of the lead. The lead, however, still suffers from a blatant traditionalist interpretation in which the entire Muslim era is no more than two or three sentences long, by far outstripped by the pre-Muslim coverage, or coverage of lesser known Hindu rulers during the Muslim period. This is shameful, and I believe, deliberate. Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  20:54, 11 June 2019 (UTC) I've corrected and trimmed the British Period section. Please keep an eye on it. Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  21:34, 11 June 2019 (UTC)


 * I can't help but feel that the entire lead has a very Northwest-centric focus with hardly any mention of the aboriginal people or the population of southern and eastern India. what's your view on this? AshLin (talk) 04:08, 12 June 2019 (UTC)


 * No coincidence, I suppose, that the Muslim-part is under-represented. I also agree that the south is somewhat neglected, though that's understandable, since "civilisation" first developed in the north. "Civilisation" being a British pre-occupation, I once read somewhere; for India, of course, this has long was thought to have been the Vedic culture, solely from which Hinduism is thought to have developed, according to a certain narrative. Ironically, Narasimhan et al. (2018) have interesting things to say in this respect, about the mingling of Harappans with southern Indians after the decline of the Harappan civilisation, and the 'external' origins of the Vedic culture; they present a broader picture. But alas, I'll leave that discussion to rest, though I still recommand others to read that article, and the press/blog (Razib Khan) coverage of it. Joshua Jonathan  - Let's talk!  04:33, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Oh, your changes have already been reverted; this were F&f's edits; these are Highpeak35's edits. It seems to reflect the shifting focus of this 'certain narrative' from the Vedic culture to the IVC as the origin of Indian culture. 3300-1300 is incorrect, of course. Joshua Jonathan  - Let's talk!  04:36, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Why was the mention of famine and economic decline during British rule deleted from the lead? I have more concerns, let’s start with that. (Also JJ, I did not add that June content, just restored it.) (Highpeaks35 (talk) 10:19, 12 June 2019 (UTC))
 * That,, is because it was WP:UNDUE and unencylopedic. The corresponding section on the second half of the 19th century in the FA India, which has been through several reviews, says: "Although the rebellion was suppressed by 1858, it led to the dissolution of the East India Company and the direct administration of India by the British government. Proclaiming a unitary state and a gradual but limited British-style parliamentary system, the new rulers also protected princes and landed gentry as a feudal safeguard against future unrest. In the decades following, public life gradually emerged all over India, leading eventually to the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885. The rush of technology and the commercialisation of agriculture in the second half of the 19th century was marked by economic setbacks—many small farmers became dependent on the whims of far-away markets. There was an increase in the number of large-scale famines, and, despite the risks of infrastructure development borne by Indian taxpayers, little industrial employment was generated for Indians. There were also salutary effects: commercial cropping, especially in the newly canalled Punjab, led to increased food production for internal consumption. The railway network provided critical famine relief, notably reduced the cost of moving goods, and helped the nascent Indian-owned industry."  The text you attempted to restore says: "Dissatisfaction with Company rule led to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, after which the British provinces of India were directly administered by the British Crown and witnessed a period of rapid development of infrastructure, economic decline and major famines."  How is the second a WP:DUE summary of the first?  Famines have always been a part of the environmental- and (sadly) population history of India.  They might have increased in number during the first half of the Raj, but they weren't the standout notable feature.  Please examine the books in India.  What proportion of their British Raj content is devoted to famines or economic decline?  It is a small proportion.  What you have restored is more generally nonsensical: "British provinces were directly governed by the British Crown."  Who uses that language?  The world over history books speak of "Direct rule in India," not direct rule in the British provinces of the India, as if to somehow highlight the nominal, on-paper, sovereignty of the mostly politically impotent Indian rulers of the princely states.  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  10:24, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * True it does have that flavor, but it reflects, in part, that slant in the sources. It seems that before the era of settled agriculture, which in South Asia began ca 7000 BCE, the population was quite low.  The section Indus_Valley_Civilisation gives a sense of the  lopsidedness: of an overall population of 4 to 6 million for the subcontinent, anywhere between one and five million were in the region of the Indus Valley Civilisation.  That section uses for reference a new book, A Population History of India by the historical demographer Tim Dyson.  Generally speaking, Southern India, by which I mean India below the Vindhyas, or aboriginal India, as found, for example, in the Andamans, has the oldest Indian lineages, just as Southern India has the oldest rock formations, the north being mainly silt deposited by the Himalayan rivers and of little interest to a geologist. Until the neolithic era, the Southern Indian populations were hunters and gatherers leaving little record that has yet been detected of their activities.   Perhaps we can say something general, but it will need to be supported by the sources.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  12:42, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Behavior
As you have asked me not to post on your talk page, I have no option by to post here: The bigger worry for you should be about your behavior. On three pages now, in the last 24 hours, Kashmir, India and History of India, you have reverted edits of mine for which I had been providing documentation on the talk page. You have edit warred with when he suggested by same in the edit summary of his restoration. You have politely stonewalled, when he queried your edits. In my case, you are reverting edits of a competent, longstanding, editor of India-related pages, in each case, by the subterfuge that some vaunted STATUS QUO needs to be restored before any changes are made, but, more importantly, that I need to offer justification for my each of my edits on the talk page, but you are absolved from justifying the restoration. You have been given a last warning on your talk page by admin for your POV promotion activities, which you instantly blanked. Before that, you had been banned for a week, with explicit warnings from admins and. But you don't seem to be listening. I believe that time for a topic ban (at least for six months) from all India-related topics (broadly construed) has now come. You have caused phenomenal harm to Wikipedia by stuffing page after page after page with India-promotion edits. Not one, not two, but thousands, usually accompanied by edit-warring and opaque edit summaries. This has occurred in pages as diverse as Pilaf, Kebab, Shalwar kameez, Kurta, Kashmir, Indus Valley Civilisation, Great Famine of 1876–1878, where your talk page posts doubting that the author of your reference had copied from my Wikipedia edits, constitute a doozy. Your edits came to a head in History of domes in South Asia, where you were tag-teaming, against me, with a now-banned editor. Wikipedia needs you to be topic banned. Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  10:29, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * You are in clear violation of WP:BRD. You are the one that changed long established leads here and here and deleted large amount of content in Kashmir article without any discussion. The India page lead was there for years, and was established by a list of editors, but was changed by you singlehandedly. Don't bring other topics which were already raised to promote your own POV and constant edit warring with not just me, but tons of editors. I clearly came to talk page to discuss, but you refused. You are in violation of WP:BRD as seen in India, Kashmir, and here. I hope and other admins look into this; and see, you make large changes to sensitive articles without any consensus and violate WP:BRD. (Highpeaks35 (talk) 10:49, 13 June 2019 (UTC))
 * How many people were engaged in the talk page discussion with me, to whose posts I was responding with my edits? I have already responded to the UNDUE nature of the edits I was removing in the subsection above.  This section is about behavior.  The time for your topic ban has come.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  10:54, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Bullying me to promote your large edits without discussion on sensitive articles is not justified. WP:BRD works on all of us from what I read. You yourself mentioned on the India article, "every sentence needs to be discussed", but you changed it without any discussion. I will leave to admins to decide if the WP:Status Quo should be implemented in here and India article and per  WP:BRD, discussion needs to begin regarding your changes on both articles. Again, bringing other topics to promote your POV is unjustified and violation of WP:BRD. (I do not see how this does not violate WP:BRD.) (Highpeaks35 (talk) 11:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC))
 * Again this section is not about BRD, but the topic ban you have been warned about on your user talk page. As for whether I discuss my edits, please note that I have 1,172 edits in the FA India.  I have 3,235 edits on Talk:India.  That contrast in numbers does not bespeak the editing style of someone who is a bully.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  11:23, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

What does those edit counts have to do with anything? You have been here for a long time. It still does not justify you to violate WP:BRD when someone has concerns regarding your large changes. I also edited 4,379 pages. Vast majority of the time I was able to work with the editors to build consensus: Borscht being an example. But, you refuse to even discuss with me on a long standing India lead, which you changed singlehandedly. (Highpeaks35 (talk) 11:30, 13 June 2019 (UTC))
 * As I say in my Talk:India post, you are entirely clueless there. You have no idea what I was responding to, that my edits had anything to do with the upcoming 15th anniversary of India becoming in FA.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  11:48, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Let me be blunt. You are clueless about Indian history.  You cannot string together two sentences of the careful English prose needed in Indian history.  You are arguing with a competent editor.  You are wasting my precious time.  That is disruptive to Wikipedia, no matter how wronged you feel.  Wikipedia in that sense is not a democracy.  It does not think your howsoever many gnomish edits are equivalent to my contributions; it especially does not think that your howsoever many toxic, biased, pre-Muslim-India-aggrandizing, edits are equivalent to mine, nor for that matter the outsize images of non-Muslim and non-British India that you have added with outlandish persistence.  This has nothing to do with ownership of content, just the encyclopedic value of the contributions.  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  11:55, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

It is just sad, when an editor violates WP:BRD and now WP:NPA, and get away with it. Regardless, I am done with this discussion. (Highpeaks35 (talk) 12:41, 13 June 2019 (UTC))
 * I am characterizing your edits. I know nothing about you outside of your edits.  You might be the greatest guy to have a beer with.  However, your edits in India-related topics often ring with the qualities that I described mentioned above.  Those are what matters, and they have caused great harm to Wikipedia, one which will take up a lot of time of other editors to set right.    Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  12:55, 13 June 2019 (UTC)


 * I'd just point out that per WP:BRD-NOT, BRD is never a reason for reverting. Unless the reversion is supported by policies, guidelines or common sense, the reversion is not part of BRD cycle.. That said, I suspect that at some or another each of us has perhaps been lazy and used "revert; per BRD" as a lazy form of "I object to these changes; please explain your reasoning fo them on talkpage". On the other hand, F&f did explain at least some of their reasoning in their lengthy edit summaries. On the third-hand, edit-summaries, however lengthy, are not an efficient means of two-way communication. On the fifth hand, given the past-history between them, Highpeak should not be mass-reverting F&f edits in toto multiple times and at multiple pages. On the sixth hand... this is getting tiresome. Can we just focus on the disputed content for now, and discuss it in the section below and/or above? In the meantime, I'd ask Highpeaks and F&f to not make any more reverts. Abecedare (talk) 19:58, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

I don't think so all the scientific way of determining ages and dna implementation has way more limitation like lack of data. As I think dna shows retention over a long period of time. As evolution in dna depends on dna of xx and xy chromosomes. And normally we will have caste system which forces marriages of people within their caste system as their is almost same Gene adding over a thousands of years the retention chances of same type of genes increases exponentially. So, a minor chances of changes in evolution is left when their is chance outercast marriages or drastic changes in climate over hundred of years. Also, their is a way to calculate time of Indian civilisation. Like Lord Krishna time using astronomical positioning said in the Bhagwat Geeta and Mahabharata will tell you time period just before end of dwapar yuga and start of kalyug. If the timing match with Vedas +/- few hundred up and down because of lack of Vedas updates because of foreign invasion. I do hope you can count time span in terms of Vedas as truth. Try your self out. Rohit14Joshi (talk) 01:52, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Mass additions of citations by a user
User पाटलिपुत्र has added mass citations, copied from his earlier ones at another page. I'm sorry, but this is a high-level article. If a single statement needs six citations in it, then it is not appropriate for this article. I had added a source suggested by. I may have erred in mentioning 25,000 BCE, either misreading 2500 BCE (though this is less likely) or roughly estimating some year for the "earlier" qualification in the text, but that is no rationale for spamming this article with references. The nomination for Bhimbetka at UNESCO is written by the Indian Government (i.e. by the ASI on behalf of the Indian government), it is not a reliable source. Anyway, in the future, please point out errors here. Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  13:57, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Since (see below) this dating is frequently messed with, more refs than usual may be appropriate, though 6 is too many, especially in a taxi-rank in text. Johnbod (talk) 14:45, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Dates of Bhimbetka paintings
The claim that the Bhimbetka paintings go back to 25,000 years ago does not seem to be supported by the sources I've found, far from it. All the sources I have found suggest a date of around 8,000 BC for the earliest paintings, corresponding to the Indian Mesolithic, and apparently corresponding to actual Carbon 14 dating at the caves, which is not bad. All suggestions of earlier dates remain very vague and not supported by actual facts:
 * Achaeology Professor Yashodhar Mathpal, specialist of the Bhimbetka caves, in . He writes "Fortunately too we now have a number of radiocarbon dates from the Mesolithic deposits of Bhimbetka as also from other sites in Central India. These dates range from 8000 BP to 3000 BP. The oldest paintings therefore must belong to this range."
 * Achaeology Professor Steven Mithen in writes: ''"Unfortunately no attempt has been made to date the Bhimbetka paintings by taking carbon from the pigment itself, as has been done successfully in ice-age Europe. But circumstantial evidence suggests that many were made in the Early Holocene, at least by 8,000 BC".
 * Dates range from 8000 BC to 700 AD according to ethnologist and geographer Shiv Kumar Tiwari, Director of the Department of tribal studies, Rani Durgavati University in
 * "It was concluded that some of the art is prehistoric, dating to about 10,000 years BP. Man has inhabited some of the shelters for well over 100,000 years and some of the paintings could be much older. Further research is required" in

In light of the above, I am proposing the following wording for the caption attached to the Bhimbetka painting image:

''"Mesolithic rock art at the Bhimbetka rock shelters, Madhya Pradesh, showing a wild animal, perhaps a mythical one, attacking human hunters. The rock art has not been directly dated, but Carbon Dating of the deposits and circumstantial evidence suggest early dates circa 8000 BCE. Some might be earlier, perhaps even dating to the Upper Paleolithic." ''

I'm open if better sources are available. I am also asking some contributors to refrain from using abusive language and personal attacks in their interractions with others. I am also pinging, who has helped me clarify this chronology issue in the past.पाटलिपुत्र Pat   (talk) 14:19, 17 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Support this, and thanks - better add a hidden note not to change it without discussion. You've no doubt seen the main article has "Some of the Bhimbetka rock shelters feature prehistoric cave paintings and the earliest are about 10,000 years old (c. 8,000 BCE), corresponding to the Indian Mesolithic.[9][10][11][12][13]", with some of these sources. Indian art has "the earliest paintings are some 10,000 years old.[4][5][6][7][8]" - we should harmonize. Johnbod (talk) 14:38, 17 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Carbon dating of what deposits? The rock art as the Oxford Handbook (2018) says, has not been directly dated. How does it help to cite a 1984 publication of Mahipal? Mahipal is already summed up in the article of Dubey-Pathak (2014). In other words, if it is not carbon dating of the rock art, but of something ancillary, then it is circumstantial evidence.  And what about the Indian government's nomination statement for Bhimbetka at UNESCO WHS you added as a reliable source? Look I have no dog in this fight.  I'm trying to be neutral.  Without, Dubey-Pathak, and my misreading of 2500 as 25,000 in it, the best citation is what is in place in the article now.  Please don't misuse the word "abusive," when you continue to spam high-level articles with text or sources copied from lower-level articles.    Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  14:45, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * In other words this is adequate: Mesolithic rock art at the Bhimbetka rock shelters, Madhya Pradesh, showing a wild animal, perhaps a mythical one, attacking human hunters. Although the rock art has not been directly dated, it has been argued on circumstantial evidence that many paintings were completed by 8000 BCE, and some earlier, perhaps even much earlier.  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  14:51, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * We can't say upper Paleolithic, because the sources don't. Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  14:56, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Indeed there is no mention of Paleolithic in Dubey-Pathak. She supports "8000 BCE or earlier". That is good enough as far as I am concerned. In other words, drop all the other sources. They don't add much. The Algora Publishing book looks quite dubious to me. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:03, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * It looks ok to me, though written for a wider audience. I'd support "8000 BCE or slightly earlier", or we may end up with six-figure BCE dates again. (those who haven't seen Talk:Bhimbetka_rock_shelters might want to check that out). Johnbod (talk) 15:06, 17 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Perhaps also rework the lines in the lead para which suggest a 30,000 BCE date? However, the earliest known human remains in South Asia date to 30,000 years ago. Contemporaneous human rock art sites have been found in many parts of the Indian subcontinent, including at the Bhimbetka rock shelters in Madhya Pradesh.[2] --regentspark (comment) 16:45, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

And perhaps also rework the India page which says "The earliest known modern human remains in South Asia date to about 30,000 years ago.[66] Nearly contemporaneous human rock art sites have been found in many parts of the Indian subcontinent, including at the Bhimbetka rock shelters in Madhya Pradesh." We're far from "nearly contemporaneous". पाटलिपुत्र Pat   (talk) 17:04, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I've taken out Bhimbetka from the lead. It will automatically disappear from the ancient history section of India once I integrate the cites from the lead into the history section, and I only have four days, per the impending (21 September) GOCI copy edit for TFA on 2 October.  Not sure why Bhimbetka ever made it into the lead. If my memory serves me correct, it was somehow the India-POV answer to Pakistan and Sri Lanka which had older sites per 2007 knowledge.  That may have changed.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  21:13, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * ,, , and I've taken out the Bhimbetka mention from the ancient history section of India as well.  The strange thing is that we don't really need all the sources above.  Upinder Singh   who had been cited in the lead of this page, has a four page discussion (pages 89 to 93) on Bhimbeka, including its mostly mesolithic provenance. I just read her pages.  They are pretty good.  So, I don't know why she became fodder for the 30K BP date.  And I don't know why she was not in the used in paleolithic section here.  (I hadn't really paid attention to this page until a few months ago.)  What happened? Drafting by a committee of changing POVs, with blinders on, is probably what happened.  Anyway I'm glad, it got sorted out.  I'll add her (obviously) to the citations above.  So, the Paleolithic section caption will now read:  "Mesolithic rock art at the Bhimbetka rock shelters, Madhya Pradesh, showing a wild animal, perhaps a mythical one, attacking human hunters. Although the rock art has not been directly dated, it has been argued on circumstantial grounds that many paintings were completed by 8000 BCE,  and some slightly earlier."
 * BTW, the fronting of India-related-text when the inconvenient truth of Pakistan's earlier provenance stares in the face, continues apace: witness the Neolithic section here with its peristent insertion of Bhirrana and Lahurdewa before Mehrgarh. Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  22:05, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Sounds good, thanks for all the work here. Johnbod (talk) 23:30, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Echo that. Thanks for your efforts Fowler.--regentspark (comment) 00:16, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Apologies for missing this. That looks ok. The Oxford Handbook's mention of cupules seems all to dubious to add. Doug Weller  talk 15:46, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

review rollback
Recently there was a major rollback on this article, done without prior discussion on this talk page, which removed a lot of content, mist of which seemed to be appropriately referenced. Can some other editors who are knowledgeable on this topic please review the changes to see whether the content removed actually should have been removed. Irtapil (talk) 06:11, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

There was another removal or a smaller, but still sizeable contribution here and a few other big rollbacks and reductions that look possibly destructive. Irtapil (talk) 06:36, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

At a glance the stuff removed in both of these looks relevant and well referenced, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with this topic to know whether the content removed might have been biased or irrelevant, so tagging a few recent contributors to review it: Can you look at some of the other past edits that have substantially reduced the size of the article too, please. Irtapil (talk) 06:36, 5 May 2020 (UTC)


 * what's wrong with my reverts 1 2 3? --Serols (talk) 07:15, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The major rollback was five or six weeks ago; per WP:EDITCONSENSUS, and the fine reputation and major work achieved by f&f on this article (and many others) I think it’s fine. Thanks for raising the issue in good faith, but you can rest easy. Mathglot (talk) 07:51, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Responding to ping- my contributions to the article have been solely as a Pending Changes reviewer. I did not contribute to the article other than keeping uncited material and vandalism out of it.  Jip Orlando (talk) 15:19, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Improve the quality of this article
Requesting all editors who have read my message to help in making this article an A-class or a featured one. Please try to do your part and make it more user-friendly. I feel that this article has enough material, although some more focus on other parts of India and minorities would be much appreciated, and now the trimming and beautification of this article should begin. The article looks scattered and the grammar and tone could be much better. FlyingNinja1 (talk) 06:15, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler You might remember that you reverted my edit on the basis of it being too large and blue-linking too much. Thus I have decided to shorten the editing and limit it to one para per edit only. Blue-linking was a new term to me and I have interpreted it to mean the hyperlinks; I have vastly decreased the hyperlinks though I think more of them would be better. If you still have any problem with my edits, please discuss on the page's talk page. Also, I would like to mention that despite being a "high-level" article, the first sentence of the page was grammatically incorrect. Looking forward to more collaboration.

FlyingNinja1 (talk) 06:40, 9 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Regarding blue links, Fowler may be referring to WP:OVERLINK. CMD (talk) 07:36, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, I checked it out and removed unnecessary links from my side FlyingNinja1 (talk) 10:47, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * FlyingNinja: I have reverted your edits. They are not only incorrect but also POV.  It is "the Punjab".  Punjab = land of five rivers; the definite article is needed.  You have added "only" and "also" here and there making the sentences POV.  There is nothing wrong with "date to 30,000 years ago."  Expressions like that or "date to 30,000 BP" (BP=before present) are used all the time.  It is not the same thing as dating to 30,000 BCE, which is 32,000 BP.  When edits are littered with so many errors, we have no option but to revert all.  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  11:50, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler First of all, no need to get so heated. At this rate, we will get embroiled in an edit war. Would it be too hard for you to have a discussion before reverting? I will try my best to reply to all of your points one by one. It can not be the Punjab just as we don't call New York, the New York or Texas, the Texas. Punjab is a noun and do I need to tell basic article usage. It is clear that this page has to be written in Indian English. Please see any Indian newspaper, book, or website and they do not use "the" in front of Punjab. I think that this point has been concluded. Also, even in the wiki page of Punjab, there is no article before Punjab. I am new on Wikipedia and thus, I do not know the meaning of many common Wikipedia slangs and jargon. If you could explain POV, it would be appreciated. I can also see that you have judged all of the edits on the basis of one only. My thought process on removing "Before the present" with BCE was that BCE was commonly used and in timelines as huge as millions and hundred thousand, differences of thousands are just right as any other. "300000 years ago" is not predicted with accuracy and is an approximation with differences of 10000s of years. The event could be on 333333 or 376748, it is just an approximation. There were many discrepancies in the use of BCE or BP, somewhere BCE was being used and BP was used. I merely wanted to clear the confusion and use only one timeline system on the page. Just like if you use the BC system in one place and BCE system in others, it becomes a lot confusing and disordered. Please think before pointing mistakes that the other person must have a reason for making a clearly non-destructive edit. I would also like to know who "we" is referring to because I never saw any discussion regarding your revert. For me, it was a one-man decision. You have commented on my edits as being grammatically and historically incorrect and I would like to see where. I think you would agree that this article is not perfect. Literally, the first line of this page is incorrect. It requires edits, which you are not willing to give to anyone who is not in your acquaintance. I was also not aware that one edit of an editor could be taken as a judge for reverting others. If you found one of the edits displeasing then, there was no need to revert the others. Please tell me if you are willing to let me edit on this page or not. If you are not, then there is no need for us to fight. Looking forward to more collaboration.

FlyingNinja1 (talk) 14:00, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Just a couple of points. Firstly, note the difference between Punjab the wider region, which is what this article is concerned with, and Punjab, India and Punjab, Pakistan, which often or usually don't take "the". Of course modern Indian references are mostly to Punjab, India.  Secondly, it is normal and correct not to use BCE for very early dates, and not to use BP or "years ago" for ones that are not very early. The cross-over varies, but is usually somewhere in the range of say 12,000-5000 BCE (14,000-7000 BP).  It depends on the field etc (neither of our articles seem to deal with this, which is a pity). BP/ya dates are never going to be precise.  You have very few edits, and I see many elsewhere have needed correction by other editors. I'd stay away from top-level articles for a while as you gain experience, and if yoiu change multiple things, don't expect point by point critiques.  Johnbod (talk) 15:15, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 7 June 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved  Mdaniels5757 (talk) 21:56, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

History of India → History of India prior to 1947 – The title makes it clear that the time period takes place is before 1947 and not after India gained independence. I would also be fine with History of India before 1947. Interstellarity (talk) 00:49, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Weak support the history of Indian subcontinent did not stop in 1947, also the name "India" confuses with the modern borders of India. I think it would be better to rename to History of the Indian subcontinent and rewrite the article to continue up to the present. buidhe 09:07, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose There have been numerous debates and discussion about this on this page. "History of South Asia" is what I had once preferred.  But "History of India" is what the rough precedent is in the literature now. (See India, history section.) We have roughly followed 's opinion of long ago.  The history in this page concentrates more on the geographical region that constitutes present-day India today .  In other words, in the Indus Valley Civilization (or Harappan civilization) section, it focuses on sites that are in present-day India, not on Mohenjo-daro or Harappa which are in Pakistan.  So the history here is definitely not the history of the Indian subcontinent or South Asia.  There are separate History of Pakistan and History of Bangladesh pages. Also, there is a separate History of the Republic of India which concentrated on India after 1947 (or 1950 when India became a republic).  The hatnote at the top of the article says all this.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  12:02, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose Wishy washy alternative title. Plus, as has been adequately demonstrated in previous RMs, the common term used in academia and elsewhere for the history of the region is "History of India". --regentspark (comment) 13:46, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose, sort of per F&F. The hatnote is clear enough. But that rightly says "This article is about the pre-1947 history of the Indian subcontinent", so I disagree with F&F on the scope - his "the history here is definitely not the history of the Indian subcontinent or South Asia" - wrong, it is just that, and should be. How does the very brief section on the IVC "focus[es] on sites that are in present-day India, not on Mohenjo-daro or Harappa which are in Pakistan"?  There are also articles like History of Tamil Nadu  (in fact also pre- & post-1947 ones).  Johnbod (talk) 13:49, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi. What is in the article really has no bearing on what should be in the article. This article has long been vandalized by promoters of Hindu nationalist history.  (There is a complete disconnect, therefore,  between the history in the India page and this page, which the India page should aspire to summarize.)  Most people I know never edited this page, which by neglect and wariness had become a kind of pariah page. I might have made my first edit only last year after Vanamonde93's concerns which he expressed somewhere.  I drastically reduced this article, made the presentation more evenhanded, but a topic-banned editor reappeared as an IP and stuffed the material (text+pictures) back in.  I had to remove his edits for a second time, but it is still overloaded with many outsized Hindu sub-histories. As for South Asia, subcontinent, etc. I'll answer that below.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  19:42, 7 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose, and agree with Johnbod that the "History of India" should be about Historical India, i.e. the subcontinent as surrounded by the natural barriers formed by mountain chains: it is the most relevant geographical unit from a historical standpoint, and the recent and artificial Pakistan-India division should have nothing to do with it. पाटलिपुत्र  Pat   (talk) 14:39, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * There were no real histories of India before the British. The traditional history of India therefore has never been that of the geophysical subcontinent, which includes Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. ( There's not much of a barrier between India and Nepal, or even Bhutan; even Sri Lanka is accessible. The Tamils certainly made it there. )  It has always been the history of the geographical region that constituted the British Indian empire in its largest geographical extent, i.e. by ca. 1880, minus Burma which the British never really considered a part of India.   For this reason, these histories stay clear of Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka, even though there is a much stronger historical (textual, artifactual, cultural) connection with these countries than is with Balochistan, which is included.  As for the post-1947 history, I don't know why that is not included. (I was merely repeating the hatnote.)  I suspect it might look incongruous if a grand history were to suddenly bottleneck in 1947 to a modest one of the Republic of India with its everyday problems. The India page, however, does have the post-1947 history.     Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  19:45, 7 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose. On the exact proposed name, strict date cutoffs are not the most useful divisors for broad historical topics, which tend not to restrict themselves to such sharp divides. On the broader question of the scope of the page, I understand the value of focusing on what was until 1947 quite an inter-related area, but also feel that even if short post-1947 summaries were included, WP:SUMMARYSTYLE and related considerations should relegate those 70ish years to a very minor part of a multiple millennia topic. CMD (talk) 07:18, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. For hundreds of years the whole subcontinent was just called India. No need to complicate things just because for only 73 years it's been divided into two (later three) countries. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:45, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Hi all. I thought about this for a little while and I think instead of moving this page, in the section, History_of_India, we could add a longer summary of the article History of the Republic of India and removing the hatnote so that the article represents all of Indian history not just before 1947. This is similar to this section in the History of China article where there is a longer summary on the article History of the People's Republic of China. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on this idea. Interstellarity (talk) 22:38, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * You make a good point about that section. I've added hatnotes for the histories of Pakistan and Bangladesh because they should be there as well. If we do add longer summaries, I'd suggest leaving the title as is and adding short summary sections for the Republic of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Not sure it it is necessary though, might be overkill. --regentspark (comment) 00:00, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't really disagree with Interstellarity or RegentsPark. But this is a pariah page.  ( And I mean it sardonically.  The real pariahs, the untouchables of unsanitary occupations—walled out literally and metaphorically from caste Hindu India—you will be hard-pressed to find here. )   I don't want to touch this page because it remains chock full of Hindu nationalist delusions, from proto-history to the modern period. Consider the 20th century.  Do you find any mention of Gandhi?  If you do, he is in a first clause  followed by "however." Contrast that with the amount of space devoted to Bhagat Singh, and all the 20-something "revolutionaries;" compare that in turn with the NPOV lead of Bhagat Singh.  And this is after my drastic trimming.  The 800-pound gorilla here is not the meta-issues—what this history should be called, what its scope should be when it should start or end—but the POV that has existed for 15 years. We have a patient dying of TB in a coughing hall.  Why are we bothering with the chipped paint on the window sill?     Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  00:18, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I am thinking about copying and pasting the lead section of History of the Republic of India into History_of_India and building off of it. That section talks very little about what India was like after 1947. What are thoughts on this? Interstellarity (talk) 00:41, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not just India though. This article is about a region that is now split into three countries so we'll have to add something about all three countries. --regentspark (comment) 00:46, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Why is the article title titled History of India when it has to do with the other two countries as well? Interstellarity (talk) 00:55, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Because the entire region was known as India prior to 1947. The pre-1947 history can't be separate for the three countries because the regions overlap. So, on wiki, we've kept one article for the pre-1947 history that encompasses the entire region (this is in line with what academic does) and three separate articles for the post 1947 period (though, curiously, I notice that the History of Republic of India begins in 1950). --regentspark (comment) 01:00, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you. That's clear to me. Interstellarity (talk) 01:01, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * This is what I was alluding to when I mentioned . He was of the opinion, with which I am in agreement, that the History of India should be that aspect of the History of South Asia which significantly overlaps with the region of present-day India, leaving room for the History of Pakistan and History of Bangladesh pages to have their own pre-1947 histories. I said this in 2007 (you'll have to dig up that discussion) and I'm saying it now, if you want to make the scope of this page the history of South Asia, then it should be called the History of South Asia.  Do away with the history of India before 1947.  The history of South Asia would not end in 1947, or 1971; it would be the timeless history of a geographical region, no hat notes needed, QED.  But you can't call it the history of India, give it the geographical scope of the British Indian Empire, ca 1880, take full advantage of the accident of history by which one successor state of that empire continued to be called India and the others did not, and grant to this India the full advantages of a history that properly also belongs to the others, going back into a past (i.e. IVC, Mehrgarh) before the word "India" had any linguistic antecedents, whether Greek, Persian, or Indo-Aryan .   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  01:18, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

My previous post might not sound like what I was saying earlier, but the old "India," while still the majority usage, is being increasingly replaced by "South Asia." Certainly, all the academic departments have changed names. Many history books have too, especially the proto-histories: See for example Indus_Valley_Civilisation. That is the trend. It would behoove WP to be ahead of the curve on this, in my humble opinion. The nationalistic nonsense would be dealt a death blow. Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  01:26, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I think part of the problem is that the Pakistani and Bangladeshi editors have entirely abandoned this page if they haven't also abandoned Wikipedia, so relentless is the onslaught of the right-wing Indian editors. I am not particularly hopeful that this will stop.  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  01:36, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * If I proposed to move this page to History of South Asia, would you support or oppose the move? Interstellarity (talk) 11:50, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I would. But I won't have any time to help with the content rehashing right now.  Here are a few books that might help.
 * Also please don't request a move on the fly. Have an RfC first to determine if this is what editors want. .  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  15:27, 8 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm not so sure I would. While I agree that it makes sense, and is perhaps preferable, I don't think that's the dominant term used for the history of the region and we should follow rather than lead usage. A quick, admittedly light, google search shows that books still use the term India for histories of the region. If there is convincing evidence that India is being substituted by South Asia, that would be a different matter. --regentspark (comment) 15:47, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't either, "South Asia" is a geographical and pc term rather than a historical one. As far as history is concerned, I think "India" is preferable, clearer and much more understandable to the general reader. Also, depending on the definition, South Asia can include Afghanistan, Myanmar, Tibet, and even Iran (per UNSD)... that's certainly not an issue with the term "India". पाटलिपुत्र  Pat   (talk) 16:16, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The bottom line for me is that in the 21st century the scholarly publishers are publishing books on the history of South Asia (74) over history of India (36) by a two to one margin. It also stands to reason, that if the departments at Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Chicago, Princeton, Penn, Michigan, Berkely, UCLA, Cambridge, Oxford, Warwick, SOAS, ... have all changed their names to South Asian studies, etc.  the scholarly presses associated with these universities will not be publishing histories of "India" with the meaning of histories of "South Asia." The reasoning that was employed to change their names from the Department of Indian studies (or Indology) to South Asian studies, will be at work in judging book titles. On Wikipedia we essentially have two options: either keep "history of India" with Nichalp's original scope of focusing on the region that roughly intersects present-day India (i.e. let the Pakistanis have first dibs on Mehrgarh, Taxila, Takt-e-Bahi, IVC, Alexander's India campaign...) and share Nawabs of Bengal, Bengal famine of 1943 with the Bangladeshis, or change the name to History of South Asia.  We have tried "History of India." After 15 years it is still spouting nonsense about caste not really existing before the Muslim invasion, about the Mauryas having highways, canals, and governing Balochistan (but making sure that no trace of the presence there is left for posterity.)  My personal attitude is: I ignore this page.  Let the nationalists have their way here.  But if they come to the India page with those conceits, I will fight them tooth and nail.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  23:01, 8 June 2020 (UTC)




 * I don't think I'm quite ready to support that, like RegentsPark, but I do think that History of South Asia should redirect here, not to Outline of South Asian history as at present.  Unless anyone objects, I will change that in a few days. We should also have a bit more on the scope in the lead. Johnbod (talk) 12:48, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Golden Age of India
I'm not seeing where the sentence in the lead about the Golden Age of India is supported by the sources; to the best of my knowledge, many different periods in Indian history, including the period of the Gupta empire's ascendence, are described as a Golden Age, but the term is not usually used for a 1500-year period. do you think this is an accurate representation of the sources? I can't remember when we last checked the lead of this article. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:10, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * No indeed, nor does the poorly-referenced Golden Age of India say that. Johnbod (talk) 17:01, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hello For the record (of WP and my brain), I have edited only the first paragraph in the lead and the first half of the second—all in all, beginning, "According to consensus in modern genetics," ... and ending, "opposed the growing influence of Brahmanism and the primacy of rituals, presided by Brahmin priests, ...."   As you know, modern historians don't write about golden ages, unless as a part of a review of older historiography.  I'll look in the sources later in the day or tomorrow if you don't mind, but the short answer is: no, the 1500 years are not called a golden age.  Agree with you and Johnbod.  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  18:14, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks; I didn't mean to imply that you wrote it, only to ask for your input. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:30, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I realize that. I had simply forgotten who had written what.  Anyway, I will look into when the notion of a pre-Islamic Hindu golden age appeared, even the more restricted Guptas'.  Whether or not it was there in the pre-1885 (the rough date for the rise of Indian nationalism) British histories, I can't say, but it was very likely given great impetus after 1885, especially after the 1920s. That is my conjecture.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  20:51, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, and the 1500 yr period is much too long. The traditional view of Euro scholars took an increasing dim view of cultural developments (or rather the lack of them, in the north mainly) after about say 750 or a bit later - a view still widely held today, including by Indian historians. That certainly works for art history. Johnbod (talk) 13:20, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to rearrange titles and redirects in the area of "British India"
A long move discussion (and post-discussion) on a proposal to move Presidencies and provinces of British India to British India (which redirects there) has now been reclosed as "no consensus". Further to this, I have started a discussion at Talk:Presidencies_and_provinces_of_British_India as there is clearly unhappiness with some of the titles and redirects in this area: British India, British Raj,  British rule in India, British Indian Empire and maybe more. I've floated some thoughts and proposals as a basis for preliminary discussion. All comments welcome. Johnbod (talk) 18:20, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 February 2021
Humans did not originate in Africa, they co-originated in all countries together, and the genetics supporting the Africa theory is wrong, modern science is very wrong. Also I am personally hurt and offended by the first line in the Wikipedia. So can u please remove it? 67.175.195.151 (talk) 16:58, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Not done, please cite reliable sources for changes you would like to suggest. CMD (talk) 17:29, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

John Merci, Kim Smith; James Leuck
Does anyone have access to this source cited in the article: "John Merci, Kim Smith; James Leuck (1922). "Muslim conquest and the Rajputs". The Medieval History of India pg 67–115"? Google just throws up a journal article (which seems to have copied the source from a Wikipedia article) and other Wikipedia articles including Rajput resistance to Muslim conquests and Rawe (Rajput clan) (which cites this source to support the obviously false claim that a bunch of eminent historical kings belonged to a particular caste). utcursch &#124; talk 19:40, 4 March 2021 (UTC)


 * WikiBlame suggests that the source was inserted by an anon here. utcursch &#124; talk 20:06, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 September 2021
In the Ochre Coloured Pottery Culture section, Change "People had domisticated Cattle, Goat, sheep, horse, Pig and dog etc." to "People had domesticated cattle, goats, sheep, horses, pigs, and dogs." 12aku (talk) 13:04, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ I tidied a bit more of the section than you requested as well. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 13:23, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Unlock please
Yet another locked page? Whom does the status quo benefit? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.85.205.150 (talk) 02:27, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Request for removal of a certain part in the article which hurts religious feelings
I am requesting for removal of a certain part in this article in Iron Age (1500 BCE to 500 BCE) > Sanskrit texts

I think this part hurts religious feelings of Hindus so I am requesting removal of this part. Thank you. Piedpiper186 (talk) 19:25, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Some Hindus probably, but it is supported by the vast majority of RS, so will remain. Johnbod (talk) 01:49, 24 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is not censored. Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive‍—‌even exceedingly so. Attempting to ensure that articles and images will be acceptable to all readers, or will adhere to general social or religious norms, is incompatible with the purposes of an encyclopedia. Chariotrider555 (talk) 01:52, 24 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Removing correct and well-sourced info hurts my secular and scientific feelings, and goes against the basics of Wikipedia. This is an encyclopedia, not a faith-manual. See also Ruchika Sharma (2017), The Mahabharata: How an oral narrative of the bards became a text of the Brahmins. Joshua Jonathan  - Let's talk!  04:47, 24 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Is one well cited paragraph much more important than someone's religious feelings? Are Wikipedia's rules more important than feelings of Hindus? Secularism? I am sure if something was written against Islam and Christianity in this same article (no matter how much it was cited) you would have been forced to remove it. Science? Come to my talk page and I'll tell you about historical and scientific evidence of Hindu texts. Piedpiper186 (talk) 09:17, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, of course it is. Do you understand what an encyclopaedia is? It's a repository of information, not a apologetic for any faith. Check out the pictures on Muhammad's page if you really want to see something that hurts certain religious people's feelings... Dāsānudāsa (talk) 09:16, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Well-cited info is the essence of Wikipedia. Regarding Islam, see, for exame, Talk:Islam/Archive 31. PS: which feeling, exactly, is hurt by these facts? Joshua Jonathan  - Let's talk!  11:00, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Joshua Jonathan: Really? You don't understand? It is written in the article that "Hindu texts Ramayana and Mahabharata have no historical basis" doesn't this hurts religious feelings of Hindus AND this information is cited in  Wikipedia that DOESN'T mean these 'facts' are proven IRL. Piedpiper186 (talk) 16:01, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
 * No, I don't understand which feelings are hurt, in which way, by such a statement. What I do understand is that the aim of an encyclopedia is to provide scientific knowledge and theories, not hindered by religious fundamentalism and attitudes. An aim which I fully support. If the "religious feelings" of whoever who are the measure stick to determine what to write and what not, we would be stuck in primitive societies, with never-ending religious wars. Wikipedia provides overviews of what WP:RS say about topics. If you don't like that, bad luck for you. Joshua Jonathan  - Let's talk!  19:09, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Joshua Jonathan: You are a foreigner and you don't know these 'theories' created by our so called Indian 'historians' are more like a propaganda. There is no proof that these 'theories' are proven you think it's a fact because it's cited in Wikipedia but that DOESN'T MEAN it's a proven fact. Piedpiper186 (talk) 08:24, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request
After the excavation of Rakhagarhi site Indus-vally civilization looses the crown of being first civilization in Indian subcontinent and I request to editor to make necessary changes. Rakhigarhi is dated back to 6500 BCE proving it's antiquity. Rakhigarhi site is way older than Ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia. Sources are mentioned in this article 👇🏻

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakhigarhi Vis14620 (talk) 08:56, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The article you linked mentions that site as being part of the Indus Valley Civilisation. Dāsānudāsa (talk) 12:33, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, and Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, as well as other parts of the world have many Neolithic sites just as old and large. The IVC is taken, from the continuity of pottery etc, to begin c. 3,500 BCE but only becomes a "civilization" with large urban centres around 2500 BCE; before that it was just another Neolithic village culture, like those in most of the rest of the Middle East, China and Europe (etc etc). This is the normal pattern with early civilizations, and often not understood, especially by excitable nationalists. Also, looking at the "Dating" section, claims that "Rakhigarhi is dated back to 6500 BCE" seem to confuse BCE with BP dates - I can't see the source so can't tell if it's that Indian online paper, or the WP editor writing it up. It probably should say Rakhigarhi is dated back to 6500 BP (ie c. 4500 BCE). Johnbod (talk) 13:47, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No, 6500 BCE. But not a civilization, indeed. Hunter-gatherers sheltering in shallow pits. Joshua Jonathan  - Let's talk!  14:53, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks. Probably a bit more comfortable than that, though. Mehrgarh, not far away, had farming and 4-room mud-brick houses by then. Johnbod (talk) 15:02, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Wright (2009) says, "a fifth city, Rakhigarhi on the Ghagger-Hakra, will be discussed briefly in view of the limited published material." The general philosophy of research by Indians on Indian IVC sites is: Keep the foreign archeologists out (Possehl was the only one admitted and he downsized the claims in his book), write only in-house reports, or lately short announcements in paid journals, which are never followed up by the usually detailed article elsewhere. Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  15:15, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Good thing Mehrgarh is 500 miles away; otherwise, it too would have been claimed by the "excitable nationalists" in the neolithic radiating out of Haryana (and not the one spreading eastward from Iraq, by way of Iran) Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  15:28, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Done
According to to India subcontinent between 73050 thousand year ago however the earliest known human remains in South Asia date 2:30 thousand years ago settled life which involves the transitive from boring to farming and crop begin in South Asia around 7000 BC hat the side of Meghalaya Preston b bid and barley my name is inclusive so I am studying in class first 2409:4063:4E02:18A5:0:0:8C49:220A (talk) 14:15, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

History of South Asia redirects
Several redirects (including History of the Indian subcontinent) are being discussed at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 January 19. – Uanfala (talk) 01:10, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Reference cleanup improvement
I see a few citations in WP:CS2 style while the majority are in WP:CS1. I'd be converting them. Some s are duplicated. Would it be possible to convert the books [and journals?] to use ? Also see WP:CITEVAR, as it might need a consensus. Some works in the "Sources" section are not used for references. How about moving them to Further reading section? The userscript at User:Trappist_the_monk/HarvErrors would be useful to detect them easily. — DaxServer (talk · contribs) 15:20, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

history of India pre-historic times to c. 200 CE
history of India pre-historic times to c. 200 CE 2409:4073:4E09:A8D8:0:0:420A:8305 (talk) 05:09, 22 January 2022 (UTC)


 * ...yes, that is covered in the article. Do you have a question or suggestion for improvement?  Thanks, Wham2001 (talk) 08:45, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 09:08, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
 * South Asia (orthographic projection) without national boundaries.svg

The authenticity of the given sources and false information without citation.
I find a lot of popular narrative being used as facts in this article. If there's no varifiable evidence of Aryan Invasion theory (Theory is just as fictional as Santa Claus) editor must remove that part from this article. No, some book from a anybody can't be used as proof for a Theory which is built to suit Christian Bible Genesis mythology timeline.

I want to discuss with whoever wrote that Indo Aryan Invasion part in this article.

Please try and prove the authenticity of Arayan Invasion theory. Theory is called theory for a reason and if there's any doubt, no matter how minor; can't be used as facts. Vis14620 (talk) 08:33, 1 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Who wrote anything about the “Arayan” “Invasion” here? There is nothing of sorts in this article. Migration is a proven fact. ChandlerMinh (talk) 20:09, 8 November 2021 (UTC)


 * No it's not a proven fact. Please change it. If it was a 'Fact', it wouldn't be called 'theory'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Varenxvkx (talk • contribs) 18:17, 15 February 2022 (UTC)


 * The article actualy contains to little on the Indo-Aryan migrations. was it removed somehow? Joshua Jonathan  - Let's talk!  12:07, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 March 2022
The page contains an image of a Gold coin. The caption for this states that William IV reigned from 21 August 1765 to 20 June 1837. These are the dates of his birth and death. He became king on 26 June 1830. Please change the text '21 August 1765' to '26 June 1830' Source: Wikipedia entry on ‘William IV’. 2A02:1811:43B:C700:5D66:2CCC:C5E3:47DA (talk) 18:37, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ Thank you!--RegentsPark (comment) 18:57, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 May 2022
"Thomas the Apostle sailed to India around the 1st century CE. He landed in Muziris in Kerala, India and established Yezh (Seven) ara (half) palligal (churches) or Seven and a Half Churches."

This statement has no historical basis. No surprise that it lacks any citations. There is no evidence anyone named Thomas the Apostle, assuming he ever existed in the first place, visited India. It should be removed. Chriscparkhp (talk) 02:42, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:50, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Saraswati
Saraswati river is mentioned several times in Vedas. It dried up thousands of years before so called Aryan Invasion Theory. This theory is fake and forced down the throats of Indians to justify some ulterior motives. Please arrange to delete entire aryan invasion theory. Also word Arya denotes a person who has perfected himself and not any race. Why there is no mention of events which are mentioned in Mahabharat and Ramayan with many evidences of dated events. Were they not part of Indian history? Please stop abuse of history of a billion people living in India. 182.55.108.238 (talk) 02:52, 5 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia gives an overview of scholarly info based on WP:RS, and does not present beliefs as facts. Joshua Jonathan  - Let's talk!  03:51, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Correction of timeline
Timelines are full of wrong information_ kindly correct without biasness 2409:4060:309:D25D:D11D:12EF:7045:1B (talk) 09:50, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Maratha empire completely missing!!??
Why does this have no reference whatsoever to Maratha empire!!?? Incomplete and possibly biased. 75.44.150.185 (talk) 02:25, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Not sure what page you're looking at, as there is coverage of the Maratha empire. CMD (talk) 05:43, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Typos
“Who would go on to for the Shunga Empire” should be “Who would go on to form the Shunga Empire” 84.48.50.200 (talk) 06:51, 3 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Done, thanks! CMD (talk) 07:13, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

About these so called Central Asian Aryan Migration!
Aryan Invasion never happened in Indian subcontinent, recent geological, linguistic and gentetic studies has proven India as the source of the R1a1* family that conquered the world. These findings falsify Friese's claims that R1a1* originated in the Central Asian steppe. Yes, R1a1* did exist in the Central Asian steppe, but it reached there from India. 2409:4063:4D9A:1A8F:5982:AE2F:9A1D:1278 (talk) 22:04, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Indus Valley Civilisations
In this valley civilisation began about what is 4700 years ago, it is also called as Harappan civilisation because Harappa was the first city to be excavated by archaeologist. 122.170.202.2 (talk) 14:24, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Harappa
Harappa was discovered in 1919. 122.170.202.2 (talk) 14:25, 24 August 2022 (UTC)