Template:Did you know nominations/Kali the Mother (poem)

The following is an archived discussion of Kali the Mother (poem)'s DYK nomination. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page; such as this archived nomination"s (talk) page, the nominated article's (talk) page, or the Did you know (talk) page. Unless there is consensus to re-open the archived discussion here. No further edits should be made to this page. See the talk page guidelines for (more) information.

The result was: promoted by Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 15:12, 14 April 2013 (UTC).

Kali the Mother (poem)

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... that in the poem Kali the Mother written by Swami Vivekananda in 1898, the poet worshipped the terrible form of Hindu goddess Kali (pictured)?

Comment: Template:Did you know nominations/Gagak Item

Created/expanded by Titodutta (talk), Dwaipayanc (talk) Abhidevananda (talk). Nominated by Titodutta (talk) at 16:29, 4 March 2013 (UTC).

New article, started March 4. Size OK, 1844 bytes.

Image is free and in the article.

Citations in each paragraph.

Hook short enough and interesting

The writing needs some improvement. I'm not sure how to fix much of it, though, such as "Later, he became a worshipper of Kali and felt, worshipping of the tweakgoddess was his "special fad"." The article also needs more explanation and background: is there any reason why it was written in a houseboat? Is there a "good" form of the goddess? It's a little confusing and hard to understand the significance of the poem. Cmprince (talk) 04:04, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

a) His master, Ramakrishna, was a worshipper of Kali, and Vivekananda eventually became so. b) the "tweak" was a typing error, I have corrected it c) staying in houseboat at Dal Lake is like staying in hotels in Paris or London. Floating houseboats are equivalent of hotels in Kashmir (Shrinagar etc), that's the place's attraction and tradition, see the image. Want to visit? d) about the "good form" of goddess, you can read the "good article" Kali. There are lots of mythological details like the goddess started to kill all demons and that was her "terrible" form. To clariffy, generally a goddess is portrayed as polite, motherly, ever-blessing in every religion (Mother Mary (not a goddess though) or Durga). Kali has a similar form, and she has another terrible form too. If you see the image carefully, Kali has not worn any dress other than dress made of human (demon) heads and body parts. The poet has worshipped this form of the goddess as he wrote in another Bengali poetry "everyone desires for peaceful, undisturbed life, and finally lives a "selfish" life completely ignoring troubles and miseries around them. Poet noted, not too many people truly wants to take the path which is full of difficulties, criticism, adverse circumstances (in another poem the same poet felt, "The nobler is your heart, know for certain, The more must be your share of misery"). Still the poet, who dedicated his whole life for the welfare of downtrodden people wanted to follow the difficult path and that's why he worshipped the "terrible form" of the goddess which is generally avoided by others. --Tito Dutta (contact) 04:28, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I have to admit that I still don't completely understand, but I tried to add a little bit of context to the article. Cmprince (talk) 04:16, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Any other comment/idea? --Tito Dutta (contact) 03:12, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I was unable to find either quote from the article's Influence section at the cited source, so I have replaced those citations with "citation needed" templates. (I also marked an earlier quote in Background.) If these are in the Vivekenandra anthology, please let me know the pages and I'll be happy to take another look. Also, because the Aurobindo quote is so long, I made it a blockquote per WP:MOSQUOTE; such long quotes don't count toward the 1500 prose character minimum, and the article is now at 1414 characters and will need to be expanded.

However, there's another issue, and that's the analysis of the theme. The first few sentences are sourced to an article by Chander Bhat: I'm not entirely sure what makes him a reliable source, and there's something odd about the article, including its quoting of Carebanu Cooper, who is not identified at all. The final sentence is merely sourced to a page that quotes the entire poem yet contains no analysis, so the sentence contents appear to be original research. I think, for this one poem to be considered particularly notable, there needs to be more reliable sources with analysis of the poem's contents and importance, which could then be included in the article's contents. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:40, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I can find both the quotes in the cited source, which you have replaced now for some reason! --Tito Dutta (contact) 22:34, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Tito Dutta, I'm very sorry: for some reason the Aurobindo wasn't showing up that day: I suspect my browser might have not loaded the entire Bhat page, because, as noted, I certainly thought I searched for it in the right places. But I might have been on the wrong site. In any event, I apologize: I've restored the citations. However, that still leaves one "citation needed" template (I think it should be to page 16 of the anthology), the article too short, and the Chander Bhat article itself, about which I have my doubts. He mentions people as if they are relevant, even quotes from them, but doesn't identify who they are and why they should be considered important. If he doesn't say why, then I don't see how the article can use information or quotes from them as if they had expertise. What makes this a reliable source, or a site with assumed reliability? (One thing about the poem itself: the sources disagree whether the second word in the sixth line is "loose" or "loosed"; two sources have it one way, and two the other. Wikisource is in the former camp, the swamivivekananda.org.in is in the latter.)BlueMoonset (talk) 01:57, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Reference 1 added at the end of the paragraph supports that quote. Here is a quick link with search word. IKashmir is regularly cited in Wikipedia, they claim to be a news network and represent Kashmiri Pandit. We have an article Kashmiri Pandit, it seems they are somehow related to this community! I don't know about swamivivekananda.org.in (who owns/maintains it), but, if there are inconsistencies in poem wording, we should follow the Belur Math's version of the poem. --Tito Dutta (contact) 02:44, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Tito, the article still has only 1414 prose characters, which is below the minimum required for DYK, and has been that way since March 19. If you do not add more material to the article soon, it won't qualify. Good point about Belur Math being a more clearly reliable source than the swamivivekananda.org site. BlueMoonset (talk) 02:11, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

The expansion was done, but, was not updated here! --Tito Dutta (contact) 17:08, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Now that the article is expanded and the "citation needed" template has been taken care of, nomination needs a review. BlueMoonset (talk) 17:57, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

There is still at least one more item that really needs a citation. In the Theme section it talks about what the poem teaches. This can be very subjective and depends on interpretation so not only should this definitely have a citation but it would probably be even more helpful if it said, in text, who is interpreting the poem as teaching about embracing hardship, etc.

I'm also not sure about the hook. I think a lot of westerners won't understand the significance of the poet worshiping the "the terrible form" of Kali, even if you add the same link used in the article. To explain the difference between the two forms of Kali in the hook would add too many characters and also distract from the main article about the poem. I actually think it would be better to scrap that hook and go with a different angle. You could go with a hook about the poem being written on a houseboat after visiting Kheer Bhawani or even how it inspired freedom fighters Subhas Chandra Bose and Sri Aurobindo, etc. Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 06:19, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

a) I have removed the portion b) personally I am more willing to keep the "terrible form" in hook, since very rarely in any literature "terrible form" of any goddess is worshipped. Generally we worship "motherly, loving, caring" form of goddess (eg. Mother Mary). --Tito Dutta (contact) 14:05, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Referencing concerns have been addressed and the article passes all other DYK criteria for date, length, etc with no signs of close paraphrasing or plagiarism. Picture is on Commons with a suitably free license. Admittedly I still have my doubts that this is the best hook, especially with nothing linked to the phrase "terrible form" to explain what it is or why this is unique. Unfortunately we really can't use the Kali#Iconography link since that would be linking to the Kali article twice in the same hook. However, those concerns really aren't enough to hold up the nomination, IMO, since the biggest issue will be with people simply not understanding the significance of what the hook is saying and thus not clicking on the link. If this is the hook that you would like to go with than it is good to go. Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 02:23, 14 April 2013 (UTC)