Talk:Saurabh Kalia/Archive 1

Archive 1

citations added and article made more neutral

Only one usage of word brilliant is present. Citation to the same has been added from an official government websiteSaurabh Kalia where he is indeed described as a "brilliant" student. considering that user N1ugl falsely refers to "many" instances of words "brilliant" and "excellent", neutrality of his own objections is possibly suspect.

--Abhisri 02:05, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

read more carefully

I said there were many words _like_ excellent and brilliant. Meaning many words that had the same glamorizing effect, not necessarily repeated use of the same word. N1ugl 19:55, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

please be more specific in future

1. Your objection was as to there being no citation for such words. To quote you.

"There are many passages with words like 'brilliant' and 'excellent' that have no citations."

You are misquoting yourself as well. I can still read "many passages" not "many words". Grammatically speaking, your sentence will be assumed to imply multiple occurrence of "brilliant" or "excellent", but I digress.

2. He has indeed been described at least as a brilliant student, having landed scholarships, as per official government sites. Citation regards same as been added.

Regardless, article now is far more neutral than earlier. Glamorization has been removed. Abhisri 05:09, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

neutrality

The neutrality of this article is certainly suspect. There are many passages with words like 'brilliant' and 'excellent' that have no citations. N1ugl 21:02, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

The neutrality of this article is indeed suspect; therefore I added the POV template. The frequent use of phrases or words like "Kargil Martyr", "unprecedented brutal torture", "the Pakistan army had indulged in the most heinous acts" does not represent a neutral point of view. So far, no references have been made about Pakistan's position concerning the incident which would certainly be helpful since it could provide a less one-sided view. If no sources/references from Pakistan can be obtained, at least the language should be changed in a way that represents a neutral point of view. PINTofCARLING (talk) 17:43, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

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Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Saurabh Kalia/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Lead section is missing. It should summarize the information on who this guy is. GDibyendu (talk) 17:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Last edited at 17:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 05:30, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Rank

According to our article, Kalia was a lieutenant at the time of capture. Can anyone work out why and when he gained promotion to captain? If it was a honorific posthumous award I would have expected the numerous slavish interview sources etc to say so as it is part of his glorification. But they seem not to do so. I am slightly concerned he may never actually have been promoted and that the captaincy may just be something that has developed in the "folklore" (poor word, sorry) surrounding him. Was he promoted in absentia while a captive? - Sitush (talk) 13:24, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

[1] says he was Lt at time of funeral (and that the Indian Express carried a story "condemning the politicisation" of the funeral). - Sitush (talk) 14:09, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Even in 2001 he was being designated a Lt - see [2]. It is very odd and I am increasingly of the opinion that sloppy journalism might be behind it. - Sitush (talk) 14:18, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

[3] says he was promoted on the battlefield but refers to him as Lt throughout! - Sitush (talk) 16:28, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

According to [4] it was a posthumous promotion. Yet again, sources are differing on even the most basic information. I think the solution to this sort of thing has to be to ignore Indian news sources if there is a reliable alternative. I know we usually say "show all points of view from reliable sources" but, honestly, it has been demonstrated time and again that Indian news sources, with the possible exception of The Hindu, really are not reliable. - Sitush (talk) 05:02, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Martyrdom

To say that the guy is a "martyr" is to use a subjective word, just as one person's "freedom fighter" is another person's "terrorist". Please do not do it - it doesn't matter if all 1.2bn people in India agree with you (which they don't), there are many more billions of people who would prefer the neutral "killed". Thanks. 146.200.49.240 (talk) 12:44, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

"Martyred" is a pov term that, for sure, the Pakistani side won't agree with; "killed" is accurate and neutral.

Pakistan say they didn't torture, the Indian govts have been reluctant to pursue the matter, the post mortem hasn't been independently verified and the govt of the day needed something to offset bad news in their conduct of the war; hence it is an "allegation" made by India but denied by Pakistan and unconfirmed by other agencies, including various other govts whom the guy's father approached. - Sitush (talk) 07:20, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

It is interesting that Kalia is always the figurehead here. Yes, he was the patrol leader but the post mortems allege that the list of injuries was spread among all six of them, not entirely inflicted on Kalia, yet it is difficult to find anything more than a name-check of the other five soldiers. I suspect the reason is because Kalia's father has been basically running a one-man PR campaign about his son, recruiting sympathetic journalists and the MP to his cause. It is notable just how many sources derive from uncritical interviews with him.

A New York Times article I found after protection was put in place here noted that such alleged atrocities took place on both sides during Kargil, which also should be mentioned for balance. Alas, there are few mentions of the soecific incident outside India, which perhaps further evidences that this is mostly about one family grieving for their son, and even they say they haven't seen the full PM report. This trail is likely to run cold soon as the parents are in their 70s and no-one else really seems to care except as a means of rallying Hindu nationalists to a cause. - Sitush (talk) 07:41, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Even the Govt of India rejects this misuse of "martyr", eg [5].

No term like 'martyr' or 'shaheed' in our lexicon: Defence, home ministries [6]

- Sitush (talk) 08:37, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

And it seems the govt is also wary of exposing itself to criticism of its own alleged atrocities - [7]. The article needs to be updated for this (there are other sources) as it goes a long way to explaining the issue. The Early life section also needs work because the first source only supports parents' names (not d.o b. etc) and the second source, which is poor because it is hagiographic and makes ludicrously unknowable claims such as that the men did not crack under torture, doesn't support anything we say about education except that he won awards. Sitush (talk) 08:45, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

By the way, the IP above is me. Something weird going on with my use of the mobile app - I am logged into it but often it shows IP rather than username, sorry. Sitush (talk) 09:22, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

[8] notes the poor Indian press attitude at the time, which did not question some obvious issues with the government narrative. Eg, like me now, it wonders why the heck Pakistan would even voluntarily return mutilated bodies and thus damage its standing internationally. "Reporters either did not care, or practised self-censorship in the 'national interest'" - Sitush (talk) 14:15, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I will be solving problems one by one, but the lead is POV right now. What do you mean by "allegedly tortured"? See these sources [9][10] Surely there are enough problems but lets start solving with this one first. If more reliable sources are firm that torture took place then we must not use the word 'allegedly' and that is the case here. Pakistan's denial is also added after all. Capankajsmilyo^{(Talk | Infobox assistance)} 05:08, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

There are enough reliable sources for referring him as "first martyr" as well. See this from New Indian Express and this book. Unless we have reliable source say there was someone else who was the 'first martyr', I don't see how the removal is justified. Capankajsmilyo^{(Talk | Infobox assistance)} 05:41, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

There are no reliable sources that say it happened and which are not contradicted by other sources. I have already explained that the Indian government and media are not reliable for things like this because they are skewed by nationalism, and his family by grief; international sources are either citing those or have raised doubts. And the Pakistanis also.

It is contradictory to say "X was tortured and killed. Y denies it". And I would hope you have heard of the old quote that the first casualty in war is the truth.

I have no idea who is telling the truth here, sources disagree and even in one case an Indian writer raises concerns about the official narrative in their country. I can both imagine it happened, because horrible things do happen in war, and also imagine why it might be exaggerated or even fabricated. - Sitush (talk) 13:00, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

"Martyr" doesn't seem to be an encyclopedic term to use in the lead. Perhaps some note in one of the sections of the article makes sense, as the "Saurabh Kalia as martyr" perception does have cachet in a few sources and in a particular ideological group.Pectore^talk 23:17, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Agree. I am not averse to saying that he is popularly called a martyr by some Indian people, although the government officially rejects terms such as that and instead refers to battle casualty." We should be able to source that and I think I have seen some sources explain that the entire "martyr" naming thing has been driven by right-wing Hindu nationalists. - Sitush (talk) 04:55, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Injuries

Does anyone know where the list of alleged injuries came from? Sources (both cited here and via google) seem to become increasingly lurid in their detail as the years go by but another common comment in them is that the post mortem results would not be released because it was contrary to army regulations (eg [11]. If the info was not released, where did it come from? His father says the evidence would have helped his campaign, yet sources seem to say he knows the very details that he says he doesn't know!

We know that Indian news sources often plagiarise material and copy/paste old stuff without checks - is this an example of something like that? Are there any official govt reports now (even ones that have not been independently verified)?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Sitush (talk • contribs) 16:26, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 5 September 2020

The following content is sourced from a newspaper which makes the article politically biased.

"However, there was no independent international observer at the post-mortem and The Guardian noted that the announcement of the results came in a scripted ministerial speech replete with "sabre-rattling" at a time when India was desperate to gain a propaganda advantage after a humiliating period of conflict."

Calling speech by India's state representative, a 'scripted rattling' & Kargil War as 'humiliating' for India despite of the fact that India won the war are examples of content biased towards Pakistan. Wikipedia should be encyclopaedic & free from such bias. Kindly remove these lines. User8573 (talk) 06:47, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

 Done That was clearly an example of loaded language and sensationalism. It was also a case of WP:EDITORIALIZING and labelling and non-neutral pov. I have made a change. Thank you for pointing this out. - hako9 (talk) 07:49, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 4 April 2021

change killed to martyred Areyoulisteningtothis0 (talk) 07:39, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: WP:NPOV. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 20:56, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 14 August 2021

kindly replace the word died with "martyred", This is the appropriate word for a deseased soldier. Moharaj04 (talk) 17:53, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit extended-protected}} template. ––Sirdog9002 (talk) 19:17, 14 August 2021 (UTC)