Talk:Bharatiya Janata Party

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Sikh Violence

The anti-Sikh violence is utterly irrelevant to this article. They were perpetrated by the Congress, and some Congress leaders were punished for it, as they should have been, and others were not, for various dodgy reasons; but all of that has nothing to do with the BJP. The source mentions the riots, and suggests a link to the BJP. The new source simply mentions the Congress role in the sikh riots; why are they relevant here? Mentioning them here is OR of the highest order. If you want context, find a source linking those riots to the Congress, or that shows the relevance of the sikh riots to this page. Since you seem so worried about them, I have tweaked it to read "hindu-muslim" violence, thus excluding the sikh riots. Vanamonde93 (talk) 06:46, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

The statement needs clarity. It implicates BJP for riots in early 1980s when we can clearly see Congress was in power and involved in riots. The first election that BJP fought was in 1984 where it won a meagre 2 seats. I have put back the clarification tag. You can propose how you want to make that clarification if you are not okay with the way I made it. --AmritasyaPutra^T 07:04, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I have made a change, to address this issue. I don't see any further need for "clarification." The text now only mentions "Hindu-muslim" violence; there is no source showing INC involvement in those in that period. Moreoever, the source says "As it happened, the formation of the BJP heralded a wave of religious violence in northern and western India. There were major Hindu-Muslim riots in the Uttar Pradesh towns of Moradabad (August 1980) and Meerut (September–October 1982); in the Bihar town of Biharsharif in April–May 1981; in the Gujarat towns of Vadodara (September 1981), Godhra (October 1981) and Ahmedabad (January 1982); in Hyderabad, capital of Andhra Pradesh, in September 1983; and in the Maharashtra towns of Bhiwandi and Bombay in May–June 1984. In each case the riots ran on for days, with much loss of life and property, and were finally quelled only by armed force." Guha, 2007. It's pretty clear what he is saying. He says heralded, paraphrased here as "marked." What are you looking for? A statement saying "oh, but the Congress was also involved in riots?" that is irrelevant. Vanamonde93 (talk) 07:13, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

You may read these biggest Hindu-Muslim riots of early 1980s: 1980 Moradabad riots, Mandai massacre and Nellie massacre. BJP is still non-existent in Mandai and Nellie after 35 years much lesser in 1980s! Yes, Congress government was reigning when these three incidents happened. Summariy saying early 1980s and implicating BJP for rioting does encompass the incidents that I mention and is clearly misleading hence a clarification is much needed. --AmritasyaPutra^T 07:29, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Let me get this straight. Are you saying the source is incorrect, or are you suggesting mis-representation? The text DOES NOT say the BJP was responsible for any of these. It says the riots occurred soon after the formation of the BJP. It is necessary, because the next sentence goes on to say that the BJP actually moderated its agenda in those years. Vanamonde93 (talk) 07:34, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I am saying same thing as you, BJP was not responsible for it. But the context and the present form suggests otherwise. I have tweaked it to remove that ambiguity, if you simply keep reverting I will have no choice but to stick the clarify tag and wait for you to come up with a middle path, I am open to suggestions. --AmritasyaPutra^T 08:48, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Nuclear policy

The quote from the source; "Yet the BJP chose to disregard the likely adverse consequences and departed from India's post- 1974 "nuclear option" policy, which had reserved for India the right to weaponize its nuclear capabilities but had not overtly declared its weapons capability. National governments of varying political persuasions had adhered to this strategy for more than two decades." Sumit Ganguly 1999. The source itself refers to it as a "policy;" nonetheless, I have reworded it to read "strategy," since it was obviously not a codified policy. Vanamonde93 (talk) 06:54, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, there is no such policy. Thank you. --AmritasyaPutra^T 07:10, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Neutrality of this article is disputed

I have added a NPOV tag to the article. The discussion is in the GA review page. --Calypsomusic (talk) 13:12, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Vanamonde93 has removed the NPOV tag. This is against NPOV policy. Please wait until the issues are resolved. I have explained why the article is not neutral. This needs to be resolved before removing the NPOV tag. --Calypsomusic (talk) 13:21, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

No, it most certainly is not. I quote "This template should only be applied to articles that are reasonably believed to lack a neutral point of view. The neutral point of view is determined by the prevalence of a perspective in high-quality, independent, reliable secondary sources, not by its prevalence among Wikipedia editors or the public." You have only raised personal concerns on the talk page, and the only secondary sources you have provided are an out-dated Sangh Newspaper and Koenrad Elst, who is a fringe source. Vanamonde93 (talk) 13:27, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

What has happened in the GA review was highly unfortunate. I didn't follow closely what were your concerns earlier but I do remember the RFC. Now I also see that you raised issues which either were addressed at that time and/or the reviewer answered them. If you have anything new (emphasis on that) to say, do it now or else drop the stick. How long can you expect everyone else to AGF? And please no walls of text, there's a limit to how much anyone can read. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:56, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

@Calypsomusic: I came over to find out why this GA nom failed, and notice that you are contesting its "neutrality." Note that neutrality on Wikipedia means fairly representing all the view points that exist among reliable third party sources. So, to argue the lack of neutrality, you need to specify what reliable third party sources have been omitted. You also need to show that the proportion of the viewpoints in the article differs from their relative prominence among the scholarly sources. So, can you tell us what sources you are claiming to be unrepresented? Kautilya3 (talk) 17:23, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

From this bold edit that Calypsomusic made [1], I picked up the following 4 sources, which he believes will make the article "neutral."

• Reddy, Sheila (14 April 2008). "Interview "I Was Prepared To Take The Risk"". Outlook India.

This is Advani speaking, not a third party source.

• Elst, K. (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa & Co.

Elst is a strong supporter of the Hindutva movements and not exactly third party. But, still, if the information he wants to take from here is not contentious, it can be used.

• Venkatesan, V. (29 September 2000). "The Laxman line". Frontline.

Once again, Bangaru Laxman is not a third party source.

• "SC comes to the aid of Chakmas". Organiser. 11 February 1996.

Organiser is not a mainstream newspaper and, hence, not a reliable source. It is also part of the Sangh Parivar and so not third party.

On the whole, other than possibly Elst, none of the other sources can even be cited here as per Wikipedia policies. If Calypsomusic wants to contest neutrality, he needs to bring much stronger sources, especially to contest Ramachandra Guha, a Padma Bhushan-winning academic. He also wants to paint Guha as a "critic" of the BJP. I have seen nothing to say that he was a critic. The book from which the material is taken is a standard book on the history of independent India that is top-class, having put Guha in the top-league of the world's historians. There is nothing to indicate that Guha is biased and needs to be countered by other sources. Kautilya3 (talk) 22:28, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

This is much the same thing I have been asking Calypso to do for a long while now. Accusations of lack of neutrality mean nothing as long as they are not backed up by sources. Yes, Calypso's changes were reverted; but that is because they did not back them with a single reliable source. With due lack of humility, I have read the majority of academic journal articles that discuss the BJP, and the policy section that I wrote reflects those. Moreover, these scholars are not "critics" of the BJP; they are third party observers. If I had included criticisms of the BJP made by its political opponents (which would be somewhat ridiculous) then it would be appropriate to present the BJP's view on every one of those issues; but that is not the case. Political issues become a terrible mess if described from the point of view of the participants, so we use neutral sources, and coverage in those determines coverage in the article. Even so, "critical" material has been attributed. Giving further space to BJP voices would be undue weight. TL;DR: @Calypsomusic: If you want neutrality concerns taken seriously, provide serious sources backing them up, or prepare to be ignored. Vanamonde93 (talk) 04:41, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

This is an article on an existing political party, so the neutrality is all the more important, especially if it were a Good Article. Neutrality means including all signficant viewpoints, and the BJP and Hindu nationalist pov is obviously significant in an article on the BJP. I gave many examples of biased sections where the BJP pov is not represented. In addition to the fact that articles on existing political parties are contentious and thus difficult to achieve npov, it is also the case that the majority of academic sources do have an anti-BJP and anti-Hindu nationalist bias. Therefore, it would maybe help, to include more sources with only a moderate anti-Hindu nationalist bias (for example, Heuze is moderatly biased against the BJP.) The problem is that some statements and sections in the article are biased without additional opinions as I explained in the GA section.

The quote from Advani is not directly quoted from a publication by Advani, but from an article on Advani, so it could be ok. In the Times of India source I also added, the same is supported by Lala Ram Gupta. Regarding using Elst on Integral Humanism. His opinion on Integral Humanism (in a book based on his PhD thesis) is not contentious or controversial, and his treatment on this particular topic seems simply to be best scholarly treatment in secondary sources (he says in the book that he is the first scholar to examine it in this level of detail). If this happens to be the best source available for this particular topic, and his opinion on this is not controversial, I don't see a reason not to use it. As I said, I'm busy the next two weeks, so can work more on this afterwards.

All this shows is a spectacular misunderstanding of our policies on neutrality, and especially WP:DUE. Our coverage is based on coverage in reliable secondary sources; you have consistently failed to provide such. Policies aside, commonsense dictates that you would not write about a party using sources from within the party; every political party, from the most humane to the most brutal and bigoted, has justified its actions, would you include their justifications in every instance? Preposterous. Your allegation that academic sources are anti-BJP is quite ridiculous, especially as you fail to back it up; academics tend to be criticize of virtually every mainstream party. Quotes from advani are reliable sources for those quotes, and nothing else. Elst is a fringe source, a previous RfC with which you are well acquainted established that there is no consensus to include him here even in the Further Reading, let alone as a source. If you have a truly policy-bound argument of non-neutrality, I would like to hear it; as of now, you seem content to ignore the "in reliable sources" part of the NPOV policy, and so your argument carries no weight. Besides, you had six months before the GA review in which to raise these issues; the fact that you began editing again precisely during the review, and edited no other page, is interesting, to say the least. Vanamonde93 (talk) 14:01, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

@Calypsomusic: Thanks for getting back. To make progress, you need to start policy-based discussions. For example, the wp:rs policy states that articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. It also states that we publish the opinions only of reliable authors, and not the opinions of Wikipedians who have read and interpreted primary source material. You are doing the precisely the opposite. You are asking us to value your opinions over and above those of the reliable sources of highest quality (Ramachandra Guha). That cannot be done.

• I understand that Advani has stated that he didn't make any anti-Muslim speeches. I have no reason to doubt that. But that is just one point of evidence among a multitude of facts that the scholars consider before making up their minds. We have to report what they say, not our opinions. In this particular case, I think it would be ok to make the briefest possible mention of Advani's disclaimer, something along the lines of "although Advani himself has denied that he made any anti-Muslim speeches." (Note that this does not actually contradict the quote from Guha because he did not state that Advani made anti-Muslim speeches.)
• Regarding Integral Humanism, I don't think any of us have any objections to including details about it. But nobody has been able to say anything substantive about it. The page on Integral humanism has been undeveloped for several years, with outstanding questions raised on the talk page for over 2 years. If you are able to, please work on that page and provide detail. Then we will be able to summarise it here. This can be done any time, and has nothing to do with the GA nomination.

Cheers, Kautilya3 (talk) 13:47, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Calypsomusic, it has been a week and a half, and you have not responded to the points here. Specifically, we require a reliable source contradicting the narratives in the article, which you have not yet provided. Can we take your silence to mean that you can live with this version? Vanamonde93 (talk) 00:34, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

BJP & RSS to be Given the title of terrorist by a american Court in April?

I see That the BJP is a branch of the RSS, would this latest news update on The NewYork Court order effect The BJP as The BJP is linked to the RSS & would this be a excuse For a future labeling of BJP members? If so would this Ref be needed Here Or just on the RSS wiki?

http://sikhsiyasat.net/2015/02/04/usa-new-york-court-to-hear-sikhs-for-justice-lawsuit-against-rss-in-april/92.236.96.38 (talk) 12:58, 8 February 2015 (UTC)Caplock

The source provided is not a reliable one. Furthermore, the opinion of a court doesn't hold very much weight on Wikipedia; if a verdict is produced, and reliable secondary sources give it coverage, then we could consider mentioning it. Vanamonde93 (talk) 13:42, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 12 February 2015

link Gujarat to wiki page Gujarat in the 2002 violence area.. Bhavesh.p.more (talk) 08:04, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Done We don't usually do this if there is already another link in the article (see WP:OVERLINK). However, the links are far enough apart that I have made an exception in this case. If anyone disagrees, please let me know and I will revert. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 09:47, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

1984 and 1989

The article talks about the success or failure in elections purely by the number of seats won. By this measure, the 1984 performance seems to be a failure and 1989 a grand success. However, the votes received in 1984 were 7%, the same as what the Jana Sangh got in 1971. Similarly, the votes received in 1989 were 11%, only marginally better than 9.4% that Jana Sangh received in 1967. So, neither was 1984 a great failure nor was 1989 a great success. The reason for the large difference in seats is the strength of the competition. In 1984, the Congress was strong and, in 1989, it was weak. This has nothing much to do with the BJP's own performance. It doesn't seem like Malik & Singh understand these subtleties all that well. I am going to cut them out and use a more erudite source like Jaffrelot. Kautilya3 (talk) 01:31, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Kautilya3, I would not cut them out entirely. Jaffrelot takes a more sociological approach to this, while Malik and Singh are coming from a more political science oriented background, and as such they have different things to contribute. In a first-past-the-post system like India has, absolute percentages count for little, and concentration for much more. Sure, the Congress's strength made a big difference, but the Janata's popularity also seems to have inflated the BJP's vote tally in 1984 without getting it any seats because the votes were so diffuse; the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, on the other hand, concentrated that nine percent of votes in the Hindi heartland, and gave it a lot of seats. We can include Jaffrelot, by all means, but Malik's narrative (which Guha also seems to buy into) doesn't seem to be off the mark. The comparisons to the Jana Sangh, to my mind, don't mean too much, because the same variability of the Congress also affected it; 1971 was the election after the war, when Indira Gandhi had far more support than in 1967 when she was a relative unknown, and the Congress was at war with itself. All in all, might we discuss the changes here first? Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:47, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

The Congress got 43% vote in 1971 and 49% in 1984, even though the Jana Sangh/BJP got the same votes in the two cases. That substantiates my assertion that the competition was stronger. (Can you see that the BJP's winning chances went down because the other parties lost votes?) I don't believe Malik and Singh understand numbers well enough to build valid theories. But, in any case, I will use Jaffrelot as the authoritative source, not myself :-) Kautilya3 (talk) 09:19, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

(response both to this and to your tp) I'm not underestimating anything, my friend, and I am personally a fan of Jaffrelot as a source. It's just that given a topic so complex and so sensitive, and given further that most media coverage is not good enough for this article, we need to rigidly balance academic views. You may feel that Noorani and Malik are not quote there with respect to the BJP; a priori, though, they do need to be given weight. Malik may occasionally be superficial, but I would also question the wisdom of looking at nationwide vote tallies; they might give the broadest of brush strokes, but little beyond that. Add Jaffrelot, by all means. Or wait until I get back to my good university library; then I'll add him myself; but not to the exclusion of all others. Vanamonde93 (talk) 09:10, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Clarify tag

Since AmritasyaPutra adds tags like this [2] and refuses to do his homework, here is the information. The paragraph summarises pages 301-312 of Jaffrelot, 1996. The fact that the communal violence rose "sharply" during the Janata Government and that the former Jana Sanghis were implicated in Aligarph and Jamshedpur riots in 1978-79 are both mentioned on page. 301. The Aligarh riot was investigated by the Minorities Commission and the Jamshedpur riot was investigated by a three-member commission headed by Justice Jitendra Narain. Kautilya3 (talk) 00:19, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

There is also a direct quote from the Jitendra Narain report here: [3]. Kautilya3 (talk) 00:23, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I updated content and removed tags. Why sarcasm and arrogance? It is obligatory to address a clarification tag, deleting it without any discussion and accusing editor of misconduct in edit summary is not the way. --AmritasyaPutra^T 03:13, 20 February 2015 (UTC)