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Request for comment (RfC) on Mahatma Gandhi's last hunger strike

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When describing Mahatma Gandhi's last hunger strike (or "fast-unto-death") undertaken on 12 January 1948, should we say that in addition to stemming the religious violence (or restoring the peace):

  1. "the fast also sought to pressure the Indian government to pay out1 cash assets owed to Pakistan?" (Note: 1: pay out = pay a large sum of money from funds under one's control.)
    1. (both in the lead and the relevant section)
    2. (in the relevant section, but not in the lead)
  2. "the fast also sought to indirectly (or implicitly) pressure the Indian government to pay out cash assets owed to Pakistan?
    1. (both in the lead and in the relevant section)
    2. ( in the relevant section, but not in the lead)
  3. "the fast also caused (or led) the Indian government to pay out cash assets owed to Pakistan."
    1. (both in the lead and in the relevant section)
    2. (in the relevant section, but not in the lead)
  4. Make no mention of cash assets in this context anywhere in the article.
  5. "In the months following, Gandhi went on hunger strike several times to stop the religious violence. The last, begun in Delhi on 12 January 1948 when he was 78, also aimed to restore to Pakistan its share of cash assets of undivided British India. The fast was an important factor in the Indian government's decision to pay out the assets during a time when India and Pakistan were engaged in a war over the disputed territory of Kashmir."
    1. (both in the lead and in the relevant section)
    2. (in the relevant section, but not in the lead)

Please choose one of: 1(1), 1(2), 2(1), 2(2), 3(1), 3 (2), 4, 5(1) or 5(2). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:13, 22 August 2024 (UTC) Corrected with addition of "also" and removal of parentheses earlier. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:13, 22 August 2024 (UTC) Option 5, a variant of option 3 was added (added later at 00:46, 23 August 2024 (UTC) after discussion here and here) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:46, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]


Fowler&fowler's NPOV explanation of the background

This is a challenging RfC, but given Mahatma Gandhi's importance in a range of Wikipedia subject areas, it is important for us to rise to the challenge. Here is the background:

Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948. On the 13th of January, he went on a hunger strike to achieve some goals. These goals very likely had what Freud might have called both manifest content and latent content, i.e. what Gandhi announced publicly and what he implied through back channels or by other means. Most scholarly sources consider the accomplishment of the latent goals to be the more notable of the two. Some even say it was his finest hour.

So what were they? The British Indian Empire had just been partitioned into a largely Hindu India and a mostly Muslim Pakistan on 14–15 August 1947. It was a time of great violence on the subcontinent, cataclysmic violence. Hindus and Muslims were slaughtering each other in the hundreds of thousands, if not the millions. The partition or division was not just of land, but also the military and treasury. India as the primary successor state not only received the capital, New Delhi, the offices of government, but initially also all the cash reserves in the treasury. Out of these cash reserves, India was required to hand over Pakistan's share in a timely fashion. The Indian government seemingly dawdled. By late October, war had broken out between the two countries over Kashmir and the conservatives in the Indian government wanted to leverage the cash strategically. There was popular support for this. Gandhi, who was not the part of any government, let it be known that the money was the undivided British India's, and the Indian government as its caretaker had to to relinquish what was Pakistan's share. How he let it be known and even whether he let this be known (i.e. whether he was simply assumed to have felt so, given his long life of high morality) is the million dollar question. Gandhi soon went on a hunger strike, and the Indian government not long after agreed to give Pakistan its share. This in turn enraged many Hindu nationalists, one of whom, shot Gandhi ten days later. So, whether or not Gandhi "pressured" the Indian government, directly or indirectly, the fast was notable not only as an example of his morality but also because it may have led to his death.

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:20, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here are my sources: User:Fowler&fowler/Gandhi's last hunger strike: sources. ( If someone can fix the Wiki error in "quote" in the Monographs section, I would be grateful. ) Finding these sources has been one of the most enjoyable things I have done on Wikipedia.

For nearly 10 years, the lead of the Mahatma Gandhi article said, "The last of these (fasts), undertaken on 12 January 1948 at age 78, also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan."

Here are some samples: 2 October 2013, 10 July 2014, 12 January 2015, 15 August 2016, 12 January 2017, 28 May 2017, 2 October 2017, 26 July 2018, 9 October 2019, 14 December 2020, 30 September 2021, 25 July 2022, 26 March 2023, with nary an edit dispute or war during this period.

Today, the scholarly sources are more or less unanimous in asserting that Gandhi did indeed compel the Indian government to give up the cash, whether or not he explicitly came out and said, "Pay up," or words to that effect. In other words, "indirectly" is not needed.

Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:30, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

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  • 3(1). Since, based on the sources, it is unclear whether or not this was an explicit requirement of Gandhi's fast, it is clear it was not the primary requirement. Therefore 1 and 2 are not well supported. However, India did apparently pay up partly or wholly because of the fast, so 3 is well supported. Finally, regardless of its significance in the actions of the then Indian government, since the payment is an important factor in the dislike for Gandhi amongst the right wing Hindus, this needs to be said in both the lead as well as in the body. Therefore, we cannot not say this and that excludes option 4. --RegentsPark (comment) 14:38, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Note following the addition of option 5: I prefer 3(1) because it is the more parsimonious description of the events. There is insufficient evidence that the repayment was an explicit demand (on Gandhi's part) and, imo, we should stick to the simplest description when the actual facts are fuzzy. For these reasons, I don't support option 5. RegentsPark (comment) 00:20, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 4. Indian government had officially denied such a link between the fast and the due payment for Pakistan.[1][2] It has been conclusively proven that the fast was not related to the payment also by the fact-checkers.[3][4][5][6] Reliable sources have clearly mentioned that Mahatma Gandhi made a number of speeches throughout January 12 - January 18, but none of them mentioned the payment. Similary, the top sources of that time also made no mention of this fast being related with the payment but treated the both as two different events.[7][8] If you are going to mention the fast then it will require the mention of India's official position and also the fact-checking that has been done many times over this topic, but it would be undue since Wikipedia is itself not for fact-checking and this claim has been ignored by most of the scholarly sources have written about Gandhi thus it is not really important. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 15:12, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 1(1): It adds to the greatness of this leader; by not mentioning it, we would be doing him an injustice as Wikipedia editors, and in good conscience, I would not want to do such a thing. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 15:27, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 3(1), though I could live with 2. Numerous scholarly sources above mention the transfer as a an indirect result of Gandhi's last fast: not mentioning it does not appear to be an option. The !vote for 4, above, appears to completely ignore those sources, and also we give the Indian government's position no weight on Wikipedia; as such it has no basis in policy. The !vote for 1 immediately above mine does not provide sources in support. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:06, 22 August 2024 (UTC) Slightly amended. I have reviewed F&F's sources. It appears to me that the majority of them describe the payment as a desired outcome, but not necessarily as the explicit motivation for the fast. As such, I prefer the more qualified wording. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:16, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 4 I looked more into this after it was mentioned above that Gandhi's fast ended on 18 January, but in February 1948, Pakistan's Finance minister Malik Ghulam Muhammad stated that they still hadn't received any payment.[9] I found that Pakistan had lodged a complaint to UNSC about India withholding the payment and then India had announced that they would release the payment. "Pakistan side was represented by Sir Zafrullah Khan, the Foreign Minister. The Security Council started hearing the complaint on January 15 , 1948. [...] Pakistan replied to Indian complaint and also lodged counter - complaint requesting the Security Council to ask India to fulfil all agreements as to division of military stores and cash balance."[10] This is confirmed by UN's own document.[11] It preceded India's announcement to release the payment. It should be noted that these sources have made no mention of Gandhi's fast. To claim that Gandhi's fast was responsible, which has been also rejected by India and the independent observers, is absolutely misleading. Azuredivay (talk) 16:18, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 4 - I was thinking of supporting 3(1) but it is also inaccurate. The alleged link was never established; it was rejected. Neither the due amount to Pakistan was ever made available when Gandhi was alive, let alone his fast having caused the release of it. CharlesWain (talk) 17:40, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 3(1)ish (5(1) see discussion below), much like S Marshall. The weight of sources show it needs to be mentioned, the question is how it is mentioned. I like how Marshall worded this, and any disagreement among academics about the details can be mentioned in the body of the article. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:00, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 5(1), as per discussion below.—S Marshall T/C 16:10, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 5(1) is the preferred formulation per below discussion. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:53, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 4, unless better, more inclusive, and NPOV options are offered, this shall be my position. The options here presuppose that the disbursement of cash arrears to Pakistan was amongst the primary, avowed objectives of Gandhi's fast, yet in the discussions that had ensued last year over this same question, which I was a party to, and where this issue was most comprehensively discussed by a wider group of editors, a third-party 3O, citing excerpts from Ramachandra Guha's scholarly monograph on Gandhi, Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, unequivocally established the fact that this was not even on Gandhi's agenda, much less his chief objective, when he began the fast. His was a fast against the societal tendency towards communal strife, which was being anticipated in the run-up to the partition. The fast itself continued long past the announcement that payments would be released, further underscoring the point. It was the governor general Lord Mountbatten who had apprised Gandhi of the issue of cash arrears on August 12, after Gandhi had begun his fast, and while the issue likely cropped up in his exchanges with Nehru and Patel the following days, it was never avowed, rather denied. See Abhishek's sources, chiefly Raghuvendra Tanwar's Reporting the Partition of Punjab, 1947: Prime Minister Nehru was naturally the first to state that even though Gandhi had been consulted on the issue, the decision to transfer the cash balance to Pakistan had nothing to do with his fast. The Prime Minister also said: 'we have come to this decision in the hope that the gesture in accord with India's high ideals and Gandhiji's noble standards will convince the world of our earnest desire for peace'. Some scholars speculate that this was likely an unofficial or tacit goal of Gandhi's fast, and while this was exactly the phrasing that the 3O had proffered (vide archive 16 #Comments_continued), there were brought up in the discussions a litany of scholarly sources discrediting the very proposition that Gandhi had used the fast to arm-twist the government of India into releasing payments to Pakistan--an aspect that the OP has consistently, against policies, disregarded, even though summarising the scholarly disagreement and divergence was the compromise reached during the fag end of the last year's discussion. While S Marshall's phrasing, incorporated in option #5, but not the whole of it, comes closest to being acceptable to some degree, it is preceded by the sentence in the option that the fast also aimed at the release of payments that suffers from the same lack of substance and editorializing as other options. MBlaze Lightning (talk) 19:20, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 4. When you need various proposals to get around a questionable claim that lacks any firm foundation, then it is best to continue omitting the claim altogether. ZenDragoX (User) | (Contact) 14:49, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 5 as per discussion below. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 13:55, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 4. This is too subjective to include in the lead of the article. If the claim is questionable and or unprovable, it doesn't belong in the lead. Elmmapleoakpine (talk) 21:49, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak 5(1). I do find the abundance of sources provided for the statement to be compelling, while the sources in opposition feels like government propaganda in some cases (i.e, the government trying to make it sound like they are doing it out of the kindness of their heart), or otherwise a book of dubious scholarly merit (Beyond Doubt: A Dossier on Gandhi's Assassination seems to be cited exactly 1 time according to a google scholar search), and some news articles. While DW.Com is considered generally reliable, it has been noted that other language versions are less reliable per Perennial sources. Likewise, this source says The success of the Delhi fast would cost Gandhi his life. His effective pressure on the new Indian government to meet payments owed to Pakistan and on Hindus to cease persecution of Muslims persuaded his extremist Hindu assas- sins that they must wait no longer. But, the fact that Pakistan wasn't paid out until after a complaint at the UN was lodged probably has more weight on the decision. If the article is to say The fast was an important factor in the Indian government's decision, the statement should be cited because otherwise declaring it as "an important factor" seems to be MOS:PEACOCK.Brocade River Poems (She/They) 18:47, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks @BrocadeRiverPoems: for taking the time to reply with such thoughtfulness. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:59, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 3 or 5 This has been a difficult conclusion to make. I have read the sources and comments provided below by users Abhishek0831996 and Fowler&fowler among others.Thanks to both of you for replying to my discussion below. In the end, there are just too many reliable sources claiming the payout had relevance with Gandhi's fast for the fact to be completely ignored. And where we are dealing with a topic that is clouded by opposing viewpoints, I don't see how we could use a black-and-white solution like 1, 2, or 4.
Fowler&fowler, in an effort to have both viewpoints addressed, is there a reasonable solution that can include the idea that the payout had nothing to do with Gandhi's fast? Penguino35 (talk) 13:10, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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@Abhishek0831996: I am truly sorry, but there was an "also" in the statement that in my hurry I forgot to add. I corrected this after you posted your response. Please reread the RfC and if need be amend your response. Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:19, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"also aimed to restore to Pakistan its share of cash assets" is a speculation without any basis. Capitals00 (talk) 11:20, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That is not what undergraduates in history read around the world. See books written by major historians and political scientists of South Asia Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:21, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PS See also WP:TERTIARY which is WP policy and describes the role of introductory textbooks in determining due weight, especially ones that are referred to nearly 7,000 times in scholarly publications. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:30, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@RegentsPark: There's something to be said for parsimony. As this is not a traditional RfC (in which different options are to be counted) but one in which a consensus is being crafted, would you be comfortable with: Option 6: "the fast also led the Indian government to restore to Pakistan its share of the cash assets of undivided British India which the government had resisted doing earlier? The way I see it, in the language of set theory, 1 ⊆ 2 ⊆ 5 ⊆ 6 ⊆ 3 where ⊆ denotes "is a subset of" At stake I think is the moral principle (that Truth is above Nationalism (e.g. wartime loyalties)) that Gandhi alone had upheld. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:04, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm by no means wedded to the proposal above, but there is considerable source mis-representation in the opposition to it, and in the support for option 4. The sources that ostensibly support 4 are 1) not commenting on the issue of payment, or 2) listing communal strife as another motivation, or 3) written by non-scholars. Categories 1 and 2 (which includes good sources, like Wolpert) do not in any way impinge on this proposal; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, especially when dozens of scholarly sources do support the other alternatives. Category 3 (including Setalvad, Hiro, and Vaidya) are not as reliable as the scholarly sources being offered, and at best can be presented as an alternative narrative in the body. I have yet to see a single scholarly source that explicitly says the payout was not a motivation for Gandhi's fast. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:41, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Vanamonde93: There are scholarly sources that have noted that the release of payment was not Gandhi's motivation.
Raghuvendra Tanwar, Reporting the Partition of Punjab, 1947: Press, Public, and Other Opinions, p.71: "Looked at carefully each of the seven main issues was only an attempt by Gandhi to restore the confidence of the Muslims who had been traumatized. None of the points even remotely referred to the transfer of the cash balance to Pakistan."[12] See Sumit Ganguly's review of this book here.
Professor Saiyid Zaheer Husain Jafri, "Recording the Progress of Indian History: Symposia Papers of the Indian History Congress, 1992-2010", p. 254: "Only a tiny section of Maharashtrians brought up in a particular school of thought were vehement critics of Gandhi; they accused him of showing partially to Muslims, and of favouring Pakistan by his fast coercing the Nehru Government to transfer Rs. 55 crore to Pakistan, and finally killed him. In reality, according to C.D. Deshmukh the then Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, has recorded that the amount transferred was legitimately due to Pakistan."[13] He is cited across Wikipedia.[14]
Lars Blinkenberg, India-Pakistan: An analysis of some structural factors, p. 144: "Mountbatten found some mystery in Gandhi's last fast, and Kripalani thought that Gandhi was under great mental strain and in poor health, but he underlines that the fast was not directed against Patel. He confirms that Gandhi personally denied this to his secretary, Pyarelal. Maulana Azad, on the other hand, just like Durga Das, confirms "that, in a sense, the fast was directed against the attitude of Sardar Patel, he ( Patel ) knew it". Azad also explains that Gandhi put forward the exact conditions he wanted fulfilled in order to terminate his fast (the list specifying these conditions did not mention the transfer of money to Pakistan). He received the undertaking from representatives of the Hindu and Muslim communities, that they would assure that further communal disturbances would not take place, in Delhi."[15]Abhishek0831996 (talk) 16:55, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You'll have to do a bit better than that. Jafri is noting that Pakistan was owed those assets, which is precisely what other people cite as Gandhi's motivation. Jafri is saying that it didn't have anything to do with Gandhi's alleged partiality to Muslims; he's not saying the transfer wasn't a motivation. Blinkenburg is also not saying that; he's attributing the opinion to Maulana Azad, who was a party to the events being discussed and isn't a dispassionate independent source. The excerpt you have provided from Tanwar is devoid of context, but appears to be an analysis of Gandhi's formal demands, which of course we are in no way beholden to if scholars describe the cash transfer as an implied demand. Vanamonde93 (talk) 17:21, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • But @MBlaze Lightning: Gandhi met with Mountbatten on January 6 per the account of his personal private secretary Pyarelal Nayyar who was the brother of Gandhi's personal physician, Sushila Nayyar. Says he, in [Nayyar, Pyarelal (1958), Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, vol. II, Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, pp. 699–706, On the 6th January, 1948, Gandhiji discussed the question with Lord Mountbatten and asked for his frank and candid opinion on the Government of India's decision. Mountbatten said, it would be the "first dishonourable act" by the Indian Union Government if the payment of the cash balance claimed by Pakistan was withheld. It set Gandhiji furiously thinking. ... Out of the depth of his anguish came the decision to fast. It left no room for argument. Sardar Patel and Pandit Nehru had been with him only a couple of hours before. ... The issue was nothing less than "the regaining of India's dwindling prestige and her fast fading sovereignty over the heart of Asia and therethrough the world." ...
    The fast commenced at 11:55 a.m. on the 13 January ... Only a few intimate friends and members of the household were present. The company was impromptu. ... Neither Sardar Patel nor Pandit Nehru tried to strive with him though the Sardar was very much upset. A believer in deeds more than words, he simply sent word that he would do anything that Gandhiji might wish. In reply, Gandhiji suggested that the first priority should be given to the question of Pakistan's share of the cash assets.
    So:
    Also, @MBlaze Lightning: Patel made his first public announcement of the abrogation of the cash assets payment on the morning of January 12, Gandhi made the announcement of the fast (or had Sushila Nayyar read it as it was is day of silence) in his evening prayer meeting of the 12. The fast did not begin until January 13. Your dates are incorrect. This is not just stated in Pyarelal Nayyar's secondary source, but can be viewed in the second newspapers in the list here. Patel's announcement of the abrogation of the payment is on the right. Gandhi's announcement of the beginning of the fast the following day is on the left. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:47, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Fowler&fowler Your whole comment can be discounted on one basic point that it commits synthesis of published material and misrepresents the source by quote-mining and assembling different passages (that occur far apart in different contexts in the source), synthesizing them together to advance a conclusion that cannot be found with a microscope in the source. The chapter in the Pyarelal source begins with a brief treatment of the political debate over the withholding of cash payments to Pakistan. In relation to it, Pyarelal writes that Gandhi broached the issue about the payments in his discussion with Mountbatten on January 6 to solicit his opinion. Gandhi himself did not even have a definite opinion on the matter at this time...It set Gandhiji furiously thinking. He did not question the legality of the Indian Union’s decision. Nor could he insist on the Union Government going beyond what the strict letter of the law required and permitted them... The context then segues to the more predominant and discernible context of the Maulanas of Delhi approaching Gandhi to ventilate their grievances about being subjected to violence in their own country, and these talks serving as the catalyst for Gandhi's fast. There is a lack of definite interrelation between the two contexts. You cannot make up for it or bridge that gap with WP:SYNTH by reading between the lines, especially where there is not anything to read, where the author has not made any connections, or lift parts from the latter and mix it artificially with the former. While Pyarelal contextualizes Gandhi's fast wholly in the communal context,[16] you have completely glossed over the same.
    You say that the dates are wrong, but as a matter of fact, they are not. Gandhi's visit to Mountbatten on January 12th in the aftermath of his announcement that he would begin a fast is a well-documented statement of fact in scholarly sources. Pyarelal attests to it (p.703), Ramachandra Guha notes it. Hell, the sources from your own compilation note it. Sources discuss it in the context of Gandhi's fast and establish the sequence of events through from the latter to the former. This is conveyed in so many words by Pyarelal in his memoir to boot.
    Here I bring out the excerpts from the same source that exemplify the actual communal context that impelled Gandhi to "to launch on a fast unto death unless the madness in Delhi ceased." (p.701)
    • The Maualanas approach Gandhi to convey thier grievances: If the Congress cannot guarantee their protection, let them plainly say so... The Muslims...cannot even go to Pakistan, for as nationalist Muslims we have been opposed to its formation..Hindus will (also) not allow us to live in the capital.. (p.700)
    • For the Mahatma who had spent his life in essaying to reconcile religious differences of the Hindus and the Muslims, and in bringing them together in one nation in peace and harmony, this was a matter of biblical proportions. Gandhi mentions "Times were bad. In Pakistan Muslims had gone mad and had driven away most of the Hindus and Sikhs. If the Hindus in the Union did likewise, it would spell their own ruin." (p.701)
    • "She came running to me with the news— Gandhiji had decided to launch a fast unto death unless the madness in Delhi ceased."
    • For Gandhi, the only reason for undertaking the fast was to resolve the problem of communal violence: "From the time that he had returned to Delhi..Gandhiji had never ceased asking where his duty lay in the face of what was happening.. There was no answer he could give to the Muslims who came to him..with their tales of woe. He was impatient to go to the succour of the minority community in Sind and the West Punjab... But with what face or self confidence could he go there when he could not guarantee full protection to the Delhi Muslims... Out of the depth of his anguish came the decision to fast. It left no room for argument. Sardar Patel and Pandit Nehru had been with him only a couple of hours before. He had given then no inkling of what was brewing withing him." (p.701)
    • "The decision was read out at the evening prayer meeting. The fast would begin on the next day..and..would be terminated only when and if he was satisfied that there was a "reunion of hearts of all the communities brought about without outside pressure but from an awakened sense of duty"." (p.702)
    • Gandhi explains his sense of compulsion and inner necessity he experienced on seeing the communal situation in Delhi to undertake the fast: "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. Such an occasion has come my way. When I returned to Delhi from Calcutta on the 9th September, 1947, gay Delhi looked a city of the dead. At once I saw that I had to be in Delhi and “do or die”. There is apparent calm brought about by prompt military and police action. But there is storm within the breast. It may burst forth any day."(p.702)[17]
    • Next, Gandhi seeks blessing: "He asked all to bless his effort and to pray for him and with him. The issue was nothing less than “the regaining of Indians dwindling prestige and her fast fading sovereignty over the heart of Asia and therethrough the world"."
    • Death for me would be a glorious deliverance rather than that P should be a helpless witness of the destruction of India, Hinduism, Sikhism and Islam. That destruction is certain if Pakistan ensures no equality of status and security of life and property for aU' professing the various faiths of the world and if India copies, her. Only then Islam dies in the two Indias, not in the world. But Hinduism and Sikhism have no world outside India.
    • In reply to a question as to why he should have decided to launch on a fast at that juncture when “nothing extraordinary had happened”, he answered that “death by inches” was far worse than sudden death. “It would have been foolish for me to wait till the last Muslim has been turned out of Delhi by subtle undemonstrative methods.”!’ Could Suhrawardy freely move about in the city? He could not. “I cannot today ask him to accompany me to prayer meetings lest someone should insult him. ... All this has to go before I can be at peace with myself.”'® ...
    • it concluded that "the speaker remarked that they were satisfied that the tide had definitely turned and was now fast flowing in the direction of communal harmony and peace where previously bitterness and hatred prevailed. Since the administration had under-written the assurance given by the representatives of the people, they had every reason to believe it would be implemented, though it might take some time." (p. 731)
    • And then... "After the High Commissioner for Pakistan had reiterated the appeal, followed by the representatives of the Hindu Mahasabha, the RSS, the Sikhs and the representatives of Delhi Administration, Gandhiji broke the fast".
    There is nothing about the issue of payments, not in the least about it being the catalyst for Gandhi's fast. It is all about using the fast as a means to resolve the pressing problem of communal violence that Gandhi could not put up with. Gandhi made it clear that the fast would be terminated only when the communal problem was resolved, and an announcement made in the interim of the release of payments did not have any impact on it, illustrating again and again that the two were not intertwined. Gandhi employed the fast as a means to resolve the pressing problem of communal violence that he could not put up with. THis is what the sources convey too. He had a moral interest in the question of payments to Pakistan. He was a man of principles, so naturally when this issue was raked up in political circles, he had also formed a principled opinion on the matter. MBlaze Lightning (talk) 01:47, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have read the arguments and the votes for consensus and came here to caution editors against WP:SYNTH, which says, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to state or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. Similarly, do not combine different parts of one source to state or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source. If one reliable source says A and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C not mentioned by either of the sources. This would be improper editorial synthesis of published material to imply a new conclusion, which is original research."
The arguments to include or not include the pay out/reason for the pay out/request for the pay out are all good, and we have excellent and productive editors contributing to this conversation, however, please provide the quotes from scholarly sources explicitly stating Gandhi
1. requested the pay out as part of the fast and
2. that the pay out was a result of Gandhi's fast.
If there are sources explicitly stating the opposite, I would like those brought to light as well. However, stating that the pay out was made on a specific date that aligned with Gandhi's fast, and then assuming the reasonable conclusion is that the two are related is not appropriate for a Wikipedia article. Penguino35 (talk) 13:37, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Penguino35: Here are the opposite ones:
Some reliable concluding Gandhi did not fast for the payment.

  • Raghuvendra Tanwar, Reporting the Partition of Punjab, 1947: Press, Public, and Other Opinions, p.71: "Looked at carefully each of the seven main issues was only an attempt by Gandhi to restore the confidence of the Muslims who had been traumatized. None of the points even remotely referred to the transfer of the cash balance to Pakistan."[18] See Sumit Ganguly's review of this book here.
  • Professor Saiyid Zaheer Husain Jafri, "Recording the Progress of Indian History: Symposia Papers of the Indian History Congress, 1992-2010", p. 254: "Only a tiny section of Maharashtrians brought up in a particular school of thought were vehement critics of Gandhi; they accused him of showing partially to Muslims, and of favouring Pakistan by his fast coercing the Nehru Government to transfer Rs. 55 crore to Pakistan, and finally killed him. In reality, according to C.D. Deshmukh the then Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, has recorded that the amount transferred was legitimately due to Pakistan."[19]
  • "Did Gandhi go on a fast to get Rs 55 crore to Pakistan", Deutsche Welle: "Gandhi made no mention of Rs 55 crore given to Pakistan. The assurances given to Gandhi by the committee set up to end Gandhi's fast also did not include giving money to Pakistan. The press notes issued by the India government at that time also make no mention of Gandhi's demand for Rs 55 crore to Pakistan. So the fact that Gandhi went on a hunger strike to give Rs 55 crore to Pakistan is also a lie."
  • "Why, in 2022, We Must Remember the Hate That Killed Gandhi", The Quint: "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."
  • 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.
Abhishek0831996 (talk) 16:55, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with MBlaze Lightning and Abhishek0831996 that the source supplied by Fowler&fowler«Talk» is in danger of breaching WP Policy SYNTH. However, is there really no way to include that the payout had something to do with the fast? Even if the need for the payout was what led to Gandhi considering the other civil issues that he actually fasted for in the end? What do we think? Penguino35 (talk) 14:23, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That is not my main source @Penguino35:. The list of my sources is: User:Fowler&fowler/Gandhi's last hunger strike: sources which are ordered in degree of reliability and due weight, the most reliable and due being those in group 1 i.e. major introductory text-books read in universities around the world and authored by some of the biggest names in history and political science. They leave very little doubt that they have interpreted the sum total of available primary and secondary sources to say there is a connection. Not a single one says there was no connection. Please read, in particular, Oxford University Press's, Gandhi: A Very Short Introduction and gauge how unambiguous it is in seeing a connection
The primacy of introductory textbooks or reviews of the literature is based on Wikipedia policy, in particular, WP:TERTIARY which is very clear. I have done this commonly to avoid pitfalls in history-related articles. For example the FA India's history section uses such textbooks, many in Group 1 of my list, for every one of its many sentences.
Pyarelal, whose memoir has been quoted from above by MBlazeLightning is not something we can use beyond citing dates. This is because it is a primary source. Pyarelal was Gandhi's private secretary and his sister the personal physician and his book is written from notes of his and his sister's from that time. Accordingly, I cited Pyarelal only for a contradictory proof of a date MBlzeLightning had offered for the day Gandhi announced his fast and the date of the meeting with Mountbatten. But MBlazeLightning has, as much as I have discerned, attempted to deduce historical conclusions from his memoir. That is a textbook definition of original research.
As for the sources Abhishek0831996 has listed, they are about the most fringe I have encountered in my 18 years on Wikipedia. My sources in Group 1 have a total of 7,000 citations in publications listed in Google Scholar. Abhishek0831996's Dossier etc does not have a single one.
So, Penguino35, long story short, please read the highlighted sentences in textbook after textbook listed in Group 1. The evidence is staggering. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:23, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PS @Penguino35: Another thing I have noticed is that these editors along with a few others have misapplied WP:CONTEXTMATTERS, when they offer it to support their arguments. That context matters means that if a reference makes a passing mention of some conclusion, it will be on average less reliable than one which goes into more detail about the same conclusion. But that does not mean that conclusions in text-books are passing mentions.
Textbooks are vetted for balance by an army of advanced readers. The scholarly publishers such as Oxford, Cambridge, Chicago, Columbia, etc all require such vetting because their own reputation is at stake. Moreover, many of these textbooks are in the second or third editions. That means—to take Metcalf and Metcalf's A Concise History of Modern India, 3rd ed, CUP, as an example—the books has been used in hundreds of courses around the world, including those taught by former students of the Metcalfs and other professional historians in their academic community. In other words, a false conclusion would have been challenged by a very large population of careful readers in academe itself. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:50, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PPS And @Penguino35: what do Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf say in the 3rd edition of A Concise History of Modern India, Cambridge University Press, 2012? They say, "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." The book has become such a classic around the world that it is now an audiobook. see here, one of the very few on modern Indian history. It has been cited nearly 1000 times on Google scholar. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:03, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Penguino35: Gandhi had fasted for putting an end to the violence. The payment issue was separate from that and it didn't concern Gandhi as we can see from not only recent sources but also the coverage during those days such as the Time magazine on 26 January 1948. That's why it is fair to support it's omission. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 16:56, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please tell that to the thousands of undergraduate and graduate students in history around the world, maybe hundreds of thousands, who read Metcalf and Metcalf's classic mentioned above as their introduction to modern Indian history. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:06, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
They don't read Time magazine, let alone a short 1948 article without a byline. Seriously? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:08, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But none of them ever cared about addressing the debunking of this claim. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 17:11, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How a journalist Testa Setalvad,, whose Dossier is a random collection of primary sources, will hold a candle to two of the major professional historians of South Asia, I struggle to comprehend.
  • Not only did you remove the reference to the cash payout in this article (in which it had stably remained for 10 years), but also recently on
Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:28, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm at a loss. This discussion seems to have died in the water of opposing perspectives. Anything we can do to reach a consensus? Can we combine ideas, share sources? What do we think? Penguino35 (talk) 23:05, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is not opposing perspectives. It is one perspective supported by the best sources available (the same quality as in the FA India) and another perspective which is being propped up by a small handful of abysmally poor sources. Engaging these editors further has no benefit for me; in fact it is depressing. Even though I had written the lead, I have lost interest in it. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:51, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In some ways this RfC was ill-fated from the get go. There simply was not enough participation. Perhaps, I had made it too complicated. Please read the closer's notes in RfCs such as Talk:2024_Kolkata_rape_and_murder#RfC:_Name_of_victim and Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_287#Times_of_India_RFC in which there was wider participation. The perspective I had supported, which had nothing going for it but a surfeit of highly reliable sources, won the day with a 2:1 super majority. So maybe, if the mood strikes some months from now, or maybe a year or two, I'll ask some experienced WPians to formulate the strongest RfC statement consonant with the sources and revisit the issue. Thanks for your good-faith concern @Penguino35: Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:53, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've been in those kinds of disputes before. I'm sorry for the fizzle in engagement. Hopefully clarity and consensus can be reached. The reliability of a textbook as a source should be noted and held with due weight. Penguino35 (talk) 19:39, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 25 December 2024

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Add the following information to the section "Early Life and Education":

During his time in London, Gandhi joined the London Vegetarian Society and was elected to its executive committee. Initially under the presidency of Dr. Oldfield, and later under Mr. Arnold Hills, Gandhi worked actively to promote vegetarianism. This experience marked an early instance of Gandhi demonstrating leadership and his ability to challenge authority, as seen when he defended the membership of Thomas Allinson, despite disagreements within the society. 

Gandhi: The Beacon of Nonviolence and Peace Jogendergagrai (talk) 20:31, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template. Remsense ‥ 论 20:48, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, that source does not appear to be very reliable. This seems like an undue tangent for inclusion in a general encyclopedia article about Gandhi. Remsense ‥ 论 20:49, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 29 January 2025

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Add pronunciation correctly as pronounced in India correctly by all as /Rspl.: gahndhee/ /IPA: gɑːnðiː/ . 2409:40D5:1071:6438:F0EF:847:D725:B67D (talk) 02:45, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That English pronunciation is already there. Pronunciations in other languages aren't necessary for this English Wikipedia article. Yue🌙 08:15, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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