User talk:Chotanagpur

This is my first try at editing, so I talk first!

Several issues arise in the Jharkhand article:

History:

1. 'The tribal rulers, some of whom continue to thrive till today were known as the Munda Rajas' Cite is accurate, but facts are not. Mundas and two other tribes referred to their leaders as Munda Rajas; members of the other 29 tribes did not. Do I edit out and provide a new cite?

2. 'Munda Rajas,[2] who basically had ownership rights to large farmlands.' This claim is highly contested; the missionary got it wrong. Farmlands were 'collectively' owned and decisions about who farmed where were taken by council. The distinction is crucial because many of the (unmentioned) local bases for Jharkhand statehood agitation were based on 'unfair' or 'inappropriate' or 'illegal' seizure of farm and forest land.

3. 'During the Mughal period, the Jharkhand area was known as Kukara.' Much better to say that several Mughal leaders referred to the area as Kukara. People who lived in the area called it (if they recognized 'it' at all) by a variety of names.

British Rule:

4. 'After the year 1765, it came under the control of the British Empire and became formally known under its present title, "Jharkhand" – the Land of "Jungles" (forests) and "Jharis" (bushes).' This is wrong. As the article correctly described, the area was packaged and repackaged at the whim of the British authorities. The name 'Jharkhand' had no political meaning until 1995 (Jharkhand Area Autonomous Council) and no political clout until 2000, when Jharkhand became a state.

Jharkhand Movement- post-Indian independence:

5. section para 4: 'the Bihar government represented by the then chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav'  Laloo is misspelled (generally, there are many Lalus in Bihar, but the Chief Minister always spelled his name Laloo)

6. section para 6: 'In July 1997, Shibu Soren offered support to minority government of Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav with a condition of a separate Jharkhand bill in the assembly. On 2 August 2000, the bill to create a separate state of Jharkhand to be carved out of Bihar was passed in Lok Sabha by voice vote.' Two problems with this claim: a. Shibu Soren's 4-member-of-parliament Jharkhand Mukti Morcha first supported the Indian National Congress minority government in 1994 on similar basis (and were investigated, along with Prime Minister Narishima Rao, on bribery charges) b. The bill to create a separate state was drafted NOT by the Laloo Prasad Yadav coalition, but by the BJP--which crafted a majority government after the 2000 elections.

I can suggest text and provide reliable citations for each of these issues. But surely there is some sort of editorial process?

Jharkhand – a separate state

There is not a single citation in this three-paragraph section and all content is politically (and historically) contested. Unlike the comments above, I do NOT have a reliable, open-source basis for proposing changes. But I do not think that it is appropriate for the section to remain as it is. Perhaps add a 'needs editing' or 'needs citation' marker, to encourage reader awareness?

Chotanagpur (talk) 21:42, 7 May 2011 (UTC)