Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Great Calamity

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was NO CONSENSUS. -Splashtalk 22:15, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Great Calamity

neologism. Facts stated without annotated sources despite requests on the talk page, Some of the language is a rant. Philip Baird Shearer 11:32, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I am no expert on Indian history and this request for deletion may fail because in fact the article is completely accurate. But it seems to me to be written in the form of a rant and makes factual claims for which there are no footnotes to back them up. I have asked some questions on the talk page (See Talk:The Great Calamity ) but as yet there have been no replies. So if this request gingers up the page and fixes some of the problems with it then I will consider that as much a success as it being deleted. The last thing I want to do is have a page which has some redeeming characteristics deleted.

"The Great Calamity" when referring to this article is being used as a neologism see Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms. The phrase "The Great Calamity" usually refers to the Irish potato famine see [1] which includes links to Merriam-Webster and dictionary.com which confirm this. I could not find one web page which uses the term for India 1870-1900. Nor could I find the term on the Wikipedia pages which now link to it until after the page was written.

The article was created on 13 November by an IP address user: 63.164.145.85 with no references. The references which are there were added user:Prasant55 3/4 of an hour later. Unless Prasant55 is a very quick reader and cross checker of facts, then I presume that the article was also created by Prasant55. Which is a new User ID created around the same time as the article.

None of the links to the page used the term The Great Calamity until after the article had been written.

As I said before I am not an expert in the history of this place or period but the article contains many facts which I can not check. Nor am I sure that anyone can without the correct reference books eg the first paragraph:

Roughly thirty-year period from 1870-1900 in British-controlled India (see British Raj), in the wake of the Indian rebellion of 1857 against British rule. The period is of interest especially to social historians, economists and demographers because of the manner in which governing administrative policies caused its disastrous conditions to arise and be exacerbated. Furthermore, it represents one of the most severe such economic and demographic collapses ever suffered by a modern nation, exceeding in scale even the similar disasters of the nearly contemporaneous Potato Famine in Ireland, the Ukraine during the mass Soviet collectivization of agriculture in the 1930's, the Killing Fields of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge in the 1970's, and the famines and massive demographic ruin resulting from the Thirty Years’ War in the lands that now constitute Germany in the 1600's.

I have asked for sources for all the claims made in this first paragraph on the talk page of the article but after 36 hours none has been forthcoming. I have asked for other information on the talk page like a source for the statement "Nevertheless, the extent to which the Great Calamity constituted a deliberate genocide, as opposed to a disastrous though basically unintended consequence of a predatory imperial policy, is highly debated" eg who has claimed that it was a deliberate genocide?

Things which seem to indicate a rant are phrases like "nearly contemporaneous Potato Famine". The Irish potato famine occurred in late 1840s which was 30 years before the period mentioned here (1870-1900) and is as close in time as "the Ukraine during the mass Soviet collectivization of agriculture in the 1930's,"

--Philip Baird Shearer 11:32, 17 November 2005 (UTC)


  • Keep or rename. Valid topic. --Kefalonia 13:13, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. But merge with economic reforms in India and rename to Left-nationalist economic history of India. The references do exist and are valid, but the facts represented in those references are contested by modern Indian economic historians and the earlier theories are collectively termed Left-nationalist views (roy, thirthankar). For the modern views of these periods, check out the references at Economy of India. --Pamri • Talk 13:31, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • The question here is whether this should be salvaged and moved to the History of India, Famine in India, British Raj, economy of India, etc.... since the Great Calamity does not exist as a recgonized term in Indian history and it is not the job of WP to start coining new terms for historical developments. (see [2]). The author has transplanted the term from the Irish Potato Famine as noted by the nominator and then gone and added disruptive additions to other articles to give substance to this invention. (These should be reverted back.) It makes me suspicious that the editor willfully (given the fact the s/he then went added links/content to other relevant articles) chose to ignore other venues where this information could be added. The content which is not particularly POV is duplicated elsewhere (above links). The last part is hopelessly POV/rant. So: I think it would be uncivil and unfair to foist this on the many folks who have worked hard on articles that would be affected by a merge of such tendentiously written material. Strong Delete Eusebeus 15:22, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • 'Merge any valuable information in it. A brief google for Amartya Sen Great Calamity finds references to Bengal in 1943 and to Ireland, nothing to 1870-1900. The Land 16:55, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
    • I did a google search on ["Amartya Sen" " The Great Calamity"] it returned about 17 English pages for "Amartya Sen" "The Great Calamity". all of them are references to the Irish potato famine, and his exerpiance of famine in India in the 1940s. None of the articles are referring to any Indian event as "The Great Calamity" --Philip Baird Shearer 21:31, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Redirect to Irish potato famine. That is the event that this term currently refers to. This is original research. If the author wanted to write an article about Indian famines of the 19th century, he is welcome to do so. He shouldn't appropriate a term commonly used to refer to other events for the purpose. Capitalistroadster 22:52, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge what is verifiable to the appropriate India articles, if possible. Delete article as original research and recreate as redirect to Irish potato famine per Philip Baird Shearer and Capitalistroadster. Saberwyn 23:28, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
    • While you're at it, if someone hasn't done it already, remove the wikilinks to this article to prevent later confusion. Saberwyn 23:29, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete as original research/neologism and redirect to Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849) --Carnildo 19:17, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Redirect to Irish Potato Famine. Bwithh 04:22, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment the connection between the Irish Famine and India appears to come from this poorly thought out high school history homework assignment kept on the Nebraska Department of Education server - [see here]. The author of the wikipedia article appears to have read that but decided to highlight India instead of Ireland. The assignment itself is horribly skewed and one-sided. While it is true that the British Empire was culpable for various oppressions, the assignment is a almost comically bad way of teaching history. Bwithh 04:22, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep but disambiguate, for example with "Great Calamity" as a proper noun used for the Potato Famine and a separate reference for "Great Calamity of India 1870-1900" used here. This is a fairly useful and relevant article- detailed, informative, reasonably even-handed for the topic and scholarly. The term "Great Calamity" for that period is definitely not a neologism as much as there is some nomenclature ambiguity surrounding how it is used in relation to the better-known application of the term to the Irish Potato Famine. The periods may not precisely be contemporaneous but they were closely associated not only in absolute chronology but in both occurring during the Victorian period, under a similar government and owing to causes and conditions that had some overlap. Thus a number of authors, Sen among them, have naturally drawn links between the Potato Famine and the collapse in the last few decades in India. In addition since the Potato Famine is perhaps better known as the "Great Calamity" (though probably more often as "Great Hunger"), the natural corollary has been to speak of the "ensuing Great Calamity of India" or analogues.

It has been years admittedly since I have read Sen but I believe he does make this connexion and apply the term to late 19th-century India as well. The other authors I know less about, but Davis at least has a similar tone and they may have also made the same sort of connexion. In South Asian history classes for example, discussions routinely consider the parallels between the policies inciting the Potato Famine and those leading to the broader economic collapse in India 3 decades later, drawing the link between the "great calamity" in Ireland and the "great calamity" in India. Even broad general history texts like the Oxford History of India, if I'm recalling correctly, bracket the same basic timeframe with a similar designation connoting the enormity of the disaster in India. I'm supposing that the author probably intended to later clarify the usage of the term in regards to the Potato Famine and the Famines in India but was not sure of the best way to go about it. As to the question posed above, there indeed *have* been some authors who have called the collapse in India in the late 19th century a genocide since it occurred under British rule and harsh British policies, so many (in sheer numbers) perished, and the famines wiped out a number of Indian cultural communities entirely. (Davis is one.) If anything, the original contributor seems to have doubts about this designation in particular as the last paragraph indicates.

Recall that there is also an oral tradition in Indian tongues such as Tamil, Hindi and Marathi in regards to the collapse of the late 1800s that encompasses roughly those last three decades, and which does refer to them in terms that would roughly translate as "great disaster" or "great calamity" since the memory remains so painful for the stricken states. Therefore, there is a tradition of multiple authors within academia who link the Irish Great Calamity with the great calamity that occurred in India several decades later under a similar government, in the wake of policies with some pertinent similarity and roughly during the period that the author specifies (and is also considered by Sen and I believe by Davis as well), along with an oral tradition within India that uses a designation that would translate in roughly similar terms. The information in the article is accurate and thus the only question is the name designation, and these precedents should meet any reasonable standard for a naming designation as used in an encyclopedia or a peer-reviewed journal.

Since the "Great Calamity" is still most often associated popularly with the Potato Famine and should remain primarily associated with it, my suggestion is as follows: Create a disambiguation page with "Great Calamity" as a *standalone proper noun* linking to the Potato Famine in Ireland. Then set off a secondary link to the India article as something more technical such as "Great Calamity of India 1870-1900" or "Indian Economic Collapse of 1870-1900 a.k.a. Great Calamity of 1870-1900." This in my opinion is the most effective and parsimonious solution since it reserves the explicit standalone term itself for the Potato Famine, while setting off the unique phenomenon of the Indian social/economic collapse in 1870-1900 with a nod to the way "the great calamity" designation has been extended from the Potato Famine to it, while not reappropriating the term itself. Alternatively, if any South Asian scholars out there do know of a separate designation to the phenomenon of the 1870-1900 collapse used in a specialized text (for example in a Tamil, Hindi or other Indian-language text used in India) and can translate, then substitute in that term for the main link and mention "Great Calamity of India 1870-1900" as secondary. The Main Event 20:21, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

This user id (User:The Main Event) has just been created and has only made this one edit to date [3] and there is no evidence from what is written that "The Great Calamity" used as a name for events in India described in the article is anything but a neologism --Philip Baird Shearer 00:13, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Also to date User:Prasant55 contributions apart from this article and links into other pages about this article are none existant. --Philip Baird Shearer 00:18, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
It is now 5 days since I posted some requests for information on Talk:The Great Calamity and to date there have been no replies from the authors of the article. --Philip Baird Shearer 00:24, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.