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discussion and question

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This list-article is under construction. It seems to me to be an obviously beneficial list for Wikipedia, and creating it is meant by me to facilitate improvement of related list-article List of Indian castes, which has heretofore included many scheduled caste items which more properly belong here, I believe. I am open to discussion, including about renaming this list, and to development of this list.

Question: Is the Indian constitution in the public domain, or is it otherwise justified to copy-paste from it the list of 1,108 scheduled castes. I think it would not be a copyrightable passage, based on extension from my understanding of U.S. copyright law, which holds that any mere list not reflecting creativity is not copyrightable. I would like to proceed by copying in the list from the 1950 constitution already referenced in this article, and keep it organized by the 25 regions, but would be happy to receive comments. --doncram 19:47, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am given advice (from editor Sitush, copied from my Talk page): "BTW, using the 1950 stuff for List of Scheduled Castes is going to bring you a lot of grief. It is so out of date as to be useless and I would suggest that if you really want to go down that road then you rename it to List of Scheduled Castes in 1950. Please be aware that there are numerous names shared by several different communities, which can make linking to articles a dodgy thing to do. Even more so because some castes have changed their names. Furthermore, the lists are actually created at regional level, not nationally. The 1950 list was really little more than a paradigm. "
Okay, thanks. I assume that there is a definitive current source somewhere, about what are the currently recognized Scheduled Castes. It may fluctuate. For a list-article in wikipedia, I would think that the notable Scheduled Castes to be listed are any that have been officially designated, even if they have later been de-designated (which should be noted). Probably some table format is needed. The 1950 constitution is documentation that its items were listed, I assume.
I assume this may be handled like lists of historic buildings are handled. Buildings may be listed on a historic register (and sometimes delisted later), and the official designation is something we can hang our hat upon, for defining list scope. De-designated items can be moved to a separate table below a main table of the currently designated items. --doncram 20:21, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try to give you a primer but you'll be getting it in a few chunks. Feel free to query as things go along.

Firstly, there are presently 35 units immediately below the national unit that is India. They comprise 28 States and 7 Union Territories, and it is a federal system of government. I'll call them "regions" henceforth - less of a mouthful. The difference between this figure and the 25 that you note above is due mainly to the Linguistic division of states in 1956 and subsequent similar legislation. More changes are expected with, for example, the Telangana movement gaining a lot of attention at national level. The names and boundaries of a fair few of the regions have changed also, eg: Uttaranchal is now Uttarakhand, and of course some of them are disputed, including Jammu and Kashmir.

Each region has its own legislation wrt the Scheduled groups, and those pieces of legislation change from time to time. I'll compile a list for you in the next hour or so.

As far as your copyright concern is, erm, concerned, I think it would be best to speak with Moonriddengirl. - Sitush (talk) 20:51, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As at 2001, for Scheduled Castes (it can be different for Scheduled Tribes). Names as they were then:

  1. Andhra Pradesh - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  2. Arunachal Pradesh - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Lists (Modification) Order, 1956 and as inserted by Act 69 of 1986
  3. Assam - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  4. Bihar - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  5. Chandigarh - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Lists (Modification) Order, 1956 and added by Act 31 of 1966
  6. Chhatisgarh - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976 and as inserted by Act 28 of 2000
  7. Dadra & Nagar Haveli - The Constitution (Dadra & Nagar Haveli) Scheduled Castes Order, 1962
  8. Daman & Diu - The Constitution (Goa, Daman and Diu) Scheduled Castes Order, 1968
  9. Delhi NCR - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Lists (Modification) Order, 1956
  10. Goa - The Constitution (Goa, Daman and Diu) Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders, 1968
  11. Gujarat - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  12. Haryana - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  13. Himachal Pradesh - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  14. Jammu and Kashmir - The Constitution ( Jammu & Kashmir) Scheduled Castes Order, 1956
  15. Jharkhand - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976 and as inserted by Act 30 of 2000
  16. Karnataka - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976 and as inserted by Act 39 of 1991
  17. Kerala - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  18. Madhya Pradesh - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  19. Maharashtra - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  20. Manipur - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  21. Meghalaya - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  22. Mizoram - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Lists (Modification) Order, 1956 and as inserted by Act 81 of 1971
  23. Orissa - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  24. Pondicherry - The Constitution (Pondicherry) Scheduled Castes Order, 1964
  25. Punjab (India) - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  26. Rajasthan - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  27. Sikkim - The Constitution (Sikkim) Scheduled Castes Order, 1978
  28. Tamil Nadu - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  29. Tripura - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  30. Uttaranchal - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976 and as inserted by Act 29 of 2000
  31. Uttar Pradesh - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976
  32. West Bengal - The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976

- Sitush (talk) 21:19, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Within each region there may be areas where the scheduling does not apply and those areas are not necessarily the same for all the communities, although often they are. Equally, not all of any community might be scheduled. - Sitush (talk) 21:21, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

India is, of course, a huge country. It has a population of something like 1.2 billion and numerous languages. It also has pretty poor literacy rates, especially outside the major cities. This causes problems with identification, especially since names are being transliterated into English: there are often numerous English variants of a given name and also so many problems with spelling in the native scripts that the en-WP India project introduced WP:INDICSCRIPT. Consequently, an English transliteration that gives the Goud community of Andhra Pradesh also gives the completely unrelated Gouds of Goa/Kerala. If, as often happens, the full qualifier is omitted - Goud (Gowd/Gowda etc) Saraswat Brahmin - then you need to know the background. Worse still is when the names are truly identical: there are, for example, several communities called Mon but they are unrelated. We have numerous articles where a full set of redirects do not exist either, ie: there are many names for a given community but we have either no redirects from those names to the chosen article title or we are lacking all of them. Different regions may refer to a community under a different name when in fact they are the same community. - Sitush (talk) 21:51, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

India is a pretty corrupt country and it is also chaotic. In fact, I've had quite a few Indian contributors tell me that the endemic corruption and chaos is more depressing than the well-known issue of poverty. This chaos is reflected in official websites, which often host vague or outdated or undated or contradictory statements and documents. The standard required for entry to the Indian Civil Service is extremely high but the levels of corruption are such that civil servants are often bound by their terms of service to move to a different region and department every couple of years: there is little continuity that would enable the chaos to subside.

It is also a country where social position and respect is a huge importance, even today. Various communities form, disappear, split and rename themselves, seemingly almost at the drop of a hat. Much of this is intended to boost their social standing, either by disassociating themselves from a group or by associating themselves with another group. One of our best articles that discusses this is probably Nair. And note that as far as modern academics are concerned, Nair/Nayar is not a caste, just as Yadav is not a caste ... but you will see many lazy references to them being a caste. It was and still is the case that entire communities arrive or disappear between censuses. The enumerator's handbook for the 2011 census should give you some sense of the issues (pages 24-26). I know that you may think this to be irrelevant but it is something that you really need to understand if you are to work your way through the issues. - Sitush (talk) 22:12, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at your above lecture, I have the strongest impression that you have spent zero years in India and I would be completely unsurprised if it turns out that whatever you know of India is only through the telly, movies and books (mostly written by westerners who themselves have spent little time in India but like to think of India as "weird"). Right?OrangesRyellow (talk) 10:21, 25 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
OrangesRyellow, do you have any factual or educational addition to make here, or do you only go round looking to attack and insult the people who are actually doing all the hard work? -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:29, 25 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I am only trying to clear the hurdles in the way of working on this article. Sitush has tried to create the impression that India is a chaotic country and that the official sources on India are also chaotic (without showing any sources to support his claims). He keeps telling Doncram again and again at various places that Doncram is unfamiliar with this subject area. But then, Sitush is also an amateur and no more. I am only trying to set the record straight so that people can work on this article with official sources in the usual way. I see no unusual problems in dealing with the subject of this article and even if some problems crop up, we should deal with them when they do crop up. I would certainly like to help when such problems crop up, but do not approve the negative climate about sourcing that is being created now. I do not think it is helpful to demoralize people by talking about problems in vague terms without pointing out any specific problems in the article. I think it is quite easy to write this article by sticking closely with what the sources say.OrangesRyellow (talk) 12:41, 25 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sitush is pointing out that the official sources are many and complex, for various reasons, and that is perfectly true. And it's not at all surprising that the documentation is indeed so complex, given the size of India, its population, and the vast array of different cultural groups that go to make up the nation. And before you ask, yes I have spent time there. I loved it, and I kind of think of India as "weird and wonderful" - it's one of the most rewarding places I've ever been (and I've traveled a lot). I think Indian bureaucracy does astonishing well considering the sheer size of the task, even though there is undeniably chaos and corruption. (And that's a criticism of politicians, not an insult to Indians - there are venal and corrupt politicians everywhere, like the expenses thieves who were exposed recently in the UK). Sitush is also correct that Doncram is not familiar with the subject - Sitush has spent a lot of time researching it, while Doncram has not. And the fact that he's an "amateur" is utterly irrelevant - we're all amateurs here. Now, do you know anything of official and reliable sources that might help this article? If you do, please feel free to contribute something positive, rather than continually bitching about the hard work of others. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:04, 25 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oranges, I was asked to explain by Doncram. I pointed out that it would be lengthy because Doncram is starting out here with a near-zero knowledge of the subject matter and an insistence that everything must be ok because there are official lists. I didn't even finish explaining the issues here because the discussion moved elsewhere. - Sitush (talk) 13:08, 25 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Any dispute about this list-article, at all?

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Is there any complaint about sourcing or anything else? None at all? Then why is an editor seeking to open a second AFD. It is an article built from official government sources only, what is there to dispute? --doncram 05:19, 25 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You know what the problems are likely to be. Or, rather, those problems have been explained to you, whether you choose to understand them or not. Your comment above is disingenuous, in particular because the AfD concerns userfying not deletion. - Sitush (talk) 12:53, 25 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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I thought that there was agreement that there is much danger in linking lists such as this to various Indic community articles and that this applies as much to redlinks as to bluelinks. For example, we set up redlinks here for community A in Punjab and, later, someone who is unaware of this list creates an article for a community called A but in Tamil Nadu - the link will turn blue even though the communities may not be the same. - Sitush (talk) 22:07, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't happen to understand what danger you refer to, out of any temporary mis-connections to articles, not sure if you need to expand on that or not. But every statement here in this article can and should be sourced, and should not be controversial, and it is not a great tragedy if a link temporarily goes to a disambiguation page or to a wrong article. I happen to notice several links to disambiguation pages in newly linked, pre-existing lists of Scheduled Castes in Rajasthan and in other states. No big deal.
Anyhow, this is an encyclopedia-building project, and it is proper and good to have redlinks; "redlinks help the wikipedia grow" is a truism. If and when a different article appears then that can be addressed. But, perhaps better, and avoiding all temporary mis-connection cases, would be to create articles right now for any redlinks identified. The current redlinks showing include:
for each of which we should perhaps create a short, sourced article to state that each term is named as a Scheduled Caste. If another editor chooses to develop any one of these topics differently to cover some other same-named group, then they would perform necessary disambiguation first, and there would never be any mis-connections. I note, by the way, that there has been apparent controversy at one or more of these already, e.g. Dhanak appears to have been deleted for lack of sourcing, previously. But a new short article with just fully sourced statement should be okay, and would be a step forward. Sitush, how about our proceeding that way, simply starting new articles where we see (by our detecting existence of a redlink) that it can be done easily? --doncram 23:31, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'll add that I am not sure what to do about combo cases, e.g. Balmiki, Chura, Bhangi which is a redlink. Maybe that is a good name to start an article about the Scheduled Caste? Or maybe the mention of Scheduled Caste status (or disambiguation) needs to appear in 3 separate articles at Balmiki, at Chura, and at Bhangi? --doncram 23:40, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Doncram, you are clueless about this stuff. That you do not appreciate the danger of what you call a temporary mislinking for Indic community articles just illustrates the point. Now sue me. I don't mind a block if that is what it takes to cause you to understand that you haven't got much clue what you are talking about in this sphere. Your attempts at polite-but-useless articles/disambig etc creating is becoming ridiculous and someone needs to draw a line. You yourself suggested that an RfC regarding your behaviour was probably best- so set up that RfC. You are playing a "polite incilivty" and wikilawyering game not just here but across other Indic lists and elsewhere. This attitudinal issue needs to be addressed at community level, as you said yourself. And, yes, this is ad hominem: I've had enough of the crap. - Sitush (talk) 01:31, 30 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Scope question: Is this supposed to include Scheduled Tribes, too?

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It appears to me that this is intended to be a list just of the Scheduled Castes, but the reference in the lead sentence to Scheduled Tribes leads me to wonder. IMO, it's important for the lead section of a list to clearly define the list scope. Can this one be clarified further? --Orlady (talk) 17:25, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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