Talk:Bengal famine of 1943/Archive 6

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Comments on proposed rewrite

Comment on Wikipedia entry. I have had to remove the new entry for the following reasons.

The entry was 25, 000 words, a small book, completely useless for anyone wanting to use an encyclopaedia as a quick reference. 5000 words is the very maximum. And this means very tight writing indeed.

The bulk of the submission is essays on various subjects, interesting elsewhere but mostly irrelevant here. Yes, we all know that the subcontinent had and still has serious agrarian problems. We all know that farmers around the world suffered from the Great Depression. We all know that the war caused massive problems everywhere in the world. We all know that all countries have a history of bad agricultural policy. We all know that many Indians were malnourished in normal years with some dying of hunger, as is still the case. This is not the place to present long essays on this. I doubt if any reader except me will have waded through all this to get to the famine. A brief paragraph summarizing this is the maximum.

There is no attempt to answer the obvious questions: all these factors applied to the whole subcontinent throughout the war, and to much of the rest of the world; Why did the famine occur in some districts of Bengal and not throughout India? Why was there no famine in the Bombay presidency which was seriously short of food? Why did the famine occur in 1943, and not in other years when the conditions mentioned in this small book certainly applied? It is not just a matter of not addressing these questions, it is effectively suppressing their existence.

The key function of Wikipedia is to identify and explain differences of opinion, not to express one contributor’s own view or what he believes to be the dominant view. In this submission, key issues are suppressed, or given passing mention in an enormously long, rambling, entry, and different views are suppressed. For instance, the following

• The conclusion of the FIC was that the main reason for the totally inadequate response was that the Governments of India, Bengal and Punjab in particular, as well as Indian politicians, believed that Bengal had plenty of food, with the normal rumours of hoarding, speculation and inflation (all unsupported by theory or evidence) to support these beliefs. A convenient belief as it saved them the trouble of actually getting large quantities of food into Bengal.

• Another conclusion was that the refusal of the democratically elected governments of surplus provinces to supply food to Bengal until far too late was critical. The Bengal Government had complete responsibility for dealing with the famine – Wavell had to get their permission before sending the army in to distribute relief. This was widely believed at the time, and by subsequent scholars still think it important, not least by scholars in the sub-continent. The contributor glosses over this: he explicitly and repeatedly objects to interpretations that put any blame on any Indians.

• Another widely held view is that only the Bengal Government’s inaction and corruption let the Famine happen. Again, strongly supported by people in the sub-continent, then and now. Again, the submission talks of a conspiracy to put the blame on Indians.


• The whole system of government was considered by most people at the time to be critical, with largely self governing, elected governments in Punjab and Bengal for instance. The Punjab felt it could openly refuse to do what the Government of India requested, reminding the Viceroy that there were a million Punjabis in the army. The small book ignores this, making it impossible to determine who is supposed to have acted or failed to act. The submission refers to non-existent bodies such as ‘the British’, ‘The British administration’ and ‘the government’, ‘the imperial government’, ‘the colonial government’. And it fails to mention that there were a tiny number of ethnically British involved, apparently less than a dozen, in an Indian Civil Service that was by 1943 dominantly Indian staffed. This appears to be because of the writer’s expressed anger that Indians have been blamed for aspects of the famine.

• The submission suppresses the fact that the military considered the famine to be a threat to the security of India and the Empire, and it was their pressure that got action eventually, both in India and in London. (Nobody would challenge the view that the strain of feeding the army and a series of disastrous military decisions had its effect.)

• Scandals like the seizure of a trainload of grain meant for the starving by another province, and the Bengal Government cutting relief to save money are omitted.

• Greenough’s conclusion that the famine was caused by Bengali men is suppressed, though much of what was put in the submission supports this.

• The fact that researchers have shown that Sen’s research is based on misrepresentation of the facts in his sources is suppressed, though it is fundamental to this contribution and the contributor was perfectly aware of it. Bowbrick’s papers are misrepresented as a ‘FAD-oriented’ analysis, for example, when he presents it solely as a refutation of Sen, and only Sen, on the grounds that Sen systematically misrepresented the evidence in his sources on more than thirty key issues, that he presented no economic analysis whatsoever for his claims, that he falsely stated that his estimates of supply were ‘conservative’ and reliable, and that the explanation postulated by Sen requires that the few people who could afford to buy rice at famine prices ate 14 days’ food every day. Similarly, Tauger’s identification of misrepresentation of the evidence cited is suppressed, as is other evidence. And others have made similar claims. It is hard to believe that this editor even read the papers he cites. Suppression of a major, and orthodox, point of view is entirely contrary to Wikipedia guidelines.

• The lengthy quotations on Mahalanobis’ surveys. It is improper not to cite Das’s criticism of this survey, or Das’s own survey.

• When important points are mentioned they are scattered throughout the report, bits of them appearing in different paragraphs and different sections, so their impact is removed. For instance, the evidence that the crop statistics were worse than useless is scattered through the report. Yet it is not mentioned next to statements like ‘The most influential and widely accepted analysis belongs to Amartya Sen,[208] who concluded: "The current [rice paddy] supply for 1943 was only about 5% lower than the average of the preceding five years. It was, in fact, 13% higher than in 1941, and there was, of course, no famine in 1941.”’ Sen made it clear that this conclusion depended on his belief that his figures were based on extremely accurate figures so the difference between the 1940 and 1942 crop forecast are virtually 100% accurate. Clearly the difference between a ‘meaningless’ 1942 forecast and a ‘meaningless’ 1940 forecast is ‘meaningless squared’. But this is not just random meaningless: we know that there was a bias towards overestimation in poor crop years, especially 1942; we know that the forecasts were changed by senior officials, then the availability estimates were further altered by Mahalanobis, with assumptions by Sen further altering them. Which puts the margin of error way off the scale. All of which makes Sen’s claims of accuracy culpable. Bowbrick, Dewey, Tauger, and others pointed this out. Failing to mention this argument here is bias.

There are repeated mentions of inflation, but a complete failure to mention that the rate was only about 15% -18% per annum throughout the war - modest for wartime conditions, and a small fraction of the hyperinflations that have occurred in other countries which did not have a famine. Such inflations are, of course, very uncomfortable indeed for the poor, and cause economic problems. The writer seems to be unaware of what inflation means to an economist. There is a constant confusion between inflation (a national phenomenon) and the price rises caused by food shortages in specific areas, notably Bengal: this is a normal supply and demand effect, with the usual knock-ons. There is an extraordinary implicit, unorthodox, and unargued assumption by the writer that in times of inflation the standard market economics ceases to work. 

 There is a failure to mention that the working-class consumer cost of living indices (a key indicator in this context) soared in the famine period in Bengal, as rice prices rose, but not in India generally. And there is a failure to mention that when the 1943 crop was harvested, the Bengal cost of living indices dropped to the same level the rest of India, giving the same inflation over the five war years. All of which is compatible with a crop failure in Bengal but not with other scenarios. This was a deliberate suppression: references in the Wikipedia entry that was removed give details.

There are repeated claims that the failure to declare a famine was a cause, with the explicit statement that it would have meant that the Bengal Famine Code would have been invoked and supplies would have appeared out of nowhere. There is not, and cannot possibly be, any evidence to support this claim – nobody can possibly prove that the Government of Punjab, for example, would have changed its policy because someone signed a bit of paper.

‘Amartya Sen in particular attributes the most devastating periods of inflation to heavy speculative buying.[360]’ No, Sen does not. He suggests that rice prices, not inflation, rose because of a shortage in supply which occurred because speculators bought far more than needed to feed the province, and withheld the surplus from the market in order to push up prices (a common assertion during this famine and many others). As Wikipedia requires that statements are supported by verifiable evidence, the contributor is obliged to point out that there is no evidence that speculators were able to procure even enough to feed the population. And he is obliged to point out that Sen’s claim implies that up to three million tons of paddy was withheld from the market, and that there is no evidence whatsoever of this, though it could certainly not be hidden in the countryside, and there was no spare storage space in the cities where it might have been hidden, and there is no evidence of it being destroyed. There is, on the contrary, a lot of evidence that traders had lower stocks than normal. Giving prominence to such a claim, unsupported by any evidence, and contradicted by absence of evidence, is unacceptable. And suppressing all the evidence to the contrary is unacceptable.

‘The debate [on carry over] began at the same time as did analyses of the crisis (Government of India 1945, pp. 15, 35–36; 179–87 and has continued since (A. Sen 1977, pp. 47, 52; De 2006, p. 30; Mukerjee 2014, p. 73).’ No, Sen did not debate this: he assumed it away.

The contributions on the Famine Inquiry Commission raise further concerns about the reliability of all this contributor’s citations. ‘For their part, the Famine Commission Report absolved the imperial government from all major blame.[372]’ I cannot find this in the source cited (O’Grada). On the contrary, there is a statement that there was no naming of ‘any representative of HM Government’ with only the Viceroy and probably the provincial governors being such representatives – civil servants were part of the Government of India not HM Government. But we do know that Linlithgow, Viceroy at the time, put on a lot of pressure through the India Office and directly through his own lawyers to have his name removed. The Commission retained the criticisms but removed the name. For example, they mention disastrous decisions made by GOI, while in another section they say that Linlithgow personally took charge of food during this period (in addition to his normal job of running India). I cannot think of any area of responsibility of the Government of India where the Commission did not make major damning criticisms.

Again, ‘Some sources allege that the Famine Commission deliberately declined to blame the UK or was even designed to do so;[375] however, Bowbrick (1985, p. 57) forcefully defends the report's accuracy.’ I cannot find anything in the source cited (O’Grada) to support this claim. Nor can I find any evidence that Bowbrick made any such defence; on the contrary, he is insistent that, to be fair to Sen, he confined his analysis to Sen’s sources. Since he is concerned with what really happened in 1942 and 1943 and what action was taken, not on laying blame, his argument is not affected by the suggestion that the GOI and possibly GOB were quite well aware that there was far less food available than they claimed. Bowbrick does suggest in the place cited that the Commission’s ‘economic analysis was naive or even wrong in parts’ and there were ‘major errors’. As to the claim that the Commission was designed to withhold blame, there is evidence that the new Viceroy, Wavell, was strongly opposed to having an inquiry at all, though he, personally, was in the clear, but Indian politicians forced him to. And the GOI published very few copies indeed to try and suppress the report as it was political dynamite (there seem to be only about 3 copies in the UK). This is a worrying number of errors in one citation.

A very large amount of the submission is anecdote, unevidenced, which is not permissible in Wikipedia.

o It is always tempting to include anecdotes that support one’s position, and exclude ones that undermine it.

o Even if a ‘reputable source’ gives an example of politically charged rhetoric, perhaps anti-British, anti-Bengali, anti-Hindu, anti Party A, or anti Party B, we have no reason to believe that the view was widely held, that there was evidence to support it, or that it was correct. It is likely that was quoted because it was unusual and stands out from the general discourse. It is not verifiable evidence and cannot be put in Wikipedia.

o Similarly, the anecdotes about what individuals saw cannot be quoted or cited. They give the entirely false impression that what they report was typical and widespread. The descriptions of death in Calcutta in the submission suggest that there were a large number, while the evidence is that there were very few: the evidence is that there were enormous efforts made to see that people died out of sight in the country where their deaths could be ignored. There is no shortage of citeable research.

o The submission quotes rice prices. Any agricultural economist knows that price reporting problems make these meaningless in normal years. And any agricultural economist or historian knows that in famine years people report the highest price they have observed or, more often, the highest price they have heard rumours of. That is a single transaction for an unknown quality in an unstated market situation. Yes, there are ways around this in an emergency, but these price collection methods were not adopted in Bengal.

There is repeated overstatement of the accuracy of guesses and estimates. For example we have ‘Total deaths: Initial est.: 1.5 million; current est. 2.1 million’. There is certainly a difference of opinion on this, which is why the entry that this contributor removed said 1.5 to 4 million. While these are probably the extremes that one would get from any serious researcher, there are internet pages, usually neo-Nazi, which give figures of 12 – 15 million. The suggestion that the 2.1 million estimate should be accepted because it is the ‘current estimate’ or because one faction reports it as a consensus is unacceptable. Maharatna is very careful to mention the data problems, the possibility of error and the existence of alternative estimates, which is why his paper carries such weight. I would mention that the 1.5m to 4m figure in the previous entry has received a lot of abuse in previous years, as being biased and understating the true figure, so great care is required.

Similarly, the estimate of the number of refugees from Burma given, 500,000 is within the range given in the previous entry, but the existence of alternative estimates is not mentioned, nor the general view that there is no meaningful information and we just do not know. And certainly, the Government of Bengal did not know at the time.

There are claims of a ‘consensus’ view. Yes, a group of people that continually cite each other rather than people who disagree with them come to a ‘consensus.’ But there are other groups. For example, I have worked in 35 countries over fifty years on agricultural economics and have not found that the contributor’s ‘consensus’ views were shared by either local experts or international experts.

A special display link has been inserted, which takes the reader to a PhD thesis. This is entirely unacceptable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AidWorker (talk • contribs) 16:29, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Response

OK, but but I don't understand what you're referring to. What "Wikipedia entry"? You say "I have had to remove the new entry", but you (User:AidWorker) haven't edited this page, nor has there been a removal on the order of 20,000 words by anyone on this page, which appears to be undergoing active editing... so to which page or what material are you referring? Could you link to it? Herostratus (talk) 16:57, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Sorry, @AidWorker:, can't read rambling texts, so I didn't read yours. But if you are thinking, even remotely, of randomly removing any sourced content from this article, even a fragment that hasn't quite worked its way up to a clause, you've got another thing coming. The present text is the current version. [[Fowler&fowler]]«Talk» 17:09, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Oh, OK, User:AidWorker are you referring to the current article? OK well then couple things. @User:Fowler&fowler, "if you are thinking, even remotely, of randomly removing any sourced content from this article... you've got another thing coming" sounds rather threatening and dismissive, and isn't true. This is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Of course, under the present circumstances, it would be a very good idea for User:AidWorker or anyone to propose any substantial changes for discussion rather than making them unilaterally.
Yes User:AidWorker your post is unusually long. That's certainly permissible, but it does make it hard for us to digest all at once. Suggestions for specific improvements to particular sections would be welcome.
OK. But the basis of your complaint comes down to "This article sucks, it just horrible from top to bottom -- worse than nothing, and needs to be erased and start over" if I'm reading you correctly. In that case individual changes here and there are not what you have in mind, exactly. Still, small incremental improvements are probably the best way forward. Enough of them will eventually result in a good article, I would venture.
I believe that the article is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/A-Class review or was. If that is still active User:AidWorker is encouraged to participate. There is also a Wikipedia:Peer review process which could take a look at this article. I'm not familiar with that process and there is a backlog. But that's one tool.
As to article size, User:AidWorker has a point. WP:SIZERULE (just a guideline) says "40 kB, length alone does not justify division; 60 kB, probably should be divided (although it depends), 100 kB, almost certainly should be divided". Current page size is 90 kB (all these numbers refer to readable prose, excluding references etc.) So yes, the article probably needs to be divided in some manner. Not sure how -- chronological, or other. Then this article would remain with a couple-few fairly short overview sections, giving a summary and then pointing to the main article on that topic -- "Events preceding the Bengal famine of 1943" or whatever. There's no hurry on this, though; it's something that can be discussed at leisure sometime down the line.
As to the rest, this is quite a conundrum. The chain of events, if I understand it correctly, is something like this:
  • Article existed in a certain state, its native state after years of editing. User:Lingzhi felt the article entirely unsatisfactory, and worked on a total rewrite in his sandbox for a year on it. However I understand that User:Ceoil, User:Clarityfiend, User:Dank, User:Frietjes and perhaps other editors also worked on this.
  • At some point, this was pasted into the article. I believe this was on 8 April 2017, although its hard to tell because the edit history of the sandbox draft was brought over to the main article (and properly). And further work has gone on since then.
  • But User:AidWorker has now objected to this new version in its entirety. With this edit he reduced the article by 127,000 bytes, and I believe that this was a rollback to the previous version, before the new April 8 2017 was brought over.
  • And User:AidWorker posted his reason in great detail (above).
Normally User:AidWorker would have the whip hand here under WP:BRD. The current version has not stood long enough (less than a month) to be considered the "current stable version" in my view. If one decides to bring over an entirely new version of an article, that is certainly a WP:BOLD edit and allowable or even encouraged. At the same time, the presumption is that any such edit can be rolled back with the burden on the person making the edit to prove his case and gain consensus for his change. And "don't you dare touch our edits" is probably not a productive response to that.
However, several editors have worked on this new version. It's a group effort and well thought out and carefully made. A case could be made that User:Lingzhi, User:Ceoil, User:Clarityfiend, User:Dank, User:Frietjes and User:Fowler&fowler, taken together, versus User:AidWorker who at this point seems to be a lone voice, constitutes a de facto consensus for the User:Lingzh et al version to be considered adopted.
On this basis I have rolled back User:AidWorker's reversion (that is, his restoration of the old pre-April 8 version).
However, it is not a simple question. User:AidWorker could be considered to stand with WP:BRD behind him, and didn't just revert but also posted detailed reasoning for his objections, which is correct procedure.
So User:AidWorker's points need to be addressed and not just blown off and an effort made to consider including some of his points if only as minority viewpoint, if it indeed a viewpoint entertained by some scholars, and if properly referenced as such and its otherwise appropriate. And so forth. It may be that User:AidWorker's objections are all nonsense, but that needs to be shown and not just asserted.
Failure to do this on the part of those wishing to defend the April 8 version won't look good if the situation should be escalated.
However, User:AidWorker is encouraged to present his points succintly (and of course politely) perhaps a few at a time, to be discussed, and with refs handy. The burden is also on User:AidWorker to engage effectively. Herostratus (talk) 18:28, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
I agree with Herostratus's revert, while also commending AidWorker's thoughtful and informed reasoning. I dont see this reasoning as fatal to the survival of the re-written version, more so points to be worked through. Also I strongly disagree that length, on principal, is to be discouraged, though trimming, for redundancy or flow, is often desirable. That AidWorker has posted such a large block of comments gives a logistical problem; maybe if they prioritise? Ceoil (talk) 21:26, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
      • I don't know how strongly I can stress this: For the record, for once and for always, for any admins who want to see, for Herostratus, for everyone: AidWorker's edits, every comment made above, are a hardcore British apologist POV (or at the very least, hardcore FAD POV; the two overlap considerably but can in theory be separate). This is not a case where I sorta kinda maybe feel like perhaps I sorta suspect it might perhaps be a pro-British and/or pro-FAD POV; it's a case where you can read the itemized list of POV statements directly above. It's a loud and proud declaration of POV. I made a long list (but wasn't half finished) of the POV problems of the previous version – and "problems" is a vast understatement – I'll try to find them...  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 22:58, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
        • @Lingzhi: It is best not to respond to a long list with another long list. Let me suggest something more methodical below, and I'll ping the others who have weighed in thus far. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:53, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Examples (spot check, one paragraph)

In the section, Military build-up, inflation, and displacement,

consider the short paragraph:

"At the same time, hundreds of thousands of troops poured into the province from various countries, especially the United States, the UK, India, and China.[99] Calcutta was the main resupply base for American troops fighting in China, and its grassy Maidan park the airfield for transports flying over the Himalayan mountains.[105] Troops also passed through Bengal on their way to the border with Burma.[106] This massive influx of industrial workers and domestic and foreign troops[107] placed further strains on domestic supplies of every kind – especially medicine and food.[108]

Here is a sentence-by-sentence Round 1-type analysis of the paragraph:

  • Sentence 1: "At the same time, hundreds of thousands of troops poured into the province from various countries, especially the United States, the UK, India, and China.[99]"
    • If you look at the cited text, Mukherjee, Janam (2015). Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-061306-8., pages 131–132, the author says, "Hundreds of thousands of Allied troops were moving through the city to the front, and returning there on leave, fueling a thriving "rest and recreation" industry that included dance halls, restaurants, bars, and a mushrooming prostitution industry. Huge profits were being made and the city was, in fact, more cosmopolitan than ever before. By 1943, in Ian Stephens's words, Calcutta:

      "was a great war-base...a vortex of humanity into which men doing war-jobs from all over the world, uniformed or not, were being sucked...American forces started arriving; and with their high living standards and total ignorance of India probably felt most alien of all. There were Chinese troops, some 30,000 or so, who had passed through the Bengal-Assam hills on their retreat from Burma...and Chinese merchant seaman, some thousands too... there were Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian Air Force types... [and] coal-black troops from West Africa under British officers...and, of course, masses of young men from Britain of every social class... and (also) Indians, mostly from the subcontinent's North-West or South and therefore feeling almost as foreign in Bengal as the so-called white men.'"

    • Note that the author doesn't imply only "pouring in," but really coming and going. It doesn't quite say, "especially Americans, ..." either. But mainly, the cited author, J. Mukherjee, is quoting from a memoir of Ian Stephens, the editor of the Statesman, a Calcutta newspaper, so more than half the text is really a primary source of sorts, paraphrasing which is tricky, especially when attributing it to Mukherjee. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:36, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
PS The question of whether this mention of some nationalities is essential to the article's main storyline is not a Round 1 issue. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:12, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Sentence 2: "Calcutta was the main resupply base for American troops fighting in China, and its grassy Maidan park the airfield for transports flying over the Himalayan mountains."[105] (The citation is to: Stevenson, Richard (2005), Bengal Tiger and British Lion: An Account of the Bengal Famine of 1943, iUniverse, ISBN 978-0-595-36209-7. Here are the issues:
    • The book is published by iUniverse, which mostly brings out self-published books. The book has not been reviewed in Google scholar, though it was published 12 years ago. It does not have an index. The bibliography is listed from 1 to 156, not in alphabetical order, and the books in it are old histories of India, such as Vincent Smith's from the 1920s. Further, what has been paraphrased appears in the preface (page ix):

      "The author has a problem in describing the important American military presence in Calcutta during these times. Calcutta was the main American base for the resupply of troops of General Joseph Stilwell and his Chinese allies. The Maidan of Calcutta was used as an airfield for the transports which flew "over the hump" into China. The American Army managed the railway system that the British used in their in offensive against the Japanese in Burma. Yet the Americans seems to have been written out of the history of those times; it is almost as if they never existed.

    • How reliable these prefatory remarks in the self-published work are I can't say, but it is unlikely I would be using them, especially for a statement for which, if it is true, many more reliable sources would likely exist. Next, Stevenson mentions the hump, not the Himalayas. The hump is a reference to some hills in Burma and and southwestern China. These hills are not a part of the Himalayas, whose eastern anchor, the Namche Barwa, in Tibet, at the great bend of the Brahmaputra river, is considerably to the north of the airfields from which the transports, flying east, typically took off. See map in File:Allied lines of communication in Southeast Asia, 1942-43.jpg. In fact, the WP article The Hump makes the same error, calling these hills thae Himalaya mountains. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:20, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Sentence 3: "Troops also passed through Bengal on their way to the border with Burma."[106] The statement has been cited to a journal article, De, Bikramjit (2006). "Imperial Governance and the Challenges of War Management of Food Supplies in Bengal, 1943–44". Studies in History. 22 (1): 1–43. doi:10.1177/025764300502200101. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help).
    • The choice of the work cited is itself a little unorthodox when more conventional military history accounts such as McLynn, Frank (2011), The Burma Campaign: Disaster Into Triumph, 1942–45 (Yale Library of Military History), New Haven: Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-17162-4 exist, but that is not a Round 1 topic. I don't have access to this journal, so I can't check the paraphrasing etc. but I do note that 1943 was mainly a time of lull on the Burma front. There was the disastrous Arakan Campaign of 1942–43, which kept some 15,000 soldiers busy, and Wingate and the Chindits, about 3,000, who were waging a guerilla campaign. The proper Burma campaign did not begin until well into 1944 by which time the famine had lifted. So, frankly, I'm not sure how this sentence is really relevant to the famine. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:19, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
    • I do have access to that journal now. On page 2, the author says:

      "The war also placed new pressures on the administrative machinery, which had been established for the purpose of the management of civic amenities. Large contingents of troops arrived in Bengal from 1942 onwards, mostly consisting of British and Americans recruits to the Bengal—Burma border. The immediate and excessive pressure placed on health, civil supplies and other departments increased the government's necessity to provide additional stocks of medicines and food grains, especially rice, to the army. The government also had to requisition."

      • Here the paraphrasing seems OK. There may be questions of DUE, but we can't address those in Round 1. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:46, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Sentence 4: "This massive influx of industrial workers and domestic and foreign troops[107] placed further strains on domestic supplies of every kind – especially medicine and food.[108]" Here [107] is the citation of J Mukherjee mentioned above and [108] has two references, one to Bikramjit De above and another to: Dando, William A. (January 2012). Food and Famine in the 21st Century. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-59884-730-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
    • The last source says:

      "With the overland link with China severed, the Allied command began to build up its air forces to supply Chinese forces American forces played a large role in this ... effort during 1942. Correspondingly, the numbers of U.S. soldiers and airmen in India increased dramatically as well. Clearly, feeding and supplying these large numbers of soldiers posed a significant challenge to the Allied command in India and put a much greater strain on already stretched domestic food supplies."

    • So here too the paraphrasing is fine. However, the citation is incorrect. Dando is the editor of the book (of two volumes), and the citation is really to a chapter of Volume 2, which is subtitled, "Classic Famines" and written by other authors. The correct citation is: Lohman, Andrew D.; Thompson, Wiley C. (2012), "Bengal Famine 1943–1944", in Dando, William A. (ed) (ed.), Food and Famine in the 21st Century, Volume 2: Classic Famines, ABC-CLIO, pp. 125–152, ISBN 978-1-59884-730-7 {{citation}}: |editor= has generic name (help) There may be some synthesis and some redundancy, which I'll address next. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:14, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Proposal for revision

@AidWorker:, @Herostratus:, @Ceoil:, @Dank:, @RegentsPark:, @Ian Rose:, @Clarityfiend:, @Frietjes:, @Ms Sarah Welch:, @Nick-D:, @Lingzhi:. This is a long article—nearly 15,000 words. It deserves a methodical approach to revision. I propose that we do this in three rounds, systematically proceeding from beginning of the article to its end in each round

  • Round 1: Check the article, say 1000 words at a time, each over a couple of days, for accurate paraphrasing, synthesis, and redundancy (steadfastly eschewing ideological disagreements, questions of DUE, or even overall redundancy, at his stage.) As there are over 150 cited works, this work may not be that easy, and will take us at least a month, maybe six weeks, as people will be doing this in their spare time, not consistently (I myself will be traveling during some of this time), and not all attempting will be equally expert. At the end of this period, we should have a flow-chart of the logical flow of the article. During this period, in the interests of fairness, it would be good if Lingzhi doesn't edit the article significantly, though talk page clarifications would be very welcome. Of course, we can't force him not to. It will help everyone if Lingzhi will take and active part in the revision, especially in clarifying queries.
  • Round 2: Check each 1000 word subdivision for overall synthesis/redundancy and weight (WP:DUE). Here ideological disagreements that are specific to the context under scrutiny come in. This should take about three weeks, and, at its end, we should also have a WP:LEAD for the article, which succinctly summarizes the article. Here too it is probably best if Lingzhi takes a back seat in the editing, except for clarification etc.
  • Round 3: (At this point, we could advertise at WP:ECON, WP:INDIA, WP:BANGLADESH, and WP:UK.) Check/revise the article for overall DUE. This is where general ideological critiques come in. This will probably take another two to three weeks.

The text itself will now be ready, and we can discuss issues like what pictures are appropriate to what section. I'm guessing that the revision will take about three months. I believe it is best not to rush this. Once done, in this leisurely fashion, Lingzhi can make his clean resubmission to FAC. I doubt it will need another review. I will shortly give an example of (1) below, for those who might be new to this. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:36, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

    • Example (spot check). Note (added at 07:18, 2 May 2017 (UTC)). I've moved this example to the new section below, as it seemed to be detracting from the proposal. I'm sorry I did this after Lingzhi's reply below, ... but the reply doesn't address anything in the example. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 07:18, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
  • For the record again: Fowler has done a reasonably decent job of portraying him/herself as impartial (above) . For the record, please do keep running track of the sum total of F&Fs suggestions/edits and see whether they end up tilting the entire article in a British-friendly direction.... I am not anti-British. That perception about me might arise because the Indian-nationalist POV warriors (or people who just hate Churchill for other reasons) are very scattered and ineffective. We fought them back (and I took the lead in doing so) far, far more easily than I expected or feared. But the pro-Brits are here in force, some with bloviation, and others with barnstars. So I'm fighting pro-Brits, which might make me appear ant-Brit, kinda by default.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:24, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
PPS (Added later at 01:41, 2 May 2017 (UTC)) I did want to say that if we do end up taking the approach I outlined above, I myself will not be organizing the revision. I will be traveling for a significant portion of that time, and in any case someone more even-tempered than I, perhaps an admin, will best discharge such a responsibility. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:41, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Comments

  • F&f and L: Thanks for the ping. Please consider collaborating going forward, rather than asking the other person not to edit. You both are experienced editors, you will save time and effort if you edit each other's changes (and welcome others knowledgeable about this topic and who can contribute). You don't need to pre-discuss every change, to avoid duplicated effort. Discuss it on the talk page, if and when necessary. Yes, edit conflicts are best avoided. Place an "inuse" template or something, or check if the other party hasn't edited for more than an hour. Hopefully, at the end of all the editing, the article will breeze through a FAC review. Ping me when you jointly nominate it! All the best, Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 19:32, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for you comments. All very wise. Will keep them in mind. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:28, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Ms Sarah Welch: I have incorporated your suggestion by not only removing any restrictions on editing in the revision guidelines above, but by also making Lingzhi integral to the revision process. However, the potential revisers are not just he and I, but very likely many others, such as AidWorker. Although for most Wikipedia pages such a structured revision is not called for, I believe some structure is good for this contentious topic, and will protect it from wild swings of POV. Also, many issues such as DUE can't be discussed effectively until the sources used have been confirmed to be reliable, their paraphrasing in the text faithful and free of synthesis and redundancies. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:08, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Currently 152 sources, but adding "articles not used" is pointless

I've been quiet. I'm letting you have your day here. But WTF? There are... good Granny, I haven't even counted the sources. [Update: I count 152 sources.] And you're adding unused ones? Are you doing that because you know I don't wanna edit war over pointless bullshit? Yes. I think so.

You were bellyaching above about how shitty one of my resources was. Good! Excellent! Find a better one. Replace mine with others Approved by Foweler&Fowler, who (according to Fowler&Fowler) is the only one who knows what a real resource is. That would, in all truth, be just fine. But please don't add pointless bullshit just to show you can. It's quite childish.   Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:28, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

  • PS At some point, perhaps a few weeks from now, perhaps even sooner, magic will happen and you'll find some rationale for genuinely major revision (or outright scrapping) which magically tilts this article in a British-friendly way (gutting one or more sections..inflation? British military presence? Government action/inaction? I can't wait to see which). Please do ping me when you get to that point. Until then, I'll try my best to ignore you... though obviously that's difficult to do...  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:52, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
You hit on none of the reasons why sources have been put in a section called "Further reading." They are there to check claims in the article cited to one book against claims in other books not being currently used, and to have these books present transparently in article space where others can view them, rather than in user space. "Further reading," is, moreover, a dynamic list. Some sources will be added, others discarded, as I move my focus from one section to another. I'll be traveling overseas in few days. I can't carry books with me, especially not books whose contents are only peripherally in areas of my interest, let alone obsession. But no worries. I will soon move them here (to article talk space) in a section below. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:51, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
The list of source on the articles is already huge. I am very glad that you have moved your list here to Talk. If needed, I can also replace sources from the list that you don't like with the sources that you do. That is of course fine, so long as the text of the article is not meaningfully changed without reason & consultation.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 12:46, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
When an article had been developed in main space chiefly by one editor over a period during which feedback, scrutiny, and consultations with others has been a leaven of temperance, that one editor gets some benefit of doubt, per WP:OWN#Single-editor_ownership. In this instance, this version has been copied by you from your user space in one edit. That fact, and not POV or NPOV, is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Although I myself will be following the procedure outlined in the section above, there will be others who will be editing the article and who may or may not agree that there is anything meaningfully sacrosanct in this version that precludes it from being meaningfully changed without consultation, per WP:BOLD. No one as far as I'm aware is really asking that the old version be reinstated. However, in this "bedding down" period of several months, per Coordinator's Note in FAC close, it will be best that you cut others a small measure of the slack that you allowed yourself for an inordinately greater period of time. I am trying to ensure that everyone with a view gets an even chance, and that you, either by using foul language or by imagining biases in others (such as mine for the British POV) are not able to game this revision process to your slightest benefit. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:24, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
    • In another forum, you stated: "This is in part because BFo1943 is only obliquely military history. In fact to cast it as military history is to buy into a POV out there that exceptional war time conditions allowed the famine to fly under the radar of British responsibility." Let's be clear about one thing: If this famine is only obliquely military history, as you state, then Great Britain is absolved of the great bulk of any potential blame. That is the principal reason why I perceive you as a British apologist.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 16:07, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
      • OED: "Obliquely" = "In a way that is not direct or straightforward; by suggestion or implication; indirectly" Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:33, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
        • Precisely my point. From the opposite perspective, a hardcore Indian nationalist, or a fully-persuaded but dispassionate FEE adherent, would say that the use of "obliquely" is flatly (and objectionably) wrong. I'm trying to help you and regentspark see (or admit?) that absolutely everything in that debate – including especially which side of the debate you fall on – turns on your view of the prominence of the war. [I suppose you could throw in Churchill's racism, real or alleged, too... but without the war, Churchill's views would not have had much impact, because his views alone could not magically generate a food crisis.] If you think the war only obliquely impacted it, then Britain is (largely) exonerated... So going back to the FEE view, which aligns neatly with but could be separable from the Indian Nationalist view, is that the famine was "man-made". Man-made by whom? By Great Britain, and perhaps specifically by Churchill, and specifically because of the war. Or they might assert it was man-made through the actions of speculators and/or hoarders (see for example the view of Amartya Sen), but the ruinous speculation/hoarding found an economic setting suitable for hoarding/speculating only because of the war... Or they might say it was "inflation-made", so to speak, but the inflation was man-made (principally by Great Britain's debt terms with India, plus the military's war-time consumption... or perhaps by speculators), and specifically because of the war... The FAD view, which neatly aligns with but could be separable from the British apologist view, is that the famine was largely caused by nature (especially the brown spot disease, but the cyclone/floods hurt too). A FAD adherent might allow that Great Britain didn't (or couldn't) really help the situation much by being kinda feckless or clueless (see the section on ridiculously poor agricultural production statistics), but would still assert that it was principally a natural phenomenon. By extension, to them, the war was only a peripheral matter. Any way you look at it, from either perspective, one's view of the importance of the war is central to the position one takes.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 23:29, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Per you removal of "Pointless bullshit" from the section heading long after I had replied to your post, Wikipedia Talk page guidelines, WP:REDACT has this to say: "if anyone has already replied to or quoted your original comment, changing your comment may deprive any replies of their original context, and this should be avoided. Once others have replied, or even if no one's replied but it's been more than a short while, if you wish to change or delete your comment, it is commonly best practice to indicate your changes. Any deleted text should be marked with <s>...</s> or <del>...</del>, which renders in most browsers as struck-through text, e.g., deleted." — Fowler&fowler 01:50, 5 May 2017 (UTC) — continues after insertion below
"Bullshit" and "WTF" are retained in text. My tone is not altered.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:23, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
I have not bothered to read your statement, as it took me all of its first two sentences to realize that it is addressing Round 3 issues. The next couple of months will be devoted to Round1 and Round2 issues (see my post above). When we get to Round3, you may repost. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:50, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
How odd that you wouldn't want to understand/acknowledge/consider that!  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:23, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Editing

I will be editing a section of the article today, addressing some Round 1 issues. For this reason, as suggested above by Ms Sarah Welch, I will be adding an {{inuse}} template during the period of active editing. I will also be adding an {{underconstruction}} template thereafter until the next active edit. This means that the "underconstruction" template may appear in a section of the article, or in the article itself, intermittently for the next few months. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:47, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

I view this as obstruction, and am expecantant that similar delaying tactics will follow over....many months. You also said you will be "travelling* for long periods. Very clever, but as such I am disregarding. Edit like anybody else, I get that you think you have entitlement and manners, but this is getting tiredsome. Ceoil (talk) 11:45, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
Delaying tactics usually have a purpose. What would be my purpose? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:41, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
I think its fairly clear. I have to say, I dont like the overwrought, verbose reviewing style, which is all about obstacles and wear and tear, rather that the sofixit, plain speaking style I am more use to. Reading your posts here is like untangling an exceptionally tedious puzzle box. Ceoil (talk) 17:16, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
But now you are saying something different. I could fix it, without a peep, but people will be pouncing on me, and Lingzhi has already proved thin-skinned.* Also, the real POV warriors will see in my unexplained edits a license to make theirs. If I didn't have Round1, Round2, ... you'd have people simultaneously copy-editing, adding new sources, adding new arguments, ... in short, a royal mess. The flip-side here is that the original editor's work gets some harsh public scrutiny. But, no worries, once people see that I'm reliable, they'll ease off and so will I (about explaining everything). (* But maybe my overwrought reviewing style pushed the wrong buttons in him. I'll grant that possibility.) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:45, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
Well, your sort of being insufferably obtuse and difficult. As I get older I have less tolerance for windbags. You create a mess and then use it as a slight. Ceoil (talk) 20:17, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
@Ceoil: I still don't see what the purpose would be. You mean slighting people is my purpose? Or, when, in two weeks time, you will see my editing times change by 12 hours, waking up at unearthly hours will be my purpose? Wouldn't I be holding forth at ANI or some forum instead if that were my purpose? I could be slighting all day there. But you never see me there. You're not making sense Ceoil. I don't see you discussing whether the sources have been faithfully paraphrased in this article, which is what I'm concerned about. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:50, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Recent changes - couple questions

Unfortunately I can't access Tinker's 1975 work "A Forgotten Long March: The Indian Exodus from Burma, 1942". This means that I'm going to have to ask a few questions which may potentially have an obvious answer. Also note that I know jack-diddly-squat about this topic. I actually came across this via the AN/I case with the IP. I put this article on my watchlist and have been following the proceedings to some extent in the meantime. My concern is generally that a few of the changes remove material that appear relevant to the topic with little or no reasonable explanation as to why they were removed.

  • In later months, 70 to 80% of these refugees were afflicted with diseases such as dysentery, smallpox, malaria, or cholera, with 30% "desperately so". On 26 April, the British, Indian and Burmese soldiers of the Allied forces in Burma joined the civilians in a full retreat was removed in this edit and half re-instated in a later edit as Of the few refugees who arrived at the main Manipur refugee camp near Imphal, in late May, 70% were thought to be ill, and 30% gravely so. In this instance the choice to include the lower estimate of "70%" only seems POV-y to me. That is unless the 80% upper estimate is flatly incorrect. Again, I can't confirm this because I don't have access to Tinker. F&F states in their edit summary removing the material; full retreat; removing the 70-80% bit; it is incorrectly phrases; will add back later. My question is which part is an incorrect paraphrase? the numbers couldn't be a paraphrase. Issue of "70-80%" now dealt with. Secondarily, on leaving out the diseases, it's not the flu we're talking about here. The diseases specified are all easily (even commonly) fatal, especially with no access to medicine. Why remove them?
  • this edit removed The influx of civilian and military evacuees from Burma had three immediate effects relevant to the famine of 1943. First, the spread of disease presented an increasingly apparent public health risk with the explanation that it would be returned in "round 3". What is the purpose of removing it, if it will be returned later? Why not just leave it in?
  • I did have a third issue, the removal of 10,000 - 50,000 dead in this edit, but, it was re-instated in the mean time. For reference, the change was from The number of refugees who successfully reached India totaled at least 500,000; an unknown number, conservatively estimated between 10,000 and 50,000, died along the way to Of these, between 100,000 and 200,000 cut through the Arakan hills in western Burma, and up along the coast or coastal waters, to Chittagong in Eastern Bengal. Now, I'm not concerned about the removal of the first half of the sentence as that is basically a restatement of the previous sentence which says; However, most Indians, between 450,000 and 500,000, trekked overland to India. Might be worth saying that they successfully "trekked overland to India" to complete the sentence, but, whatever. There is a subtle change between the old and new version; Between 10,000 and 50,000 Indians refugees, according to one estimate, died from various causes before they reached India. The dropping of "conservatively estimated" is appropriate. Only one source was provided alongside the numbers, so it's really the only estimate provided. By definition, that would neither be conservative nor liberal since there is nothing else to compare it too.

I didn't have any other issues worth discussing. I did notice a couple double spaces and the occassional grammatical error, but, most of those have already been rectified. I might do a copy edit and fix anything obvious. Cheers, Mr rnddude (talk) 15:01, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for posting @Mr rnddude:. Well, the missing 80% was a typo. I've fixed it. I made another mistake. It wasn't "late May." I have fixed that too. As for the rest of the first edit, the thing is that the 70 to 80% estimate was made by a medical officer at a refugee camp in Manipur. Here is the entire quote:

"Throughout June, most of the stranded refugees stayed where they were, though none were now left forward of Palel. The military units scattered around the hills above the Manipur plain were themselves running short of rations and severely depleted by malaria and other sickness. A few refugees—the lucky ones, the most knowing, those who still had money to buy and bribe their way out—were able to get to Imphal. Of those who came into the care of the government organisation, the senior medical officer, Brigadier Short, gave this account: "In the later stages of the evacuation 70 to 80 per cent of the refugees were definitely ill, 30 per cent desperately so; many were received ill-clad and even naked, and practically all were suffering for lack of suitable or sufficient food ... a mob without discipline of any sort, with a complete absence of morale."

In other words, this assessment of sickness is made about a section of the refugee population at a specific location and point in time. It does not mean that 70 to 80 per cent of the 500,000 were sick. Also, the medical officer did not mention the diseases by name. The names were mentioned earlier at the bottom of page 11 and top of page 12. Here is that full quote:

"The main camp was near Imphal, and here there were tents and some medical personnel and some kind of rationing. Forward, towards Tamu, there were several encampments—often at a river crossing, where the onset of the monsoon had caused a break in communications. These were camps only in the sense that people were huddled together; there was little shelter, little or no food, and only an occasional subordinate medical orderly as a gesture of medical aid. The Indians had arrived in poor health and poor morale. Now, epidemic disease began to levy a toll. Dysentery, smallpox and malaria appeared first. The refugees had brought their affliction along with them. In these uninhabited jungle hills, such diseases had been unknown, but the stranded Indians had been compelled to use a common water supply, and had defecated together; contaminated water and the anopheles mosquito had quickly bred and spread disease. At first it was asserted that cholera was not afflicting the refugees, but by mid-June it was known that the cholera bacillus was spreading fast.

That is why I had to change it. It was faulty paraphrasing. So, now, in the text, the diseases are mentioned by name, but a sentence or two earlier. The medical officer's assessment, as paraphrased in the text, does not mention the diseases by name, because he did not do so either. ... Eventually, as other sources are integrated, I'm sure we'll be able to make more low-res, or higher-level, statements. More about the other statements next. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:26, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure that the original was claiming that 70-80% of the 500,000 were ill. That section was separated into its own paragraph away from the original 500,000 figure. I'm fine with this change though, the clarification that those refugees received at Manipur were ill. With regards to the diseases, it's some slight synthesis being done. Note, the original text said were afflicted with diseases such as (emphasis mine), this doesn't mean that all of the 70-80% were sick with these specific diseases, but, that these diseases were present within the sick population. This makes sense given that the first block quote states that 70-80% of the refugees accepted into the camp at Manipur were ill with 30% being gravely so and the second block quotes states that the dieseases of dysentery, smallpox, and malaria came with the refugees into Imphal (Manipur camp) and cholera contaminated the water supply while they were there. Mr rnddude (talk) 04:59, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
As for your second point, the problem with these setting-up-the-context statements (one of which I removed temporarily) is that they become a way of introducing deductions based on faulty interpretations of the sources, that is—when the sources have not been interpreted faithfully. That is my worry here. From reading the various sources, I am not getting the sense that the diseases the refugees carried (in whatever percentages they carried) during January-June 1942, had direct bearing on the diseases that killed over a million people in 1943-44, in other words, the refugees did not start a long-term epidemic that continued on ot 1943-44. They may have had indirect bearing in the sense that a portion of the medical establishment may have been diverted into epidemiology rather than into nutrition, with ill-consequences for later when diagnosis and treatment of malnutrition was needed in large numbers, or they may have affected other factors such as the economy. But just saying that in generality gives rise to misunderstanding. I want to establish first, what it is exactly that the sources are saying. Trust me, whatever that is, I will reinstate later. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:13, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
So ... you're not satisfied that due diligence has been done in the course of writing this article and think that, either deliberately or not, the sources have been misrepresented in the article. When you put it like that, you might see why Lingzhi has been upset over the last little while. You're erring against the side of AGF. I.e. I'm not sure this has been done right, so I'm going to assume it hasn't. I'm not saying you're wrong, but, you're given zero benefit of the doubt for something you're not sure about. Mr rnddude (talk) 08:22, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Now to your third point. I did write it will be reinstated, but when I read Tinker, I realized he was saying something more subtle than what was in the article. So I have reinstated it, but in a larger context that doesn't create misunderstanding. When the text says, "The number of refugees who successfully reached India totaled at least 500,000. .. In later months, 70 to 80% of these refugees were afflicted with diseases such as dysentery, smallpox, malaria, or cholera, with 30% 'desperately so'." and a few sentences thereafter, "As early as April 1942, the condition of the evacuees flooding in from Burma led Public Health Services officials in Bengal and Assam to begin generating weekly epidemiological reports on cholera, smallpox and plague.[87] ... The sudden and disturbing appearance of these distraught refugees bred foreboding, uncertainty, and panic amongst the government and populace of Bengal," it creates the impression that most of the sick refugee population was coming into Bengal. The reason why I have given the actual numbers of refugees that successfully reached India along two of the three routes is simple. It is what the sources are saying in completeness. They are not saying that 500,000 people reached Bengal, or even swung through Bengal, only that 500,000 people (or thereabouts) reached India through three different routes two of which did not lead to Bengal. I will make some general remarks below. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:33, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
Mostly an issue of how you'd interpret the text when reading it. The full text as it originally stood here is;

The number of refugees who successfully reached India totaled at least 500,000; an unknown number, conservatively estimated between 10,000 and 50,000, died along the way. In later months, 70 to 80% of these refugees were afflicted with diseases such as dysentery, smallpox, malaria, or cholera, with 30% "desperately so". On 26 April, the British, Indian and Burmese soldiers of the Allied forces in Burma joined the civilians in a full retreat.

The influx of civilian and military evacuees from Burma had three immediate effects relevant to the famine of 1943. First, the spread of disease presented an increasingly apparent public health risk. As early as April 1942, the condition of the evacuees flooding in from Burma led Public Health Services officials in Bengal and Assam to begin generating weekly epidemiological reports on cholera, smallpox and plague. Second, those who struggled through arrived in an alarming state, with "hair-raising stories of atrocities and sufferings". The sudden and disturbing appearance of these distraught refugees bred foreboding, uncertainty, and panic amongst the government and populace of Bengal; this aggravated panic buying and hoarding that contributed to the onset of the famine.

Ignore the issue we've already addressed above about the "70-80%" figure and the listing of diseases for a moment. First, the original text does say reached India ... at least 500,000. No claim that many or most went through Bengal. Second, April 1942, ... Public Health Service officials in Bengal and Assam (emphasis mine) makes it clear that this was an issue elsewhere not just in Bengal. It's only in the last sentence that we start talking specifically about Bengal alone. It's difficult for me to see how this could be misconstrued, but, I've read the same paragraph multiple times and dissected it word for word. Maybe if I'd given it a glancing skim I might have read a different story into it. Despite this, given that this article is about a famine in Bengal, it only makes sense that the majority of the focus would be on Bengal.
This is what the new section looks like with new text highlighted in green;

However, most Indians, between 450,000 and 500,000, trekked overland to India. Of these, between 100,000 and 200,000 cut through the Arakan hills in western Burma, and up along the coast or coastal waters, to Chittagong in Eastern Bengal; this route was closed in March 1946. Of the remaining Indians, who had now moved north in the face of the advancing Japanese, some 220,000 trekked up the lower Chindwin river valley and eventually arrived in the Indian princely state of Manipur. A third group, and the last to leave Burma, moved up the upper Irrawaddy river valley and arrived in the Indian province of Assam. In early March 1942, the Government of India began constructing a road along the Manipur route, offering supplies and limited transport.

However, barely had the road been completed, when, on April 26, 1942, a full retreat from Burma into India was ordered for all Allied forces. Immediately, all priorities changed, and the demands of the military became the focus of official attention. According to author Hugh Tinker, “The Indians were left to their own devices. … the troops arrived: pushing the refugees aside, laying hands on all supplies, and utilizing all available military transport.” In mid May 1942, the monsoon rains became heavy in the Manipur hills, further inhibiting civilian movement. The depleted refugees fell victim to disease, initially to dysentery, smallpox and malaria, and later to cholera. Of the few refugees who arrived at the main Manipur refugee camp near Imphal, in the later stages of the evacuation, 70–80% were thought to be ill, and 30% gravely so. During their long arduous journeys, the Indians had received mix treatment from the local Burmese; some were treated with kindness, in keeping with Buddhist precepts; however, others were subjected to extortion, robbery, and violence. Between 10,000 and 50,000 Indians refugees, according to one estimate, died from various causes before they reached India.

By May 1942, some 300,000 refugees had passed through Bengal en route to their homes elsewhere in India. Back home, the refugees told tales of atrocities inflicted by the Burmese and of the viciousness of the Japanese attack. Rumor and panic took hold in many parts of India. In Assam, through which the injured soldiers had passed in May, fears arose of a Japanese attack. In the United Provinces, where in Gorakhpur district alone, some 30,000 refugees had returned by the end of 1942, the Governor publicly lamented the low morale. In Bengal, a witness before the Government-appointed Famine Commission, recalled later in 1945, “(The refugees were) bringing hair-raising stories of atrocities and sufferings. The natural effect of all that on the people of Bengal was to make them feel that the times were extremely uncertain and that terrible things might happen.” The uncertainty aggravated panic hoarding on the part of merchants that contributed to the onset of the famine. The influx of refugees created more demand for food. More clothing and medical aid were needed, further straining the resources of the province.[citation needed] In the larger picture, the influx of soldiers retreating into Bengal further compounded the strain on resources, the lowering of morale, and the impression that the Raj was weak and would certainly fall to the Japanese. As early as April 1942, the condition of the evacuees flooding in from Burma led Public Health Services officials in Bengal and Assam to begin generating weekly epidemiological reports on cholera, smallpox and plague.

There is a lot going on in this new section. Though one part has just been moved around. Also, there's a citation needed tag in there that somebody will want to deal with. In reading this I notice a strong focus on Manipur in the first two paragraphs of the expanded revision. It's beyond me to speculate how significant this is in relation to Bengal. It's just something that might be worth noting given how expansive this article already is. Mr rnddude (talk) 07:50, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
@Mr rnddude: Here is what I'm worrying about right now. It is not stuff that can go into Wikipedia, but just something that is informing my thinking this minute. There were a million Indians in Burma (as recorded in the last census of British India before the war, ie in 1931). Of these 1 million, there were 300,000 from Bengal (some speaking Bengali, but most speaking Chittagonian, the dialect spoken in Eastern Bengal, which is mainly Muslim.) The remaining 700,000 were from other regions of India (speaking Hindi/Urdu, Tamil, Telugu, etc). You can read the numbers in the actual census (here on page 227, in the table "Indians classified by race." If all things were equal (and they may not have been), this was the proportion in which the refugees arrived. That means that 350,000 of the 500,000 may have sojourned for some time in Bengal, but they made their way to other places. They may have been a temporary burden on Bengal, but were not a permenent burden by way of being a permanent presence. (Of course, I am not suggesting that that statistic should be put in the article. It is not even an argument for or against anything. I'm just saying that it is the backstory that I have in mind when I evaluate numbers, even within reliable sources.) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:01, 7 May 2017 (UTC) I've scratched this, as I think this "backstory" bit might confuse people. Sorry. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:09, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
@Mr rnddude: I have already indicated. There are three steps here. Round1, Round2, and Round3. In Round1 we are establishing what the sources being used are saying in a small stretch of text, say 1,000 words, and issues of synthesis within this text. By the very nature of such a process, the text will be temporarily expanded. The fidelity of the existing text here is not sacrosanct here, only the fidelity of the sources being used in the text. In Round2 we look at issues of DUE (i.e. examine how the sources being used stack up with other sources) and redundancy within these text-segments. The text now shrinks again in size. In Round3, we look at overall DUE and redundancy in the article. The text shrinks even more. There is no other way of revising an article that is in a contentious topic area. You can't check for DUE first, if you're not sure that the paraphrasing is correct. As you will see, the paraphrasing was faulty in the original text. I am barely half way through the Round 1, in that subsection. I added the citation needed etc because for some sentences, either no source has been indicated, or even when the sources are indicated, it is hard to figure out how they have been employed to craft the words of the sentence. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 09:49, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Query about an attribution

I'm looking at a sentence in this section:

"In the larger picture, the influx of soldiers retreating into Bengal further compounded the strain on resources, the lowering of morale, and the impression that the Raj was weak and would certainly fall to the Japanese."

It is cited to three sources:

1) The first author, J. Mukherjee, on the relevant page, 88, is talking about Indian Civil Service (ICS) officers in Bengal, i.e. about civil servants He says, "The war was going badly and on their shoulders rested the prestige of colonial rule in South Asia. Colonial officers in Singapore and Burma were understood to have been apathetic, ill-prepared and ultimately timorous in the face of Japanese threat. Their chaotic and desperate evacuations had been sordid and humiliating. Many had made their way to Calcutta, sometimes in a desperate condition, with hair-raising stories to tell. With morale among colonial officials in Bengal already at a low point, this influx of disillusioned comrades from further east only served to compound the enervation of war, rebellion, and administrative impasse."

2) The second author, Bidyut Chakrabarti, is talking about the Quit India Resolution. He says on the cited page, 91: "What marked the August revolution off the other Congress launched anti-British campaign was the war in which the initial Japanese victory against the British troops in Burma made the state in India vulnerable. This popular perception that the collapse of the state was imminent also accounts for mass participation in the rebellion. "

3) The third author, Madhusree Mukherjee, on the cited page, 91, is talking about the cyclone of October 1942, and there is no mention of any soldiers.

I am perplexed how the sentence, ""In the larger picture, the influx of soldiers retreating into Bengal further compounded the strain on resources, the lowering of morale, and the impression that the Raj was weak and would certainly fall to the Japanese." is cited to those three. Could someone explain? Perhaps the page numbers are incorrect? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:38, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

  • I am massively demotivated to participate, for reasons already given...
  • what do you want?
  • passage Number 2 you listed above is not about Quit India; it's about the fall of Burma (as the text says)
  • Do you want "refugees brought disease?" Bengal-specific try perhaps "Transport was delayed and crowded as refugees fleeing from Burma traveled around the countryside and spread diseases, and in general people were highly uncertain and anxious." (Tauger 2009 p. 181, citing Knight, Food Administration, p. 75, citing FIC, p. 25.); it's mentioned in the Commission report but speculatively tied to virulent strains of malaria. General principle? Try Mokyr & Ó Gráda (2002) "Mobility increases mortality in famine-stricken regions for two reasons. One is that it exposes both the famine refugees and their hosts to new disease environments and microbial regimes to which they are not immune. The other is that hygienic and sanitary needs depended on certain fixed items..." Also Devereux discusses de Waal on this...
  • refugees strained resources?"Increased demand for food was created by both the army and the inflow of refugees from Burma." Maharatna 1992. The Famine Commission lists "influx of refugees" as one of five strains on food supplies.
  • Hungry Bengal p. 47 has refugees telling of British capitulation
  • Secret war p. 61 (not 91) has disease among the refugees.
  • Is that what you want?  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 06:39, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
It is not a question of what I want. Neither is it a question of what other sources are saying. We are in Round1. That means we are merely trying to establish what the sources being used are saying, and whether the sentence citing them constitutes a correct paraphrase. I am asking again: How do the words of the sources imply that of the text, in particular "the influx of soldiers retreating into Bengal," for the first is talking about the civil servants of Burma and Singapore, the second about the initial Japanese victory, and the third about a cyclone. It is very important to stick to the sources and page numbers being used. Here is the sentence again: "In the larger picture, the influx of soldiers retreating into Bengal further compounded the strain on resources, the lowering of morale, and the impression that the Raj was weak and would certainly fall to the Japanese." Or perhaps you can give us three sentences, each paraphrased from one source, and we can together craft the one sentence that best summarizes those three. If you are saying that the page numbers in the attribution were incorrect, i.e. they should be J Mukherjee (p 47) and M. Mukherjee (p 61), I did examine those, but they say nothing about the retreating soldiers. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:17, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Oh, you're hung up on the single word "soldiers"? That is extremely easy to explain. Note the words "Colonial officers" above. I interpreted that to mean "soldiers". Are you trying to say that "Colonial officers" means civil servants?...OK yes, I see I.C.S. just above. That is the mistake... I should tell you that I converted many many of these sources to text files and wrote a little program extracting passages containing key words. It's possible that the ICS bit wasn't included in a relevant snippet, or it's possible that I simply and blindly overlooked it in the larger context.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 11:33, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict):::::Yes, of course it does. Notice it also says, "This influx of disillusioned comrades from further east only served to compound the enervation of war, rebellion, and administrative impasse." If "colonial officers" meant "army officers" they wouldn't be called comrades. No worries. Perhaps the administrative ennuie and disillusionment can be added as well. Will take another look after breakfast. PS Between you and me, now that I have taken a cursory look at J Mukherjee, M Mukherjee, I have to say they are shabby books, written in a hurry, and very likely without any editorial oversight. Saying nothing about their POV, only the paraphrases they themselves make of the sources they cite. Appalling. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:49, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

(←) M. Mukerjee is a hardcore nationalist (I mean, just look at the book's title) and I'm sure would quite readily admit as much. J. Mukherjee is much more restrained, lying far closer to center, but still probably somewhere on the nationalist side. As is their right, and is quite natural. You... if you count refs, I believe I used J considerably more than M, but both sources can be used, carefully. Greenough is perhaps preferable, but is seriously outdated. He needs to update his book.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 11:58, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

BIAS, FALSE STATEMENTS, AGGRESSION AND BULLYING

The Bengal Famine Wikipedia page was removed in its entirety and replaced by another. No detailed criticisms of the previous page were made to justify this (cf WP:BRD.)

The main author of the new page User:Lingzhi has said that he is writing to support his personal point of view, that nothing that Indians did or did not do contributed to the catastrophe of the famine – a view not shared by Indian commentators at the time, or by modern scholars. He stated that he has the objective of removing anything on the page that says that they did, and indeed anything that could be interpreted as being pro-British. He has removed from the page generally accepted, and verifiable, evidence that throws doubt on his point of view. He has also removed the conclusions that various commentators with a range of other points of view have reached. He has introduced his own, unpublished interpretations. Those of his citations that I have checked prove to bear no relation to what is in his source. There also appears to be cherry-picking, including parts of papers and individual sentences that supported his POV, and suppressing others. In the academic world, in Wikipedia, and for the aid agencies these actions are agreed to be totally unacceptable, as they necessarily produce a biased and untenable conclusion.

As expected by Wikipedia WP:BRD, I put up a longer, detailed and evidenced, version of these criticisms was on the talk page to explain why this page was unacceptable. I restored the previous page, which covered a wide range of POVs including ones I found unconvincing, which was verifiable and which met Wikipedia standards. No doubt it had its weaknesses, arising from trying to cover a very complex subject concisely and readably. (There have been contributions to this page over the years by serious scholars were able to argue politely and construcively, as well as occasional vandalism by undergraduates.) This page was immediately removed and replaced by Lingzi’s page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AidWorker (talk • contribs) 21:01, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Dear @AidWorker:, We are in Round1 of the revision process. That means we are examining the sources being used in the current version of the article for faithful paraphrasing and synthesis in short segments of text, approximately 1000 words at a time. We have started with Section 2.1 and will work our way through Section 2 first. This is not the time to argue about ideological issues or ones of due and undue weight. Those are the subjects of Rounds 2 (for short segments) and Round3 (for the overall article). Your concerns will be adequately addressed at the appropriate time. Meanwhile, I invite you to closely read the sources we are using, which are all good sources, and look for more elementary errors first. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:38, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Response to criticisms

Lingzhi responded to the criticisms as follows: ‘I don't know how strongly I can stress this: For the record, for once and for always, for any admins who want to see, for Herostratus, for everyone: AidWorker's edits, every comment made above, are a hardcore British apologist POV (or at the very least, hardcore FAD POV; the two overlap considerably but can in theory be separate). This is not a case where I sorta kinda maybe feel like perhaps I sorta suspect it might perhaps be a pro-British and/or pro-FAD POV; it's a case where you can read the itemized list of POV statements directly above. POV problems of the previous version – and "problems" is a vast understatement – I'll try to find them... Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 22:58, 1 May 2017 (UTC)’

This raises very serious issues

1. Lingzhi’s fantasies about my political beliefs and the results of my economic analysis are false.

2. I cannot accept that only a ‘hardcore British apologist’ would require that an entry meets Wikipedia standards of balance and integrity, and that its facts are correct. There are honest, rigorous, scholars holding a range of POVs.

3. Contrary to Lingzi’s statement, my criticisms were not ‘FAD’. Indeed, I complained that Lingzi had suppressed the section on Greenough, who produced some of the most thoroughly researched work in the literature and who presented a non FAD analysis and explanation. This was very influential and widely cited. However, Greenough concluded that the famine was largely caused by Bengali men, which contradicts Lingzi’s personal point of view. So why was he removed?

4. Contrary to Lingzi’s statement that it was pro-British, the page that Lingzi removed mentioned prominently that there was very strong criticism indeed of the Governments of India, Bengal and Punjab for not getting substantial amounts of food to Bengal, and criticism of the UK Government for not supplying shipping for imports. It is widely believed that these failures killed millions, so these criticisms are strongly anti-British. However, these criticisms are only valid to people who agree with the ‘FAD’ view that the famine was due to crop failures etc. Their opponents say that Bengal had plenty of food, so no outside supplies were needed. So, contrary to Lingzi’s conspiracy theory, the crop failure believed by ‘FAD’ is compatible with an anti-British view, and in this case necessary to it. Lingzi clearly does not understand what ‘FAD’ is and what it implies, which is alarming as it has been important in the literature he cites. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AidWorker (talk • contribs) 21:01, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Dear @AidWorker:, Again, we are in Round1 of the revision process. That means we are examining the sources being used in the current version of the article for faithful paraphrasing and synthesis in short segments of text, approximately 1000 words at a time. We have started with Section 2.1 and will work our way through Section 2 first. This is not the time to argue about ideological issues or ones of due and undue weight. Those are the subjects of Rounds 2 (for short segments) and Round3 (for the overall article). Your concerns will be adequately addressed at the appropriate time. Meanwhile, I invite you to closely read the sources we are using, which are all good sources, and look for more elementary errors first. Your concerns have been noted. Have no worries, I will make sure they are addressed at the appropriate time. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:40, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Abuse and bullying

Inflammatory statements were put up which will prevent reputable scholars from taking part in future edits: ‘Sorry, @AidWorker:, can't read rambling texts, so I didn't read yours. But if you are thinking, even remotely, of randomly removing any sourced content from this article, even a fragment that hasn't quite worked its way up to a clause, you've got another thing coming. The present text is the current version. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:09, 1 May 2017 (UTC)’

Lingzi has attacked other contributors for being pro-British (which they denied), and has sworn at them ‘But WTF? [abbreviation for a very abusive phrase]. . . pointless bullshit? . . . You were bellyaching above about how shitty one of my resources was. . . But please don't add pointless bullshit just to show you can. It's quite childish. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:28, 4 May 2017 (UTC)’ He also proposes thought police monitoring of them ‘For the record, please do keep running track of the sum total of F&Fs suggestions/edits and see whether they end up tilting the entire article in a British-friendly direction.... But the pro-Brits are here in force, some with bloviation, and others with barnstars. So I'm fighting pro-Brits, which might make me appear ant-Brit, kinda by default. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:24, 2 May 2017 (UTC)’ Serious researchers will not contribute

Any academic would try to produce an academically respectable page, one which students could use to find the main points of view as the starting point of their research. No tinkering with Lingzi’s page over any length of time would produce such a page. So they will leave it alone or replace it in full.

No scholar would waste their time on editing when they have been told that their comments will not be read, and their edits will be removed.

The ‘checking procedure’ has failed to identify the many factual and other errors, and the POV biases. Evidently checking by someone who has not got the theoretical training in the subject and who has not read the papers carefully and critically in their entirety does not work. Again, a serious scholar would not participate in this system.— Preceding unsigned comment added by AidWorker (talk • contribs) 21:01, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Dear @AidWorker:, Please have some patience. Please read my response above. Have no worries, you concerns will be addressed, at the appropriate time. Meanwhile, for now, I invite you to dive into the sources that are being used, engage in close reading of them, and help us improve their paraphrasing and summarization in the segments and page numbers that are being cited. Again, we have started with Section 2.1 and will work our way through Section 2 first. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:44, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

The implications

It is agreed by scholars that false beliefs on this famine killed millions, though there is strong disagreement on which beliefs are the correct ones. The dissemination of false beliefs by Wikipedia will influence people dealing with future famines and may kill millions more.

Wikipedia should remove this page and go back to the previous one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AidWorker (talk • contribs) 21:01, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

  • In two or three sentences, would you please summarize the most important details of false beliefs that will kill millions? Thanks  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 21:06, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
    • Dear @AidWorker:, The page is here. It might not be perfect, it might or might not have its own POV, but it is fairly comprehensive. One of the good things about Wikipedia is that nothing is lost. So, the older version is not going anywhere. I invite you again, as I have already done above, to shun the ideological arguments for now, to accept for now that this version is here, to improve it by diving into the sources cited, and then argue at the appropriate time about whether or not the overall slant of the article has changed. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:51, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
      • I gave full disclosure about an appearance of POV above. See the two successive bullet points "To be painfully honest, if anything" and "For example, one way"  Lingzhi ♦ (talk)

vocab level, expanding length

  • In phrases like "had had other salient effects" and "its demise looming", could we reach for somewhat higher-frequency vocabulary? Consider a broad range of readers.
  • The length seems to be expanding, as forex the discussion of Manipur. That does not seem to be a good idea in an article that is already long. I am afraid that after we've expanded it repeatedly, we'll say "Oh dear, it's too long. What to do? I know, let's move some sections into their own articles." And that is something I would contest.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:43, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
I have your concerns in mind. As I have already stated above, each section will expand in Round1, and shrink back in Round2. They will be done sequentially for each section, so that it won't expand much for the article as a whole. It is the same with the vocabulary: Round1: fidelity to the source, Round2: Most concise overall description. No, no, I'm not contemplating spin-offs. Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:23, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Famine commission report

@Lingzhi: I'm reading the Famine Inquiry Commission's Report on Bengal and Final Report.

Is there a reason why you are citing the first as "Government of India?" The author, of course, is the Famine Inquiry Commission, (and not GoI) and it is cited as such in Sen, O Grada, etc. I would have changed it myself, but it is cited so many times that it probably needs to be done using an correction editor. Also, the publisher is "Manager of Publications," (I think they meant, "Manager of Publications, Government of India," but forgot to add the GoI) and that too is a part of the citation in Sen and others. Also, as you must know, there are two reports, the Report on Bengal and the Final Report. The latter has some bearing on this article, and is mentioned on Bowbrick's site. Speaking of that site, it has poor copies. Better copies are now available of both reports, and I'm attaching the refs below. Besides, Bowbrick's website has his own spin there and is best avoided in a WP reference.

Sir John Woodhead was the chairman of the commission, so he's mentioned as second author, to distinguish the authors from other famine inquiry commissions appointed by the Government of India. The second ref below has a large pdf file, which takes a while to load. I couldn't find an online version in the same format as the first.

  • Famine Inquiry Commission; Woodhead, Sir John Ackroyd (1945a), Report on Bengal, New Delhi: Manager of Publications
    • <ref name="CommissionWoodhead1945a">{{citation|author1=Famine Inquiry Commission|last2=Woodhead|first2=Sir John Ackroyd|title=Report on Bengal|url=https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.206311/2015.206311.Famine-Inquiry#page/n3/mode/2up|year=1945a|publisher=Manager of Publications|location=New Delhi}}</ref>
  • Famine Inquiry Commission; Woodhead, Sir John Ackroyd (1945b), Final Report (PDF), New Delhi: Manager of Publications
    • <ref name="CommissionWoodhead1945b">{{citation|author1=Famine Inquiry Commission|last2=Woodhead|first2=Sir John Ackroyd|title=Final Report|url=https://ia801900.us.archive.org/33/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.190476/2015.190476.The-Famine-Inquiry-Commission.pdf|year=1945b|publisher=Manager of Publications|location=New Delhi}}</ref>

In sfn format, we would be referring to these reports as {{sfn|Famine Inquiry Commission|Woodhead|1945a}} and {{sfn|Famine Inquiry Commission|Woodhead|1945b}}

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:30, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

  • You cn do whatever the f*ck makes you happy, fella. You shipwrecked it twice. [But for the record, no one fucking puts Woodhead's name in the cite, tho I have seen it informally referred to as "the Woodhead report"] ...   Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:16, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I'm aware that others don't include Woodhead in the authors, but was merely suggesting that we do, to distinguish this Famine Inquiry Commission from others. But that's fine. Let's make the author "Famine Inquiry Commission." The most cited author is "Famine Inquiry Commission," not "Government of India." Please note that I've been in academics for much of a lifetime. I'm used to abusive people. If you are using foul language (such as " the f*ck makes you happy, fella. You shipwrecked it twice. But for the record, no one fucking puts Woodhead's name" as a coping mechanism in the face of anxiety, that's fine; if you are using it because you are hoping to derail me off a rigorous assessment of this article, you are wasting your time. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:18, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
Done. Government of India (1945) --> Famine Inquiry Commission (1945a) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:08, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Infobox mortality

(Added later, at 21:29, 13 May 2017 (UTC), this is a note for future consideration, not present.) Though this doesn't concern us so much at this stage, in the Report on Bengal figures for the total excess mortality cited in the infobox are for a specific period. They say a number of things in that report:

  • (As mentioned in the infobox): "On this basis we must concluded that about 1.5 million deaths occurred as a direct result of the famine and epidemics which followed in its train." (page 110)
  • But also
    • "The complete mortality figures for 1944, which are not available at the time of writing, may show that, as far as excess mortality is concerned, the year 1944 was almost as disastrous as the previous one." (page 108)
    • "The Bengal famine of 1943 stands out as a great calamity even in an age all too familiar with human suffering and death on a tragic scale. Between one and two million people died as a result of the famine and the outbreaks of epidemic disease associated with it." (page 1)
  • Maharatna in his thesis mentions the Famine Inquiry Commission's "about 1.5 million" figure with time frame "January 1943 to June 1944" (page 215)
  • His own 2.1 million revision is for the period January 1943 to January 1946 and subject to the condition that the underreporting of the births and deaths during the period was such that the numbers require a correction factor of 1.71 for births and 1.51 for deaths. His excess mortality when reduced for the period January 1943 to December 1944 is 1,924,617. Reducing his time period further to January 1943 to June 1944, will reduce that excess mortality even more in the direction of the 1.5 million estimate of the Famine Commission. (Table 5.4, page 228) It seems to me that his reassessments are more a riposte to Sen and Greenough than the Famine Commission.
  • Finally, it is usual to mention the official estimates. Those in this case are not those of the Famine Commission, but of the Bengal Public Health Department. These are either "792,854 to 1,017,600" for the period May 1943 to April 1944 (as cited in Maharatna) or 1,111, 217 (=688,846 + 422, 371) for the period January 1943 to June 1944 (as in Report on Bengal (page 108). That the FIC report are not the "official figures" are suggested in: "While the Commission cannot accept popular views on mortality, it is nevertheless of the opinion that the official figures under-estimate the total number of deaths." (page 108-109) However, many authors do regard FIC to be official. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:28, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
You said "at this stage" - I read "my tactic is war of attrition". Just saying. All this "It seems to me" mumbling and verbosity is deeply unattractive. Ceoil (talk) 11:00, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
Good morning @Lingzhi: Please note that after thanking me publicly on April 22 (‪"Ceoil‬ thanked you for your edit on ‪Bengal famine of 1943‬ (fixed lingzhi's catch)") i.e. for this edit, @Ceoil: has now restored the ambiguity (about people dying twice, first from starvation, and then from disease) to which you had objected in the Milhist review. As for your recent query in an edit summary about why your participial addition, "accelerating a trend toward economic inequality" kept disappearing, Ceoil's edits might suggest one answer. There are other booboos: underlying causes of the famine have now become underlying causes of why "between half and three fourths of those dependent on agriculture were already at near subsistence level." Merchants withholding their stocks of rice, could now be interpreted as corporations selling rice withholding equity stock, and many more. But as these edits have nothing to do with me, in the making or the remaking, I will let you two duke it out. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:44, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
  • By far the strongest argument for Dyson/Maharatna's 2.1 million (which is actually IIRC the middle value of three estimates) is that Tauger has gone on record as saying it is the academic consensus. How does he know it is? Did he discuss it over tea and crumpets with Devereaux, Ó Gráda, Greenough and Sen? Is there a private mailing list somewhere for famine experts? I have no idea, but Wikipedia has no authority to over-rule his published statement.
  • Before Tauger's assertion, the de facto consensus was probably Sen's 3 million (as I think Maharatna notes.. I think it was Maharatna who noted that, but may have been Tauger).
  • No one, absolutely no one, buys into the FIC figure of 1.5 million. That includes the FIC itself, and Wallace Aykroyd, the member of the Commission who single-handedly (yes, single-handedly) generated the figure. Aykroyd has a famous quote to that effect, but I don't believe I included it.
  • Finally, I think I totally forgot to mention an important point: these numbers do not include the definitely-famine-caused excess mortality in Orissa and the possibility of related excess mortality in other districts. I'm sure we can note this fact, but I don't think we can add those to our total, for fear of WP:OR.
  • I'm not gonna argue any more about the lede etc. I live in fear that you'll take it upon yourself to totally rewrite it anyhow. I am looking forward to arguing about it.<note ironic/resigned/mildly sarcastic tone of voice>  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:33, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
LInghzhi, My note above has nothing to do with Maharatna's 2.1 million reassessment, only about what fine print needs to be added to official figures, which were for a slightly different time period than Maharatna's (or Dyson and Maharatna's). I am already aware that O Grada has mentioned an academic consensus about 2.1 in Making famine history ("Subsequent estimates of mortality in Bengal range from 0.8 million to 3.8 million; today the scholarly consensus is about 2.1 million (Hall-Matthews 2005; Sen 1981; Maharatna 1996)"). Yes, I know all about the FIC estimates unreliability, I've read O Grada's bit about the commission's own self-doubt. Show your exasperation with the poor-quality edits Ceoil has just made on the Bengal famine of 1943 page, against your express intents, not in misinterpreting my post, and telling me things I already know. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:02, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
F&F, as far as I can see unless I'm missing it, you haven't actually proposed any changes regarding the infobox. Why mention all the statistics ranging from 0.8m to 2.1m — you've taken the 2.1m for the period 1943-46 and reduced it to about 1.5m for the period of Jan 1943 - June 1944 — if you don't actually want to make a change to the infobox. I'm assuming you want to include the Bengal Public Health Departments estimates of between 0.8m and 1.0m (May 1943 - April 1944) and 1.1m (January 1943 - June 1944). In which case there would need to be agreement as to the period duration of the Famine, which from the article starts as early as December '42 and ends by mid '44. That would discount the 0.8 to 1.0m figures from the infobox as these are from a selective period within the famine and are not representative of the famine as a whole. Presumably you could add the 1.1m figure, but, that would require consensus. For that matter, I can't find a reference to the Bengal Public Health Department anywhere in the article. I found what you were talking about in Maharatna – link provided. In this work Maharatna criticizes both the Bengal Public Health Department and FIC. For the BPHD he says first; No allowance made for under-registration of deaths; also employs an over-estimated level of "normal" mortality, which thus reduces the estimated level of excess deaths. Then second; Arbitrarily assumes under-registration of deaths as 40 per cent and this figure is also an underestimate. Btw, the BPHD's figures for June 43 to Dec 1944 are 1.4 million. For the FIC; No allowance made for under-registration of deaths in 1944; baseline normal mortality fixed by deaths during 1938-42. I found 688,846 but not 422,371 figures as well. All of this (except the last two figures) is on Table 5.1 on pg. 217. Maharatna's comments imply unreliability for both the BPHD and FIC numbers in their opinion. It would be remiss of us to include these values from Maharatna's work without giving appropriate context to those numbers. Personally, I'd recommend a footnote be attached to the numbers stating that they were pulled from Maharatna's work and repeat or paraphrase the criticism that Maharatna gave of those numbers. That's all I have, Mr rnddude (talk) 15:47, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
@Mr rnddude:
  • (a) Yes. I haven't proposed any changes. I was merely noting down some things about the different estimates that may need to be considered, when we get to the lead and infobox much later in this process (explained by "though this does not concern us so much at this time"). I was doing it now, because I began closely reading the Famine Inquiry Commission reports, on account of their being cited in Section 2.1 in a different context.
  • (b) You are right, the Bengal Public Health Department is not mentioned in the article, which too I was indirectly noting, as the Department's estimates are widely cited in many places:
    • not just in Maharatna, as I say above, from where I took one estimate, "792,854 to 1,017,600" for the period May 1943 to April 1944, in Table 5.1, page 215, which you have noted as well, and which Maharatna cites to a primary source ("Memoranda no.14, "Note on mortality caused by the famine", submitted to the Woodhead (Famine Inquiry) Commission by the Department of Public Health and Local Self-Government (Medical) of the Government of Bengal, 1944, p.64, Document from the Pinnell Papers.)
    • but also, as I also say above, in FIC1945a (Report on Bengal, page 108, (see new link I added: Famine Inquiry Commission (1945a). Report on Bengal. New Delhi: Manager of Publications. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)). Here as you will notice, explicit mention is made of the BPHD, or BDPH, on page 108, there is total mortality of 1,873,749, and an excess mortality of 688,846 for the year 1943 and excess mortality of 422,371 for the first half of 1944, together totalling approx 1.1 million for the period January 1943 to June 1944.
  • (c) The estimates of the "Bengal Public Health Department," as far as I can tell, are different from the Bengal Public Health Reports whose number of 1.4 million Maharatna cites, and which seem to have been published much later, in 1951, four years after the British had quit India, and seven years after the famine, and obviously not what FIC 1945a (Report on Bengal, published in 1945), is talking about. See the 1945 report, which shows the 1951 publication date. Also, the the 1943 report, which doesn't give a publication date, but which has total deaths for 1943 pegged at 1,908,022 (see page 2) in contrast to 1,873,749 mentioned above.
  • (d) That a report has a time period, e.g. January 1943 to June 1944, as the FIC 1945a Report on Bengal does, doesn't mean the authors think the famine-related deaths ended after that period, for as I've already indicated above, the Report on Bengal also says: "The complete mortality figures for 1944, which are not available at the time of writing, may show that, as far as excess mortality is concerned, the year 1944 was almost as disastrous as the previous one." (page 108)
  • (e) That someone criticizes a report does not mean the report is non-notable for an encyclopedia article. Official numbers are usually mentioned in famines, regardless of what later criticism they receive from which quarter. I have ordered Maharatna's published book of four years later from inter-library loan and will look at that as well soon. But, in any case, I don't really have any issues mentioning the later criticism received by each estimate in a footnote, as you suggest, but I do think that the official estimates should be mentioned. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:35, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
  • We already have a footnote for (almost) everyone's estimates... If you wanna put all that shit in a footnote, not an infobox, and not the body text, then of course that would be OK. Otherwise, WTF? No one, and when I say no one I mean absolutely no one, attaches any credibility to it. Lay readers don't need to be abused by having their eyes seared with numbers that are certainly tremendously wrong, and could perhaps be considered propaganda. if you are in love with them, footnote them.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 20:48, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
We will consider all these issues when we get to them in Round 3. Right now I'm trying to establish that the sources have been paraphrased accurately. As I've already mentioned, I had made a note here for future consideration, not present. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:25, 13 May 2017 (UTC) PS And I've made a note of that now at the beginning of this section. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:29, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Editing strategy

(This is mostly for Fowler) Fowler, I don't think your strategy of extended discussions is working very well. From a disinterested perspective, I can see that by your approach - discussing at length the sources and the content before making changes - you're trying to be respectful of the work Lingzhi has done. But, neither Lingzhi nor Ceoil seem to see it that way. Lingzhi responds unhappily and Ceoil thinks you're doing this with some sort of mal intent and then goes their own way on the article. Mr mddude is the only editor who is taking this approach seriously. If I may make a suggestion, perhaps resorting to a bolder approach "make changes, explain in edit summaries and resort to the talk page only if discussion is necessary" may actually be more productive and less stressful. Of course, the bolder approach may blow things up completely but that's often better than low intensity warfare. I've known you long enough to know that you'll go your own way but, perhaps, rethinking your approach to this article is worth thinking about. --regentspark (comment) 14:15, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

@RegentsPark: Yes, I was thinking about the same. Let me give it a shot, a less bold version of what you are suggesting, that is, of first making the edits with ample edit summaries, and making a short explanatory post here after. Thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:09, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Burma rice

@Lingzhi: Hi there. You say, in Section 2.1 "The fall of Rangoon shut off Burmese exports of rice to India and Ceylon. The impact on Bengal was significant; although Burmese rice usually made up only around 5% of the consumption within Bengal, ..."

I couldn't find the 5% figure in either O Grada or the Famine Inquiry Commission (1945a) on the cited pages, so I was wondering where you got that number from? Was there another source, or other pages of the same sources? Perhaps it is on those pages, and I missed it.

However, Famine Inquiry Commission (1945b), i.e. the Final Report does say on page 8, "Bengal is normally deficit in rice and wheat. The average annual net imports of rice according to the recorded statistics for the five years ending in 1941–42 were approximately 132,000 tons. In addition, there were unrecorded imports by country boat from Assam and Arakan in Burma; the amounts of these imports is not known with accuracy. The average annual net imports of wheat for the same period were 249,000 tons. The imports of rice were chiefly from Burma and those of wheat mainly from other parts of India. We have already dealt with the supply position in Bengal in 1943 in our report on that province. ..."

Now, the report on that province, ie Famine Inquiry Commission (1945a) says on page 18, paragraph 10: "There is a striking difference between the average amount available for consumption (production plus net imports) during the five years ending 1937–38 (27.56 million tons) and the immediately succeeding period of 5 years ending 1942–3 (25.41 million tons)"

There, they are, of course, talking about India as a whole (for rice) and not Bengal. However, the Bengal numbers are available on Famine Inquiry Commission (1945a) page 216 (appendix), Statement IV, where the average consumption for the period 1937–1941 is 9.66 million tons (you have to add the relevant rows in column 2 and divide by 5). That means that the imported rice from Burma constitutes per cent. I may have made a mistake of, but that seems to be considerably less than 5%. I'm still keen to understand where the 5% came from. Thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:12, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

  • Apparently that one got lost in the shuffle of moving references around. Absolutely everyone says "small", a few people add "but growing", and Mahalanobis (1943) says (rough paraphrase) "no one really knows, but usually around 1%, and never more than 5%". I don't think I botched the Mahalanobis quote; I think I got it from someone else. But that person may have been quoting Mahalanobis (?) and I can't find it right at this moment. I will continue looking... Moreover the impact was felt far more deeply in other Provinces, which then bid up the price of Bengal rice and increased Bengal exports  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:53, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Use Mahalanobis 1944 p. 70, adjust downward:

How much rice do we secure from outside Bengal? Here we have (or rather had for a small number of years) reliable figures relating to sea and rail-borne trade. The net import was usually small and was on an average something like 22 lakhs of maunds or about 1% of the total production during the seven years from 1933-34 to 1938-39 for which figures are given in Table 2 of the Appendix; it was highest and just short of one crore maunds (3-6 lakhs of tons) or less than 5% of total production in 1934-35. We have, however, no reliable statistics relating to the amount of rice which comes into the province by road or river; this is usually believed to be small, but on what grounds I do not know. Statistics of movements of grain from one part of the province to another or other trade statistics relating to conditions within the province are not available... [repeated in footnote 8, with comment about stabilizing effect: 8 Burma was certainly a stabilising factor so far as price is concerned, as it prevented attempts at hoarding or cornering; but as I have already pointed out, the total physical quantity of not import was never large and did not exceed, as far as we know, 5% of the total production in any single year.]

  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 08:47, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for replying and thanks for finding this. After your earlier post, I read Mahalanobis 1943 as well, which is similar, though not as explicit, and thanks for that. I don't really think we need to mention the one outlier year 1934-35, when the net imports rose to 5%, the average of 1% is enough. Another issue: the sources themselves are too old and close enough to the time of the famine that they risk becoming primary sources. In other words, these can be used for plain statement of obvious fact, but not for interpretations of data, even in the case of an iconic statistician such as Mahalanobis. I did however find another, more contemporary, source, which is already in the Works cited: Islam's Bengal agriculture, 2007, which says something similar. He says on page 56:

"According to the calculations of the Famine Enquiry Commission,' during the five years from 1927/28 exports exceeded imports, but net exports accounted for only 2.1 per cent of total output in the official series and 1.6 per cent in the revised series. During the next ten years (i.e. up to 1941/42) there was a net import of 1.1 million tons per year which amounted to only 1.4 per cent of the domestic supply in the official series and 1.1 per cent in the revised series. Thus, though there are discrepancies in the details of the statistics available from the two sources, two points clearly emerge from them. Firstly, Bengal became a net importer of rice, at least from the beginning of the 1930s. Secondly, the quantity of net imports did not, however, constitute a significant proportion of the total available food crops. Rice was the most important food crop. Therefore, on the basis of the available data it may be safely concluded that net external supply did not significantly contribute towards narrowing the gap between the supply of foodgrains and the growth of population."

There are two tacks here: (a) leave it similar to O Grada's "The usual supplies of rice from Burma, albeit a small proportion of aggregate consumption, were cut off,' and put some version of Islam and Mahalanobis in the footnote, or mention only the ten year average, ie 1.4%. I will write something appropriate later. The rest of the stuff about the scramble in the markets etc is fine. I wasn't contesting that, at least not above. Thanks again. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:43, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
PS Islam might have made one error here. The 1.1 million (I think) is decadal, not per-year, but regardless the percentage is correct. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:47, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
PPS Islam mentions another set of estimates in a paragraph above this quoted paragraph, and those might well be relying on the same data as Mahalanobis, and those are closer to 4%. Will come up with something. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:05, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
  • I remember seeing an assertion to the effect that essentially what was going on here was that Bengalis were selling their higher-quality rice outside the province, then purchasing lower-quality rice from Burma, for consumption. That may have been Islam too; I could find probably find it. Another source (or perhaps more than one source) said that the imports from Burma were mainly purchased for Calcutta's use. I could find probably find that too.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 08:34, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
    • Yes, I already have that bit. Maybe not your sources though, so please look for yours. Export of finer grade Bengal rice and import of coarse Burmese is in: Sugata Bose's on the three famines; Paul Greenough's Indian famines and peasant victims, and Amit Bhaduri's book titled Economics and History (or some such). Also, somewhere I did read that the informal/unrecorded Burma import by boat came to East Bengal, which suffered most when it stopped. I didn't read anywhere in these sources that the coarse rice was consumed in Calcutta, only by peasants. (Just making notes here. No response required.) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:12, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
    • Yes Bose is the one I remembered:

    • Bengal had since the turn of the century been dependent on relatively small quantities of coarse Burmese rice, preferring to export some of its own finer varieties and to switch where possible from rice to jute.

      — {{sfn|Bose|1990|p=703}}

    • In the former years rice could be imported from Burma into Calcutta, as historically it had been in the 1936 famine (GB 1941: 28) and intervening years to keep the price of grain low (Chakravarti 1939: 36). In 1940-41, there were 293,686 metric tons of rice Brennan1984.txt

    • imported through Calcutta (Chattopadhyay 1981: 137) and there would have been further imports into Chittagong and other East Begal ports. But it was less the amount of grain imported than the ease of importation of Burma rice into the markets of Calcutta that kept the Bengal rice price down. In 1942-3 on the other hand Burma was under the control of the Japanese. Brennan1984.txt

    • The average imports of Burma rice were r?ughlv equal to the rice requirements of Calcutta. Therefore, for many years Calcutta had been virtually off the Bengal market both for rice and Wheat. comlast.txt

    • n addition, the big Calcutta rice merchants in the past had generally turned to the cheap Burmese source for increased supplies rather than raising the level of demand on the internal market, so Bengali cultivators were unfamiliar with a scarcity created primarily by market activity. Greenough_1980.txt

    •   Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:51, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Length, just hoping

I suppose the version moved here from my userspace may have appeared to be merely a bare framework, but perhaps there's a valid reason for that: I tried hard to 1) make observations, 2) document the ways those events were directly or indirectly linked to the famine (a very key goal), and 3) wrap it up, done. There now seem to be a very large number of data bits being added. Fowler&fowler has promised a heavy-duty trimming session at some point in the (somewhat distant) future. I assuredly hope so. The article was quite long before all this, back when I moved it here. It may even then have been longer than the longest FAC. It has grown considerably since, and seems far short of its (projected) ultimate length.. Even if current editors promise not to indulge in spin-offs that remove entire sections, there will certainly be FACers who will urge just that. I am really hoping the promised heavy-duty trim will be really heavy duty (without tossing facts whose removal serves to tilt POV).  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 16:41, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

I have already told you that each section will be expanded before it can be trimmed down again. There is a good reason for this. It is to see the lay of the land in the light of reliable sources of DUE weight. I can give you a simple example. I am working on the Quit India section right now. Bengal was not the major staging area of the Quit India movement. Those regions were Bombay, the United Provinces and Bihar (whether judged by casualties inflicted, or suffered, or property damage, and so forth). The movement's major incidents did not take place in Bengal. In fact, the major incidents in Bihar, for some time cut off Bengal and Assam from the rest of India. Until we see it in perspective, we stand in danger of making the Quit India movement in Bengal to be of larger consequence than it really was. We stand in danger of using snippets from here and there, among authors who are writing only about Bengal and the Bengal famine, and who are necessarily highlighting the place of that proximate cause in the famine.
For another example, how does one see the errors in:

The violence of the "Quit India" movement was condemned around the world and did much to harden British opinion in many sectors against India and Indians in general;{{sfn|Panigrahi|2004|p=239–40}} some sources speculate that this reduced the British War Cabinet's willingness to provide famine aid at a time when supplies were also needed for the war effort.{{sfn|Bayly|Harper|2005|p=286}}

unless, one actually sees what the late Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper are saying, which is something quite different:

"Quite apart from the demands of war, it is difficult to escape the impression that the War Cabinet was simply hostile towards India. The prime minister believed that Indians were the next worst people in the world after the Germans. Their treachery had been plain in the Quit India movement. The Germans he was prepared to bomb into the ground. The Indians he would starve to death as a result of their own folly and viciousness. Churchill got the implicit support of the government's scientific adviser Frederick Lindemann, who seemed to have thought the Bengalis were a weak race and that overbreeding and eugenic unfitness were the basic reasons for the scarcity."

In other words, there already is POV in the article. If you don't see it, note again that Bayly and Harper say, "Quite apart from the demands of war" How then did the article arrive "at a time when supplies were also needed for the war effort?" If that is not POV, what is it? If I don't expand it first, let the reader and myself see what Bayly and Harper are saying, and in what context, how will I contract it in a faithful manner? I won't bother right now with the POV in the first part of that sentence above, but please rest assured that I will do this revision right. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:35, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
  • No, you're wrong. I suppose I'll have to re-read your post after a cup of coffee, but I don't see that the article's text is "quite different" in intent from the original, or that it adds a POV. In other words, there are no errors, though you say you are seeing errors. The original Bayly/Harper is saying (paraphrase) "Yeah the demands of the war were a factor in the War Cabinet's refusal to release shipping for aid [this is discussed immediately above the quoted text], but the Quit India movement was a separate and additional factor that further hardened War Cabinet opinion [text also suggests an undertone of racism]." There is a chain of logic in the text: the War Cabinet refused shipping for two reasons: demands of war, and anger at Quit India. Why is that in any way shape or form different from article text? And the article never suggests that Bengal is the center of Quit India. IIRC it explicitly says that the movement was India-wide (but lasted longer in Bengal). It's important to note that the point of whether or not Bengal was the center is irrelevant anyhow. If Churchill [and others] truly was bitter/angry, he was not angry at Bengalis specifically; he was angry at Indians in general. According to this POV anyhow, Bengal was just the place in India where his anger had powerful consequences, or so that line of reasoning suggests. Finally, article text hedges with "some sources speculate", which signals that this is just one line of reasoning among quite different alternative explanations. I agree that Bayly/Harper present a POV (which may or may not be a consensus POV among scholars; that's another discussion), but why is article text POV? It clearly reflects their intent. It is clearly hedged in article text. It is accurate and NPOV.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:19, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
Again, Bayly and Harper say, "Quite apart from the demands of war, ..." How did you manage, "at a time when supplies were also needed for the war effort?" Supplies are a demand of war. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:32, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
We seem to be talking around each other. If you wanna delete the word "also" that might be OK; the "also" here does not minimize or even refer to the observation that supplies are a demand of war. The "also" refers to the point (explained above) that there were (according to one POV) two motivations for denying shipping: 1) the war, and 2) "also" racism/anger toward Indians [among at least some key British agents in this setting, mainly Churchill], which may have been present all along, but was bolstered/elevated by events of Quit India. I hope we don't ec... Additional point: I think the "Churchill's Secret War" POV would say "No the war needs were not the most important factor; it was more racism than supplies for the war". I think the Bayly/Harper POV would say "Yeah, shipping was needed for the war, but also Churchill and others were certainly bitter and probably racist". A minor distinction perhaps among anti-Churchill POVs, but a distinction nonetheless.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:50, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
Bayly and Harper did not say that the Quit India resolution caused Churchill to want to starve the Indians to death, or was even one of the factors. They are saying that the visceral hostility toward India caused him to both view the Quit India movement as treachery and to want to starve the Indians to death. You didn't mention the previous paragraph in any case, which was not about the demands of war, but how "lethargy" as well as the inability to be roused to "action" were excused by casting them as responses to demands of war. Here is that passage,

"The British war cabinet refused to countermand orders to send Indian food overseas. It had not the slightest intention of diverting shipping from the war front to send food to Bengal. Britain was grossly overstretched and the ships were needed to feed the United Kingdom and supply the critical war front in the Middle East. Leo Amery, the secretary of state, who had the responsibility of justifying the doings of Indian government in Parliament, began by adopting a lofty political economist's perspective. He argued that growing hunger was the 'natural' result of the long-term growth of the Indian population and Bengal's climatic problems, as if this somehow justified the government's lethargy. By early summer of 1943 he was, however, becoming seriously concerned. Penning ever more alarming reports on the food situation for his Cabinet colleagues, he tried to rouse them to action. He predicted that India's future as a base of military operations would be threatened if the population of Bengal continued to starve and die in the ensuing epidemics. Morale in the Indian army was in jeopardy. ... An even more urgent tone was heard after British and Indian press reports began to use the forbidden word 'famine' in July and August 1943. Yet the Cabinet remained unwilling to release more than a quarter of the food tonnage and shipping which the viceroy and the secretary of state were now demanding."

Your version, "some sources speculate that this (i.e. the violence of the Quit India movement) reduced the British War Cabinet's willingness to provide famine aid at a time when supplies were also needed for the war effort." not only misinterprets what Bayly and Harper are saying, but, indirectly, lays the blame of the famine at the doorstep of the Quit India movement. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:30, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
PS And, no, Bayly and Harper are not saying, as you are suggesting, ""Yeah, shipping was needed for the war, but also Churchill and others were certainly bitter and probably racist". They are saying that the War Cabinet continued to make the excuse of the demands of war to not act. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:35, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

PPS And if there is any doubt they were blaming the British government. Here is the paragraph before the one I have quoted above:

The higher levels of the British government had been warned constantly from the early months of 1942 that a serious crisis was building up. It was a matter not only of public welfare but of military security that the second more important base of Britain's world power should be adequately fed. But the government was deaf at the highest level. Nor were local agencies in better shape."

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:54, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

And, if there is still any doubt, here is their poignant conclusion:

The famine hit the most vulnerable hardest. It was the people who were dependent on food or wages from others in the villages who starved first. Those who died were 'the village washerman, cobbler, blacksmith, tailor, mason, labourer and his wife and his dependents and children.' These people were predominantly of low caste, of course. Many starving families tied to preserve their young males, sacrificing their daughters and grandmothers. Hundreds of people died in their homes, too proud to embarrass others with their fate. People lay down in the street and died, rather than resisting or looting the grain stores in the way the radicals wanted. This was not because they were fatalistic, as the British and high castes asserted. It was because they were good subjects, good parents, good children. Their rulers, elders and betters, husbands and fathers, had cut them adrift."

And this is not Madhusree Mukerjee, a sometime physicist, turned science writer, who has written a polemical trade paperback on the famine. These are the preeminent historians of South- and southeast Asia, whose book, if you include all its editions, has a citation index of nearly 400, ie. it has been cited by 400 other scholarly articles. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:10, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

  • So Bayly/Harper are hardcore anti-Churchill rather than moderate anti-Churchill. That still puts them in the anti-Churchill camp, and still means the text as I wrote it was 100% correct, because it said they had an "anti-" POV. Questions?.. OH, I never laid the blame at the Quit India movement. I said some people, in other countries in the world, especially Churchill in the UK, blamed it. You are (to paraphrase sen) in a dark room chasing a black cat that wasn't there...  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:15, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
  • I see you wrote "misinterpretations should be corrected" but then deleted your edit. tell me re bayly/harper: Are they or are they not saying some people (esp. Churchill) were racist/angry and their feelings were either reflected in or amplified by their position on Quit India? And is that not what the article text said? The (original) article text says what they said, and says they said it, and presents it as POV rather than fact. true or false?  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:08, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
You have asked: "Are they or are they not saying some people (esp. Churchill) were racist/angry and their feelings were either reflected in or amplified by their position on Quit India?" Well, not quite. They are not saying that "some people (esp Churchill) were racist/angry" either. They are saying that the Churchill and Churchill's War Cabinet, dragged their feet, that they refused to act to take the preventative measures that were being demanded, and that could have saved lives, chalking their inaction to wartime imperatives or "long-term growth of the Indian population and Bengal's climatic problems. They are saying that the British government was "deaf at the highest level" i.e. that at the highest level of power, they refused to listen. They are saying that, moreover, quite apart from the exigencies of war, it was difficult not to conclude that Churchill had visceral hostility to India (note "anger" is different from "hostility"), manifested in his considering Indians to be "the next worst people in the world after the Germans," in his considering the Quit India movement to have confirmed, or to have shown plainly, the treachery of Indians, and in his willingness to starve out the Bengalis. There is nothing said their about racism, only, the aside (in a paragraph quoted above) that his scientific adviser harbored old ethnological notions of "weak races," eugenics, etc. Obviously, if they were the next worst to the Germans, who are Caucasian, like Churchill was, and who speak a Germanic language (German) as Churchill did (English), Bayly and Harper are not talking about race or ethnicity. The text that was originally in place, and whose second half (after the semi-colon) was a paraphrase of Bayly and Harper was:

The violence of the "Quit India" movement was condemned around the world and did much to harden British opinion in many sectors against India and Indians in general; some sources speculate that this reduced the British War Cabinet's willingness to provide famine aid at a time when supplies were also needed for the war effort."

Bayly and Harper are not saying anything about the violence of the Quit India movement, they are saying that Churchill's generalized hostility saw in the Quit India movement a confirmation, or plain evidence, of the treachery of Indians, just as that hostility caused him to refuse to listen to pleas of aid, and in effect to starve out the Bengalis. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:40, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
  • And how does this confirmation of the treachery of Indians not "[reduce] the British War Cabinet's willingness to provide famine aid at a time when supplies were also needed for the war effort"?  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 12:39, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
That is your deduction. They say only that, independent of wartime imperatives, Churchill and his cabinet were simply hostile to India. Effects of that hostility are the perception of Quit India as treachery and the resolve to starve out the Indians. The causal factor Bayly and Harper are talking about is hostility. Another prime minister, Attlee for example, who had supported decolonization in India from the mid-1930s, might not have resolved to starve out the Indians, even if he perceived Quit India to have been treachery. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:39, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
@Fowler&fowler: I think what I have written about the impact of Quit India on the Cabinet is implicit in the Bayly text, but I agree that it isn't spelled out plainly enough to be used as support for an assertion that Quit India enhanced their hostility. So I agree that the "some speculate" bit can be reworded. I still recall (I haven't revisited the texts!) more than one source saying that relief aid to Midnapur was hampered/complicated by political hostilities; I seem to recall one source (Mansergh?) stating that the Congress loyalists explicitly told locals to refuse Raj aid... Thank you for your correction... I still have no idea how you perceived "clear POV" in the "Quite apart from the demands of war" quibble. If that is still important to you, speak on... I do have a confession: I am barely skimming what you are writing on the article (and sometimes simply not reading at all). I am so completely sick of all this that if I felt free to simply walk away I would. But that would be (IMO) irresponsible... From an *extremely selfish* point of view, I sometimes regret starting this whole process. But my weariness with the process is overshadowed by the hope that I have added some valuable knowledge capital (so to speak) to the stock of readily available, public information... as for reading your revision of the article, my plan is to wait until you say you are fully done, print hardcopies of my version and your rewrite, lay them side by side, and spend a week or so comparing text for POV shifts. Unless I accidentally see something that seems really significant before then.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 09:31, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
@Lingzhi: What you say at the end sounds fine. Thanks for your patience. I know it is not, and won't be, easy. I will keep your concerns in mind as we go forward. I do have one question for you. You mentioned somewhere above that you had converted various sources to text files and then written a program to extract snippets relevant to the topic on hand. How extensively did you do this? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:26, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

(←) Very extensively. I have roughly 200 sources (text files) in the source file, and 533 text files with results for keywords in the output file. Note of course that I also actually read many, many of the sources, often in full, and sometimes repeatedly. I also have other sources that were not convertible to text for various reasons...  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:46, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

@Lingzhi: OK, thanks very much. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:54, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Why did you remove almost all mention of violence in southwest Bengal and replace it with Cripps? Major scoping error  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 14:08, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
@Lingzhi: What specific edit do you have in mind? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:52, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
Mmmmm, there have been so many versions floating around now that it's getting hard to keep track. I was sure I had listed specific details.... and much more importantly, sure I had mentioned that animosity lasted longer and deeper in SW Bengal than in other areas of India. hey, the bombers didn't monitor the Indians, they bombed the Indians. The whole main point of the Civil Unrest section is this: I am not saying civil unrest caused the famine. Surely not. But civil unrest was one of the "shocks" that made the situation tense, caused psychological distress, and (more importantly) actually hindered the EARLY relief efforts (immediately after the cyclone). The Raj actually made a genuine effort, it seems, to provide aid/relief in the immediate aftermath of the cyclone. Some sources (was it... Brennan?) suggest that was because cyclones fit in with their mental model of "something we are supposed to provide aid for", whereas figuring out what to do about inflation was far less clear to them (so their response was late, weak, and kinda "schizophrenic" so to speak because it was divided between two departments with different methods and even different GOALS).. And I know Cripps is important to India, but in the context of Bengal it merits a single sentence... also, it seems you are putting in facts that I added a long time ago then deleted to shorten the article. That's OK I guess. But 1) Uprising was longer and deeper in Midnapore than elsewhere in India. Animosity in Midnapore (Contai/Tamluk) and perhaps also 24 Parganas was deep. 2) Animosity and uprising very directly hindered early aid efforts and complicated later ones 3) Cripps gets 1 sentence, even though it is huge in the history of India as a whole and is 1 of 2 direct causes of Quit India (other =jailing Congress) 4) bombers bombed, not monitored 5) A final and relatively trivial point: your list of "centers" of Quit India doesn't jibe with my (extremely imperfect!) memory; I'll try to find the info I seem to recall... but on second thought, you know, that list could just be deleted as irrelevant... OH AND 6) please try to avoid reflexively deleting everything by "Madhusree Mukerjee, a sometime physicist, turned science writer, who has written a polemical trade paperback on the famine". Let's you and I both agree that among all the sources we have, she resides somewhere very near the nationalist pole on the political spectrum. [Others not quoted here are worse of course.] Let's also agree that she is not a historian (she describes herself as a journalist). But that doesn't mean delete, delete, delete. If she can cite sources, her points can be included.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:25, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
I have barely done finishing the QI42 overview and haven't got to Bengal yet. Yes, I do understand that you are not saying that QI42 caused the famine. I haven't removed anything about Midnapur, in fact was going to expand it a little. You are right QI42 lasted longer in Bengal (Midnapur), in Orissa (princely state of Talcher, where people were strafed from the air by the RAF, or so some versions have it), Maharashtra (Satara), Gujarat (Kheda district) and so forth. The bombers did not bomb, only patrolled. The exact quote from Bayly and Harper is, "Bomber patrols began over the affected areas." Yes, the centers were mainly Bihar and eastern UP, and perhaps Bombay. (I'll add something more shortly.) Bengal became increasingly removed from the center of India's nationalist movement after Gandhi's noncooperation movement began in 1921, especially after CR Das died in the late 1920s, and even more so after Subhas Bose got booted out of the Congress in 1940. I have here in my shelves Anthony Low's edited Congress and the Raj: Facets on the Indian Struggle, 1917-1947 with forward by Rajat Kanta Ray. Of the 15 odd chapters, there is none devoted to Bengal. (Of course, that may have more to do with who was invited to contribute.  :) ) The overnight heroes thrown up by QI42 were Jayprakash Narayan, Aruna Asaf Ali, Sucheta Kriplani, Usha Mehta, Ram Manohar Lohia, not really the brave old woman who is currently mentioned in the text. Obviously, I'm not saying we have to delete reference to her, but we do have to keep things in perspective. I'm not reflexively deleting Madhusree Mukerjee, but removed only a shaky surmise of hers based on a primary source that Paul Greenough found in the papers of Moni Mukherjee, a statistician at ISI Calcutta. I don't believe she has the training to objectively evaluate primary sources. Of course, I will reduce. But I can't reduce, as I've already stated, until after the whole section (in this case, section 2) has been expanded and the sources made DUE. Perhaps, I might do it, for related subsections, if there is a clear theme relating them. More after I've added some text. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:39, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. I remembered aircraft attacking (I think it's verified; I recall upper-level officials admitting as much), but not necessarily the weapon or the exact place. If aircraft strafed in another province, but bombers only patrolled in Bengal, then mentioning the patrolling without the strafing seems a bit misplaced... As for your list of heroes, of course there were other heroes and of course we can mention them if it seems relevant. One thing I deeply love about Wikipedia is wikilinks; they make name-dropping the occasional unsung hero (both "hero" and "unsung" are defined by with reference to a particular group or groups, of course) a very worthwhile activity. [I mention a couple journalists, editors, artists etc. elsewhere]. The reason I mentioned Matangini Hazra is because I saw a couple or three sources (not only M. Mukerjee) mention her, and she is specifically relevant to the Contai/Tamluk context. And that context is the only that is directly relevant to this article. Those "centers" you mention, were they among the majority of areas that stopped protesting within 2 weeks or so? Only Bengal is really relevant... Yes I agree, Mukerjee... I don't believe I even mentioned her estimate of mortality because... yes. She's a journalist. When she reports events, she is usually on far firmer ground. But I will look into the assertion you deleted later. My brain is dead; I am tired of looking at documents about Bengal and focusing brain cells on them.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:22, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

@Lingzhi: @RegentsPark: Very welcome. They did strafe from the air in Bihar (Stanley Wolpert in Shameful Flight, apparently the first time, in the history of the Raj; and in Orissa as well (Sekhar Bandyopadhyay in From Plassey to Partition). I've added a little more. Will now be traveling for the next few days. Will be back on WP before the end of the month (May), and be working on the rest of the section 2. Look forward to more chats. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:30, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Incendiary Churchill quote is emotional POV-bomb. Should be deleted. Period.

  • As I have repeatedly argued, that "Why hasn't Gandhi died" quote is way, way, way, way too incendiary and prejudicial. It tilts the emotional balance against Britain. I actually think the quote is taken out of context, too. I made that case above; I make it again now. The quote in the footnote should be deleted. Period. However, I have editors from both sides of the POV very eagerly crawling up my breadbasket at present, and I am reluctant to remove your cite personally (at least, right now.. but maybe later... )..   Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 06:29, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
@Tyler Durden: We are, for the next six weeks, and perhaps more, discussing Round 1 issues, i.e. checking the text for incorrect or incomplete paraphrasing of the sources that are being used, and for instances of (local) synthesis and redundancy. For this reason, I will be reverting this edit, as it is entails adding a source that is not currently being used. At the appropriate time, during Round 2 and Round 3, we can discuss this edit. Meanwhile, @Lingzhi: let me suggest politely that you bag the grandiosity and condescension. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:29, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
@Fowler&fowler: Thanks for the courteous response. Will bring this back later, then. Best regards, Tyler Durden (talk) 10:50, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
@Tobby72: Please have a look at this edit of mine, and the above discussion. Regards, Tyler Durden (talk) 17:04, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Genocide

As the famine only happened because the British were occupying India it should be called a genocide. (86.160.141.142 (talk) 15:25, 27 May 2017 (UTC))

No. That is not what a genocide is, there was no concerted effort to massacre and entire ethnic group. Mr rnddude (talk) 15:30, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
Churchill deliberately allowed the famine to kill over two million people because he was stealing India's resources. (2A00:23C4:638A:5000:1D81:D590:5A3F:9698 (talk) 15:49, 27 May 2017 (UTC))
IP(s), what you are saying is WP:OR commentary. You should back your claims from WP:RS, and in this case, WP:HISTRS. Also, please keep in mind, WP:NPOV. Regards, Tyler Durden (talk) 16:15, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
If India had not been under British occupation the famine would not have happened. (2A00:23C4:638A:5000:1D81:D590:5A3F:9698 (talk) 16:17, 27 May 2017 (UTC))
The Bengal famine was certainly horrific but probably not genocide. The famine was a result of colonial disregard by the British authorities, sheer lack of interest and respect towards the Indian lives. There are some similarities with Britain's role in the Irish famine.
"If food is so scarce, why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?"[1] — Winston Churchill
"Famine or no famine, Indians will breed like rabbits."[2] — Winston Churchill
"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."[3] — Winston Churchill -- Tobby72 (talk) 22:43, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
  • We've been over this a million times. if you don't know what's going on, try to catch up.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 22:52, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Are we considering the possibility

... that what I wrote was correct, but i got the cites mixed up? You seem to be deleting a lot. That may not be a good thing. Probably isn't  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:29, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

  • Maidan airstrip Your favorite Bayly/harper p. 362  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:52, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
No worries. I have only temporarily removed the sentence, until I find a proper reference for what the sentence should be saying. I obviously know the Maidan had an airstrip. I have met people who were in Calcutta during that time, and I have seen videos of planes taking off, and landing in the Maidan. Those planes were small fighter planes. The resupply mission planes, big C-46 transport planes, took off from airfields such as Chabua Air Force Station, Dinjan Airfield, Sookerating Air Force Station in the Brahmaputra Valley in Assam. The goods were sent by train from Calcutta and elsewhere to Assam and then flown in the transport planes. If you have a reference for transport planes taking off from the Maidan, I'd be interested. You had written, "Calcutta was the main resupply base for American troops fighting in China, and its grassy [[Maidan (Kolkata)|Maidan park]] the airfield for transports flying over the [[Himalayan mountains]].{{sfn|Stevenson|2005|p=ix}} That is a far cry from having an airstrip. The small issues in the sentence can be fixed, such as: There weren't that many American troops fighting China, only American AAF helping Chiang Kaishek's army. Not to mention that the planes did not fly over the Himalayas, the eastern anchor of the Himalayas, the Namche Barwa, lay west of the flight paths. They flew over hills in Burma. (Many authors make this error though.) Calcutta, moreover, was the HQ of the Eastern Air Command, a fact not mentioned in the sentence, but the officers coming through were smaller in number. I have a few sources that speak to these issues, and in some such transformed fashion, the sentence will be recast. (Eg one source, not the best, says, "Because of the enemy's rapid successes, the routes available to supply China with arms and supplies required the establishment of the longest supply line in military history. ... Indian trains across to Calcutta; and use trains, river boats, or truck convoys to Air Transport Command bases in Assam.) Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:21, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
PS Here are spitfires landing and taking off in the Maidan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n24GCBvEdWc Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:24, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
PPS Here is the USMA map of the China airlift. Allied lines of communication in Southeast Asia. As you will see in the map, the resupply airfields lay some 500 miles to the NE of Calcutta. The bottom right of the picture shows them in a hi-res view, all clustered around the end of the railway line near Ledo in Assam. Also, the source which you cited, Stevenson, a self-published one by iUniverse, says in its preface page ix, which you had cited, "Calcutta was the main American base for the resupply of troops of General Joseph Stilwell and his Chinese allies. The Maidan of Calcutta was used as an airfield for the transports which flew "over the hump" into China." Your own sentence, quoted above, which I removed, is too close a paraphrase of this to be simply a case of getting the cites mixed up. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:55, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
    • I qwasn't talking about that one when I was talking about sources mixed up; that was just the first one I was able to quickly verify elsewhere. I am constantly called away from the computer. more later.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 23:09, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
OK. And, yes, Bayly and Harper, in any case, are talking about something different. They are talking about the changed, somber, mood in Calcutta in the early months of 1944. They say on page 362, "The old complacent routines of Anglo-India were beginning to change. Junior officers were now sleeping four to a room in the great hotels along Chowringee. From their windows they could see camouflaged anti-aircraft guns along the whole length of the street. The great paddock, or Maidan, one the scene of equestrian events, had now become an airstrip. The denizens of the Calcutta club had become more reticent about their luxurious meals." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:18, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Things I don't think I included

If I give the wrong name for a cite or mention something that is already in the article, it's because I have gotten so sick of it that I hardly wish to look at it. But here are some things I think I didn't put in (may add more later):

  • Sen has a table of rice prices that has prices at 500% at one point. I don't think I quoted that. But I think I did quote the "100 rupees in some areas", didn't I?
  • Several sources mention the expansion of money supply... did someone give a number of "seventeen times greater"? Maybe Iqbal's history.. or...
  • As I mentioned earlier, mortality does not include Orissa etc.
  • Just got an article by Law-Smith (later "Weigold") which has a different take on the relative importance of factors. May add something.
  • I always thought I under-emphasized the Great Depression a little, but the article is large already.
  • Maybe mor later, as I recall more things.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 11:27, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the note. Great that you got Weigold. That South Asia journal is harder to find. Please keep noting things here; these notes will come in handy later. However, let's add new sources into the article itself only in Round 2; otherwise, things will get confusing. All I am doing right now is correcting the paraphrasing from the sources already present, that is, if they need correction. That is why I won't actually be writing Islam's version into the article body just yet, only note it upstairs. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:58, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Sen says FIC is FAD, but FIC is actually schizophrenic. At one point it flatly asserts the famine was due to shortage; at another point, due to inflation. And there was one assertion that was virtually a paraphrase of Sen's FEE hypothesis (more likely Sen paraphrased FIC), but I lost it.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 12:01, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Images: I think it was Mahalanobis who had a very clear chart plotting rice prices and the death rate. I think it was O Grada ("Sufficiency") who had a very clear and excellent map of the (estimated) relative rates of excess mortality by district. I also saw a nice image of Indian workers building an airstrip. I think I can find it but I recall it doesn't specify where in India the picture was taken. From a conversation with Nikkimaria, the plot chart is more readily licensed "fair use" than the O Grada maps. The photos were created to NARA, I think.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:17, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
Which paper of Mahal is this? We don't have to take an image of it; we can simply draw it ourselves and say "after Mahal 19--, page --." That reminds me I have to renew my license for a software for drawing these. Mahal is from the 1940s so it is public domain under Indian law. O Grada I don't know. I mean I don't know if one can redraw their map without fair use. As for images, you may recall that the Cornwall and other ships, were sunk off the Ceylon waters, not exactly next door to Bengal. There was one ship that was sunk near Bengal. It is HMIS Indus (U67). It was not as big a warship, as the others, but it already has a clear image in WP, and was sunk in April 1942, off Akyab, 200 miles SE of Chittagong. It is mentioned in O Grada somewhere. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:41, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Btw, what's the deal with Raghavan? He has Calcutta being bombed on 9th December 1941. At first I thought it was a typo, until I saw his many paragraphs, all repeating the date. He also keeps citing some primary sources about which I'm very doubtful. Maybe I misinterpreted what he was saying. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:59, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Am traveling, more Monday. Mahal may not be right maybe maharatna  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:52, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, I found the price, mortality-index (MI), and conception-index (CI) plot in Maharatna. Very interesting plot. It is on page 235 in his PhD thesis of 1992 (where the prices are in a dot-plot) and page 148 of the published book (1996) based on the thesis (where prices are in a continuous plot). There seems to be a little problem though. In the thesis he seems to be making the point that he supports an entitlement-failure hypothesis, saying:

"There is a dearth of direct monthly data on food-availability or consumption which might help capture directly the time path of famine distress. However, time trends in food prices should largely reflect the development of distress because drought and consequent employment losses were singularly not very important sources of entitlement failure. Price rises indeed are widely believed to have directly caused much of the famine distress, especially among those sections of the population who were net-purchasers of food grains.(footnote 53)" (emphasis his)

where footnote 53 quotes FIC1945a:

"As the Report on Bengal writes, 'The remarkable feature of the Bengal famine was that the rise in the price of rice was one of the principal causes of the famine. This, as far as we are aware, makes it unique in the history of famine in India. The great majority of Indian famines have been caused by drought and widespread failure of crops over wide areas...In large famines produced by such [natural] calamities the shortage of grain was naturally reflected in a rise in price, but the latter was a secondary phenomenon, and not a primary cause of the famine'; see Famine Inquiry Commission (1945a), pp.96-97."

In the published version of the thesis all except the first sentence above is missing, the footnote as well! I suspect when the book referees reviewed it, they questioned something or other which resulted in the removal. When a PhD thesis has been published as a book, it is usually the book version that takes precedence. So we are left with a couple of plots plotting MI and prices, which are very interesting, but are offered mostly without much explanation. Similarly, he says in the thesis, in the context of explaining high prices and low rates of conception, which are also shown in the same graph, "This probably largely resulted from a deepening nutritional stress in 'a substantial part of the population', caused by the persistently high food prices." But this too is removed in the book. Also, neither in thesis nor in the book (in this sub-section) does he explicitly make the point that extreme caloric restriction can cause infertility or miscarriage. There is another thing interesting in the plot, which he doesn't mention in either source. The mortality peak occurs after the price rise has mainly subsided, pointing to the continued deaths by diseases. Still, a very interesting plot. Perhaps we can add it but without much commentary, let the reader deduce what they may. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 08:54, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

  • Greenough replies with surprise and great interest to the fertility info, saying it may have been coping strategy rather than reduced caloric intake...birth rate decrease precedes/anticipates mortality increase  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 21:43, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
    • Greenough, I have to say, is a superb writer, eloquent, restrained, inventive, and rigorous. Is it from his book? I vaguely remember Indian Famine Commission reports of the 1880s and 90s making similar points. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:21, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
      • I take the last remark back. In the 1880s and 90s, there was no way to measure conception/fertility, (as birth or death records were not regularly maintained) only birth-rate and death-rate, by the decadal censuses. But birth-rate, measured by census of the under 10-year-olds, was complicated by the young ones, especially ages 0 to 5, being the first to die in a famine; their deaths reduced the birth rate as much as reduced conception did. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:52, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
        • I can't read carefully until much later today but just judging by the title and by my recollections I strongly suspect I am thinking about this: Greenough, P. (1992). Inhibited conception and women's agency: a comment on one aspect of Dyson's' On the demography of South Asian famines'. Health Transition Review, 101-105.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:00, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
          • Thanks. I just read the paper. The hypothesis, Dyson's, is not entirely clearly formulated. Greenough is questioning it and wondering how it may be tested, whether the lower conception rates constitute an anticipation of famine, whether that in turn is an example of incipient female empowerment (as hinted at in the later work of Bina Agarwal), whether is is a counterpoise to his notion that Bengali males, not females, were decisively controlling the family dynamics of survival in the 1943 famine. Very interesting paper. Will need to be reread more carefully later. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:06, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Linlithgow had authority to infringe provincial autonomy to remove trade barriers  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 11:08, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
    • I think this Linlithgow bit is probably the most significant omission. I might add it myself, but again am too tired of this topic to go digging at length for Linlithgow's rationale. I suspect there might be more than one POV about his rationale too. If I find something quickly, I'll add it.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:11, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Bengal Tenancy Act. Forcible relocation of migrants (and by some accounts, innocent bystanders) to refugee camps, spreading disease. [This was actually the bit that first showed me the bias of the Famine Commission Inquiry report, they gloss over the December forced relocations to an extreme degree].  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 22:31, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
  • T.C. Das and "underlying causes" in "causes" section. I think that section needs a sentence or two about "scattered, fragmented holdings" etc., discussed in the pre-WWII sections of the current article text.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:05, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
  • sen quote: (paraphrased) "Even if the famine was man-made and not caused by shortages, the British government is not entirely off the hook, because the way to forestall great deaths is by importing foodgrains"
  • Sen has another quote which says that in his opinion the British government's inaction did not rise to the level of criminal behavior but was certainly.. what did he say.. callous? It was a BBC interview.
  • Need a figure for yearly average rice production in the "Shortfall and carryover" section, to put the various guesstimates by people such as Blyn and others in perspective.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:29, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Key historians say "primarily a wartime famine"; Sen says speculation.
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