Talk:The History of Doing

A fact from The History of Doing appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 22 December 2019 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that The History of Doing describes a fundamentalist Hindu protest, with many women part of it, in favour of sati, the burning of widows?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2019/December. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The History of Doing.

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Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by 97198 (talk) 12:44, 13 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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ALT0:... that The History of Doing describes a fundamentalist Hindu protest, with many women part of it, in favour of sati, the burning of widows? Kumar describes the shock of facing a fundamentalist Hindu demonstration – with many women on it – in favour of sati (the burning of widows). (Socialist Review, July/August 1994)
- ALT1:... that in The History of Doing the author gives counter-arguments to the claim that the women's movement in India is an unnecessary import from the West? It also offers a strong counterblast to the hostile claim that feminism in India is an irrelevant import from the West (Independent)
- ALT2:... that the illustrated and widely read Indian feminist book The History of Doing was possible because of a Norwegian grant? Source: There was no money; only a couple of small grants. A Norwegian organisation had given a grant of Rs 1.4 lakh that led to a beautifully illustrated and much-read book: Radha Kumar's The History of Doing (Telegraph)

Reviewed: Bin Cheng
Comment: I have quoted some sources inline. Earwigs copyvio detector catches these. Do please let me know if I have missed anything which isn't permissible.

Created by DiplomatTesterMan (talk). Self-nominated at 09:14, 9 November 2019 (UTC).[reply]

ALT0 could be rephrased using the words - Altruistic suicide. DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 08:58, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That would be a mistake, from various points of view! Johnbod (talk) 22:31, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Johnbod, the sati article describes sati as - "in which a widow sacrifices herself by sitting atop her deceased husband's funeral pyre." Doesn't this make sense in relation to what it says on the altruistic suicide page - "Altruistic suicide is sacrifice of one's life to save or benefit others, for the good of the group, or to preserve the traditions and honor of a society. It is always intentional."?

(I just want to add, I know very little about both "Sati" or "Altruistic suicide" so if the two terms are not connectable, whatever I wrote about rephrasing ALT0 can just be ignored.)

But I have a doubt now that in ALT0 "the burning of widows" could only be understood as that the widows are forcefully burnt on the pyre, which wasn't always the case, as far as I have understood sati from its article? DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 05:39, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There is even a line on the Altruistic suicide page: "Indian, Japanese, and other widows sometimes participate in an end of life ritual after the death of a husband..." DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 05:43, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct to have doubts! Johnbod (talk) 16:21, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

New enough, long enough, and thoroughly sourced. Earwig finds the marked quotes but no problematic copying. QPQ done. I much prefer ALT0 (as originally phrased, not the euphemistic suggested alternatives!) as it is shocking and hooky rather than technical and jargony (ALT1) or only mildly intriguing in its juxtaposition of unlikely countries (ALT2). Good to go with ALT0. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:53, 18 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]