Talk:Anti-Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: SBC-YPR (talk)

I will be reviewing this article over the next several days. The version I will be reviewing is this one, and subsequent changes will not form a part of the initial review. Regards, SBC-YPR (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, I have not been able to complete the review of this article sooner due to some RL constraints. The review will be up in a couple of days. Apologies for the delay. Regards, SBC-YPR (talk) 13:32, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Preliminary Review

Thank you for nominating this article for good article review. I have assessed it against the six good article criteria, and commented in detail below:

1. Writing:

(a) Prose

The article reads well throughout. A few issues to be addressed:

Names of individuals need not be spelt out in full each time. For example, C. Rajagopalachari can be mentioned subsequently as Rajaji, particularly since you have mentioned the abbreviated form in parantheses at the first instance in the lead. Likewise with Periyar, Radhakrishnan etc.
Hindustani is not exactly an amalgam of Hindi and Urdu - the part within parantheses in the Background section is unnecessarily confusing (the link provides sufficient explanation) and should be removed.
who viewed it as an attempt to make Tamils subordinate to North India is problematic. It should either be Tamil Nadu or North Indians.
Citations should be placed immediately after (and not before) a punctuation mark.
Is Justicy Party a typographical error, or was it the name of the Justice Party at that point of time?
Rajaji's persistence was viewed by opponents - whose opponents? Rajaji's or Hindi's?
Ramnad, Tinnevely, Salem etc. should link to the respective districts and not the towns, keeping in tune with the preceding part of the sentence.
Rajaji used the Criminal Law Amendment Act against the agitators, so that they can be charged of "non-bailable" criminal offenses - the tense should be consistent with the surrounding narrative. This inconsistency in tense also occurs in other places in the article (which uses the past continuous and past perfect tenses for the most part) and needs to be fixed throughout.
Periyar was fined 1,000 Rs - incorrect usage. It should be either Rs. 1000 or 1000 rupees.
Quotations should not be italicised.
Why does Ramakrishna Dalmia link to Dalmia?
All three words in Official languages act should be capitalised throughout. Likewise, the words Act, Bill etc. referring to the same should also be capitalised.
The first part of the second paragraph of the Official languages act of 1963 (the "may/shall" debate) is rather cumbersome to read. It could be paraphrased and rewritten using better prose.
The word anti in anti-Hindi should not be capitalised. Also, a hyphen between anti and Hindi muist be used throughout, to maintain consistency with the title of the article.
Why is the word "volunteers" in the Madurai Incident sub-section within quotes?
crore should not be capitalised. A link could be provided instead of the figures in parantheses.
Instead of Currently, use As of 2009 etc.

I will help out with some general copy-editing.

All done

(b) Manual of style

The lead does not mention the agitations after 1967 - a sentence or two could be added.

Done

Overlinking is rampant throughout the article and needs to be removed. A few instances – Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, Indira Gandhi, Madras, India, Constitution of India (there are others as well).
The Agitation of 1937-40 seems to have ended in October 1939. The section should be renamed accordingly.

Done

It was suspended in October 1939, but the threats/negotiations/editorial attacks dragged on till January 40.

The titles of sections 2 and 3 are inconsistent – either change the first to 1937-1940 or the second to 1940-50.

Done

The section Language and Indian constitution could be renamed to Official languages and the Indian Constitution or some such, to make its purpose more clear, since the discussion for the purposes of this article is confined only to Part XVII and not the Eighth Schedule as well.

Done

Legacy is ordinarily used to refer to persons. The section could be renamed to Effects or Impact instead.

Done

2. Sourcing:

(a) References

Good use of references. The article is soundly referenced to reliable sources. Some issues with the formatting of existing references:

Reference 9 seems to be a chapter of some book. The book's name and publisher need to be mentioned.

Done.

It would be a good idea to move references that are cited more than thrice (9, 37, 45, 50, 68) to the References section and then cite specific pages inline (see below).

For some of the books i don't have individual page numbers. ref 9 (Perumal) and 37 (Annamalai) are published books, but are available online in different formats - in perumal's case as individual pdfs for each chapter and for Annamalai, HTML pages for each chapter. So i don't know the individual page rages in the paper book format. 45 (simpson) is a single page ref and 68 (Mitra) is a 3 page range ref. 50 (hardgrave) explained below.

(b) In-line citations

Several of the citations (4, 7, 18, 50, 59, 82) are generic and either do not mention specific page numbers or mention a range of pages. Would it be possible to cite more specifically, mentioning individual page numbers?

Similar problem as above. The page ranges are from works which discuss the agitations in a broader context and the facts are spread over pages : for example in ref no 18, Irschick discusses it as a part of tamil revivalism in 1930s. So he reports one incident in page 221 and launches into an analysis for a couple of pages, then adds one more detail in 223. So when i take only the facts to fill two lines in the article (dates, names and places) out of the whole analysis which is spread over six or seven pages there are as many citations as there are pages. Hence the page range. Same is the case for 4 (Guha discussing hindi imperialism), 7 (JBP more writing about muslims and general political situation), 59 (Rajagopalan discussing the parliament's actions during 1962-3), 82 (Kannan describing what Anna was doing the agitation). I have tried to maintain a balance - keeping the no of cites manageable, while keeping the page range reasonable. --Sodabottle (talk) 08:12, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(c) Original research

The article is free from original research.

3. Broadness:

(a) Topic coverage

The article addresses the main aspects of the topic.

(b) Focus

I would suggest that the sections on the Agitations of 1937-40 and Agitation of 1965 be split off into separate articles, with the current article providing only a summary of the main events instead of going into them in exhaustive detail. A link to the sub-articles could then be provided using the {{Main}} template.

Has it grown that unwieldy? When i started the rewrite it was small enough, but it has now become huge. For me it looks fine (not enough strategic distance to see it objectively). I checked the guideline for splitting and it said not absolutely necessary unless it goes about 100k. --Sodabottle (talk) 09:22, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A link to Part Seventeen of the Constitution of India could be provided under the section on Language and Indian Constitution.

Done

If possible, reactions to these agitations in North India and elsewhere could be elaborated upon.

Sourcing for this is a problem. The scholarly sources dont mention what people in the North were thinking. They are focused on the Madras alone. Partisan sources are one dimensional - Tamil ones call north indians "fanatics" and "imperialists". Even the Time magazine article from 1965 describes jan sangh activists as "roaming about" in Delhi blackening english name boards.--Sodabottle (talk) 09:22, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

4. Neutrality:

The article represents viewpoints fairly and without bias.

5. Stability:

The article is stable and has not suffered any recent edit wars or content disputes.

6. Images:

(a) Copyright status

The images have been tagged with their copyright status. Some concerns regarding the first image were raised during the peer review, but since then seem to have been addressed.

(b) Relevance and captioning

The captions should identify individual persons in the photograph by their location (i.e. L-R, R-L, front, side etc.)

Done

Overall, this article is well-written and referenced, and stands a good chance of passing the review if these issues are addressed.

As a result of the above, the article has been placed on hold for a period of ten days, at the end of which I will check back to see whether the issues have been resolved. Please feel free to contact me on my talk page (or by leaving a query on this page) for any clarifications. Regards, SBC-YPR (talk) 06:48, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Clarifications

Regarding references: In the case of Perumal's book, since the page numbers are provided on the chapter PDF, they can be used; since the reference is being made to the e-version of the book rather than the print edition, this should be fine. As to Annamalai's book, would it be possible to reference it chapter-wise, as has been done for Ramaswamy (Reference 6)?

switched to harvnb and single page refs for Ravichandran. But for Annamalai all refs come from a single chapter (which is in the ebook as a single html page). I have given the chapter name ("Language Movements Against Hindi as An Official Language"), but not able to provide page ranges.

Regarding splitting: The article is long but not unwieldy; nevertheless summary style requirements stipulate that an article should provide a balanced and complete overview about the whole topic, without going into too much detail. In the present case, the article is about the Anti-Hindi agitations in TN in general, and hence more specific details about individual agitations of 1937-40 and 1965 (like exact details of riots, quotations etc.) could be hived off into separate articles and the existing sections could be trimmed. Also, consider merging (at least the first paragraph of) the section on Impact of 1965 Agitation into the section on Agitation of 1965, to complete the account of the latter and keep the narrative cohesive. Wasn't the OL (Amendment) Act, 1967 also a result of the 1965 agitation?

impact of 1965 implemented. 1967 OL was not direct result. rather indirect result. see explanation below. ~~Will split the articles soon.~~Done

Was there any connection between the Congress' defeat in the 1967 TN Assebly elections and the timing of the OL (Amendment) Act, 1967? If so, this should be brought out.

No. It was more due to Congress's reduced majority in the LS and Indira's attempts to gather the support of 25 DMK MPs. She was facing pressure from the syndicate within the party and needed as many external allies as possible in the parliament

Since Tamil Nadu was known as Madras State until 1968, all references to it prior to that year (except quotations) should also reflect the name as it stood then.

Done

Why is reference 33 (Guha) repeated in the list of external links?

Removed

The article remains on hold, pending resolution of these issues. Please post queries/responses, if any, below this message. Regards, SBC-YPR (talk) 19:28, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Will incorporate the changes by sunday.--Sodabottle (talk) 12:46, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All comments implemented--Sodabottle (talk) 06:42, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Final review

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it reasonably well written?
A. Prose quality:

B. MoS compliance:
Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
A. References to sources:

B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

C. No original research:
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. Major aspects:

B. Focused:
Is it neutral?
Fair representation without bias:
Is it stable?
No edit wars, etc:
Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
Overall:
Pass or Fail:

Following some excellent editing on the suggestions provided, the article now satisfies all the Good Article criteria. I have now passed it as a Good Article, and listed it as such on the Good Articles page under Social sciences and society. For the record, User:Sodabottle contributed significantly to this GA pass (with five or more major edits during the course of the review). Compliments to all the editors who helped in writing the article – especially with the sourcing, which was a job done quite well. I wish you all the best if you decide to take this article up for FA review. Regards, SBC-YPR (talk) 16:43, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for review, valuable comments and suggestions. This article is much better because of the review.--Sodabottle (talk) 16:46, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]