Talk:Bengal famine of 1943/Archive 4

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Citations, further reading

• Inline citations are not linked to the reflist. The "Further Reading" section is a bit too humongous. Thoughts on how to address these issues? Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:04, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I've done some heavy editing to the refs, but I haven't lost any info & only added a few trivial things like urls. More work still needs to be done. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 18:28, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

I've made major changes in formatting, but the content is 99.99% the same. Here are (known) issues:

1. I removed the "Contemporary Sources" header because some of them were cited in article text (so I put them in "Bibliography") and some were not (into "Further Reading").
2. I removed "Stuart 1919" with a few words (nontrivial words, perhaps, but they had to go) after I searched extensively for that source but couldn't find it.
3. There's a problem with "Ghosh 1944" because there are two references, same year, different people named Ghosh. One of them is linked to the article text, but I have no idea whether that is the correct one (or whether both should be linked in different places, etc.)
4. The cites to Bowbrick may or may not be well-formed because he has a large-ish website with many subpages, and it's a little difficult to determine which cite should go to which page. I often kinda gave up and left things more or less as they were. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 06:46, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

strange article: was Bengal not part of the Empire at the time?

New Left Review, John Newsinger THE FAMISHED RAJ

The Bengal Famine of 1943–44, a man-made catastrophe that in total caused the deaths of perhaps five million people, was described by the incoming British Viceroy Archibald Wavell as threatening ‘incalculable’ damage to the Empire’s reputation. [1] It was, he said, ‘one of the greatest disasters that has befallen any people under British rule.’ Wavell was right about the scale of the disaster. But so effectively has the episode been written out of the histories of the Second World War and the Raj that it can scarcely be said to have damaged Britannia’s reputation. In the prestigious Oxford History of the British Empire: The TwentiethCentury, a volume that surely sits on the shelves of every university library in the English-speaking world, the Famine goes unmentioned. In Max Hastings’s 600-page study of Churchill during the Second World War, Finest Years, it gets barely a paragraph, while Boris Johnson’s cod biography, The Churchill Factor, does not touch on it at all. Jonathan Schneer’s study of Churchill’s War Cabinet, Ministers at War, omits any mention of the discussions the Famine occasioned in the War Cabinet. David Faber’s recent Speaking for England, a political biography of Leo Amery and his sons, says not a word about the Famine, even though its subject was Secretary of State for India at the time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.43.195.18 (talk) 01:02, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Why is the translation in Bengali only?

It is clearly mentioned that the famine was widespread and includes other states including Bihar and Orissa. So why is the translation only in Bengali? Is it desperation? Try to score points even dealing with deaths. This is just one example, I have seen such things at many articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.21.127.60 (talk) 05:57, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, you got us. You found us out. Even though we are fluent in Bihari and Orissan, we have flat refused to translate the article into these languages at the behest of the British MI5. We are desperate, desperate to score points. Right now we are behind: Us 97 points, The Truth 103 points, and only four minutes to play! BTW we also faked the moon landings. Herostratus (talk) 14:51, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Genocide

There should be mention that this famine could be legally regarded as a genocide. (Mc,dss (talk) 17:37, 8 September 2016 (UTC))

What we would need is a ref showing noteworthy people have claimed this. Herostratus (talk) 18:28, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

This article in "The Independent" says it has been likened to a genocide: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/think-india-should-be-grateful-for-colonialism-here-are-five-reasons-why-youre-unbelievably-ignorant-a6729106.html (Mc,dss (talk) 18:33, 8 September 2016 (UTC))

Well OK, but a couple things about that.

1. It is the Independent which, meh. The Independent is not highly thought of as a neutral source with a good fact-checking operation. Let alone a respected scholarly journal.
2. It's by Amit Singh. If it's cricketer Amit Singh, I don't see him as having more standing than my Uncle Dwight to be cited on these matters. If its the Amit Singh who is a vice-president of Google, ditto. If it's another Amit Singh, well, who is he? Per Wikipedia:Reliable sources checklist we want to be able to answer questions such as "Who is the author? What are the author's academic credentials and professional experience?" and many other questions. If he had a Wikipedia article we could begin to answer some of these questions. But so far I'm in the dark.
3. And he doesn't even regard the famine as genocide himself. He just says "The famine of Bengal on 1943 was so bad that it's been likened to a genocide" but he doesn't say by whom. What are his sources? His Uncle Dwight for all we know. ("So bad" does not necessarily equal genocide, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami was not a genocide for instance, so let's see some respectable sources.)

So on this basis I'm not seeing this as material we ought to have in the article, even though it might well be true. "Might well be true" is insufficient when we are dealing with a contentious subject. Herostratus (talk) 19:03, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Just a heads up

An editor, User:Lingzhi, has avowed that he is "working drip by drip on rewriting Bengal Famine of 1943 in a sandbox" for the purpose of saving us from "every dickhead who thinks he's saving the world by bashing [Churchill] on Wikipedia".

Obviously there are a couple of potential problems here, one being the language indicating the possible presence of a dedicated and patient culture warrior, another being that presenting us "dickheads" with the fait accompli of new and pro-Churchill version of the article is IMO not the best way to proceed (and will presumably just get rolled back). So editors might want to be on the watch for this.

If the editor has specific improvements to offer for the article we could hopefully have a conversation about these matters as befits reasonable adults. Herostratus (talk) 01:39, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

• I'll reply once and only once: "dickheads" refers to people who -- instead of carefully analyzing and discussing a large number of issues -- would use cquotes to circumvent WP:UNDUE. the Bengal famine of 1943 was an extremely complex perfect storm of variables (including, among many others, a lack of prioritizing the issue in the highest levels UK govt, though the lower-level people, the people actually in India, repeatedly requested it). Focusing mainly on the higher levels of UK gov't is WP:UNDUE. I will try to show in an objective, non-dramatic fashion that yes, the UK govt... may not have caused the famine, but very certainly did not respond appropriately and thus certainly made it far worse. If you would like to do that thing... what's it called... oh yeah research on this topic, you would be very likely come to a similar conclusion. That's was also the explicitly stated conclusion of Amartya Sen, whom I will quote to that effect in the article text as soon as I find the damn quote I lost. Thank you for your time and attention.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:50, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Well, much of what you say sounds eminently reasonable (which is not the same as being right of course). Wrapping it in a crankypants package doesn't help your cause.

Since it's a complicated subject and political it is probably true that there's no answer to the question "what is the one correct narrative of these events". So we want to include various theories providing they're respectable. Taking a "Here, I'll fix this for you" approach is probably not best.

I am not versed on this topic, but I can read. Looking at the first section "Onset", which is bad enough to be tagged, by paragraph I get

1. The food situation in India was tight from the beginning of the Second World War...
2. The proximate cause of the famine was a reduction in supply with some increase in demand. The winter 1942 aman rice crop... was hit by a cyclone and three tidal waves in October... tidal waves... torrential rain. Reserve stocks... were destroyed.... fungus...
3. As a result [of stuff], the good December 1941 crop did not mean the normal surplus stocks were carried over into 1943. (In other years... stocks had been built up.)
4. Bengal had been a food importer for the last decade. Calcutta was normally supplied by Burma. The British Empire had suffered a disastrous defeat.. By 1940 15% of India's rice overall came from Burma... After the Japanese occupation of Burma in March 1942, Bengal and the other parts of India and Ceylon, normally supplied by Burma, had to find food elsewhere. However, there were poor crops and famine situations [elsewhere, so] it fell on the few surplus Provinces, mainly the Punjab, to supply the rest of India and Ceylon.
5. Bengal's food needs rose at the same time from the influx of refugees from Burma. The enormous expansion of the Indian Army... did mean significantly more local demand in Bengal... (However, the effects of army consumption in causing the famine was clearly limited)

This section has been marked since 2013 as pushing a ideologically skewed and false narrative of the background of the famine, so is the the sort of problem you're talking about?

I'd be interested in what the ideological point of view being pushed here is. It certainly doesn't jump out at me. Maybe it's pushing the POV "Weather is tricky. Fungus is bad. Having Imperial troops in your grain supply is bad" or something, but is that even an ideology? You're going to have to engage with other editors on these questions if you want the article to be better.

Unless the structure of the sections is a problem, it'd probably be best to go section-by-section like this. Herostratus (talk) 02:39, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Reply

To the best of my knowledge all commentators, including people writing at the time agree with these statements. If you do not agree, put up references. But make them good. There are far too many people putting up statements from blogs, third hand references etc. And note that Sen for example relied almost entirely on the Famine Inquiry Commission and mentions these points. AidWorker (talk) 16:40, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

• The Onset section was tagged POV (not by me!) because it presents an exclusively FAD ("food availability decline") perspective and elides any discussion of FEE ("failure of exchange entitlements"). See Theories of famines. Looking at the article's history over the years, it seems there has been a rolling FAD versus FEE hobbyhorse chase, with two editors who didn't seem to fight or interact with each other, but just did a coredump of the details that support their favored arguments. I would suggest that arguing over/choosing sides in FAD versus FEE is of secondary importance to describing the many, many, many other factors involved.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 21:37, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Schools of thought

There are at least half a dozen schools of thought on the famine, and the entry mentions them though some have now been cut by editors to the extent that they are difficult to understand or even garbled. The FAD is just one, and is mentioned with a lot of contemporary evidence. In the past these half dozen schools have been cut to rely on just one, the FAD. Which is dishonest.

Bartle Frere set out the demand side in the 1870s in relation to a Bengal famine, and did not suggest that there was anything new in it. The Indian government had been committed to dealing with supply and demand since the 1870s and were perfectly well aware of demand factors as well as supply factors. These were then set out in the Indian Famine Code. Anyone who believes that either supply or demand is a total explanation of famines is a prat. AidWorker (talk) 16:40, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Provincial government inaction

This section also is tagged as being baised, since 2013. What can we do to get this tag removed?

First two paragraphs

1. Whatever the cause of the famine, deaths could only be prevented by supplies of food from elsewhere in India. This was not forthcoming.
2. In normal regional famines the Indian Government had provided the starving with money, and let the trade bring in grain which worked for regional famines, though this had been disastrous in Orissa in 1888 when, as in 1943, the shortage was not regional but national.
3. In 1942, with the permission of the central government, trade barriers were introduced by the democratically elected provincial governments.
4. The politicians and civil servants of surplus provinces like the Punjab introduced regulations to prevent grain leaving their provinces for the famine areas of Bengal, Madras and Cochin.
5. There was the desire to see that, first, local populations and, second, the populations of neighbouring provinces were well fed, partly to prevent civil unrest.
6. Politicians and officials got power and patronage, and the ability to extract bribes for shipping permits. Marketing and transaction costs rose sharply.
7. The market could not get grain to Bengal, however profitable it might be. The main trading route, established for hundreds of years was up the river system and this ceased to operate, leaving the railway as the only way of getting food into Bengal. Grain arrivals stopped and
8. in March 1943, Calcutta, the second biggest city in the world, had only two weeks' food supply in stock.

This is ref'd to "Braund 1944; Pinnell 1944; Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a."

Are these refs any good? Are they misrepresented? Are there other refs which introduce a different narrative? Which sentences here are false or misleading? #6? Which sentences could be improved by adding "according to some sources... but other sources say...". What are the other sources? Are facts being cherry-picked here? Or what?

Reply

If you do not know the answers to this, you have no right whatsoever to make comments, nor to put a POV label on the page. Indeed, there is massive support for these narratives, from people of different schools of thought. Indeed most researchers rely on the Famine Inquiry Commission if they bother to check contemporary views. And Braund and Pinnell together with Greenough are of major importance.

Anyone could put in a string of references to support these sentences, but they would be removed by the people who claim it is then original research. If you really want to challenge these sources cite your sources. It is entirely unacceptable that you should label this POV when you have not bothered to read the literature.

Indeed, I could put in another fifty or sixty references to support the statements you think are insufficiently tagged. But that is not Wikipedia is about. It is to give the reader a view on different schools of thought and, where these schools of thought disagree on the facts, and particularly when some are accused of misstating the facts in their sources, to refer to these sources. Putting in a vast number of unnecessary citations is bad scholarship. AidWorker (talk) 16:40, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Third paragraph

1. The Government of India realized a mistake had been made and decreed a return to free trade.
2. The Provinces refused.
3. "In this, again, the Government of India misjudged both its own influence and the temper of its constituents, which had by this time gone too far to pay much heed to the Centre."[Braund]
4. The Government of India Act 1935 had removed most of the Government of India's authority over the Provinces, so they had to rely on negotiation.

There's only one ref, for the quote in the middle of the paragraph, to "Braund 1944, p. 12." What problems are there with this paragragh (besides being poorly ref'd). The second sentence is quite bald. Is it true? Did they just do nothing rather than overtly refuse? Should it be "According to some sources, the provinces refused; other sources cite simple logistical problems" or something like that?

Reply

Well yes there are plenty of other people who make the same comment from different points, the Government of the Punjab, Knight, the Government of Bengal, Muslim political historians and reporters etc etc. The Government of the Punjab said bluntly that they were going to protect the financial and security interests of their constituents first and those of neighbouring provinces second,leaving Bengal until last, and that before the Government of India did anything they should reflect on the fact that most of the fighting troops in the Indian Army, the biggest volunteer army in history, were from the Punjab. Certainly more citations would be good, but nobody is going to put them into the page as long as the POV etc label remains and as long as those citations that are put up are removed by people who think that multiple citations means that this is research in progress. If you really object to the statements show that all of them are wrong. AidWorker (talk) 16:40, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Fourth paragraph

1. Thus, even when the Government of India decreed that there should be free trade in grain, politicians, civil servants, local government officers and police obstructed the movement of grain to famine areas.[39]
2. In some cases provinces seized grain in transit from other provinces to Bengal.[K]
3. As Mahesh Chandra stated in 1943, "But men like Bhai Permanand say that though many traders want to export food [to Bengal] the Punjab Government would not give them permits. He testified to large quantities of undisposed-of rice being in the Punjab."[40]

ref 39 is "Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a, pp. 57, 93.", ref 40 is "Stephens 1966, p. 181.", ref K is "Braund 1944, p. 12 (citing Government of India letter to all provinces dated 13 February 1943.)"

Reply

Again, there is no shortage of references available. Many use far more inflamatory language. I have never come across anyone who disagrees. Again, who is challenging this narrative? AidWorker (talk) 16:40, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Fifth paragraph

1. Eventually there was a clear threat by the Government of India to force the elected governments to provide grain, when the new Viceroy, Archibald Wavell, who was a successful general, was about to take office.
2. For the first time substantial quantities of grain started to move to Bengal.[41]

Ref for the paragraph (ref 41) is "Braund 1944, p. 12 (citing Government of India letter to all provinces dated 13 February 1943.)"

Is this true, or not? Was Wavell's looming ascension really a factor (it's implied to be) or was this coincidence? What kind of "force" threat is meant? Removal of officials (did the center really have that power?) or what?

Reply

It is certainly implied in contemporary sources, and he did order and get a lot of action in the next six months overruling the Bengal Government, but equally the Government of India did not believe that it had these powers during the famine (Wavell had to ask permission to give grain and troops to distribute it). It may be that Wavell had the personal authority; it may be that the mood of India had changed and the other provinces were no longer prepared to tolerate inaction by the Bengal Government and would have backed him in demanding action. But that is a research question for a political scientist, a long and rather pointless piece of work. It has no bearing on the subject. If you know of any sources, let us have themAidWorker (talk) 16:40, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Sixth paragraph

1. The Government of Bengal was slow in starting relief measures and at one stage in 1943 it limited relief to save money,
2. though the money could have been obtained.[42]
3. The supporters of the two Bengal Governments involved, that of A. K. Fazlul Huq (December 1941 to March 1943) and of Khawaja Nazimuddin's Muslim League (April 1943 to March 1945) each held the other government responsible for the catastrophe, because of its inaction and corruption.[43]
4. Bengal's chief minister, A. K. Fazlul Huq, had warned of the risk of famine but he was ignored and replaced.[44]
5. The government had done almost nothing to prepare for famine, and
6. critics noted "the feebleness of its moral and administrative standards".[45]

There are a lot of refs here for individual statements.. [42] is "Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a, pp. 61, 99, 104, 105.", [43] is "Sen 1976b, pp. 174, 175.", [44] is "Mukerjee 2014.", [45] is "Slim 1956, pp. 146–147."

This paragraph does seem a dog's breakfast. It's possible it should be broken up and the individual sentences used in other paragraphs. But beyond that, many questions. The Famine Inquiry Commission is alleged to have said that "The Government of Bengal was slow in starting relief measures and at one stage in 1943 it limited relief to save money, though the money could have been obtained." Does the Inquiry Commission really say that? Is it true? Was the Inquiry Commission itself incompetent or biased?

Reply

If you are commenting, you should know at least the basics. You have not bothered to check the reference, let alone read the report. How can you dare ask, "Does the Inquiry Commission really say that?" This is gross misconduct. The Inquiry Commission was half a dozen angry men, furious at the administrative failures and corruption that let the famine happen. Their report is extraordinarily critical of the Government of India. And all commentators use it as their first port of call.16:40, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Should the last sentence read something like "...some critics noted 'the feebleness of its moral and administrative standards' while others consider it reasonably competent but just overwhelmed by great circumstances [ref]"? Is there a ref for that last clause?

Reply

If you refuse to read any of the literature, and then make such comments, and put a POV label on the page, you are imposing your Point of View, a view held with total lack of evidence or research. This is totally unacceptable.AidWorker (talk) 16:40, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

There are other questions about this paragraph.

Seventh paragaph

1. Contemporary commentators believed that there was substantial hoarding by those consumers who could afford it, by firms and by those farmers who produced surpluses.
2. This started in July 1941 when war with Japan was inevitable, increased when Burma was attacked in December 1941 and when Ceylon, then Calcutta were bombed in 1942.
3. India would have entered the famine year with substantial surplus private stocks.
4. These stocks do not appear to have been released and there was no political drive to get people to give or sell the surpluses.
5. An official "Food Drive" in Bengal did not result in release of hoarded stocks.[46]
6. It was believed that fear of the famine actually increased hoarding.

There's only one ref here, [46] which is "Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a, pp. 56, 74."

Here we see "Contemporary commentators believed that there was substantial hoarding" rather than "There was substantial hoarding" which is possibly the approach we should be taking generally since this paragraph is contentious and contended. "do not appear to have been released" rather than "were not release". IMO this is good. But then there are direct statements: "did not result in release of hoarded stocks".

The Famine Inquiry Commission is used a lot. What's their deal really? Was it a coverup body? Or conversely a witchhunt? Or what? Don't we kind of have to use them a lot, what alternative do we have? But yet why are using a primary source so much? Herostratus (talk) 14:47, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Reply

Everyone uses the Famine Inquiry Commission report as the first basic narrative of what happened. It is not a primary source, but a report by people who studied a vast amount of evidence from primary sources and took evidence from the main players. The great majority of it is accepted by everyone. Of course any researcher will disagree with bits of it, a lot because the evidence it presents disagrees with their preferred story, some because they have found new evidence, some because they have analysed the evidence differently with an agricultural marketing economics or sociological perspective for instance. I cannot imagine any reputable researcher abandoning this source in favour of more recent commentators without serious new evidence.

There is an enormous amount of contemporary evidence on hoarding, supporting these comments, which I would not dream of citing, because it is rumour, an urban myth. The Famine Inquiry Commission does go into the validity of the rumours. AidWorker (talk) 16:40, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Ethics and POV

It is totally unacceptable that anyone should put a POV label on any page if they have not researched the subject thoroughly, and do not know the range of schools of thought that exist. It is totally unacceptable that they should put a POV label on the page because all the schools of thought are mentioned, not just their own preferred one. That is faking the evidence.

POV

It is now five years since someone put a POV warning on this web site claiming that it was biased. No reasons were given. In these five years nobody has put up an alternative view on the Wikipedia page, so the presumption must be that anyone who knows anything about the subject believes that the website gives a balanced presentation of half a dozen main schools of thought on the subject. It is entirely unacceptable that anybody at all should put a claim that a web site is biased, giving no reason, and leaving it for five years. This is faking the evidence. And faking the evidence on famine means that people using this faked evidence when dealing with famines kill people, perhaps millions of people.

Onset

Someone put a

on the ‘==Onset= section again without giving reasons. The facts here have been documented again after again, by all contemporary sources, and are agreed by the commentators supporting the major points of view. In many years of research, I have not come across anyone who would claim that the famine could have occurred without the war, the loss of the 15% of rice provided by Burma, and the poor crop, following the poor crop two years earlier. Anyone who made such a claim would be considered eccentric in the extreme by the more charitable researchers. Nobody has put in this claim on the Wikipedia page in the three years since the POV was put up. Telling the reader that this is biased is faking. And faking the evidence on famine means that people using this faked evidence when dealing with famines kill people, perhaps millions of people.

Provincial Government Inaction

Three years ago someone put a POV on the ==Provincial Government inaction== section, again without stating how it is biased. Over the last three years nobody has changed this, evidently because anyone who has done any research in the area find it balanced. The commentators supporting the main points of view agree with all points in this section. I cannot think of any researcher that I have read over the last thirty years who would disagree with any of this. Most would be very much more critical of those they think particularly guilty, or those they have covered in depth, some of corrupt traders, some of the actions of the governments of surplus provinces, some of the Bengal government etc. Telling the reader that this is biased is faking. And faking the evidence on famine means that people using this faked evidence when dealing with famines kill people, perhaps millions of people.

Revisionists

Three years ago someone put a POV on the ==Revisionists== section. This section discusses two revisionists. It is unacceptable that anyone should rubbish Greenough’s deep, meticulous and carefully argued sociological research without providing evidence. I appreciate that some people may be unhappy with his conclusion that the famine was caused by Bengali men, ‘In short, the "man-made" famine was culturally patterned in its onset, crisis and denouement.’ ((sfn|Greenough|1982|p=265)). The fact that the conclusions are unpalatable do not justify calling it biased. I and other readers would be extremely interested to get references to research that disagrees with Greenough but a POV entry is entirely unacceptable as a substitute. Telling the reader that this is biased is faking. And faking the evidence on famine means that people using this faked evidence when dealing with famines kill people, perhaps millions of people.

Amartya Sen revived the claims made in the famine year that there was plenty of rice available and that the famine was caused by inflation. His claims have been subjected to very serious criticisms. The main differences noted by commentators between his view and the orthodox view are set out in this section, as is right and proper. The criticisms cited have not been challenged by Sen or anyone else. If someone thinks that they are unfounded, the correct procedure is to write a reply, attacking them, and send them to a reputable journal where they will be published with replies from the authors – who will certainly not pull their punches. The papers may then be cited in Wikipedia. Nobody has attempted to do this since 1986, let alone in the three years since the POV warning was put up. Telling the reader that this is biased is faking. And faking the evidence on famine means that people using this faked evidence when dealing with famines kill people, perhaps millions of people.

Wikipedia is all about verifiable facts, and most particularly about giving the full range of verifiable facts, especially those that are omitted from partisan blogs and Facebook – this information is not available elsewhere.

Removal of evidence

There are constant additions to this page by people who have picked up fantasies from Facebook or blog sites, and which are unreferenced. These are easy to deal with. It gets very serious indeed when these people (including, it seems, the Wikipedia volunteer editor) remove things that disagree with their Facebook fantasy. When a contributor has spent a great deal of time condensing one point of view into perhaps four very carefully constructed and evidenced sentences, it only takes two or three cuts to garble the message and make it seem illogical or irrelevant. This has happened time and again with this page. As a result at least two major research programmes, schools of thought, have effectively vanished from the page.

Omission of schools of thought

Two areas which have had high profile on the social media have not been put on the page, evidently because the POV message has discouraged people who would otherwise put up a description of a school of thought that is not the dominant one, and which would certainly be described as biased by people who believe passionately in one explanation. A major famine is necessarily very complex, usually in its causes, always in how it is dealt with, what effects it has, and always in its effect on the agricultural economy, the national economy and the economy of neighbouring areas and countries. There can never be a simplistic answer: different researchers will emphasize those areas that they have studied, but there will be a range of schools of thought on the relative importance of these. Which must be covered. Similarly there are areas where the quantity and quality of available evidence limits the statements that may be considered verifiable and this must be made clear. It is Wikipedia, not a partisan blog.

Repairing the damage

I would like to restore the damaged sections and ask experts in special areas to fill the gaps and check the content. Like everyone else though, I am not willing to undertake the substantial amount of serious work involved until the bias claims are removed.

Wikipedia guidelines say that the tag should be removed, 'If the maintenance template is not fully supported. Some neutrality tags, such as Conflict of Interest (COI) and Neutral point of view (POV), require the tagging editor to initiate a dialogue (generally on the article's talk page), to support the placement of the tag. If the tagging editor failed to do so, or the discussion is dormant, the template can be removed.' Clearly the editor has not supported the placement of the tag: all he has done is say that he has not read anything on the subject. Clearly the discussion is dormant. Accordingly, I shall remove the tag.AidWorker (talk) 16:40, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Churchill quotation

There is ongoing concern about the appropriateness of the Churchill quotation. I've replaced it with an accurate quotation from Wavell that's the source of the alleged comment (note that no source cited here actually attributes those exact words to Churchill). But the WP:UNDUE issue remains. As a warning to readers until it can be sorted out, I've tagged (only) the quotation with {{POV statement}}. Hairy Dude (talk) 14:16, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Strange claim

"During the British rule in India there were approximately 25 major famines spread through states such as Tamil Nadu in South India, Bihar in the north, and Bengal in the east; altogether, between 30 and 40 million Indians were the victims of famines in the latter half of the 20th century"

The above sentence surely seems wrongs. If the meaning of the sentence is supposed to be that between 30 and 40 million Indians died due to many different famines during the period of British rule, then the very last part of the sentence should not be referring to "the latter half of the 20th century". Perhaps this should be "the latter half of the 19th century", that is, 1800's, or "the first half of the 20th century", that is, 1900 to 1947.Lathamibird (talk) 06:53, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Undid large-scale edit with vague edit summary "restoring"

• I just undid a very large-scale edit with the vague edit summary "restoring". Restoring what? The cite format was changed, entire sections were removed, etc. Was this a restore to a version from literally years ago?  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 16:26, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia and "genocide" in this particular case

Some editors, and at the moment this specifically refers to 73.202.190.56 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), are eager to increase the general level of social justice in our world by using Wikipedia as a forum for telling the world that this particular famine was a "genocide". That may be a noble goal, but there are two or three problems with using Wikipedia for that purpose. The goal of Wikipedia is Verifiability, not truth. If you can find reliable sources that label this famine a genocide, then you can add that info. Please note that blogs are not reliable sources in this particular case (in most cases, actually). Personal web pages are not reliable sources either. No, you must find a book or journal article by a well-known publisher etc., and even then there are some exceptions, because some sources are more reliable than others.

But wait, there's more. Even if you do find a reliable source that calls this particular famine a case of genocide (and I have looked for months and haven't seen any that would state it so baldly), then you still can't label the famine a genocide if you only found one source that says so but several sources that do not. That would be placing undue weight on the one source that you personally believe in your heart is correct..

This particular famine is extremely, extremely complex. World-class experts like Amartya Sen and Cormac Ó Gráda have argued about it, as also have many other relatively less famous (but still reputable) scholars on a long, long list. So this topic is very debatable. And even among those scholars debating it, "genocide" is a word that is probably too strong for most scholars to be willing to use.

The number of books and articles that cover this topic is huge. So Wikipedia cannot just ignore all this debate and unilaterally make a statement that is so controversial. We must cover a nuanced topic in a nuanced (and balanced, and verifiable) manner.Simple declarations of "genocide" are very, very far from providing a sufficient explanation that would be suitable for a Wikipedia article.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:02, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Shipping section UNDUE

Yes, shipping was tight for GB, but when Wavell put his foot down and used his connections to pressure GB into supplying aid (the Statesman photos made a difference too), the aid came mostly from the Punjab.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:19, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Hardly 'UNDUE'. Many commentators consider the failure to import was very important - India usually imported 2m tons of grain. The 200,000 tons eventually imported was not enough and came too late for many of the starving. You cannot ignore this just because some well-fed people chose to believe that there was plenty of grain available and imports were unnecessary. It needs verifiable facts. These have however been removed and replaced by inaccurate quotations referring to different periods. AidWorker (talk) 11:20, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello AidWorker. As I have mentioned, I am working from a database of over 200 sources (almost all on my computer; I can you send you any you wish). You're welcome to view progress the ongoing top-to-bottom rewrite here. It does mention shipping somewhat briefly in the "Debate over primary cause" section, near the bottom. That brief section shows two opposing views. If you have "many commentators" you wish to share, please do feel free to discuss your sources here on this page.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 11:34, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Please add sources to end of intro

Add this immediately after last sentence of intro

{{sfn|Nightingale|McDonald|Vallée|2006|p=707}}<ref>{{cite book |first=M. |last=Davis |title=Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World |publisher=Verso |location=London |year=2001 |isbn=1-85984-739-0 |page=9 |url= |ref=harv}}</ref> Add this to References section * {{citation |title=Florence Nightingale on Health in India |last1=Nightingale |first1=Florence |last2=McDonald |first2=Lynn |last3=Vallée |first3=Gérard |isbn=978-0-88920-468-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=amE1cz1fkIkC |year=2006 |publisher=Wilfrid Laurier University Press |location=Waterloo, Ont }}

Information is valid but must be properly cited

(Taking a deep breath) Hi Libdems23. Welcome to Wikipedia. I am very familiar with Florence Nightingale's speech etc. I hope I can bring you up to speed on the state of this article. In a few words, it is massively inadequate. However, this topic is nearly as deep and complex as any non-technical article I have ever seen.

I am working on a complete top-to-bottom rewrite in my personal userspace. NOTE this rewrite is MONTHS from being finished... You are invited to read (but not edit) that rewrite here: User:Lingzhi/sandbox. You are invited to comment about the rewrite here: User talk:Lingzhi/sandbox. As for your concerns: Look down toward the bottom of the rewrite, and you'll see there's a section titled "Debate over primary cause". That's where I'm gonna put the opinions of scholars about why the famine occurred. there are three main schools of thought: it was England's fault because they were incompetent and overwhelmed bunglers; it was England's fault because they were heartless and/or racist, and it was no one's fault but the result of natural disasters. All three will be given their due voice. Here is a very important point: Wikipedia cannot choose among these explanations in this case, because the scholars themselves disagree. We can only report the consensus view, and if there is no consensus, we report each view and say there is no consensus. So... please do be patient... I hope this helps.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 10:07, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

This is racist and inaccurate. Nobody, to my knowledge, believes that it was England's fault. England had no role. The British Government (there is no English government}, the British Cabinet and the War Cabinet had a role - well documented in the standard sources. The Government of India had a role. The Viceroy/Governor General was a Scotsman, not an Englishman. The majority of the elite Indian Civil Service was ethnically Indian, with many of the ethnically European being Indian born. There were for example only 30 'European' members of the Indian Civil Service in Bengal in 1943, including teachers, prison officers, foresters and agriculturists. Within the Indian Civil Service there were at least three conflicting views on the famine, as shown in the Famine Inquiry Commission, Braund, Pinell, Knight and various memoirs and books such as Stevenson. The action taken depended on which faction was on top, and of course Wavell taking over from Linlithgow as Viceroy. If a civil service disagrees with a policy, they can make sure it is not implemented. And the actions, failures to act, and refusals to act of the Provincial Governments were seen at the time and by later commentators to be crucial. The orthodox view, that a shortage caused by natural disasters and wartime problems was allowed to turn into a famine because officials and politicians chose to believe that Bengal had plenty of food does not fit into any of your categories. Many people chose to blame the Military even claiming that they deliberately caused the famine, though the fact that they stood up to Churchill and the War Cabinet is well documented in standard sources, as is the damage that was indeed caused by the military. So the situation is far more complicated than Lingzhi recognizes. Which makes it all the more worrying that people continue to remove academically respectable, though not necessarily right, explanations, any that do not meet their own prejudices, rather than presenting the alternatives.AidWorker (talk) 11:58, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

(Taking an even deeper breath) I'm glad you're familiar with that one source, but there are a dozen more where that came from confirm the same point. I understand that it's important to include all viewpoints on a complex disaster such as this one, but equating the view that this was simply an unavoidable "natural" disaster is analogous to blaming racial disparities between African-Americans and white Americans on "natural" conditions, not on institutional discrimination. While there is a large quantity of academic sources supporting the former hypothesis, they were mostly published before the late 20th century, similar to explanations of the Bengal famine not being the responsibility of the British government. I'm sure you can see why it'd be problematic to provide equal share of the wiki and legitimacy to such opinions of African-Americans, even if such conclusions haven't been drawn about foreigners until recently. Additionally, delineating the different explanations of British responsibility in the way you mentioned isn't necessarily helpful, as most sources I've come across (including on the wiki page) include basic apathy and and resultant incompetence, (along with the fact that, erm, the British were already committing brutal human rights violations in order to continuing colonizing India, and how that relates to the overall good administration of the region) as part of the overall reasoning of why the British willfully had this disaster happen. In other words, I think it's unwise to differentiate the general racism with the apathy/incompetence, when the latter is an aspect of the former. As I've already mentioned, I can provide numerous (more) sources to support these views and others like it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Libdems23 (talk • contribs) 22:09, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

First, the reason to distinguish between them is because the literature itself explicitly draws that distinction and explicitly argues over it. For example (highlights added):

Sen and others have described the famine as the product mainly of bureaucratic bungling and accompanying market failure. I see it instead as largely due to the failure of the British authorities to make good, for war-strategic reasons, a genuine food deficit.

— Ó Gráda, 2009 pp. 190–91

There is strong evidence that there was a food deficit, and indeed there was a failure to import, for reasons largely removed from the page, but it is difficult to argue that there was a war-strategic reason for what many see as bungling: the Chiefs of Imperial General Staff saw the famine as effectively taking India out of the war, and possibly threatening the loss of India. Also recently removed from the page.AidWorker (talk) 11:58, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

In the context of Britain's war in Asia, the Bengal Famine cannot be understood merely as the story of a particularly grotesque form of 'collateral damage' (as it sometimes has been); it must also be understood... as the direct outcome of intentional policies and priorities that many, including high officials in the colonial government, fully recognized would bring dire hardship (and even starvation) to the people of India. In their fight against imperial Japan, Britain and its allies were willing to sacrifice Bengal in order to pursue war elsewhere, as well as to regain their lost supremacy in Asia... The Bengal famine was no 'accident' of war-time 'bungling', but rather was the direct product of colonial and war-time ideologies and calculations that (knowingly) exposed the poor of Bengal to annihilation through deprivation.

— Mukherjee, 2015, pp. 251–52

The key point is that we cannot filter the literature through the lens of our own perceptions of Truth and emphasize Truth as we see it (that would be a violation of WP:NPOV); we can only report what the literature says... the whole body of the literature, I mean.

Second, it's not the case at all that I'm only familiar with one source. Glancing at the "Bengal" directory/folder on the computer I'm using at this moment, I see...hmmm... 129 pdf documents... but let's assume some of those are duplicates and say OK maybe 110 or so. And I have read them. Some of them I have read repeatedly. I'm not bragging or trying to say I have some superior degree of authority. I'm just trying to bring you into this conversation fully informed about its participants.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:14, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Collecting a large number of papers on the subject only helps slightly: much more difficult and vastly more important is to collect the evidence (it has taken me thirty years in libraries and swopping with other researchers). Then, to analyse it, you need to know an awful lot of agricultural economics, including agricultural market economics, food policy, agricultural statistics, and the political economy of agriculture. And a decade or so of working in government in a grain-staple developing country to put it into context. This is emphatically not a task for postgrads.AidWorker (talk) 15:48, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Referencing

Could people confine themselves to the standard academic referencing. Do not reference Singh 2018 for a fact on what happened in 1943: he or she cannot possibly have observed it. Find Singh's source and give the reference as Mahalanobis (1943) cited in Singh (2018). Better still, find Mahalanobis, check what he did in fact say and its contex, and give the Mahalanobis reference. It is never satisfactory to give second hand references, and they should be avoided in Wikipedia wherever possible. In this case, where the facts are 73 years old, the probability is that A cited B, who cited C, who cited D, who cited E, so the reference has probably been garbled. In fact, E is likely to have cited F who made it up, or to have found it on someone's blog. Since the subject is very political it is very common for people to make up facts, to distort them, to leave out the context, to hide the fact that the original author surrounded the statement with caveats, to leave out the next three sentences saying why the original author rejected this hypothesis etc. All meaning that you should check the original source. And when commentators disagree on the facts, using the same sources, Wikipedia needs to know what the original source said.

And of course proper referencing means that it is easy for readers to get copies of the originals.AidWorker (talk) 16:04, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

On the contrary, Wikipedia should cite recent scholarship as much as possible, earlier scholarship less, and primary sources rarely and very carefully. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, which is completely different from academic research. Original sources are vital in academic research, but have little or no place in an encyclopedia, which by definition is a summary of the existing scholarship. Editors have no business performing their own analysis of original sources. --Worldbruce (talk) 18:19, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

On the contrary, failure to check citations makes the entry useless or worse. Similarly, failure to check statements against a range of scholarship makes bias inevitable. You end up with fabricated evidence supporting conspiracy theories and outright invention. As has happened on this page from time to time.

COMMENTS ON ARTICLE AS AT 25 JANUARY

The introduction has been modified to produce major falsehoods in the first paragraph. Originally it had the statement Estimates are that between 1.5 and 4 million people died of starvation, malnutrition and disease, out of Bengal’s 60.3 million population, half of them dying from disease after food became available in December 1943 This has been changed to Approximately 3 million people died due to famine. Generally the estimates are between 1.5 and 4 million, taking into account deaths due to starvation, malnutrition and disease, out of Bengal's 60.3 million population. That is to say a) A perfectly balanced statement and defensible statement, academically respectable, has been removed. The reference to the standard paper on the subject, (Dyson and Maharatna) has been removed, effectively removing the links to a discussion of data problems and how people reached such a range of results. b) The editor has replaced it with his own preference, choosing two papers which happened to agree with him. c) The Sen paper cited is dodgy at best, comparing the results of one unreliable developing country census with one grossly unreliable census, and ignoring the ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Partition which could well have explained the apparent excess mortality. The Dyson and Maharatna paper points to further ‘errors’ as was made clear elsewhere in the Wikipedia article. d) The Lazarro reference is due to a 788-word set of statements on a web site, one which gives no referencing and makes a string of other errors. There is no reference or explanation for his figure of 3 million dead. There is no excuse for citing this rubbish on Wikipedia. e) The correct reference for the 1.5 to 4 million people, (Dyson and Maharatna) was replaced by a reference to something written by a David Myers on a website. I have not been able to check this because my virus checker says the website is dangerous. Nor have I been able to find anything about David Myers and Bengal on the internet.

In the same paragraph the statement ‘Although food production was higher in 1943 compared to 1941, demand exceeded the supply.’ This is a highly contentious statement, again attributed to Myers. But the section in Wikipedia, drawing on Dewey’s magisterial work, shows that contemporary statisticians were agreed that the statistics available were meaningless and no such conclusions could be drawn. The Indian statisticians who developed the systems used worldwide now produced further evidence that the statistics were not just meaningless but biased. Anyone who has the most basic knowledge of agricultural statistics, indeed anyone who has done Statistics 1 in any social science must agree. A major function of Wikipedia is to say where no evidence exists, not to present fantasies and wild guesses which have no evidence to support them.

Similar changes appear throughout the re-edit. In addition, large chunks summarizing mainstream views have been removed. The effect of the military is of more than passing interest; many people in the former Bengal and Pakistan have been raised to believe that Punjab ‘deliberately starved Bengal’; that there is a school of thought that massive corruption and the breakdown of the social system was more important than lack of food; that there is a school of thought that there has been no famine in a democracy; that there is widespread ignorance of who had what powers at the time etc. No doubt all these sections could be improved, but they cannot be removed because one person has different views.

I would ask that whoever was responsible for these changes makes no further changes of any sort whatsoever to this article.AidWorker (talk) 11:37, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

References

FAD POV

Sen is dodgy? Are you talking about Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize winner, or some minor unknown Sen?

I am traveling and cannot engage at length. Calling Amrtya Sen dodgy is the hallmark of a FAD POV. I will (must in fact) let everything stand unaltered for 3 weeks, but then we must have a very serious conversation. I plan to wipe this article clean and replace with a top to bottom rewrite. This version has 3 weeks to stand unaltered and approx. 6 or 7 weeks to exist. I am prepared to bring sources to the table at that time  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:06, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

You are expected to be aware of the literature and have some knowledge of the theory. Calling something a "FAD POV" because it mentions the well known (and pretty obvious) criticisms of one bit of work by one person whose conclusions you personally like does not give any confidence in the rewrite you are proposing to do. And no, the fact that you like a person does not mean that everything he wrote is perfect, nor that it would pass the referees of a modern journal.

Nor is it acceptable to replace a factually correct article with one containing crass misinformation.AidWorker (talk) 11:06, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

I find it extraordinary that a comment on the methodology of one of many estimates of the deaths caused by the famine should result in the assertion that it was highly biased (POV) because of what Lingzhi choses to believe (wrongly) are my views on a completely different subject, the causes of famine.AidWorker (talk) 11:58, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

VERIFIABLE FACTS

Wikipedia demands above all verifiable facts. Presenting false facts on famine, this famine in particular, puts lives at risk. People will make incorrect decisions in dealing with future famine situations. It is, therefore, of the greatest importance that the verifiable facts are made known.

Most of the verifiable facts were in the public domain in the 1940s and 1950s, and the secret British papers were released in the 1970s (e.g. Mansergh, and the Cabinet Papers). Some further information came to light later, e.g. Brennan, Greenough. It is increasingly unlikely that new information will come to light. On the contrary, much of the information used by, say Greenough or Dewey is now very difficult or impossible to access. Insiders in the Indian Army have been unable to find the information I sought on food consumption by the Army, etc. and believe that it no longer exists. The article put up sets out the verifiable facts from the sources used by all significant commentators. All would agree with 90% of the article, though some would no doubt prefer to have more emphasis given to evidence supporting their own point of view and to have less emphasis on verifiable evidence that does not. Putting in verifiable facts used by most significant commentators, and supported by the sources used by all serious commentators is not 'original research'.

We know that fabrication of academic research is rife: the editors of medical journals in the UK for example believe that one in ten papers are faked. Unfortunately in a highly political area such as the Bengal Famine, much of the work is faked to support one viewpoint or another (usually very crudely faked). Many of the honest commentators lack the skills needed, and any professional in the appropriate areas of Agricultural Economics will find a string of fatal errors in most papers in the subject within an hour. The suggestion that editors should present the views of commentators instead of verifiable facts would make Wikipedia a joke. The suggestion that editors should not check whether the citatations used by commentators are correct before incorporating them is culpable. The suggestion that editors should cite more recent commentators rather than earlier ones when the verifiable facts have been known for 60 or 70 years is absurd. The suggestion that editors should treat all commentators as equal is absurd.

All of which means that verifiable facts are all important.AidWorker (talk) 11:06, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

• @AidWorker: Thank you for your comments. I am typing on a cell phone and so certainly cannot edit the article for 2 or 3 weeks. Perhaps it's best anyhow to let the article rest a while. Are you, for the record, asserting that a crop shortfall was the principal cause of the famine, and that a lack of shipping was the reason the UK neither sent nor permitted much foreign aid? My contention is that Wikipedia cannot assume a stance on either issue, because both are rather hotly contested.

The article does not suggest any such thing. The article sets out verifiable facts, and states that people have drawn a range of conclusions on the subject (including crop shortfall and the allocation of shipping), which is what Wikipedia is all about. Lingzhi's many statements above confirm that he has not read the article, let alone standard readings on the subject, that he believes that one commentator is infallible, that he fantasizes about what people have said and their beliefs, that he fantasizes about their motives for writing what he believes to be biased comment, that he fantasizes about their beliefs on wider issues of economics and that he is unhappy about the inclusion of verifiable facts that do not support his beliefs. It would save Wikipedia editors a lot of time if he were to submit his novel methodology, evidence and conclusions to a respected academic journal in the field such as the Journal of Peasant Studies and got their approval before putting his ideas on Wikipedia.AidWorker (talk) 11:22, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

• • Thank you for your interesting suggestions and equally interesting summary of your various opinions. On the contrary, however, I have been reading and far-reaching sources for very nearly a year now. I hope to revisit these and other topics 3 weeks or so from now when I return home. I also eagerly anticipate the day perhaps 6 or 7 weeks from now when I completely replace the current article with the top-to-bottom rewrite in my User:Lingzhi/sandbox, which everyone is welcome to view.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 12:11, 29 January 2017 (UTC)