Talk:India

Guidelines for editing the India page

• Text to be written in Indian English (spellings are modelled on British English)
• Units in metric.
• Only external links pertaining to India as a whole, or official government of India links are solicited on this page. Please add other links in their respective articles.
• All sections are a summary of more detailed articles. If you find any points missing, please add it in the section's main article rather than on this page to keep this page size within reasonable limits.
• You may also discuss India related matters at: Wikipedia:Notice board for India-related topics.

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Two events mentioned in this article are an August 15 selected anniversary and January 26 selected anniversary. This article is also Featured on the Swedish wikipedia.

This page is Wikipedia's 76th most popular page, and the 4th most popular country after USA, Japan, and UK.

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Inline citations

Has anyone considered switching to inline citations? Guidelines have changed since this article was featured. It would be useful if people looked into it and made sure this article still adheres to new guidelines instead of waiting for FARC. (Blacksun 05:12, 22 March 2006 (UTC))

Inline citations are present. We've used invisible notes {{inote}} which are perfectly acceptable and makes the page look neat. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:13, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Some might argue that it makes it very unaccessible for anyone who might want to check the source, especially the casual readers. Also, their has been repeated complaints in regards to this. But I will respect the editors choice (for now). --Blacksun 05:31, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the {{inote}} may be changed to easily clickable citation format, may be Harvard, or other. inote format is not much user-friendly, though the allow a speedy read.--Dwaipayanc 06:06, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Akshardham Temple

The image lists it as being in Delhi, but isn't Akshardham Temple in Gandhinagar? --Soumyasch 16:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

They finished a new one in Delhi last year. (Blacksun 16:56, 22 March 2006 (UTC))

Foreign Relations of India

Is it possible that the To-Do list is outdated? Because my edits on foreign relations were rapidly reverted. If so then it would be nice if we did get an updated to-do list so that potential editors could get more work done. Nobleeagle (Talk) 06:48, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I apologize for my rather harsh message in the edit. However, you need to make sure you dont bring statements that break NPOV. I am not sure if todo list is outdated or not. And a lot of the things you are adding is mostly a rehash of stuff written in history like indo-pakistan wars, dispute with China, etc. Their is no need to repeat that.(Blacksun 07:02, 24 March 2006 (UTC))

That's alright, I understand if you want to make sure the article maitains its strong standards. I'll have another look at the section sometime tomorrow and edit a bit more carefully in order to incorporate relations with Pakistan (peace co-operation) and a bit with Africa the Commonwealth and the E.U. Nobleeagle (Talk) 07:24, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I did not revert your edits this time. However, the person who did it I think is a long time editor of this page. You might want to pm him. Three things you have to be careful of are: 1) NPOV 2) it should not be just a list of bla bla 3) it has to be very short and concise. In fact, I dont think foreign relations really belong in this article. At best a very general statement that gives an overall picture of india's foreign relations. However, that is almost impossible to do in a nice manner. Hence, we simply link "Foreign relations of India" page. --Blacksun 05:40, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'm the one who reverted the edits and put up the to do list a short while back. The recent foreign relations had only to do with the United States. We need to describe relationships duing the Cold War scenario, USA, USSR, EU, China, South Asia, Asia and the Commonwealth nations. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:23, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

My edits contained relations with Pakistan, China, the Commonwealth and a bit about the E.U. and Middle East as well as some stuff I'd read about Indian bilateral talks with African and Latin American nations. This version can be seen here. It was reverted by Blacksun as POV, which is understandable since it may have needed a bit of cleaning up to do. I agree with Nichalp as well seeing as it seems a bit less effective when only relations with the U.S. are discussed. Nobleeagle (Talk) 08:17, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

speaking of foreign relations how the heck was india a founding member of the U.N when it achieved independence in 1947 after the U.N was made? if it was a founder during the british period then i dont think it should be mentioned as at that time pakistan was a part of it and its foriegn relations were obviously being handled by the british. if such a comment is to be made, it should be within the context of british india, which should actually be a separate article. so ive removed this erroneous line.sorry i dont know how to make a new topic. Falcon7385 16:05, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Good point raised. Independent India took over the role of British India, in the same manner Russia took over the seat of USSR in the UN. =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:13, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

But with one major difference - Russia was not a colony of USSR but India was a colony of Britain - Hence this should be attributed to Britain and not the Indian people who were only involved in world war 2 because of britain.if it is to be stated that India was among the founders then i think Pakistan should also be considered as such because it was a part of India at the time.As you can see this is going to lead to some misunderstandings.In truth the foriegn affairs of india were not being determined by either the pakistani's( or the muslim freedom fighters as they were back then) or the indians.Thats why it is erroneous to consider the India of today as a continuation of the India at that time since it's government back then had its prioirities being determined by foriegners.Equating the past and present India is a more likely pitfall for newcomers ,than in the case of russia simply because russia had a different name back then. that's why i think a separate article be made to deal with this era of the subcontinents history (note that i havent used the term indian history deliberalty as this implys the modern india). Falcon7385 18:33, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Cinema industries

I am wondering what the relative sizes of various regional film industries in India are? I would have thought that the Bangla film industry is one of the bigger ones, but obviously that's not true, looking at the list of regional industries mentioned.--ppm 01:51, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Caste system

There is nothing in this article, or in any other articles about India that I can find, that explains India's caste system. Shouldn't this go under the "culture" section of this entry and be explained in greater detail in the main Culture of India article?

The caste system does have an article, but I don't believe it should be mentioned here. It is not a contemporary system in urbaized areas of India. Nobleeagle (Talk) 22:42, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

It is mentioned in demographics with a wikilink to main article. I am not sure if the wikilink was always there or if its a new addition. Anyways, their are various other India-related articles that touch the topic. You must not have looked too closely? --Blacksun 22:05, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

The article is on India, not on specifics. Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 05:08, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Differentiating between Politics and Foreign Relations

The two topics are similar but different. Perhaps it would be better to seperate them and expand a little on both. It just doesn't do justice to have Indian politics and foreign relations summed up in that tiny paragraph. It also doesn't fit in the page to have a heading called Politics and Foreign Relations. Opinions? Nobleeagle (Talk) 06:36, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Foreign relations is an important topic and deserves to have a separate section. I would also like to take this opportunity to divert the attention of fellow Indian wikipedians towards Foreign relations of India article. I've done some work to improve the article and any comments are always welcome. --Spartian 06:49, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

They are both interrelated. Politics has to do with political parties, and political parties set the agenda for foreign relations. Splitting and expanding would result in a much larger page article. =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:53, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Nichalp. Their is no reason to split them here. --Blacksun 14:39, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Indians and Race

Aren't Indians anthropologically caucasoid? If so, why are they classified as Asian, unlike all other caucasoids are classified as White.

Rcaial makeup of Indians is pretty diverse and no single racial orgin can be ascribed to Indians. Yes though majority (both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian) speakers are "Cauasoid" but they do have significant Asiatic and sometimes Australoid ancestry.

File:England flag large.png अमेय आर्यन DaBroodey 13:38, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

How do you define Asian? =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:46, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

There are two ways in which Asian is defined. To tell you the truth, in most Western nations, Asian people or Asian languages or Asian food describe East Asian and South East Asian things. But geographically, India is an Asian country. However, India can in no way be classified in the same way as European nations simply beacuse of the people's racial origins. Nobleeagle (Talk) 02:01, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

The "Indo-Aryans" of India may have Caucasoid ancestry but how can the Dravidians (mostly modern South Indians) have originated from Europe? More importantly, which part of the India article are you referring to when you say Indians are classified as Asians? This better not be a general discussion on racial classifications on Indians, otherwise it should go the Reference Desk! Gizza^{Chat ©} 02:17, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

DaGizza, dravidians are said to be descendents of Pre-Vedic Anatolian migrants to India. Atleast thats what i read... moreover DaGizza we dont originate from Europe, our race originates from Central Asia thats where Caucasus is... File:England flag large.png अमेय आर्यन DaBroodey 14:59, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Underconstruction tags, detailed history, language etc.

I don't see any edits since placement of "underconstruction" tag, so I assume the editor who placed it is not doing anything at least today. Hence, I'm removing it to allow cleanup of the article. Next, I've reverted the history sections huge dump of colonial history. India has a history spanning at least 2500 years, and the colonial part isn't ALL of it, it gets its due share in the History of India page. The history section in THIS page is supposed to be a summary, which it does just fine.

I also reverted the language comment, Sangskrit is not the ONLY major language root in India, the southern areas developed their own language independently.

Thanks. --Ragib 05:16, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

PS, partly due to the "underconstruction" tag and the mess in the history section, India ended up in featured article removal candidates!!! I hope removing this tag and the disorganization from the history section at least works positively for the article. --Ragib 05:17, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Certainly looks that way. Good job with the clean up - that was some massive dump. --Blacksun 05:35, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Don't bother too much about the nomination. Bob would have to point out specific areas where the prose is bad, and his case is rather weak. =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:49, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Our strategy should be to quickly fix any grammar issues in FARC and not contest them. Subjective criteria not listed in WP:WIAFA can be opposed. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:09, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

One thing I would recommend is to convert the references to the new citation tool style (using refs). The older inotes worked fine when this article went to FA, but now that the citation tool has been added to mediawiki recently, converting the inotes to refs would be a great improvement. Thanks. --Ragib 07:16, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

See my note below. Regards,

Headings

I have reverted the recent restructuring of headings. The heading levels of the article is strictly based on recommendations of Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries#Sections. Also, having a single subheading is considered bad style. Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:34, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Nichalp, from what I can see from Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries#Sections, you can put "States and union territories" in a separate section. But there's no saying that the section "Government" can be any different from that for "Politics". It'll be wise to combine the two sections into one by making one of them a sub-section of the other.

Also, it did not say that "Holidays" can be a section of itself, but that it could be made into a separate article with a list of celebrated holidays of that country.--Ryz05 07:50, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

In any case, a single subheading really doesn't help the article. If you want to merge the sections then the subheadings should not be used. Also remember that this article is currently a candidate for Featured Article Removal, so we don't want to take too many potentially consequential risks.

Nobleeagle (Talk) 08:14, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm well aware that this article is a Featured Article Removal candidate and I'm sure by catgeorizing "Holiday" and "Politics" (or Government) into the "Culture" and "Government" (or Politics) sections respectively will not hurt the article in any way. In fact, I think it'll help the article by conforming it better to Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries#Sections. Also, it doesn't matter if it's a single subheading or not; as long as it conforms, it's good.--Ryz05 08:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I actually dont really care either way and can definitely see holidays as part of culture section. In any case, FARC is for weak and potentially lousy reasons and I am not worried about it.--Blacksun 13:26, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I just want to remind Ryz05 (talk · contribs) that he's seriously bordering violation of 3RR. Looking at the History of this article, I notice 3 reverts in the last 4 hours. Thanks. --Ragib 08:31, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about the potential violation as I was caught up in improving this article. Thanks for checking.--Ryz05 08:38, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Ryz05, I appreciate your efforts to improve this article but the use of such subheadings are structurally wrong. To justify the use of descendents, you must have at least two subheadings. Secondly, if you need to make use of subheadings, the lead matter before subsections must be an overview of the content that follows. ie

==Section==
[overview of the sections to follow]
===Subsection===
===Subsection===

I agree that the politics and government sections are similar, but merging content together will create a very large section. Conversely, having =politics= as a subsection of the =Government= is structurally wrong, as shown above. [Note: I do this stuff in my non-wiki life]. The compromise would be to have separate top level headings. Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Deciphering Inotes

What does inote|tongues mean? I dont understand how to make sense of some of the inotes in the article. I went to the inote discussion page but that was not very helpful either. I think someone who knows about inotes needs to go through them to make sure they are correctly formatted. I am also debating whether we should have a debate over switching the system after the FARC is dealt with. --Blacksun 13:13, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

The syntax is like this:

{{inote|see Jordan page 25|Jordan-25}}

The first argument is the text of a note and the second, optional, argument is a suggested label for the note. The advantage of inote is that it makes the page more reader friendly, one very bad example of overreferencing is W. Mark Felt. However, having cite.php for a few figures in the article can't hurt. It comes to a balance between easy referencing and readability. I'll go through the inotes tomorrow and improve on them. Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:29, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes I definitely see the advantage of inotes. But some sort of balance would be very useful as you said. Also, "tongues" does not really tell me much unlike "See Jordan page 25".--Blacksun 17:44, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, I'm not completely averse to footnotes, I have used footnotes in the Nepal and Bhutan articles. Will be converting a few tomorrow. Regards =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:01, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Ryz05's image editions

You deleted loads of images by saying that they are not relevant. How the heck is the image of stock market not relevant in the economy section? I am going to go through every image you deleted and add anything that I do not think is irrelevant. --Blacksun 23:05, 14 April 2006 (UTC)