Talk:Mahatma Gandhi/Archive 16

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Archive 14

Misinformation on lead

Lead says: "he undertook several hunger strikes to stop the religious violence. The last of these, begun in Delhi on 12 January 1948 when he was 78, also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan."

The bold part is a misleading claim and should be removed. It is pure misinformation.

It is claimed that this was one of the reasons why Godse killed Gandhi but it seems to be Hindutva disinformation also because his own statement makes no mention of the owed cash to Pakistan. Similarly, pages on Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and Nathuram Godse also make no mention of this false claim.

I don't see any official sources for this information. This false claim was apparently created in the mid-1960s and became popular only after 1980s. Nevertheless, there are enough sources that debunk this information.

Stanley Wolpert (2002). Gandhi's Passion: The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi. Oxford University Press. p. 525. ISBN 978-0-19-992392-2. Since mid-August, Nehru and Patel had continued to resist releasing Pakistan's 550 million rupees owed from partitioned British imperial balances. Many Indians felt that Gandhi fasted only to encourage Delhi's Cabinet to pay Pakistan that money, but Gandhi's final fast, the penultimate passion of his life, was undertaken for more than one failure on the part of his two most powerful former disciples. He fasted to punish his impotent self for the general breakdown of Delhi, for the selfish corruption of the Congress, and for the criminal attacks against minorities in both dominions.

Testa Setalvad (2015). Beyond Doubt: A Dossier on Gandhi's Assassination. Tulika Books. p. 140. ISBN 978-93-82381-56-3. Retrieved 2023-03-05. All these facts prove that the hunger strike was not for the 55 crore rupees. [...] The Hindutva forces have consistently made false propaganda and no efforts were made to counter that propaganda. Hence, since it is repeated time and again, people believe this falsehood as truth.

Dilip Hiro (2015). The Longest August: The Unflinching Rivalry Between India and Pakistan. PublicAffairs. p. 493. ISBN 978-1-56858-503-1. Retrieved 2023-03-05. Because the Indian government made its decision during Mahatma Gandhi's fast, some historians have wrongly attributed his fasting to the issue of the cash payable to Pakistan.

Kaushik, Narendra (2020). Mahatma Gandhi in Cinema. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 243. ISBN 978-1-5275-4960-9. perpetuated myths on Gandhi's role in the partition, the release of Rs. 55 crore and the alleged appeasement of Muslims and Pakistan, which have been part of the public perception for long

Chunilal Vaidya (2015-01-30). "The truth behind the assassination of Gandhiji". Rediff. Dr Sushila Nayyar, as soon as she heard Gandhiji proclaim his decision, rushed to her brother Pyarelal and informed him in a huff that Gandhiji had decided to undertake fast till the madness in Delhi ceased. Even in those moments of inadvertence the mention of 55 crore of rupees was not made which clearly proves that it was not intended by Gandhiji.[...] We hope these facts should put at rest the 55 crore concoction at rest.

In light of these sources, this information should be removed. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 04:47, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

The indirect goal of pressuring the Indian cabinet, and more pointedly Patel, to pay out some cash assets of British India owed to Pakistan by newly independent India, has been recorded in the reliable sources for a very long time. It was also a motivation for Godse to murder Gandhi, made easier according to many by Patel's open disregard for beefing up security arrangements for Gandhi, especially after the failed bomb attack of the week before the murder. The lax security was also mentioned by Herbert Reiner Jr., the man who apprehended Godse after Gandhi's assassination. Have added some histories, classic and modern: Rudolph and Rudolph's classic socioeconomic history; Sumit Sarkar's classic modern colonial history; Joe Lelyveld's definitive modern biography, and Rotem Geva's academic monograph of last year. I am flat out of time these days for Wikipedia, so I'm pinging @RegentsPark, Johnbod, Tito Dutta, Dwaipayanc, and Vanamonde93: and request that they keep an eye on this page if they can. Thanks. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 03:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Just because "the indirect goal of pressuring the Indian cabinet, and more pointedly Patel, to pay out some cash assets of British India owed to Pakistan by newly independent India, has been recorded in the reliable sources for a very long time", it doesn't mean it becomes true since it is fairly a recent assertion and has been verified as invalid claim by the sources provided above. If it "was also a motivation for Godse to murder Gandhi" then why it was never mentioned as such by Godse himself? Your latest source tells "last fast seems to have been directed in part", which is a mere dubious speculation at best. This information appears to be 1) an accidental mix-up, 2) Hindutva propaganda as noted in one of the above sources to justify the murder of Mahatma Gandhi under the garb of significant anti-Pakistan sentiment in India. For these many reasons, this sentence should not be included in this article just like it hasn't been included in any other article. Capitals00 (talk) 03:56, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I have added four very much more reliable sources. I'll let the editors pinged be the judge of it. There are at least a dozen more reliable sources waiting in the wings, if need be. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 04:03, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

To those I have pinged, please note the need for extended quotes in controversial articles. You remove them, and as the recent history of the page proves, it begins to go to dogs (with no disrespect meant to dogs; we own quite a few of them and they are enlightened sentient beings). Fowler&fowler «Talk» 04:06, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Another source which you have added just now (accessible here) appears to be telling the claim in question to be a possible mixup by "Hindu-right circles" who without any basis "saw Gandhi's fast as political blackmail to achieve precisely this aim".

I don't oppose removal of large quotations because if the information is verifiable then even a small quotation is enough. People who remove information are liable for removing it without proper justification, not those who added after ensuring basic WP:V. Capitals00 (talk) 04:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Giving a short shrift to the many reliable sources cited above isn't quite discerning. Where one half of the sources diverge from the contested assertion, it ought not be packaged as an apodictic gospel truth anymore. This is of course presupposing the other half thereof is reliable. I proffer we take it out of the lead and summarize the disagreement in the section earmarked for it. MBlaze Lightning (talk) 04:28, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
To the editors I have pinged above, and below: I've added the references listed below. Please read the quotes that accompany their citations.
- Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India, New York, Oxford University Press, 2004. Google Scholar citation index (i.e. the number of times the book has been cited by publications in Google Scholar) = 1,285
- Burton Stein and David Arnold's A History of India, 2012, Wiley-Blackwell, Google Scholar citation index 543
- Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf's A Concise History of Modern India, 2012, Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Citation index 930
- Judith M. Brown's Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope, Yale University Press, 1991, Google Scholar Citation index 530
- Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh's Partition of India, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Google Scholar Citation Index 331
- Ian Talbot, A History of Modern South Asia, Politics, States, Diasporas, 2016, Yale University Press.
- Balcerowicz, Piotr; Kuszewska, Agnieszka (2022). Kashmir in India and Pakistan Policies. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-48012-4. Quote: As the partition atrocities continued, on 13 January 1948, Mahatma Gandhi, the widely cherished leader of India's non-violent independence movement, commenced his fast to restore peace between the Hindu, Sikh and Muslim communities and to pressure the reluctant Indian government to transfer to Pakistan a due share of the unified, British Indian military assets and financial reserves.
- Babb, Lawrence A. (2020). Religion in India: Past and Present. Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press. ISBN 9781780466231. Quote: But like a recessive gene, Hindu nationalism had been there all along, and now it had sprung back into high visibility. At the time of the assassination, Godse was no longer a formal member of the RSS, but he was strongly anti-Muslim and considered Gandhi a Muslim appeaser, a view shared by many others, especially among Hindu nationalists. With the first Kashmir war in progress, the Congress had decided not to pay money owed to Pakistan as its share of India's assets prior to partition. Gandhi opposed this position and went on a 'fast-unto-death' to get it reversed, which in fact was done in early January 1948. The assassination soon followed. Godse was caught, tried and hanged.
- Rotem Geva Delhi Reborn: Partition and Nation Building in India's Capital, Stanford University Press, 2022.
- Ahmed, Raja Qaiser (2022). Pakistan Factor and the Competing Perspectives in India: Party Centric View. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 11. ISBN 978-981-16-7051-0. Quote: Hindu nationalists viewed Pakistan through a communal lens and this embittered context, ingrained in their view of history and culture, plagued India-Pakistan relations. ... Hindu traditionalists in the Indian National Congress (INC) ranks also urged the pursuit of hawkish and chauvinist policies towards Pakistan. Sardar Patel's approach and statements concerning Pakistan were the manifestations of this mindset—many like him wanted to nullify Pakistan's significance. ... The Mahasabha, RSS and other Hindu nationalists were increasingly perturbed over what they saw as INC's meek policy towards Paksitan. ... They hated secular plurialism in India. Nathuram Godse also admitted killing Gandhi on his palpable pro-Pakistan sentiments and his fast unto death to make sure the division of financial assets between India and Pakistan proceeded in a just manner.
- Joseph Lelyveld's Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India, Knopf, 2011. Google Scholar Citation index 226
The sum total of the citations of the list at the top of this section does not add up to any one of the first four in my list. (Note: The website of Cambridge Scholars Publishing, which has published, Mahatma Gandhi in Cinema, one of the film histories listed at the top of the section, says, "Please note that Cambridge Scholars Publishing Limited is not affiliated to or associated with Cambridge University Press or the University of Cambridge." Fowler&fowler «Talk» 05:37, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

You can find too reliable sources for many types of claims regardless of their credibility, but in this case, you have to ensure that the source is addressing the dispute. We can't see that here.

For a name, Judith M. Brown's Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope, Yale University Press, 1991 states as per your own addition on the article that: "He said he would fast until communal peace was restored, real peace rather than the calm of a dead city imposed by police and troops. Patel and the government took the fast partly as condemnation of their decision to withhold a considerable cash sum still outstanding to Pakistan as a result of the allocation of undivided India's assets because the hostilities that had broken out in Kashmir; ... But even when the government agreed to pay out the cash, Gandhi would not break his fast: that he would only do after a large number of important politicians and leaders of communal bodies agreed to a joint plan for restoration of normal life in the city." See the bolded part. It tells that it was a misunderstanding and Gandhi was NEVER concerned about paying the amount owed to Pakistan but over restoring "communal peace".
You have cited Rudolph (1987) but see what your own added quotation said? "Patel was not a committed or convinced secularist. His call for Muslims to pledge their loyalty to India as a condition of citizenship after partition, his one-sided defense of Hindus during the communal rioting and carnage that accompanied partition, and his refusal to honor India's commitment to turn over to Pakistan the assets due it were the occasion of Gandhi's last fast in January 1948. The riots in Delhi abated; Patel, after being told by Gandhi on the verge of death, "you are not the Sardar I knew," turned over the assets and deferred to Gandhi's call for brotherhood and forgiveness." It tells that Patel took an additional step in deal with the carnage that was happening.
Your addition of Wolpert (2004) notes "Mahatma told his prayer meeting audience that afternoon at Birla House, where he lived. “Let my fast quicken conscience, not deaden it. Just contemplate the rot that has set in in beloved India.” It was the last of his fasts. He ended it in less than a week, following messages of sorrow and prayer, including one from Sardar Patel promising to pay Pakistan forty million pounds sterling in cash assets, hitherto withheld by India." It tells that Patel was merely informing what he did. The source is not saying it anywhere that Mahatma Gandhi made this demand or had any motives for it.

Your sources can be used only for saying something like: "Mahatma Gandhi undertook several hunger strikes to stop the religious violence. In order to deal with the violence, Patel and the government took the decision to release assets it owed to Pakistan. However, Gandhi broke his fast only after significant politicians and leaders of communal bodies showed their commitment to a joint plan for restoration of peace." Though, this does not belong to this article, it belongs to Dominion of India instead. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 07:03, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Also pinging more old South Asia hands: @Joshua Jonathan, BusterD, and Martin of Sheffield: As I've stated above, I'm flat out of time these days for careful attention to Wikipedia. Please keep an eye on this page if you can. As for the editors who have appeared in this thread—like George Mallory 99 years before them on the slopes of Everest—on the excuse, "Because it is there," I cannot do much more than bury their attempt under an avalanche of scholarly sources. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 14:38, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

This new addition by you is factually wrong because Godse never made mention of any "financial assets" as reason. The problem with nearly all of your sources is that they only provide a passing mention, contrary to the sources I had provided which meet WP:CONTEXTMATTERS and they significantly discuss the credibility of this false claim that Gandhi demanded release of assets owed to Pakistan. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 16:15, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

A final note to all those I have pinged. As I don't have any more time, or patience, to waste, I am leaving more scholarly sources here which I have not added to the article.

The first is a new book by Harvard historian Caroline Elkins and the 2022 winner of the Pulitzer prize for nonfiction.

Elkins, Caroline (2022). Violence: A History of the British Empire. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 9780307272423. LCCN 2021018550. A few months later, with war-fueled tensions over Kashmir mounting and India refusing to pay Pakistan 550 million rupees, Pakistan's share of Britain's outstanding war debt, Gandhi began to fast. "This time my fast is not only against Hindus and Muslims," the Mahatma said, "but also against the Judases who put on false appearances and betray themselves, myself and society." The elderly and frail man who was India's symbolic political and spiritual leader went three days without food before India's cabinet agreed to pay Pakistan, something Nehru had long promised Jinnah he would do.

Walsh, Declan (2020). The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393249910. Godse, who belonged to a neo-fascist Hindu group called the R.S.S., was furious at Gandhi for his conciliatory attitude towards Muslims, and for his insistence that Pakistan should receive its fair share of the assets of the former colonial state.
Ceplair, Larry (2020). Revolutionary Pairs: Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, Gandhi and Nehru, Mao and Zhou, and Castro and Guevara. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. p. 134. ISBN 9780813179193. Gandhi undertook his last fast, in January 1948, to protest the Indian government's decision to withhold a large settlement payment due to Pakistan until the Kashmir problem was solved.
Blinkenberg, Lars (2022). India-Pakistan: The History of Unsolved Conflicts: Volume I. Lindhardt og Ringhof. ISBN 9788726894707. Sardar Patel decided, in the middle of December 1947, that the recent financial agreements with Pakistan should not be followed, unless Pakistan ceased to support the raiders. ... Gandhi was not convinced and he felt—like Mountbatten and Nehru—that the agreed transfer to Pakistan of a cash amount of Rs. 550 million should be implemented despite the Kashmir crisis. Gandhi started a fast unto death, which was officially done to stop communal trouble, especially in Delhi, but "word went round that it was directed against Sardar Patel's decision to withhold the cash balances"... Only because of Gandhi's interference, which was soon to cause his death, Sardar Patel gave in and the money was handed over to Pakistan.
This shows that my words of 2011 have stood the test of time. I will now be bowing out of this thread. Best, Fowler&fowler «Talk» 22:04, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

"fast unto death, which was officially done to stop communal trouble, especially in Delhi, but "word went round that it was directed against Sardar Patel's decision to withhold the cash balances", yes it meets #1st point I mentioned above which was "accidental mix-up".

I am sure release of payment helped in reducing down the violence and related tensions but it was not asked by Gandhi. This is also evident from few of your sources that state Gandhi still continued fast until peace was established. That's the whole point. Capitals00 (talk) 01:45, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

"Gandhi undertook his last fast, in January 1948, to protest the Indian government's decision to withhold a large settlement payment due to Pakistan until the Kashmir problem was solved."

What is it you don't understand? Fowler&fowler «Talk» 03:41, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

"Godse, who belonged to a neo-fascist Hindu group called the R.S.S., was furious at Gandhi for his conciliatory attitude towards Muslims, and for his insistence that Pakistan should receive its fair share of the assets of the former colonial state."

What is it you don't understand? Fowler&fowler «Talk» 03:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

"This time my fast is not only against Hindus and Muslims," the Mahatma said, "but also against the Judases who put on false appearances and betray themselves, myself and society." The elderly and frail man who was India's symbolic political and spiritual leader went three days without food before India's cabinet agreed to pay Pakistan, something Nehru had long promised Jinnah he would do."

What is it you don't understand? Fowler&fowler «Talk» 03:45, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

"With the first Kashmir war in progress, the Congress had decided not to pay money owed to Pakistan as its share of India's assets prior to partition. Gandhi opposed this position and went on a 'fast-unto-death' to get it reversed, which in fact was done in early January 1948. The assassination soon followed. Godse was caught, tried and hanged."

What is it you don't understand? Fowler&fowler «Talk» 03:46, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

"Sardar Patel's approach and statements concerning Pakistan were the manifestations of this mindset—many like him wanted to nullify Pakistan's significance. ... The Mahasabha, RSS and other Hindu nationalists were increasingly perturbed over what they saw as INC's meek policy towards Paksitan. ... They hated secular plurialism in India. Nathuram Godse also admitted killing Gandhi on his palpable pro-Pakistan sentiments and his fast unto death to make sure the division of financial assets between India and Pakistan proceeded in a just manner."

What is it you don't understand? Fowler&fowler «Talk» 03:51, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

"Just before his death, Gandhi made one last decisive intervention in the Indian political process. By a combination of prayer and fasting, he forced a contrite ministry to hand over to Pakistan its share of the cash assets of undivided India, some 40 million pounds sterling, which had so far been retained in defiance of the partition agreements."

(That's Metcalf and Metcalf. She was the president of the American Historical Association).

What is it you don't understand? Fowler&fowler «Talk» 03:54, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

"Mahatma Gandhi, the widely cherished leader of India's non-violent independence movement, commenced his fast to restore peace between the Hindu, Sikh and Muslim communities and to pressure the reluctant Indian government to transfer to Pakistan a due share of the unified, British Indian military assets and financial reserves."

What is it you don't understand? Fowler&fowler «Talk» 03:56, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

"He undertook a fast not only to restrain those bent on communal reprisal but also to influence the powerful Home Minister, Sardar Patel, who was refusing to share out the assets of the former imperial treasury with Pakistan, as had been agreed. Gandhi's insistence on justice for Pakistan now that the partition was a fact, ... had prompted Godse's fanatical action."

(That is from Burton Stein's A History of India, read by hundreds of thousands of students around the world.)

What is it you don't understand? Fowler&fowler «Talk» 03:58, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

"Of less symbolic significance was the division of post-Partition assets. Not until December 1947 was an agreement reached on Pakistan's share of the sterling assets held by the undivided Government of India at the time of independence. The bulk of these (550 million rupees) was held back by New Delhi because of the Kashmir conflict and paid only following Gandhi's intervention and fasting. India delivered Pakistan's military equipment even more tardily, and less than a sixth of the 160,000 tons of ordnance allotted to Pakistan by the Joint Defence Council was actually delivered." (Talbot)

What is it you don't understand? Fowler&fowler «Talk» 04:01, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

What I don't understand is that why you are inclined to think that this gish galloping is going to work. It won't.

These sources are not addressing the argument in question but only repeat a debunked myth from a later period. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 05:18, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Final note

Final note I have added 17 new sources to the older version of 6 March 2023 (which had three sources [12] through [14] for the relevant sentences) and seen now in this version of 7 March 2023 in the sources and citations numbered [12] through [31]. Of these, fully seven ([15], [19], [20], [22], [23], [25], and [27] were published in 2022; one, [16], in 2020. Together, these sources, support the following text:
As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab and Bengal. Abstaining from the official celebration of independence, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to alleviate distress. In the months following, he undertook several hunger strikes to stop the religious violence. The last of these, begun in Delhi on 12 January 1948 when he was 78,[12][13] also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan,[14][15][16][17] which the Indian government, especially its home minister, Sardar Patel,[18] had been resisting.[19][20][21][22][23] Although the Government of India relented,[24] as did the religious rioters, the belief that Gandhi had been too resolute in his defence of both Pakistan and Indian Muslims, most recently those besieged in Delhi, spread among some Hindus in India.[25][26][13] Among these was Nathuram Godse,[27] a militant Hindu nationalist from Pune, western India who the Hindutva ideologue V. D. Savarkar had inspired.[28] Godse assassinated Gandhi by firing three bullets into his chest at an interfaith prayer meeting in Delhi on 30 January 1948.[29][30][31]

The authors include major historians and political scientists of South Asia (Judith M. Brown, Barbara D. Metcalf, Thomas R. Metcalf, Lloyd I. Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Stanley Wolpert, Burton Stein, David Arnold, Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh. It includes a major historian of the British Empire and Pulitzer Prize Winner for General Nonfiction Caroline Elkins. Major journalists: Declan Walsh and Joseph Lelyveld (the Pulitzer prize-winning former executive editor of the New York Times and authors of a major biography of Gandhi), the Swedish diplomat and scholar of international conflicts Lars Blinkenberg, and not to mention the scholars and authors of the academic monographs published in the last year. I have also made the role played by Sardar Patel more explicit as I have the connection between Godse and the conspirators and the ideologue of Hindu nationalism, V. D. Savarkar. The citation for this belongs to Sumit Sarkar, professor of history at the University of Delhi, in the city where Gandhi was assassinated. There is no danger that anyone will interpret the text to offer an excuse for Gandhi's murder in the manner sometimes attributed to Hindu nationalists, or not see why Patel has become their latter-day darling. I shall now be returning to my off-Wikipedia activities. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 18:06, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

PS In case someone is wondering why there is so much focus on the assassination, I can only quote from Burton Stein's A History of India:

Gandhi was the leading genius of the later, and ultimately successful, campaign for India’s independence. His innovative techniques created an aura of almost mystical reverence not only for his followers but for the global audience he acquired thanks in large part to fortuitous and new developments in communications, most notably the cinema newsreel. His martyr’s death completed the conditions for his canonization.

In other words, Gandhi's assassination is an important aspect of his biography (even more perhaps than Abraham Lincoln's is in his). Of course, Stein goes on to say:

As a result, two aspects of his role have tended to be masked or discounted. The first was the idiosyncratic authoritarianism of his style of leadership, which often disconcerted his most loyal followers and admirers. The second, paradoxically, was his comforting (to adversaries and beneficiaries) refusal to disturb the status quo of the Indian social and economic hierarchy, which was screened by his patronizing concern for the victims of the curse of untouchability and his insistence on unity across class and caste. While his ideal of a nation consisting of autonomous villages whose inhabitants lived in Spartan simplicity was consigned to the realm of utopian fantasy, he successfully prevented other, more radical forms of social and economic idealism from being realized.

But to flesh that out will require a lot more work in the article. That goal remains, though, in my view. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 18:38, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

This part has been already covered in both Mahatma Gandhi#Gandhian economics and Mahatma Gandhi#Untouchability and castes with more information and it includes high quality sources like Christophe Jaffrelot, Nicholas Dirks, Ramachandra Guha and others. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 04:28, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Sumit Sarkar said "last fast seems to have been directed in part also against Patel’s increasingly communal attitudes", which provides no clear indication. This has been clarified above.

It was only after reading Judith M. Brown, Rudolph, Stanley Wolpert and others that I came up with this wording:-

"Mahatma Gandhi undertook several hunger strikes to stop the religious violence. In order to deal with the violence, Patel and the government took the decision to release assets it owed to Pakistan. However, Gandhi broke his fast only after significant politicians and leaders of communal bodies showed their commitment to a joint plan for the restoration of peace."

There is nothing wrong with it and it is the actual description of the entire thing that happened. I believe this should be in Dominion of India though, not this page.

But the sentences like "also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan,[14][15][16][17] which the Indian government, especially its home minister, Sardar Patel,[18] had been resisting.[19][20][21][22][23]" should be removed from the lead. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 04:28, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

>>>"Mahatma Gandhi undertook several hunger strikes to stop the religious violence. In order to deal with the violence, Patel and the government took the decision to release assets it owed to Pakistan."

You have misinterpreted what Brown, Rudolphs, or Wolpert have said. I have not only read them for 40-odd years but had interacted with the Rudolphs and quite a few South Asia historians from 1980 onward, over weekly meetings that continued for many years, with them visiting my home. There was nothing unambiguous about the reason for the funds to be withheld. It was one reason alone: fear of Pakistan getting the upper hand in the Kashmir conflict by having more funds at its disposal. After initial Indian success in late October, Indian fears had begun to mount about the preparedness and acclimatization of the Indian army, especially in view of the approaching winter in Kashmir. (Today's (March 8, 2023) Guardian expose on the classified letters between Nehru and Gen Sir Roy Bucher, (Kashmir letters cast doubt on claims Nehru blundered by agreeing to a ceasefire) speaks to this very issue. The phrasing in the lead is very precise. It says that India was legally required to pay Pakistan for its share of monetary assets. The government of India, its initiative led in this instance by Patel, decided to withhold the payment in order to reduce Pakistan's power to buy weapons on the international market. Gandhi opposed this immoral, if not also illegal, action. Mountbatten, agreeing with Gandhi, or Gandhi agreeing with Mountbatten, called it "Independent India's first dishonourable decision." In the end, Patel had no choice but to give up the unprincipled nationalistic stance he was advocating, that Gandhi, Mountbatten (and to some extent Nehru) were not. I am afraid I am done with this discussion. You are welcome to pursue your concerns in the manner you see fit. All the best, Fowler&fowler «Talk» 15:41, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I detailed how Brown, Rudolphs, or Wolpert fit for the proposed wording, just right above (read it for full analysis of mine). I would repeat only Brown, who writes "He said he would fast until communal peace was restored, real peace rather than the calm of a dead city imposed by police and troops. Patel and the government took the fast partly as condemnation of their decision to withhold a considerable cash sum still outstanding to Pakistan as a result of the allocation of undivided India's assets because the hostilities that had broken out in Kashmir; ... But even when the government agreed to pay out the cash, Gandhi would not break his fast: that he would only do after a large number of important politicians and leaders of communal bodies agreed to a joint plan for restoration of normal life in the city." As per the bolded part, it becomes clear that its a misunderstanding and Gandhi was NEVER concerned about paying the amount owed to Pakistan but over restoring "communal peace".

Now that there is no actual evidence that Gandhi demanded the release of the assets owed to Pakistan, and there are sources that actually debunk this speculation as misinformation, I am very sure that it is unwise to keep this information on this article (that too on lead).

Since none of the editors you pinged have responded so far, I am pinging APPU, Kautilya3 (other long term editors having edited this talk page) to help out with the dispute. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 04:58, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

K3 has already responded to your “verbal gimmickry” on Talk:Indo-Pakistani War of 1947–1948, with, “So unless there is a strong reason for change, for which WP:CONSENSUS can be obtained, the STATUSQUO should remain. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:09, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]” He has also urged reliance on multiple high quality reliable sources for supporting the kind of India boosterism you display on that page. I have provided 20 high quality sources for four sentences.

Your exchange with K3 on that page gives a new perspective on your preoccupations here, which now seem to be about avoiding any mention of Gandhi’s deep reservations about the manner in which India had acquired Kashmir and had continued to hold on to it by 12 January 1948. Seen in this light, your pieties about “Hindutva disinformation” at the top of the thread is a red herring. For to project no implications or hints of Gandhi doubts about Patel’s unprincipled nationalism over Kashmir is very much a contemporary Hindu nationalist preoccupation. Only Nehru is projected to be weak willed. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 10:14, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

You must back off from cherrypicking sentences to cast WP:ASPERSIONS because it is not only misleading but also toxic.

In which world do you think that saying "Indian control over the majority of territory" is more accurate than "Indian control over remainder of Kashmir" becomes "India boosterism"?

If you really want to discuss my "preoccupations" about both of the articles, then you need to work more on that. Any Hindutvawadi will dislike my edits on 1947-1948 war (Hindutvawadis claim that entire Kashmir was controlled by India and Congress failed to retain it[1]) and also on this page of Mahamta Gandhi ("55 crore" is an excuse used by Hindutvawadis to justify murder of Gandhi).

What is a Hindu nationalist POV is clearly confirmed by one of the sources I cited above, "it is important to note that the hunger strike was not for that purpose. The Hindutva forces have consistently made false propaganda"[2] about assets being owed to Pakistan.

Fact that you don't understand this shows your own poor understanding of this subject. Now here is another one by The Quint, which tells: "Pandey has brought out details here that nail the “55 crore”-to-Pakistan lie, often cited as the reason why the Mahatma was disposed of. India needed to transfer arrears due to Pakistan under the terms of division of assets and liabilities. Of the Rs 75 crore to be paid, the first instalment of Rs 20 crore was already released. Invasion of Kashmir by Pakistani Army supported covert raiders happened before the second instalment was paid out. Government of India decided to withhold the payment. Lord Mountbatten was of the opinion that it was “unstatesmanlike and unwise” and he brought it to the notice of Gandhi on 12 January. Gandhi, keen that India stick to what was agreed, concurred with that view. But nowhere in the course of the last fast he undertook did he invoke this."

Your sources (some of which I mentioned have been misused by you) are not exactly discussing the dispute. This contradicts the sources I provided. Those that I have provided conclude this claim to be baseless claim.

If this was a solid fact then we would know that from the beginning rather than decades later distortions when the Hindutva movement started to rise again. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 14:50, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

My own poor understanding of the subject? The Kashmir angle was there right from the start. See the Illustrated London News, February 7, 1948, page 144 which states, "ΤHΕ LAST FAST IN JANUARY 1948 , UNDERTAKEN ON ACCOUNT OF THE KASHMIR CONTROVERSY : MAHATMA GANDHI , SUPPORTED BY HIS TWO GRANDDAUGHTERS ..." I am done with this discussion. You have no history of contributing to this article, to the British Raj article, to the Dominion of India article, or to Partition of India article, in all of which I have made a major contribution, in some for 16 years. (See the authorship of British Raj, Partition of India, Dominion of India.)

And not to mention Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi(see its authorship and the WP article on the American who apprehended Godse after the murder on that fateful evening, Herbert Reiner Jr. (see its authorship; there is a reason that Wikipedia has that utility—it is a record of the hard and rigorous work some of us have done.

You are welcome to pursue your concerns at the venue of your choosing, but if you edit war on this page or change the lead without a exceptional consensus (befitting an exceptional figure), I will report you for disruption. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 18:35, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

You have confirmed your understanding with your latest misrepresentation of the source with this cherrypicking of a single sentence that appears to be an image caption, rather than the description of the subject. Look at the page 145, it says "THE FAST WHICH HE BEGAN ON JANUARY 13 AND TERMINATED ON JANUARY 18, EMACIATED AFTER А TWENTY-ONE DAY FAST TO RECONCILE MOSLEMS AND HINDI'S."[3]

The biographical article provides a few images with captions and then it continues: "KARAMCHAND GANDHI, greatest figure in modern Indian history, assassinated on January 30, 1948, was born on October 2 assassinated on January 30, ' 1948, was born on October 2, 1869." And: "The Mahatma's pacificism and opposition to violence were the warp and woof of his being. Even his opponents were unanimous in admiration of his lofty ideals, and all who met him felt his personal charm."

There is no mention of anything that concerns assets owed to Pakistan in the entire article.

A different article from 1948:-

"( a ) Mr. Gandhi's fast to stay the killing of Muslims in Delhi, started on 12th January 1948.
( b ) The fast broken on 17th January 1948.
( c ) A bomb exploded in the audience, which Mr. Gandhi was addressing on 20th January 1948.
( d ) A man carrying bombs evidently for throwing them on Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru was arrested at Amritsar on 29th January 1948.
( e ) Mr. Gandhi was killed on 30th January 1948.
( f ) The Akalis at Amritsar on 30th January 1948 passed a resolution to the effect that congregational speeches of Mr. Gandhi should not be broadcast from the All - India Radio.
( g ) Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh was declared an un- lawful association by Government of India, on 4th February 1948.
( h ) Among the persons arrested for Mr. Gandhi's murder up to date are: - - 1. Nathu Ram Vinayak Godse, editor of Hindu Rashtra (the assassin of Mr. Gandhi) . 2 . V. G. Damle, Secretary to Mr. V. D. Savarkar...."

It interprets Gandhi's fast "to stay the killing of Muslims in Delhi", but Gandhi was concerned about killings elsewhere too. Nevertheless, just like the The Illustrated London News you cited, it makes no mention of fast having any association with assets being owed to Pakistan.

Read LIFE Magazine's article published on 9 February 1948 with a great amount of research. It notes:

"GANDHI'S LAST FAST WON SOLEMN PLEDGE OF PEACE"

"A "fast to death" was Gandhi's political weapon of last resort against unruly followers and opponents. On Jan. 12, appalled by the religious warfare that followed India's new freedom, he began the last of 11 such important fasts, some of which have lasted as long as 21 days. At first fanatical Hindus and Sikhs dared to jeer, "Let Gandhi die!" But soon huge parades and meetings for peace again revealed his almost magical control over the masses. On the sixth day, when 50 leading Moslems, Hindus and Sikhs, like chastened schoolboys, signed a peace pledge, Gandhi broke his fast. He announced he hoped to live another 47 years but 12 days later a fanatic's bullets killed him. A stunned India waited to see whether peace or catastrophe would follow."

Instead of using words like "Kashmir controversy" or "killing of Muslims in Delhi", it says "religious warfare". But just like the other 2 sources above, it also makes no mention of fast having any association with assets being owed to Pakistan.

This is why I am firm with the fact that such misinformation was created only after some decades with the re-emergence of the Hindutva movement.

Regarding your contributions to some of those articles, it is absolutely irrelevant to this dispute. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 02:39, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

What is this in Atkinson's Evening Post, and Philadelphia Saturday News, Volume 221, Issue 1, 1948: "It took Gandhi's January threat of a fast unto death to get Vallabhbhai Patel to part with a large instalment of cash - balance payments due to Pakistan. The postindependence breakdown in transport also halted the transfer to Pakistan of her share of other spoils of the partition - especially military stores and equipment, after hostilities began in Kashmir"? Fowler&fowler «Talk» 03:21, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

It means that the fast got Patel release the amount but it does not say that it was demanded by Gandhi. This is addressed by The Indian Review (1948): "He explained that this ( 15th ) fast of his was not for the sake of his health nor as a penance for the wrongs done. In these fasts, the fasting one need not believe in Ahimsa. There is, however, a fast which a votary of non-violence sometimes feels impelled to undertake by way of protest against some wrong done by society and this he does when he, as a votary of Ahimsa, has no other remedy left." And "Meanwhile leaders and responsible and women of all parties and communities bent their energies in bringing the communities together and ensuring peace. The Government of India took the extraordinary step of rescinding their order to withhold payment cash balance to the tune of 55 crore Pakistan, which only a couple of members before Sardar Patel, the Home member Mr. Shanmukham Chetty, the Finance minister had felt bound to declare."

See the words "extraordinary step". It was not a demand by Gandhi but Patel's own solution to cease the violence. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 03:39, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Also take a look at this Time magazine article from 26 January 1948. It states: "Vallabhbhai Patel left town for a few days. During his absence, the Indian government agreed to reinstate a financial agreement with Pakistan, a step which Patel had blocked only 48 hours before." This casts doubt whether Patel really agreed to release the payment or someone else did it.

The article noted[4] that Patel "inclined also to crack down on Moslems within India: "Mere declarations of loyalty to the Indian Union will not help Moslems at this critical juncture," said Patel. Later he became bolder, and darkly hinted at open war with Pakistan. Most Sikhs and many Hindus applauded Patel. Obliquely, Gandhi observed that Patel had "thorns on his tongue." Without warning, one day last week the Mahatma began to fast." And: "Not until the fifth day of his fast did Gandhi list the specific conditions under which he would break his fast. Moslems, he said, should be guaranteed freedom to worship, travel, earn a livelihood, keep their own houses. After Gandhi had gone without food for 121 hours, 50 Hindu, Moslem and Sikh leaders gathered at Birla House, to pledge themselves to meet his conditions." Abhishek0831996 (talk) 04:24, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

If it is a question of how the modern reliable sources have interpreted the fast, there is no doubt. The connection is already there in the 20 sources with a combined Google scholar citation index of 4,300. If it is a question of whether a connection was seen in 1948, my last source clearly points to it. Remember, the WP:ONUS is yours. A vital Wikipedia article requires an exceptional consensus to change something that has been in the article for ten years.

In other words, I am not going to engage in the game of arguing using primary sources (from the time of the murder in 1948). Fowler&fowler «Talk» 05:01, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

To say that reliability of the sources matter only when you cite them is a poor logic. A good number of your "20 sources" are not saying Gandhi made the demand. A number of modern sources have also debunked such connection as baseless. Your Philadelphian regional source also does not say Gandhi demanded the release. Reliable sources from 1948 as detailed above clearly made no such baseless claim. You should better work on finding reliable sources that have written rebuttal against the debunking of this particular claim. You have been told about this above as well, but you are just not getting it. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 06:35, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Final reply of Fowler&fowler

Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, left, prime minister of Bengal (1946–1947) and later prime minister of Pakistan, and Mahatma Gandhi during their 73-hour fast in Calcutta to stop religious violence in the days after India's Independence Day

The WP:ONUS for changing a ten-year-long consensus in a vital WP article, edited and implicitly upheld by dozens of administrators, is yours, Abhishek0831996. It is WP policy. The relevant portion of the third lead paragraph (without the wikilinks):

In the months following, he undertook several hunger strikes to stop the religious violence. The last of these, begun in Delhi on 12 January 1948 when he was 78,[12][13] also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan,[14][15][16][17] which the Indian government, especially its home minister, Sardar Patel,[18] had been resisting.[19][20][21][22][23] Although the Government of India eventually relented,[24] as did the religious rioters, the belief that Gandhi had been too resolute in his defence of both Pakistan and Indian Muslims, most recently those besieged in Delhi, spread among some Hindus in India.[25][26][13] Among these was Nathuram Godse,[27] a militant Hindu nationalist from Pune, western India who the Hindutva ideologue V. D. Savarkar had inspired.[28] Godse assassinated Gandhi by firing three bullets into his chest at an interfaith prayer meeting in Delhi on 30 January 1948.[29][30][31]

has been cited to 20 modern reliable sources whose authors include: scholars such as Judith M. Brown, Barbara D. Metcalf, Thomas R. Metcalf, Lloyd I. Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Stanley Wolpert, Burton Stein, David Arnold, Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, and Sumit Sarkar. It includes a major historian of the British Empire and Pulitzer Prize Winner for General Nonfiction Caroline Elkins. Major journalists: Declan Walsh and Joseph Lelyveld (the Pulitzer prize-winning former executive editor of the New York Times and authors of a major biography of Gandhi), the Swedish diplomat and scholar of international conflicts Lars Blinkenberg, and not to mention the scholars and authors of the academic monographs published during the last year. Together, the Google Scholar citation index of those sources is well above 4,000, i.e. they have been cited in more than 4,000 scholarly articles. That I am the lead author, besides, of the FA India, and of the articles Company rule in India, Indian rebellion of 1857, British Raj, Partition of India, Dominion of India, Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, Kashmir, and History of Pakistan at least demonstrates that you are dealing with a competent editor. All the best and goodbye. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 11:34, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I have now also cited to Percival Spear's book, which I had used in a discussion of Gandhi's last fast in the Dominion of India page, but forgot to add it here and to the 3rd edition of the widely used Sources of the Indian tradition, Columbia, 2014:

Spear, Percival (1990) [1978]. History of India, Volume 2: From the sixteenth century to the twentieth century. Penguin. p. 239. ISBN 978-0-140-13836-8. Gandhi came to Delhi from Bengal in October and now directed his reconciling mission from there. This time it was the Muslims he was championing and he found he was opposed by some elements within the government itself. It was the noblest and most courageous moment of his life. He had quelled the last outbreak of communal rioting in September and in January 1948 the inner voice spoke again. This time the issues were twofold, the payment to Pakistan of her agreed assets which had been withheld owing to the Kashmir dispute and the restoration of peace in the capital. Only when the money had been paid and a peace pact, including the evacuation of the mosques, had been signed, did he give up his fast, on 18th January. The Google Scholar citation index of this book is 603
McDermott, Rachel Fell; Gordon, Leonard A.; Embree, Ainslie T.; Pritchett, Frances W.; Dalton, Dennis, eds. (2014). Sources of Indian Traditions, Volume 2: Modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (3rd ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. p. 344. ISBN 978-0-231-13830-7. In January 1948 he fasted successfully again in Delhi to stop Hindu attacks on Muslims and to coerce his own Indian government into payment of large sums of money that were due to Pakistan. He prevailed, extracting both government payment and pledges of peace by leaders of all groups. This enabled him to end his fast; but on January 30, as he was en route to his regular evening prayer meeting, he was shot by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist who believed him too lenient toward India's Muslims and Pakistan.

And:

Dodwell, H. H.; Mahajan, Vidya Dhar (1962). The Cambridge History of India: The Indian Empire, 1858-1918, with chapters on the development of administration, 1818-1858, edited by H. H. Dodwell, and chapters 34 to 38 (1919-1969), edited by V. D. Mahajan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 974. In January 1948 Mahatma Gandhi insisted that India must pay to Pakistan her agreed assets of Rs. 55 crores which had been withheld owing to the war in Kashmir and peace must be restored in Delhi and the Muslim mosques must be evacuated by the Hindus. It was on 18 January 1948 that Mahatma Gandhi gave up his fast when the money was paid to Pakistan and the mosques were evacuated by the Hindus in Delhi
Bell, J. Bowyer (2017) [2005]. Assassin: Theory and Practice of Political Violence. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-4128-0509-4. The key to the conspiracy was Vinnayak Damodar Veer "The Brave" Savarkar, sixty-five, a Hindu ascetic, slender, intense, with steel-rim spectacles and a dedication to the concept of a greater Hindu India. He opposed the British raj, the concept of partition, the idea of Pakistan and, in 1947, the emerging reality of all those things. Trained in the Inns of Court, he had been imprisoned on the Andaman Islands with a double life sentence for the murder of a British bureaucrat, then freed by a postwar amnesty. He had been involved at a distance in previous attempts on the lives of the governors of Punjab and Bombay. His organization, Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSSS), had an inner and violent core, Hindu Rashtra Dal, established on May 15, 1942, made up of Chitpawan Brahmans fanatically dedicated to the Greater Hindu State. ... By January 1948, he and his followers had grown increasingly frustrated by the direction of events: India had been partitioned, Pakistan existed, and Moslems and Hindus had indulged in a long orgy of massacre that had finally largely ended because of mutual exhaustion, the flight of the vulnerable, and the last fast of Gandhi. On January 18, 1948, after fasting for 121 hours and 30 minutes, Gandhi had forced the government to agree to a series of accommodations and concessions—including turning over 550 million rupees to Pakistan as promised. For the RSSS this was treason, a betrayal of Hindu India, not simply a maneuver to end mass murder but an open recognition of Pakistan by India's most renowned figure—the moral blessing of treachery.

A book used in both the FA India and WP's article British Raj:

Copland, Ian (2001). India 1885-1947: The Unmaking of an Empire. Seminar Studies in History series. London and New York: Routledge. p. 77. ISBN 978-0-582-38173-5. Gandhi was adamant that the debt to Pakistan had to be paid, and in March 1948 he announced that he planned to embark on another indefinite fast to ensure that the Indian government fulfilled its legal and moral obligations. The Mahasabha and the RSS denounced this plan as tantamount to treason. In the early evening of 30 March, as he addressed a prayer meeting at Birla House, New Delhi, India's prince of peace was shot and killed by a member of an RSS splinter-group, Nathuram Godse. (Note: "March" is an unfortunate misprint in two places. Obviously, January is meant, for Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948.) Google scholar citation number = 51

I hope this issue is now settled. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 15:22, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Please do not comment in this subsection. Do so below. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 18:11, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Comments continued

No. These sources only repeat the same mistaken claim in question instead of verifying it's credibility. You can sure find dozens more saying the same thing but that isn't even helpful. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 17:27, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Response to third opinion request:

I've read through this full discussion, and from the quotes and arguments presented here, was originally in support of the proposed change. However, I did some more digging and consulted Ramachandra Guha's Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, which has a very detailed account of the fast. Sometimes, a single, relevant source is more persuasive than a mountain of sources with passing references. I now oppose the proposed deletion (with some serious asterisks). If you'll bear with me, I want to quote Guha at length (this is from Part V, Chapter 37, Section VIII. I encourage you to read the full, unabridged section if you can):

"On 12 January, Gandhi informed his prayer meeting that he was commencing a fast the next day. The recent riots had been contained by police and military action, but there was yet a ‘storm within the breast. It may burst forth any day.’ So, he had decided to go on a fast, which would end when he was ‘satisfied that there is a reunion of hearts of all communities brought about without any outside pressure, but from an awakened sense of duty’.

The Hindustan Times, edited by Gandhi’s son Devadas, reported that the decision to fast had come ‘as a complete surprise to his colleagues and the members of the Government’. Gandhi’s close associates ‘cannot conceal their anxiety’ at his decision, said the paper, as his health was still frail, after the fast in Calcutta. But Gandhi disregarded them, for ‘he had been very much affected by the all-round misery and chaos, thousands of refugees streaming to him with tragic tales’.

[...]

On the morning of the 12th, [Gandhi] went to the Viceregal Palace to inform Mountbatten of his fast. Later, Nehru came to Birla House and sat with Gandhi for two hours. Although the stated reason for the fast was the deteriorating communal situation, it seems Gandhi was also upset with the government’s decision to withhold from Pakistan its share of the sterling balances owed by Britain to (undivided) India after the Second World War. Because of Pakistan’s invasion of Kashmir, the Indian government had delayed the payment. But in Gandhi’s view of the world, financial debts to another person or entity, whether friend, enemy, or neither, had to be discharged immediately.

On the 13th, Gandhi had his usual morning meal [...] Then he had a long conversation with Vallabhbhai Patel. The fast formally began at 11.15 a.m., after which some prayers were said.

[...]

On the evening of the first day of his fast, Gandhi attended the daily prayer meeting and gave his address as usual. He spoke of, among other things, the perception that Indian Muslims trusted both him and Nehru, but not Patel. Gandhi thought this slightly unfair. ‘The Sardar is blunt of speech,’ he remarked. ‘What he says sometimes sounds bitter. The fault is in his tongue.’ He asked his Muslim friends to ‘bring to the Sardar’s notice any mistakes which in their opinion he commits’.

On the 14th, the second day of his fast, Gandhi met members of the Indian Cabinet, a deputation of refugees from the NWFP, and a large number of other visitors, including the maharaja of Patiala and G.D. Birla.

[...]

On the evening of 14 January, a batch of angry men arrived on bicycles at Birla House and raised what were described as ‘communal and anti-Gandhi slogans’. Inside the house, speaking with Gandhi, were Patel, Azad and Nehru.

[...]

At evening prayers on the 15th, Gandhi [...] explained that his fast was on behalf of the minorities both in Pakistan and India. Conducted in the first instance ‘on behalf of the Muslim minority in the [Indian] Union’, it was ‘necessarily against the Hindus and Sikhs of the Union and [against] the Muslims of Pakistan’.

After the meeting, the crowd filed past him, one by one, bowing with folded hands, first the children, then the women, finally the men. Meanwhile, news reached Birla House that the government had agreed to pay the sterling balances owed to Pakistan, as their contribution ‘to the non-violent and noble effort made by Gandhiji, in accordance with the glorious traditions of this great country, for peace and goodwill’. The Government of India had bowed to Gandhi’s will; when would the city of Delhi do likewise?"

Guha goes on to detail the rest of the fast, including the seven conditions for breaking the fast that Gandhi had published on the 17th.

The order of events is crucial here. Gandhi decided to fast before he met with Mountbatten, and if Ashok Kumar Pandey is correct as referenced in the Quint article that it was the Governor General who informed Gandhi of the payments issue on the 12th, then it's clear that Gandhi's fast wasn't only or mainly about the payments. This is reinforced by the fact pointed out by Judith Brown that Gandhi's fast continued long past the announcement that payments would resume. The sources that go so far as to say or imply that the fast was only/mainly because of the payments (e.g., Copland, Babb, Ceplair) are guilty of oversimplification to the point of falsehood. However, the story doesn't end there. After the meeting with Mountbatten, Gandhi had a long conversation with Nehru. The next day, Patel came to see him first thing in the morning. The day after that, Patel, Nehru, and Azad all came to Gandhi to discuss... something. And finally, the day after that last meeting, Patel announces that the government has decided to resume payments to Pakistan, explicitly citing Gandhi's fast as the motivation. Given that we know Gandhi was strongly opposed to ending the payments, it's almost certain they were a topic of discussion in those meetings, if not the main topic of discussion. And it seems immanently plausible that Gandhi would have laid down resuming the payments as one of his conditions for stopping/ending his fast.

So is there an alternative explanation? Well, we can safely dismiss the idea forwarded by Blinkenberg that Patel's decision was based on the "word [going] round" Delhi. Patel had spoken directly and at length with Gandhi twice in the days before his decision; he would not have made such an important decision based on rumors. Likewise, the presence of Nehru and Azad at the final meeting reduces the possibility that Patel simply misunderstood Gandhi's intentions. The Indian cabinet was clearly very invested in fully understanding Gandhi's reasons for the fast. In my opinion, the only semi-plausible alternative that doesn't involve Gandhi making the payments a precondition for ending his fast is the possibility that such a demand was never even necessary. Perhaps Gandhi's moral arguments or the spirit of repentance engendered by the fast genuinely moved Patel and the cabinet to make such a gesture of goodwill without needing a threat from Gandhi. But it feels like a painful splitting of hairs to argue that Gandhi convinced Patel to resume payments during his fast but not because of his fast.

So in summary, I find the conclusion of most historians that Gandhi used his final fast to pressure the Indian government into paying Pakistan what they were owed to be by far the most reasonable explanation for Patel's decision.

Nonetheless, my opposition to removing the claim in the lede is contingent on two changes. First, the wording is currently imprecise: resuming the payments could be described as a "secondary" or "unofficial" goal, but it was in no way "indirect". It might also be better to say that the fast "gained" the payments as a secondary goal, since the fast was announced before Gandhi was aware of the issue. Second and more important, given the evident importance of this topic to contemporary debates over Gandhi's legacy in India, I agree with User:MBlaze Lightning's suggestion that the article needs a few sentences or a short paragraph on this topic in the Current impact within India section. Additionally, a bit more detail on the goals and results of his final two fasts would be welcome in the section on Partition and Independence. In either case, the article should clearly and unambiguously state that Gandhi's primary motivation for fasting was the continued threat of communal violence in Delhi and elsewhere, and that pressuring the government to resume payments to Pakistan was a secondary (and never official) goal. If for whatever reason the editors here don't want to add clarifying information to the body and rephrase the claim, I would support removing it from the lede. It's too controversial/liable to misinterpretation to be left without context, and not important enough to Gandhi's life to override that consideration.

Hopefully this helps, SilverStar54 (talk) 02:00, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

@SilverStar54: This should be added only under "Partition and independence" section in the last paragraph but before the sentence "Some writers credit Gandhi's fasting and protests..." Do you agree with this wording? "Mahatma Gandhi undertook fast on 12 January to stop the religious violence. While his official motive for fasting was restoration of peace between the people, it also saw the Indian government release the assets it owed to Pakistan. Gandhi broke his fast only after significant politicians and leaders of communal bodies showed their commitment to a joint plan for the restoration of peace by 17 January." Longer text will require denial too and it will get unnecessarily lengthy. That's I think it's best to keep it this much succinct. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 13:26, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I like it, but I have a few quibbles about the wording. How about: "Mahatma Gandhi undertook his final fast on 12 January to preempt the threat of more religious violence in Delhi and elsewhere. After learning of the Indian government's decision to suspend payment of assets it owed to Pakistan until the Kashmir crisis was resolved, Gandhi probably also used his fast to pressure the government into reversing that decision. Gandhi broke his fast only on 18 January, after significant politicians and leaders of communal bodies showed their commitment to a joint plan for the restoration of peace. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SilverStar54 (talk • contribs)

@SilverStar54: I'm sorry but Guha is a popular historian, the author of trade histories (pitched mid-way between a Shashi Tharoor's and a William Dalrymple's) and a maverick (his biography says, economics, sociology, environmental history and ....).

Please see WP:TERTIARY about the value of textbooks in determining due weight. Guhu has never written a textbook. He has no academic background in history, or training in how to read and interpret primary sources in history in graduate school.) Judith Brown'a books, on the other hand, both on Modern India and Gandhi might be a little dated, but they are serious academic histories, used around the world in universities. I have used Brown, the Metcalfs, Sumit Sarkar, and Ian Copland in a number of India-related articles, as I have the Rudolphs, including in the FA India and the article Dominion of India. I wouldn't dream of touching anything written by Tharoor or Guha for use in any vital India-related article.

The references in the academic historians to Gandhi's last fast might be brief but the summary or precis is rigorous. It is well nigh impossible that would not have chosen their words with much deliberation. They have all edited major academic works. (Brown for example edited the Oxford History of the British Empire.) So, I wouldn't put too much stock in Guha's details.

I do agree with you that "indirectly" is not needed (and in fact redundant as we also say "also" which, in addition, lets us off the hook in choosing the primary reason for the fast, especially in light of major WP:SCHOLARSHIP not making that determination. I am happy to go along with:

In the months following, he undertook several ~~hunger strikes~~[[hunger strike|fasts unto death]] to stop the religious violence. The last of these, begun in Delhi on 12 January 1948, had the additional goal of pressuring the Government of India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan. Although the religious rioters relented as did the Government, the belief that Gandhi had been too resolute in his defence of both Pakistan and Indian Muslims spread among some Hindus in India. Among these was ...

The expression "hunger strike" is more commonly applied to prisoners, not so much to Gandhi.

I don't believe this detail is excessive in the least. The last two years of Gandhi's life are also his finest. Without a martyr's death, Gandhi would have been only half the historical figure he is today. Several scholars mention this in admiration, criticism, or irony (see Burton Stein's A History of India quoted above for example).

I have nothing to say to the person who sought the third opinion on this page. They have written precious little on modern Indian history. A single-issue editor, they seem to be. WP's banalities aside, a lead does not stay in an article for ten years, edited by many competent editors of India-related content, including admins, for it to be overturned lightly by passers-by of the moment with quirky obsessions.

In contrast, your comments SilverStar54, aim to be balanced, even though I do not agree with all of them. Thank you. Best regards, Fowler&fowler «Talk» 23:49, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: So first you say "I have nothing to say to the person who sought the third opinion on this page" and then you go ahead to make WP:NPA? I have already told you before that what matters in Wikipedia is what you do, not who you are, but you are still not getting it.

You need to read WP:CONSENSUSCANCHANGE. If anything, your WP:OWN (with regards to lead) is again clear with this new edit of yours. Nothing was wrong with Thinker78 improving the wording.[5] What was wrong with the edit by Robertus Pius? He was just adding the voice.[6]

Ramachandra Guha is a historian, not a popular historian. See WP:TE, especially this section which tells you are not allowed to dispute reliable sources.

Problem here is that your sources are not discussing this particular claim, they are only making a passing mention of it and some don't even support the claim whereas the sources I provided are actually debunking this claim.

No, this text won't remain on lead. All of the editors except you of course have agreed. This means we have consensus to remove the debunked claim from the lead.

@SilverStar54: WP:CONTEXTMATTERS clearly tells that: "In general, the more people engaged in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the writing, the more reliable the publication." The problem here is as I said that we have various reliable have debunked this claim, but we don't have any reliable sources that have addressed the debunking of this claim. This means we should not give more weight to the claim that lacked any existence in the initial reporting from 1948 sources as I have already proven above. Instead, it found mention in the sources from a later period.

How about "Mahatma Gandhi undertook his final fast on 12 January to preempt the threat of more religious violence in Delhi and elsewhere. Although it has been sometimes suggested that Gandhi, after learning of the Indian government's decision to suspend the payment of assets it owed to Pakistan, also used his fast to pressure the government into reversing that decision, however, this claim has been rejected by others citing that Gandhi never stated such a goal. Ultimately, Gandhi broke his fast only on 18 January, after significant politicians and leaders of communal bodies showed their commitment to a joint plan for the restoration of peace." Abhishek0831996 (talk) 06:33, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

You are wasting community time with your original research. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 20:51, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to weigh in a second time here. Abhishek flags a substantive point about the imperative to duly afford due weight to the diverging scholarly perspectives on the question of whether Gandhi sought to impel the Indian government to settle its outstanding arrears that it owed to Pakistan by dint of his penance. I think a special thanks is in order for SilverStar54 for their painstaking inquiry into the subject and special efforts they invested in marshalling resources for their instructive 3O.
Ramachandra Guha is amongst the most oft-cited scholar of history of independent India, and I, for one, can't fathom, nay make sense of arguments that discount his exhaustive, over a thousand pages long academic tome on Gandhi as one transcribed by "a popular historian" (apparently used to trivialize the scholarly work but without basis in facts). Guha's exposition of Gandhi's fast, which is as good as it gets, contextualizes it. It helps us plug into the chain of events that transpired in the aftermath of Gandhi's avowed resolve for observing penance. He notes, and I paraphrase, that Gandhi was moved into taking the decision by an impulse to hedge the society against what he apprehended was a looming spectre of internecine communal strife. This is a recurring motif amongst other scholarly accounts of the event too. It can truly be held apodictic and sufficing our NPOV requisites.
What remains ambiguous, however, is the incidental question concerning the disbursement of arrears that has been brought out as being probably on Gandhi's agenda. Guha is eminently less definitive on this score. He observes that it was seemingly tacit. It lends itself well for SilverStar5's phrasing that it was an unofficial goal. I also concur with them that the extant phrasing in lead of it being an indirect goal is a travesty of sources. The alternative phrasing, After learning of the Indian government's decision to suspend payment of assets it owed to Pakistan until the Kashmir crisis was resolved, Gandhi probably also used his fast to pressure the government into reversing that decision, which they proffer is felicitous and seems to have gained traction with Abhishek also countenancing it. Having said that, there is an obverse of the foregoing too: a litany of scholars quite categorically discredit the very proposition that Gandhi used his fast as a vehicle for arm-twisting the Indian government into acquiescing to extending alms to Pakistan. Ideally, it would serve the NPOV purpose best to spell out the scholarly disagreement in an apposite section as a starting point. There would be nothing OR in adumbrating diverging perspectives, but giving them a short-shrift would decidedly flout the overriding dictates of NPOV. MBlaze Lightning (talk) 19:09, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

On WP due weight is not determined by editors casting a vote, but by the treatment of the topic in textbooks, reviews of the literature on the topic which has been published in a journal or in speciality encyclopedias or companions (as mentioned in WP:TERTIARY). Similarly, WP:SCHOLARSHIP remains WP's benchmark for reliability. Mr Ramachandra Guha is not a professional historian. He has written no textbook in history. He has written no academic monograph in history either. He is an author of trade books on many topics, among which are the environment, cricket, and history. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 20:35, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

The policy says that tertiary sources can provide an instructive avenue for discerning due weight in cases where the secondary sources and the primary ones don't correspond in their substance. That isn't the case here. And it is not the only index for gauging due weight. It can not be used to exclude the more incisive secondary sources. Guha is an acclaimed historian; his is a monograph on Gandhi that runs in over 1000 pages. In fact it is the second of the two volumes he authored on Gandhi. Published in 2018, it accrues a citation count of a hundred which tells us that it has been vetted through peer review. The Times critiques the work as The result, the second of two volumes, is the most exhaustive account yet of Gandhi’s temporal and spiritual crusades. Why do you believe everyone expounding their informed views on the matter is casting a vote? Abhishek0831996 (talk) 06:15, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Now that this talk page has got some new faces and it was only Fowler who wants to preserve this misinformation in question, I would like to relitigate this since new experienced editors have appeared here. @Iskandar323 and Randy Kryn: Can you both chime in here too? The dispute here concerns the misleading sentence on the lead "The last of these, begun in Delhi on 12 January 1948 when he was 78, also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan, which the Indian government had been resisting. Although the Government of India relented". Gandhi never had any "goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan". Enough sources have been provided here which confirm that Gandhi never made this demand. TIME magazine article from 26 January 1948 states: "Not until the fifth day of his fast did Gandhi list the specific conditions under which he would break his fast. Moslems, he said, should be guaranteed freedom to worship, travel, earn a livelihood, keep their own houses. After Gandhi had gone without food for 121 hours, 50 Hindu, Moslem and Sikh leaders gathered at Birla House, to pledge themselves to meet his conditions. Pakistan's high commissioner in New Delhi brought an inquiry from his government asking what Pakistan could do. Gandhi, cheerful again, addressed the conference for ten minutes. Then he agreed to break his fast." Note how it does not list release of "assets owed to Pakistan" at all. Its a misleading claim created at a later period. WP:CONTEXTMATTERS clearly tells that: "In general, the more people engaged in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the writing, the more reliable the publication." So far, Fowler hasn't provided a single source that would address the debunking of this misleading claim. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 03:24, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
My initial observation is there is a lot of variety if not outright confliction in the sources. Many reference only the transfer of assets; others do not mention it at all. Many mention that the fast was more of a general protest in favor of, among other things, reconciliation between India's different communities. At least one source says on the assets side of things that it was "military and financial" assets that were in question. It certainly does appear that Gandhi had more than one motive for fasting, other questions aside. And if he only stopped fasting a week after it was agreed that assets would be released, and in conjunction with other concessions, then that does somewhat suggest that the assets issue was less primary than the page's current text makes out. The situation is not helped by the assets part of the material being unmentioned in the body (AFAICS), where the different explanations in sources might have been expounded and better contextualized. The absence of a mention in the body is of course also a MOS:LEAD issue, and, especially for something with two sentences in the lead, it's quite the remarkable omission. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:12, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
If no sources back up Mohandas Gandhi actually saying or implying "transfer cash or I'll starve myself to death, ha!" then no. To be more serious, there are no indirect goals in the science of nonviolence. Requests (not demands, real nonviolent movements do not make demands) by movements that actually follow the science of nonviolence, as developed by Gandhi and others after him, do not make monetary demands. For example, America's 1960s Civil Rights Movement simply affirmed that the focus of their actions was to assure that the American government complied with the United States Constitution and that the American public understood that and had an open dialogue about these goals. Everything was made public, there were no hidden variables or agendas in the Civil Rights Movement nor, as far as I know, in Gandhi's movements. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:11, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Criticism

~~Promising a separate section for criticism with a different headline (not criticism) জয় হিন্দ জয় বাংলা (talk) 21:51, 22 July 2023 (UTC)~~

~~You are right, this stupid man should be criticised heavily. Non-violence only furthers violence by the violent. Meowkiti (talk) 05:35, 23 July 2023 (UTC)~~

He might not have succeeded against a Narendra Modi, for example; but he made the accurate determination that the British played by certain rules, and used those rules to test equality for Indians. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 17:24, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

:::Well, just for a bit of personal info, I'm a part of Anti-Modi or movement in India; I'm totally against pro Hindutva and I do believe in pluralism and diversity. Just check User talk:Proctorr127 for instance. জয় হিন্দ জয় বাংলা (talk) 17:49, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

No worries. I was responding to the now-banned red-linked editor. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 17:53, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 24 July 2023

This edit request to Mahatma Gandhi has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please remove the tag father of the nation because according to constitution article 14 persons belongs to government military and education department we can give them title so the title father of nation is not given legally so please remove the title from the page 103.42.250.78 (talk) 02:01, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Not done There is no need for the title to be formal. Sun Yat-sen, George Washington and many others are also informally called 'the father' of their nations.[7][8] Capitals00 (talk) 03:43, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Why is the page “full protected”

I’m wondering why it’s “full protected” Coltshark (talk) 14:38, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Some ECP editors were edit warring. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 15:47, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Basically, this is an article that attracts a lot of people with very strong opinions who are prone to vandalizing the page and adding unsourced additions, so full protection helps prevent random people from constantly changing the page without discussing on the talk page first. AryKun (talk) 15:20, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

@Coltshark: It was temporary. Lifted now. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 00:26, 26 July 2023 (UTC)