Talk:India: Difference between revisions

:::Hi. Could we please reach consensus on this? First, I want to clarify I am the same user who made this post in the first place (I have retired from Wikipedia and didn't care initially to log back in). I went ahead and changed the sentence highlighted here to: "Gradually expanding rule of the British East India Company followed, turning India into a colonial economy. Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, British Crown rule began in 1858, which consolidated India's transformation into a modern state and significantly transformed ideas of education and public life. A pioneering and influential nationalist movement emerged in response to the British administration's prolonged failure to grant equal rights to Indians, becoming a major factor in the eventual dissolution of British rule." I know that was a bold thing to do but I am just not interested in rehashing debates of whether British colonialism was really "that bad," which is what I find these discussions usually devolve into. The previous formulation, especially "The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly, but technological changes were introduced, and ideas of education, modernity and the public life took root," was honestly one of the most ridiculous summaries of colonial rule I have ever read on any wikipedia page (it essentially reads: "Indians had very few rights in their own land, but hey the British made railroads and started teaching English to a very select few"). Also none of the sources @[[User:Fowler&fowler|Fowler&fowler]] provided here even substantiate that claim. There is also the added issue of what information is being selected to highlight here. The negative here is that "rights were granted slowly," when it could very well have been "Famines were significantly frequent during British rule" and "Indians were frequently subjected to [[indigo revolt|poor working conditions]] and [[Jallianwala Bagh massacre|brutality]]." MyI pointunderstand herecompletely that it is thisindeed very difficult to accurately capture British rule in one or two sentences, and that the experiences of Indians during the Raj differed between different classes and social groups, but I think undeniably there is a clear conscious effort to make British rule sound as benign as possible in the current lead. "Took root" could be changed to "significantly transformed" and that alone would be a constructive first step. This–This issue, like @[[User:1990'sguy|1990'sguy]], has been brought up before with very reasonable, non-emotive perspectives so the previous formulation clearly was problematic to others as well. My ultimate concern is that Wikipedia is powerful—often young impressionable minds' first and last introduction to certain topics—and that any user unaware of India's history would read this part of the lead and think British rule was just a chill, casually and only vaguely undesirable period, if even that. --[[User:WonderBoy1998|WonderBoy1998]] ([[User talk:WonderBoy1998|talk]]) 10:42, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

::::Note that the first restoration made by [[User:Fowler%26fowler|Fowler]] came with a misleading edit summary,[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=India&diff=1091031237&oldid=1090920994], false accusation that I am engaging in vandalism,[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Azuredivay&diff=1091120712&oldid=1086301320] then misrepresentation[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=India&diff=1091120239&oldid=1091102007] of [[WP:OWN#Featured_articles]] (which nowhere say poorly written sentences that lack consensus cannot be removed). The recent one is yet another false claim that he has consensus.[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=India&diff=1091126368&oldid=1091125793] [[User:Azuredivay|Azuredivay]] ([[User talk:Azuredivay|talk]]) 10:57, 2 June 2022 (UTC)