Talk:Indians in Germany

Untitled
various people from list

Atul Chitnis was removed because he is not an "Indian-German". He was born in Germany as an Indian. and then left to live in India at age 10. Thus he is neither of Indian-German descent nor domesticated in Germany. Moreover, the article pertaining to him in Wikipedia  has been recommended for deletion, which raises doubts as to the label "prominent" too. Anuragi 08:17, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't know what triggered this off, but just FYI - my mother is a true, full blooded German, with 100% German parents, who can trace their ancestry back many generations, and my entire family in Germany is 100% German (and partially French and Austrian) as well. While I am not too cut up about being (or not being) labeled Indian-German (I consider myself an Indian), let me assure you that you are COMPLETELY wrong with your assumptions. Achitnis 16:17, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I have undone the revision by Biruitorul, since this deleted the majority of names listed without naming any criteria for this action except "much speculation out", which is quite arbitrary. There may be reasons for deleting names, but then reasons must be stated which can be debated. This can be on a name-by-name basis, or else general criteria may be used, for instance, that only persons listed in a Wikipedia (not necessarily in English) may be mentioned. But the resaons must be plainly stated for all to see, understand and debate; individual predilections and arbitrariness are no valid criteria. Anuragi (talk) 08:23, 14 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd be glad to discuss. If the list is to include only notable German citizens of Indian descent (which is what I understand is its purpose), then:


 * for Bharat Balasubramanian, Mita Banerjee, Anil Batra, Alokeranjan Dasgupta, Gita Dharampal-Frick, Martina Ghosh-Schellhorn, Rohini Kuner, Joybrato Mukherjee, Chris Punnakkattu Daniel, Arup Sen Gupta, Rahul Sengupta, Daniel H. Sharma, and Anand Srivastav we have no evidence of notability and in many cases citizenship as well
 * for Sujata Bhatt, Arunava Chaudhuri, Ashok K. Chauhan, Atul Chitnis, Anita Desai, Robin Dutt, Kaevan Gazdar, Dia Mirza, Kamala Reddy we have no evidence of citizenship
 * Anita Bose-Pfaff, Subrata Kumar Mitra, Navi Rawat, Sibabrata Roy and Ranganathan Yogeshwar, though all but Roy are likely notable, are citizens of, respectively, Austria, France, the US, India and Luxembourg, none of which is Germany


 * You'll also note I removed the bold lettering, per WP:MOS, but that's a minor point. - Biruitorul Talk 14:31, 14 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the speedy reply; much appreciated. You have raised an interesting point, which is pertinent to an ongoing discussion between Kochank and CaliforniaAliBaba on the question of whether this article pertains to Indians (which includes people of Indian descent) in Germany (which, I presume, refers to German speaking countries; or am I wrong?), or to people of Indo-German descent and the group just mentioned. Note that in both cases actual nationality is not an issue (see the section "Requested move" below). Whatever the outcome of this debate may be, your argument based on nationality adds a new dimension, which, however, I very much doubt will be regarded as being pertinent, since so far it has not been an issue. So, unless the issue is resolved finally by some Wiki guideline that applies to all such cases and thus can be authoritatively applied throughout the Wikipedia, any emendations you make on the basis of citizenship are, at this stage, just a reflection of your personal views, which do not justify such large-scale emendation. So please hold your fire and, rather, work towards a general guideline which can be applied to all such cases.


 * Second, the issue of notability. This is a highly subjective criterion. It definitely needs to be debated, and maybe general guidelines can be worked out. But unless that happens, here too any deletion based simply on a certain person, having a noticeable position in some field, being stated to be "not notable" is merely idiosyncratic unless detailed reasons are given. Also, I gather from your contributions that you are heavily involved in Eastern and particularly South-Eastern European articles, but seem to show unfamiliarity with South Asia. This means that -- unless I am mistaken in my assumptions -- that you may be unfamiliar with what South Asian and South Asian diaspora groups might regard as notable criteria. So here again I would request caution. If there is some general accepted criterion, then the matter can be easily settled, but in the absence of such there are bound to be different points of view of what notability in a specific context is. I therefore find your reasons (or rather: lack of them) above unsatisfactory, all the more so as they do not allow a case-by-case analysis. Anuragi (talk) 16:10, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

1. "Germany" is Germany, not Austria, Luxembourg or Switzerland. Should Indian communities in those countries warrant articles, then by all means start Indians in Austria, etc. Alternatively, re-title this article as "Indians in German-speaking Europe".

2. Nationality (ie, citizenship) is the defining criterion for minority ethnic groups. This isn't a reflection of my personal views, either. See for instance British Bangladeshi and Syrian American (both GAs): "A British Bangladeshi is someone of Bangladesh origin who resides in the United Kingdom having emigrated to the UK and attained citizenship through naturalisation or whose parents did so"; "Syrian Americans are citizens of the United States of Syrian ancestry or nationality". Or Afro-Brazilian: "Afro-Brazilian is the term used to racially categorize Brazilian citizens who self-reported to be of black or brown skin colors to the official census". So the term "Indians in Germany" clearly (at least to me) refers to persons of Indian descent who live in Germany and hold German citizenship, and perhaps also to their descendants living elsewhere.

3. WP:BIO is WP:BIO, regardless of whether one focuses on the Balkans, on India, or on Nigeria. Of course, there are differing interpretations of that, and it's for the editing and AfD processes to sort out who is and isn't notable. But for people without Wikipedia articles, the external links to their biographies in any case violate WP:ELNO, point 11 ("Links to ... personal web pages") and should either be removed or turned into red links, if you genuinely consider those individuals notable. - Biruitorul Talk 18:08, 14 September 2009 (UTC)


 * These examples (British-Bangladeshi, Syrian-American etc.) do not stand scrutiny, because they are not appropriate. If it were a case of "Indian-Germans", then I would agree. But the article is "Indians in Germany". The argument between Kochank and CaliforniaAliBaba also refers to this. Anuragi (talk) 19:55, 14 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Nationality is not the defining criteria for these articles. A few of the Anglosphere articles might be called by names like "Fooian Americans" or "Fooian Australians" (perhaps implying that the article should only address topics about citizens), but in practise, the "History" section of every single article starts from the time of migration, not from the time of naturalisation. Compare to how a professionally-written encyclopedia of minority groups like Jupp's The Australian People handles the issue --- the entries therein aren't even titled "Vietnamese Australians" or "Swiss Australians" but just "Vietnamese" and "Swiss". And the content of those entries discusses organisations, religious practises, employment, etc. without regard to whether the people in question are citizens or non-citizens --- which makes perfect sense, as these are factors which don't suddenly change because some group members got travel documents from one government as opposed to another.


 * That said, I still don't think we should be indiscriminately listing every notable Indian who lives in Germany here --- just the ones for whom we can prove being an Indian as opposed to a Zimbabwean or a Finn is actually relevant to their notability, e.g.:
 * People who are notable for creative work which touches on Indian-related themes
 * People whose Indianness has been the topic of non-trivial coverage (e.g. a magazine article which goes into detail about so-and-so's immigration history and experience of living as a foreigner in Germany)
 * People who are notable for being the head of Indian-related organisations in Germany (e.g. migrant's rights groups, Indian professional associations, whatever)
 * I don't think this article is the right place to list every professor who happened to come from India. cab (talk) 03:57, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Geez!
This article is a mess! Somebody get in here and figure out how best to fix it! The Last Melon (talk) 06:42, 19 November 2007 (UTC)


 * While the above was being written, a fix was already under way! Anuragi (talk) 07:10, 19 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Great! The Last Melon (talk) 06:17, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was page not moved. @harej 00:55, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Indians in Germany → Indian-Germans &mdash; Relisted for further input. Jafeluv (talk) 17:27, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I file this request on behalf of User:Kochank, who stated: "This is in accord with the original page, which someone then renamed and moved to "Indians in Germany". The latter excludes many of the persons listed on the page, as the criteria for inclusion are then changed. "Indians in Germany" refers only to persons of Indian origin or citizenship in Germany, whereas "Indian-Germans" (or "German-Indians") refers to these as well as persons of German background in India, or of Indo-German background elsewhere, as the original page intended." For my oppose rationale, see below. cab (talk) 12:03, 8 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose for various reasons.
 * There is no good encyclopedic reason to cover "people of German background in India" in the same article as "people of Indian background in Germany". They are separate topics; cramming them onto the same page is confusing
 * These "double-barrelled" names like "Indian-Germans" are confusing and don't make it clear which is the source country and which is the destination country. They should be avoided wherever possible, especially when they are neologisms. Which leads to the next point ...
 * "Indian-Germans" is not a very widespread way of referring to this population. "Indians in Germany" is thousands of times more common:,.
 * There is a convention in some countries that "Fooian Barian" means "a person of Foo background living in Barland" (e.g. Indian Australian, Indian American); however, other countries follow the opposite convention (British Indians, Malaysian Indians, Burmese Indians). And names for immigrant groups in Germany don't generally follow either convention (see quote box at right).
 * Thanks, cab (talk) 12:09, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Points taken. But I am not concerned so much with the label as with the fact that Indians in Germany effectively excludes persons like Ashok K. Chauhan, Atul Chitnis, Anita Desai, Dia Mirza, Navi Rawat etc., since these do not fulfil the criterion of being in Germany. If you can find another solution for this problem, implement it by all means. But some solution will have to be found, as there is a discrepancy between the list of (prominent) persons listed and the article heading.Kochank (talk) 13:34, 8 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Maybe "Indian community of Germany"? Some other articles use a similar title, like Indian community of London. I think someone can be "of Germany" without being in Germany, though that's debatable too. cab (talk) 00:27, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

That too is problematic, as it does not cover persons who are of Indian and German parentage (like the persons mentioned above by me), and are therefore Indian-Germans, without necessarily having lived in Germany at all. How do we deal with these? Kochank (talk) 06:10, 9 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Again, why would they belong on this page? We should be dealing in discrete topics instead of trying to cram every possible combination of people with connections to both India and Germany on to this page.
 * Indians in Germany is a topic that is well-covered by academic journals, popular media, etc. There is scope to write a Wikipedia article which goes well beyond a mere list of people, discussing history of migration, etc. along the lines of Indians in Botswana, Indians in Mozambique, or any of the other articles in this series. Such an article could include a list of notable people of Indian descent who lived in Germany.
 * Germans in India may or may not be an appropriate article topic. We have to look for sources. Such an article could include a list of notable Germans who lived in India.
 * People of mixed Indian and German descent --- I don't see that there's a scope for making such an article into anything but a list of people, and the general consensus is that such lists of random mixes of two nationalities aren't appropriate --- see for example Articles for deletion/List of people of mixed Korean and Russian descent in which 10 lists of this type were deleted.
 * Thanks, cab (talk) 06:57, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, if that is the case, then the article certainly cannot stand as it is, for various names will have to be removed from the list, since these are names of persons who are of mixed Indian and German descent, but not Indians in Germany. So are you suggesting that that is what has to be done? Moreover, what happens when a person who fulfils the criteria for "Indians in Germany" moves away from Germany? Kochank (talk) 07:47, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, there's two types of notable Indians in Germany
 * People whose notability is related to the fact of being Indian (as opposed to any other nationality) in Germany (as opposed to any country country of residence), like the examples given above: people whose migration experience was discussed in non-trivial sources, people who do creative work drawing on their Indian heritage, etc.
 * People who "happen to be" Indian and whose notability is related to something else (cricket players, math professors, etc.), where reliable sources haven't found the fact of their ethnic origin worth discussing
 * For #1, we should avoid WP:RECENTISM --- if someone was notable in this fashion, they should remain in the list even if they emigrate; just add an annotation like "emigrated to Fooland in 200x". But for #2, like I argued above, they shouldn't really be on the list in the first place. cab (talk) 01:29, 17 September 2009 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

missing redlinks
A number of redlinks have been converted blue by pointing them at the interwiki German article. That makes it difficult for those articles actually being created. At least the English redlink should be given with a German alternative for information. Agathoclea (talk) 04:18, 29 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, it was like this in the first place, and then someone removed the redlinks. Given your comment I changed it back. cab (talk) 06:09, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

World War 2
What about Indians who settled in Germany during or after World War 2? There were indeed Indians in the Wehrmacht and Indian freedom fighters such as Subhas Bose lived in Germany and started families as well. --Elven6 (talk) 02:53, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Harun Farocki
Don´t forget Harun Farocki --> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harun_Farocki --109.193.158.225 (talk) 22:54, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Indians in Germany
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Indians in Germany's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "mea.gov.in": From Indians in Argentina:  From Non-resident Indian and person of Indian origin:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 18:42, 21 January 2022 (UTC)