Talk:Kashmir conflict/Archive 6

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KA$HMIR revert justifications

Mahesh Shankar

• I have read Mahesh Shankar to verify whether NadirAli is speaking the truth. He is. And I now find that since Shankar has admitted in his conclusion and throughout his article that his is a minority POV, so unfortunately WP:WEIGHT is becoming an issue here. Giving uncorroborated and self admitted fringe viewpoints paragraph length space is UNDUE. I am removing it. I don't think Wikipedia will agree to WP:FRINGE views being given so much attention so it might be better to discard the fringe scholar and not attempt to bring him back either. -- KA$HMIR (talk) 09:50, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

What views of Mahesh Shankar does the article have, which you supposedly object to? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:02, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Observers comments

• I am also adding back the 'most observers' comments under Dixon Plan not only because of NPOV (which requires it) but also because Loy Henderson got it wrong. Previously, Nehru didn't agree to a Nimitz supervised UN Commission for an arbitrated withdrawal of troops on both sides. Dixon got a similar feel to Nimitz and believed there would be no fair vote with the Indian soldiers hanging around. So Henderson saying that Dixon only thought what he did because he believed there won't be a fair plebiscite under the Sheikh Abdullah regime is a misrepresentation of Dixon's position. Dixon himself that the issue was also that of India not demilitarizing. So I am also adding the first half of Dixon's complaint, from his own 'grievance' quote. We don't need Henderson when he is cutting words out of Dixon's mouth and misrepresenting his concern, so he is being removed from this article. -- KA$HMIR (talk) 09:50, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

The only substantial comment that was there in that section is that of Francis Pike, who is not a reliable source. See Talk:Hyderabad State#Country.

As for demilitarisation, I will look into it. Neither Raghavan nor Snedden state it as having been an issue. Snedden rather says that Pakistan rejected plebiscite confined to Valley.

On the other hand, you have removed Loy Henderson's observations, claiming they are "wrong". Is it your own opinion, or do you have a source that questions it? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:51, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Chester Bowles again

• As for Bowles I can't find anything about these 'concessions ' from Pakistan, will research it further, but the only reason I am restoring and retaining him is that I can't find any source denying that Nehru rejected Pakistani concessions on its military presence in exchange for plebiscite. What RS reports we include in Wikipedia as NPOV requires. I also do not agree with this DUE argument because it's relevant to the 1950s developments between India and Pakistan which were about a plebiscite. -- KA$HMIR (talk) 09:50, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion. Wikipedia is written for people to read and understand. Not for beating one's drum. This is an extremely long article. Only the material that absolutely needs to be there should be included. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:58, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Nehru's Plebiscite Offer

• Titles such as 'Nehru's plebiscite offer' and 'withdrawal of plebiscite offer' are POV forks. The titles seem to be taken from or influenced by Mahesh Shankar's fringe journal article. Not good. Besides it's an incorrect title because there was no gracious 'offer' out of the blue rather there were ongoing negotiations between Nehru and Bogra before this so called offer was made and it's actual reason for failure was Pakistan's rejection of a plebiscite administrator other than Nimitz. The Cold War and Indo-pak military concerns' factors background analysis is just hypothetical opinion of scholars, which we only include for NPOV demand of fairly representing scholarly viewpoints. KA$HMIR (talk) 09:50, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

This is the closest India and Pakistan ever came to solving the Kashmir problem. It is Nehru's personal initiative, and it should obviously go by his name. Since you and other editors are busy filling up the page with invective against Nehru, let true Nehru speak for himself. What is the harm? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:11, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Mar4d intervention

• @Kautilya3: Can you please keep your comments structured in one place rather than many sections, as it's becoming hard to follow. It's not necessary to paste the comments while replying. I also think you should self-revert, since you've broken WP:1RR. A few more points:

1) For Shankar's analysis, I have to concur with KA$HMIR and NadirAli that the source is not good enough. He's an assistant professor at Skidmore College, not a historian to begin with. And because he's unknown as an author, I've been unable to locate any books or reviews. As noted, he as a matter of fact admits in his own conclusion that his view is a revisionist one which contradicts with "most important accounts" about Nehru's culpability, so he is merely trying to rebut that mainstream view. Yet you've given his personal analysis more WP:WEIGHT and WP:UNDUE space than any of the reliable scholars and analysts on Kashmir. So he will have to go, or be condensed significantly as raised by NadirAli.

2) My take on Henderson, and a question: Why do we need him telling us what Dixon thought, when Dixon himself said the issue was India not agreeing to demilitarize? His quote is quite clearly in the source. So why not let Dixon speak for himself.

3) As for the Bowles section, that is simply your opinion on it. Howard B. Schaffer is however a reputable and well-known expert who spent decades serving and dealing with South Asia, so he knows the ins-and-out of regional diplomacy credibly better. The 1950s was by far the most significant period than any other in negotiations and discussions that could have led to plebiscite. So it is of substance and relevance to those early developments which took place. You did argue that the Americans did not understand India's position; however, I don't see how that affects what we report or cover what's present in the sources, since that's not our job.

4) Your point about Nehru's offer being the "closest India and Pakistan ever came to solving" Kashmir, this is not really different to the other developments where there were offers (formal and informal, in your terms), albeit there was stalling for some reason or the other each time. This doesn't seem to address, IMO, the point about these headings being lifted out of Shankar's article above. Mar4d (talk) 08:09, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

My comments were structured. They were structured by issues. I am sure that there will be several rounds of discussion on each of them, judging by past experience, and the sources we will use for each of them will be different too. Anyway, I will humour you for now.

1) For Shankar's analysis, as you rightly observe, what I have covered is his analysis, not his "view". The views are those of Nehru, available in ample measure in the more than two dozen volumes of his writings that are in public domain and several others that aren't. As I said, Nehru needs to be given space because of the badgering he gets, in the so-called reliable sources as well as on this page. Most of these views are based on some diplomat or journalist who had a one-hour meeting with him where he lost his temper and they came away thinking he is not going to agree to anything. Scholars who have actually studied his views in depth get shunned. If we give an honest treatment of Nehru, then there would be no need to give so much space to his own writings. The fact that Nehru actively pushed for a plebiscite after Sheikh Abdullah was dismissed when India had very little chance of winning a plebscite is basically unknown, except for the readers of this page. Almost everybody ignores it becaust it doesn't fit into their preconceived world view of Nehru. The facts contradict, quite spectacularly, almost all the half-baked views found in the literature. So, I am willing to condense Shankar's analysis, but only if we agree to throw out all other half-baked views that are contradicted by facts.

2) Regarding Loy Henderson and Dixon, you claim that this is what "Dixon himself has said". Is it really? Then why isn't Bradnock citing Dixon's report? He is citing a book on Pakistan's Foreign Policy written by a Pakistani diplomat (Burke) and a Pakistan's historian (Ziring). What evidence is there that Bradnock has even read the report? Somebody who has actually read it says this:

Pakistan, however, rejected any such regional-only plebiscite. Rather, it wanted the plebiscite conducted for all J&K-ites. If this was not possible, then Pakistan wanted a division of J&K along religious lines—as a result of which Pakistan naturally would have obtained all Muslim-majority areas, including the prized region of Kashmir.

Pakistan threw a big fit after the Dixon Mission and almost went to war. Why did it do that? Kashmiris on the other hand, warmly remember the Dixon Plan. That was the only proposal that came close to giving them the voice they needed.

As for demilitarisation, as Noorani explains, Dixon was a jurist, not a political negotiator. He needed a political assistant who could have helped him with negotiations. So, Dixon might have thought that demilitarisation was an issue, but he didn't really explore the art of the possible. India had agreed to lots of demilitarisation proposals before and after the Dixon Mission (with the UNCIP as well as the Graham Mission). So, responsible scholars like Raghavan and Snedded ignore it. Burke and Ziring, on the other hand, are documenting Pakistan's perception of why the Dixon Mission failed, a perception that deflects away from their own rejection of it.

3) Regarding Chester Bowles, everything I said also comes from Schaffer. Schaffer is still an American diplomat and he is taking the American government line, which seems to have been supportive of Pakistan's rejection of the Dixon Plan. But Bowles seems to have understood that the Dixon Plan was the only thing that would work.

4) For the Nehru's offer, there was no rejection from Pakistan. If there was "stalling", please feel free to find out why. From my point of view, the biggest question is, was Pakistan ever prepared to accept a plebiscite? Was it ready to lose Kashmir if the Kashmiris decided against it? For Nehru, we know the answer. For Pakistan, we don't. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:02, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

References

• Kautilya3 you need to remember that this page is under ARBIPA sanctions and repeated POV pushing and edit warring can have severe consequences. In your latest revert you claim that a peer-reviews journal article with 126 citations (not that it means anything much since we do not know Shankar's methodology of interpreting these 'citations', nor does 'peer-reviewed' mean majority approved) is not 'FRINGE'. But Wikipedia says clearly

• In Wikipedia parlance, the term fringe theory is used in a very broad sense to describe an idea that departs significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views in its particular field. Because Wikipedia summarizes significant opinions with representation in proportion to their prominence, a Wikipedia article should not make a fringe theory appear more notable or more widely accepted than it is. Statements about the truth of a theory must be based upon independent reliable sources. If discussed in an article about a mainstream idea, a theory that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight,[1] and reliable sources must be cited that affirm the relationship of the marginal idea to the mainstream idea in a serious and substantial manner.

• Any idea in any field which departs from the mainstream idea will get treated as a minority. Shankar's revisionist account is self admitted minority POV. Therefore, will be treated as FRINGE. Wikipedia cares not what kind of a source the fringe account is. Repeatedly trying to add a fringe analysis/view is and basing whole sections of the article on it because it is one's favourite view or personally-judged correct view is POV pushing. The rest of your demand that we go against the scholarly views which Wikipedia follows and turn this page into Nehruvian apologia is also the same POV pushing Wikipedia bans. You should also keep in mind Wikipedia is not a forum or a place for original research.

• Another extremely controversial source you are basing this article on is Raghavan whose links with the Indian Government and background in the Indian Army are no secret. He is also known for 'selection bias...which distorts research findings'. His work inhhis book is explaining India's "perceptions" of the events. Therefore, his book is not a good source to write about the events. What his book "may" be okay for is our Indian view section where you are free to include India's perceptions about the 1950s events. For the 1950s events themselves we will use Schofield which is noted to be a neutral and authoritative source on the conflict. KA$HMIR (talk) 08:33, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Knowledge progresses with new discoveries and new research. Peer-reviewed journal articles, supported by ample evidence provided, are not called FRINGE theories. You need to quit making this argument.

At the same time, you keep inserting content from Schofield who is not an academic and doesn't have any research training. She is just a writer who happens to have written one of the earliest books on Kashmir in this century. It is only good for bare facts. When there are contentious issues, her account is totally inadequate. I have given you Christopher Snedden's assessment of the Dixon Plan in a book published by Oxford University Press. That should have been enough.

Raghavan is a highly acclaimed world-class historian on contemporary history. It doesn't do you any good to start throwing mud at him. If there is any "Indian perception" in the content of the article, please feel free to point it out and I will amend it accordingly. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:29, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: First, please discontinue the slow edit war, which you haven't even after violating WP:1RR. You're making a lot of unsourced and unverifiable claims including personal opinions about parties, or scholars' research and their motivations. You should stick to the sources and subject matter, as you advise fellow editors. You need to WP:DROPTHESTICK, especially about the first point. It's fringe because it doesn't conform to the majority view (it's crystal clear in WP:DUE), two, it's not a mainstream source yet you wanted to lend it weight, and three, because the writer isn't a historian as you know. So it spectacularly fails your own standards, ironically while you deny sources like Victoria Schofield on flimsy pretext. Our work as Wikipedians is to summarise the WP:RS by their prominence and not do our own research. And where WP:RS contradict, we represent both as per WP:NPOV unless its a fringe view which gets different treatment. Bradnock, whom you called partisan, actually gives both sides' perspectives in his article. Lawrence Ziring is not a Pakistani. And Snedden (who you lambasted at Talk:1947 Poonch Rebellion), not sure why you need his assessment now when we have Dixon's quote. It is like WP:POV pushing, where only sources conforming to India's foreign policy are tenable. While Raghavan does appear to focus a lot on India's strategic and military calculus in the backdrop of the 1950s negotiations, he mostly ignores Pakistan's security concerns. So he is good only so far as documenting India's perceptions are concerned. Schofield on the other hand isn't as lopsided, as she evidently gives more analysis and space to both, her work's been vetted for neutrality, and she's scholarly reviewed as one of the best experts in the field.

About Dixon's quote sourced to Bradnock, that's only a half-truth. It's also included by Schofield and she provides additional comments of Dixon too. As for UNCIP and Graham, that's again not true. The key issue for Graham was demilitarization; India and Pakistan could not agree over the number of troops to keep in Kashmir during plebiscite, that's why it failed. India also apparently rejected various UNCIP proposals on the basis of dubious legal technicalities. And for the concessions to Bowles, there's no actual requirement for knowing the micro-modalities of the offer. Just that there was an offer which India rejected, which Schaffer calls evidence of "Indian intransigence". All of that is sourced. Mar4d (talk) 09:08, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

See, you have merged all four issues into one, and now I don't even know which issue you are talking about. Let me repeat that knowledge progresses through new discoveries and new research. In case of the Dixon Plan, William Reid's BA thesis

* Reid, W. A., Sir Owen Dixon's mediation of the Kashmir dispute 1950, Deakin University, 2000.

was a breakthrough. Before it, most scholars haven't seen the report and don't know what was in it except for a few isolated quotes that somebody or other propagandised. I give priority to the scholars who have studied the report and/or Reid's thesis. Raghavan and Noorani have explicitly discussed the thesis, and Snedden I presume must have known it, having worked at the same University. All the other sources should be measured against them. (Your allegation that I downrated Snedden previously is explained by the fact that it was a different book of Snedden that was talked about at Talk:1947 Jammu massacres. That book I continue to regard as BIASED because of the source material used in it, not to reflect on Snedden himself. Note also that that book was published by HarperCollins whereas the current book is by OUP. Higher quality publisher often ensures higher quality content.)

Regarding demilitarisation, I promise to look into the issues, not only in the context of the Dixon Plan, but in general, we need to document the positions of the two countries. (But I am not interested in offers made and rejected. I don't think our reders care about them either.)

You claim that Raghavan represented only India's strategic concerns. Yes, but at the same time, he also treats Pakistan neutrally. The fact that Pakistan rejected the Dixon Plan, mentioned by Snedden, did not find mention by either Raghavan or Noorani. So, Indian schoalrs deserve more credit than you give them.

I am certainly not going to use terms like "Indian intransigence" used by western scholars, when the Western powers completely ignored the basic complaint India made to the UN. I have reams of evidene that shows that they did it deliberately and consciously, ignoring what their own experts told them about the international law. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:21, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

NadirAli intervention

To user:Kautilya3 a PhD thesis is not acceptable for such a sensitive topic. You also need to drop this WP:OR attitude of making claims about the scholarly methodologies without sources.

Okay, the best sources to write summary level article are the accepted university textbook histories, which Schofield certainly is as recommended by Joseph Schaller. We only really need the 'bare facts' (which you accept Schofield contains) outside the Indian/Pakistani views section.

And I don't understand what you mean by promising to research demilitarization. You know about it already. Even Mahesh Shankar, of whom you are adamant offers a solid analysis, admits that India laid obstacles during the negotiations on demilitarization (although Shankar thinks it was due to genuine concerns rather than Indian intransigence, but still even he accepts this fact that India did lay obstacles; India laying obstacles is a bare fact, the rest on India's motives being Shankar's opinion)

"Rather the Indian obstacles to the plebiscite-preconditions regarding demilitarization" and the political dispensation in the state-were motivated not by a desire to stall the process altogether, but by fear that by making concessions on those issues would carry with them strategic and reputational costs

On an elaborated note the more I read and re-read Shankar and Raghavan the more I see their works are full of unscholarly and unsubstantiated POV gripes against Pakistan; not really fact based but their analysis is more 'perception based'. You have to admitted this much about Raghavan that he represents India's security concerns. So he is writing according to India's threat perceptions. We cannot have this article written according to India's insecurities and imaginary threat perceptions. Raghavan's links to the Indian government also bring up question marks on him according to Wikipedia policies on independent and non-independent sources. As I said earlier, this article should be stripped to the bare facts using Schofield.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 04:48, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

It is mentioned in the tertiary sources such as Schofield that the key sticking point in the Dixon Mission was demilitarisation. This is corroborated in all the multiple [WP:RS]] except by the fringe Shankar and government hired Raghavan. India rejected all of Dixon's demilitarisation proposals including the final one which caused Dixon to come to the conclusion quoted by Schofield. I am expanding on Dixon with an Indian 'scholar' Das Gupta. Although Gupta has severe pro-India POV problems in their book but they have given a more detailed account of the bare facts. Namely what the proposals were and who rejected what and what grounds they cited for their rejection. These facts, because they're corroborated in other sources, are being incorporated. I am surprised that Kautilya3 did not read about the Dixon Mission in a book he praised on Talk:1947 Jammu massacres. I will also take care to give more space to Schaffer than Gupta since the former has been cited more than the latter if you note their profiles on Google Scholar.

It also turns out that Dixon came to implement McNaughton's demilitarisation proposals. Proposals which Pakistan accepted but India rejected (a bare fact in Schofield's tertiary work). So content on McNaughton proposals is also needed and is being added.

Given the fact that the US-Pakistan defence pact was a major controversy used by the Indians to erase the Nehru-Bogra breakthroughs, it also looks necessary to include the general American involvement with the 50s developments. As an example it turns out America offered similar weaponry to India as was to be given to Pakistan, an offer which India turned down before using the pact to go back on all the progress the talks had made. It also appears that the Commonwealth involvement was a product of American-Indian tensions. I will be careful to streamline the article with the mainstream scholarly view of Indian intransigence. --NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 04:22, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

References

@NadirAli: please note that this section is still devoted to the objections raised by KA$HMIR, who has disappeared for inexplicable reasons. You should also stick to Wikipedia policies, which are universally accepted by all editors, and refrain from making up your own policies or following half-baked proposals made by random editors at random places. Schofield's book is not a WP:TERTIARY source. (Read that definition first before you start using that term.) I have mentioned before that Victoria Schofield is a writer. She has no academic credentials. Nothing you say will change that fact. I will write in more detail below about the problems with her coverage of the Dixon Plan. The Mahesh Shankar to the WP:FTN and nobody there agreed that he was a "fringe" source. You need to stop beating that drum. If you think Raghavan is not qualified, please take it to WP:RSN.

Next, you brought in Das Gupta. Pages 161–162 of Das Gupta's book describe Dixon's plan and the objections India raised to his proposals, numbered 1,2,3,4. Do you see them on page 162? I don't have reproduce them here since you have the book. Demilitarisation is only one of the four issues. The more important issue, according to Raghavan, Noorani, Christopher Snedden as well as Loy Henderson, was Dixon's demand that Sheikh Abdullah should step down during the plebiscite. This, Noorani explains (as a recognized constitutional scholar, published by Oxford University Press) was non-starter. Constitutionally, nobody had the right to ask Sheikh Abdullah to step down, not even the Indian government. In 1953, it was Kashmir's own elected Sadar-i-Riyasat who dismissed him. (Things now are different, but we are talking about 1950.) Here is Loy Henderson [1]:

After recent statements made by Nehru it would be useless to propose plan completely abolishing Abdullah government during plebiscite. Nevertheless, Dixon might be able work out plan which while leaving facade Abdullah government intact, would render it powerless to prevent fair plebiscite.

However, India accepted the principle of a plebiscite limited to the Kashmir Valley. Pakistan rejected the principle of plebiscite limited to the Kashmir Valley (p.161) This time, I will quote:

In any case, Pakistan turned down the proposal on the ground that India's commitment for a plebiscite in the whole of Jammu and Kashmir should not be departed from, and Dixon failed to persuade the Pakistan Government to agree to attend a meeting to discuss the proposals.

No real explanation to this rejection has yet been offered. If you have one, please produce it.

Your effort to muddy the waters by bringing in the Das Gupta source is pointless. Das Gupta has not contradicted anything previously written on this page. You are simply wasting my time and everybody else's time by making dozens of edits and adding thousands of bytes of essentially junk text to the article. This POV pushing needs to stop. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:34, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

It is getting hard to summarize all of the edits made by NadirAli in middle of this dispute, they are too big and controversial to start with. NadirAli, for example[2] is not a correct representation of source and it is WP:UNDUE already. Shankar is not a fringe source, I am not sure how you are making up your conclusions. Can you describe how Raghavan is biased against Pakistan? That's really not enough of an explanation to call him unreliable and scholarly. Capitals00 (talk) 04:55, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

To editor Kautilya3:: I do not understand your response. Besides some vague claims it seems like WP:COATRACKING in essence. My concern as a neutral Wikipedia writer is to document the Dixon mission and not just one Dixon proposal which you are trying to focus on to the exclusion of the rest of the facts from that mission.

Dixon came to implement the demilitarisation proposals of McNaughton (contrary to your ealier incorrect claim that demilitarisation was not an issue) and made a number of proposals which India rejected. The regional plebiscite proposal was only one proposal out of the Mission's work. India agreed to this particular proposal and Pakistan rejected because it wanted a statewide plebiscite instead of regional. This is documented. India later rejected the proposal for a number of reasons. Both demilitarisation and Sheikh Abdullah's abeyance are documented as India's 'reasons' by reliable sources and article has documented them. What more do you want? I think you are diverting attention from a simple matter and making this article look like just one of Dixon's proposals and even then just one of India's cited 'reasons' for rejecting that proposal. Thats not how it works on Wikipedia. We have WP:DUE and WP:WEIGHT policy issues on Wikipedia. Take a look at how a university level summary textbook (Kashmir in Conflict (2010): by the neutral, authoritative and one of the best experts on Kashnir Conflict, Victoria Schofield) describes the Dixon Mission.

Secondly the uninvolved editors on the fringe noticeboard have told you that the weight you had given Shankar was undue. So we can't give him extra weight than there is now (in my mind it is already too much and maybe requiring some extra culling). Giving undue weight to revisionist accounts such as Shankar falls under POV pushing. What we can give weight to though is the scholarly community whom Shankar is trying to 'refute' in his revisionist account, which includes the same scholar Noorani you have brought up in your response. That is WP:NPOV -- NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 00:15, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

To user:Capitals00: Please stop this misrepresentation and keep in mind the ARBIPA sanctions in this page. The input on the Fringe theory noticeboard was that Kautilya3 gave undue weight to Shankar. Even if you leave aside the fringe argument Shankar was undue. If you have doubts you can reread the comments of the uninvolved editors.

You also have hardly contributed to the discussion before the past day or so. So to claim 'We have been discussing the sources for weeks' is outright misleading. You haven't even been here and certainly have not discussed any sources. Keep in mind WP:NOCON and stop this disruption.

To Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi. As you can see Capitals00 cited this thread in his edit summary as his basis to revert Mar4d and contravene WP:NOCON . But there is nothing in this thread to support his revert. He has hardly discussed any sources at all and had not been here for weeks as he claims. -- NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 02:24, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Contravene WP:NOCON in what way? NOCON says In discussions of proposals to add, modify or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:53, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Victoria Schofield's coverage of Dixon Plan

@NadirAli: I find it truly odd that you continue to push the Victoria Schofield source, despite having read excellent sources like Das Gupta (which you consider 'Indian' and 'scholar'). However, as you yourself have added on her page, Schaller opines that Schofield breaks little new ground and instead prefers to reiterate the conclusions of others in the major issues. This confirms my repeatedly stated position that she is not a scholar, and her book is only good for bare facts, and nothing in it can be taken to be authoritative and scholarly. Yet you persist. So, let us go through her coverage of the Dixon Mission.

1. First of all, she doesn't even know that there is something called "Dixon Plan", which a quick Google search would have told her about.
2. She doesn't give a citation for the Dixon's report. So, it is likely that she hasn't even read it and doesn't know what it contains.
3. She dismisses Dixon ideas using the Nehru's description of "Alice in Wonderland proposals". But her citation to Gopal's biography is a source misrepresentation. Gopal, an honourable historian, was careful to tell us that this description applied to "proposals for replacing the existing government in Kashmir". Nehru was in fact rather complimentary of Dixon's ideas for partition-cum-plebiscite.
4. She says that Dixon concluded I became convinced that India's agreement would never be obtained.... Given that she never saw the report, she presumably took it from the same kind of partisan source like Burke and Ziring that we saw earlier. For your information, the quoted statement appears on page 16 of a 30 page report. That is not what is called a conclusion! Only people who haven't seen the report would call it a conclusion, which quite fits her own situation. Frankly, she is faking it.
5. Finally, we have this pearl of wisdom that without India agreeing to demilitarise, the Azad forces and Pakistani forces (military?) were not prepared to withdraw, for which there is no citation. We have no idea where she got this from. If this is supposed to be an explanation of the Pakistani position, why didn't she include any explanations for the Indian position?

Schofield's whole discussion is no more than a page. This is a completely unsatisfactory treatment of what people have called the "best ever [plan] tabled to resolve the Kashmir dispute". This writer simply doesn't understand the subject, and there should be no citations to this book in the Dixon Plan section. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 03:52, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

To Kautilya3: As regards the Victoria Schofield coverage, you are completely missing the WP:NPOV point. There is simply no way we Wikipedians will allow a book by Schofield with 310 cites to be kicked out to be replaced by a book by Gupta with only 30 something cites. WP:WEIGHT is an issue as is WP:DUE¡ Victoria Schofield, a well established authority and expert on this conflict, will be given more weight considering her prominence in the field.

Her book is a summary book as Schaller says while recommending it as a university textbook. Gupta has only been used to by me to write in more details. These details do not contradict Schofield anywhere.

The rest of your comment is WP:OR. You have yourself said on Talk:1947 Jammu massacres that how scholars get their information is "not our business." So I I ask you not to investigate Schofield either and leave that to the reviewers of her work. Her work is highly regarded as authoritative by reviewers.

Furthermore, even if for arguments same I accept going into this WP:OR business of investigating scholars And their research then I would say we apply the same rigorous investigation standards to Raghavan and Shankar, which they will no doubt fail, since neither of them seem to touch upon the Dixon Mission as a whole and are only worried about the 'Dixon Plan' of plebiscite in Valley; which was just one of many ideas proposed during the Dixon Mission, a Mission which actually existed to implement McNaughton's demilitarisation proposals for the entire state.

Perhaps it was because India rejected most proposals in the mission that Raghavan and Shankar overlook such embarrassing details? In such a case Raghavan' s 'coverage' should also be removed from the section.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 22:39, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Please don't claim to speak for "we Wikipedians". We Wikipedians have been doing fine until your sudden awakening a couple of weeks ago. And, you are yet to learn even how to indent posts. (Please see WP:TPHELP).

As for Victoria Schofield, citation counts are not everything. If one has the right book at the right time, citations will get accumulated automatically. Have any of these citations regarded Schofield's treatment of the Dixon Plan as authoritative? I have cited two recent sources Raghavan and Snedden, who have completely ignored whatever she said about it. That hardly counts as being "authoritative". Note that her book does not meet the basic requirements of WP:HISTRS. I highly recommend that you drop this nonsensical game of source-warring. WP:SOURCETYPES says Try to cite present scholarly consensus when available, recognizing that this is often absent. Schofield's book, even if it is supposedly authoritative, does not represent the present scholarly consensus, at least for this topic.

I am gratified to learn that you have read my discussions on the 1947 Jammu massacres. But you didn't read them properly. I said, in particular, what is needed here is to find contradicting information, if you can. Until you do so, this discussion is merely a waste of time. In the present instance, I have already given you two high-quality peer-reviewed sources that make mincemeat of everything Schofield says. If you believe WP:NPOV allows you to ignore these sources and keep pushing your out-of-date mediocre source, you are wrong.

Please note that I do my due diligence on pretty much every source I use. I know what each of them is worth, and how much weight to give them. In this case, the weight to be given to Schofield is zero. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:12, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Das Gupta is not an 'excellent' source but according to the scholar Wayne Wilcox in a book review, Gupta is good for documenting the developments and positions of the two countries "without taking sides" although scholar Wayne Wilcox does note that he treats India from a 'humane' rather than power perspective. Gupta's work is also only a 'marginal' contribution to the study on Kashmir Conflict, according to Wayne Wilcox. Another flaw in it according to Wilcox is that it does not do original research but just synthesizes existing material.

Richard Wheeler who also reviewed Das gupta's book praised it a bit but noted Gupta's national limitations - interestingly Wheeler also doubts Nehru's plebiscite commitment and notes in the same book review that whatever Pakistan did it was ultimately Nehru who rejected the Dixxon 'plan', which itself was only one of the proposals in the Dixon Mission.

That is why I only use Gupta for the bare facts on the 1950s developments and the documentation of both countries positions in detail, as many details are not covered in the university level book of Schofield. But given Schofield's prominence in this field it is asine to question citations to her and this questioning is in blatant contravention of WP:NPOV which demands a proportionate representation of scholars without taking sides.

You also need to read WP:BALANCE which instructs us to give weight to views in proportion to their prominence. Since most important accounts blame Nehru (Shankar, page 16) thats what ought to have the most weight. -- NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 00:19, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Actually citation numbers do matter. I did hope that the input of uninvolved editors on the fringe theory noticeboard would have taught you that. Unfortunately it has not. You need to read WP:SCHOLARSHIP "Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable, where the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses." So there is no point questioning Schofield anymore. You can take this up at RSN or wherever if you want. I also believe Fowler&fowler had [warned you back https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Talk:Kashmir&oldid=758294669#Anti-Muslim_policies_of_Sikhs] in January about this, using the same arguments. You need to stop doing original research and stop treating all sources as equal. If you want an idea of equal/unequal sources check their citation indexes. Thank you. -- NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 00:30, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

I did not say that citation numbers do not "matter". I said they are not everything. And, I gave you quite concrete reasons why Schofield's treatment of this subject is unsatisfactory. You are completely ignoring the fact that Schofield is not a scholarly source, a basic requirement for a WP:HISTRS. Since you keep persisting with the same arguments, I am afraid this needs to go to WP:DRN. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 02:15, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Kautilya3, I have a bad feeling about the way this is going to end for you. You need to WP:DROPTHESTICK and follow WP:CONSENSUS. Explain objections, if any, section to section rather than blanket reverts. Your last edit was completely unacceptable and non-negotiable. Please stop with your persistent removal of edits that were actually discussed including the 1950s editions. If you have issues with the recent additions, the onus is on you to list those separately here. I hope you will stop this disruptive edit war, especially after how your last attempt to include undue references turned out at the fringe noticeboard. Mar4d (talk) 10:12, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

We discussed the issues with sources here or there for weeks before making revert. No one on fringe noticeboard agreed that the source is fringe. Capitals00 (talk) 13:26, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

References

No mention of genocide of Kashmiri Hindus

Why is there no mention of genocide of Kashmiri Hindus by Islamic terrorists in this propaganda article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.46.85.29 (talk) 06:01, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Sanctions reminder

@Kautilya3, Capitals00, MBlaze Lightning, NadirAli, and Mar4d: I'm assuming everyone here is aware of the additional sanctions in place on Kashmir conflict articles but here is a summary anyway:

• A second revert without discussion restriction. A second revert of any edit, however minor, that is done without an explanation on the talk page will lead to an immediate block.
• A civility restriction. Any suggestion that any editor is not editing in good faith will lead to an immediate block.
• An ethnicity claim restriction. Any attempt to bring the purported or deduced or imagined ethnic or nationality identities of any users will lead to an immediate block. This includes an editor's own stated ethnic identity or nationality. Wikipedia uses reliable sources and the weighting of those sources to decide what to include, what not to include, and how the content should be stated in an article. Please stick to arguments based on those factors.

--regentspark (comment) 15:08, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the reminder. I have no intention of claiming anybody's ethnicity or being incivil towards anyone. I have repeatedly told Kautilya that I do not wish to get into a confrontation with him, but I just wish he'd be reasonable with me with regards to sourcing, original research and WP:NOT and other issues. I have nothing more to state other than finding this all to become overwhelming.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 20:38, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

NPOV changes

Wikipedia's NPOV policy states that Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts. If different reliable sources make conflicting assertions about a matter, treat these assertions as opinions rather than facts, and do not present them as direct statements.

NPOV policy also states: Wikipedia describes disputes. Wikipedia does not engage in disputes. A neutral characterization of disputes requires presenting viewpoints with a consistently impartial tone; otherwise articles end up as partisan commentaries even while presenting all relevant points of view. Even where a topic is presented in terms of facts rather than opinions, inappropriate tone can be introduced through the way in which facts are selected, presented, or organized. Neutral articles are written with a tone that provides an unbiased, accurate, and proportionate representation of all positions included in the article. The tone of Wikipedia articles should be impartial, neither endorsing nor rejecting a particular point of view. Try not to quote directly from participants engaged in a heated dispute; instead, summarize and present the arguments in an impartial tone.

Since there are different scholarly opinions on this matter we can't state Mahesh Shankar's views as fact nor give it as preference over other scholarly views.

Mahesh Shankar, who published his work in the "India Review" in 2016, himself admitted in the same work that other scholars do not share his views and they say that Nehru deliberately delayed a plebiscite.

Shankar says on page 2 of his journal article which is cited in the body:

It particularly addresses critics’ claims—in Pakistan and in the scholarly community—that the failure of the plebiscite option owed itself solely to Nehru’s intransigence.

Shankar also says on page 6 of his journal article:

Scholars have similarly pointed to Nehru’s occasional expression of skepticism about the wisdom and practicality of holding a plebiscite. Noorani, for instance, points to a missive from Nehru to Sheikh Abdullah in August 1952 in which the former admitted to having “ruled out the plebiscite for all practical purposes.

So Shankar's views, by his own confession, are not shared by other scholars. As per Wikipedia's NPOV policy we have to describe all the scholarly viewpoints without giving preference to one in Wikipedia voice. I will be adding more scholarly views, such as those quotes in the archives by Mar4d, as required under our NPOV policy.

I am also making a change under Dixon section. What American ambassador Loy Henderson is saying looks UNDUE (and incorrect too because the main issue was demilitarisation).

Note there are ARBIPA sanctions in place on this page. I am also inviting others to review how this article has been written so far and to ensure we achieve a NPOV result. NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 04:30, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Nehru's withdrawal of his plebiscite offer (which was different from the UN resolutions) is one of the major reasons the Kashmir conflict persists. So, an explanation of the offer as well as its withdrawal is necessary in this article. I am not confident that you hae read and understood what is described in the article regarding these subjects. The offer was made in July 1953, after Sheikh Abdullah government was dismissed, when most analysts would have expected that India would lose a plebiscite. It was withdrwan in September 1953, after Pakistan signed a defence pact with the US. And, Shankar has made a detailed study of what happened in between as well as what drivers Nehru had to make this decision. The "views" wherever they appear are attributed to Shankar or Nehru as appropriate. I believe this satisfies WP:NPOV. If you know of any scholar that has studied all the evidence presented by Shankar and drew different conclusions, please bring them forward. Note also that India Review is an international journal published by Taylor & Francis. If you believe there are reliability issues with it, please take it to WP:RSN.

I am always happy for other editors to read and review my content, and revise it as necessary for WP:RS and WP:NPOV purposes. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:30, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

I have read Shankar's 'analysis' but do not see any conclusive evidence for his POV rather it is his own interpretation of the primary sources. Scholars as we know have different understandings of the same events. Where scholarly understandings differ, as Shankar himself admits, we include all of them as per Wikipedia's NPOV policy. There is no Wikipedia policy requirement that a scholar has to study "all" of Shankar's 'evidence' before having the right to arrive at an opposing conclusion. Indeed there are several things missing or overlooked in Shankar's 'analysis'. There were other stages too for example the Menzies proposal when Pakistan accepted a plebiscite under a joint or Commonwealth force but India did not. India suddenly remembered then that Pakistan was the 'aggressor'. Shankar doesn't seem to factor that into his analysis. Nor the military threats India posed to Pakistan. Other scholars have their own 'evidence'. In fact the statement 'who has studied the matter in detail' lacks a source. It is likely to go. NadirAli نادر علی (talk)

@NadirAli: thanks with respect to your additions from my sources in the archives. The questions surrounding plebiscite and the various roadblocks around it are something of historical interest. I've made some copyedits and expansions on further developments, particularly those relevant to the 1950s. As regards to the above, WP:NPOV fundamentally requires consulting a multitude of sources. So there is nothing wrong with using other authoritative sources, provided they offer a fuller and clear sequence of events. Mar4d (talk) 10:44, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

My position is that, as an encyclopedia, we want to report facts as far as possible, and minimize "views". There are too many views out there and, if we keep reporting views, we are just liable to pick views that we like and dismiss those we don't like. And, all editors push for their favourite views to be included and the article degenerates into a quagmire. That is not the way to go. We report scholars as far as possible, and we also check if they are making evidenced statements or just stating their personal views. Not all scholars are equal. Some give copious notes for their evidence and some give cursory notes or refer to some other scholar's "view" which is in turn not evidenced. You might say, we attribute views and that satisfies our NPOV mission. Not so. If you add an "attributed" view, which is contradicted by another scholar with evidence, what value does the attributed view have?

If you start adding diplomats' views, you get into even more tricky territory. The diplomats are there to represent their country's position in the negotiations and their view of other parties is only based on what has been said in the negotiations. The conclusions they draw are based on a narrow base. It is better to report such views filtered by scholars, who presumably take the trouble to double check the facts.

With regard to the so-called "Loy Henderson's view" by NadirAli, I maintain that it is not a "view". William Reid, a former UNMOGIP soldier, did a BA Honours thesis at Deakin University, which has apparently unearthed for the first time what happened with the Dixon Mission. Both Raghavan and Lamb have referenced the thesis and spoke highly of it. So does Noorani. Reid has said that Dixon's conclusions regarding the Indian position were wrong. India had accepted the plebiscite proposals made by Dixon (in fact they wre India's own proposals!), but it rejected the idea of suspending the Sheikh Abdullah government. This information comes to us via Loy Henderson and William Reid, and it is preposterous to label it "Loy Hender's view". It is information. Of course, the Indian government could have been lying to Henderson and Henderson could have been lying in his reports. But unless there is evidence to the contrary, we report the information. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:48, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

To editor Mar4d: Thank you for your expansions, it has made the sequence of events in the 1950s much clearer. It is good you have added a fuller sequence of events from Schofield's neutral and authoritative book. Our senior editor user:Fowler&fowler has recommended using Schofield. It has clarified many developments such as the Menzies proposal which were missing in the article when it was based on Shankar's so-called 'analysis'. There's many factors missing from Shankar's analysis which is mostly based on conjecture of a few developments rather than solid fact and the evidence is lacking too. But the more worrying concern is WP:WEIGHT and WP:FRINGE for Shankar's POV in the article. He writes in his own conclusion that 'most accounts' regard Nehru the reason for plebiscite failure (in other words Shankar's view is a minority view). It raises the question whether such a fringe view should be given so much space here. WP:WEIGHT applies here, I think. Otherwise this article will be POV and NPOV will be left on the sidewalk. Should it be removed or shortened? What say you Mar4d?

References

-- NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 03:45, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

He is not even an academic yet his book is "neutral" over the academic like Shankar? Capitals00 (talk) 15:56, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Loy Henderson's view

I would also recommend that you make separate posts to raise separate issues.

What American ambassador Loy Henderson is saying looks UNDUE (and incorrect too because the main issue was demilitarisation).

I think this has no basis whatsoever. What is UNDUE about it? America is the leading Security Council member whose resolution was being implemented by Dixon. India kept America informed about what its plans and negotiating positions were and the American ambassador's assessment of them is entirely pertinent. And, you are entirely wrong that the issue was "demilitarisation". It wasn't. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:37, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree with your first sentence, I'll take care to do that. Thank you. If you do not believe demillitarization was the main issue, you should read Dixon himself and Nimitz's complaints. Secondly, if the view of one American ambassador matters so much then so do the views of American diplomats in general and most observers, which I will be adding soon. NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 03:45, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

U:NadirAli The Kautilya3 user has removed your NPOV contribution from Copland which provided a nuanced analysis regarding the accession's 'popular' support. But Kautilya3 has not removed the primary-sourced view of Syed Mir Qasim which is a biased sentence on the accession's 'popular' support. It was just before your neutral sentence from a scholarly source. The section is called 'Accession' and not Indian military arrival so Kautilya's reason for removal (Is Copland talking about the invasion and dispatching of Indian troops) looks baseless and misrepresentative of what the content under the Accession section is about.

Also to Kautilya3:

• I have read Mahesh Shankar to verify whether NadirAli is speaking the truth. He is. And I now find that since Shankar has admitted in his conclusion and throughout his article that his is a minority POV, so unfortunately WP:WEIGHT is becoming an issue here. Giving uncorroborated and self admitted fringe viewpoints paragraph length space is UNDUE. I am removing it. I don't think Wikipedia will agree to WP:FRINGE views being given so much attention so it might be better to discard the fringe scholar and not attempt to bring him back either.

• I am also adding back the 'most observers' comments under Dixon Plan not only because of NPOV (which requires it) but also because Loy Henderson got it wrong. Previously, Nehru didn't agree to a Nimitz supervised UN Commission for an arbitrated withdrawal of troops on both sides. Dixon got a similar feel to Nimitz and believed there would be no fair vote with the Indian soldiers hanging around. So Henderson saying that Dixon only thought what he did because he believed there won't be a fair plebiscite under the Sheikh Abdullah regime is a misrepresentation of Dixon's position. Dixon himself that the issue was also that of India not demilitarizing. So I am also adding the first half of Dixon's complaint, from his own 'grievance' quote. We don't need Henderson when he is cutting words out of Dixon's mouth and misrepresenting his concern, so he is being removed from this article.

• As for Bowles I can't find anything about these 'concessions ' from Pakistan, will research it further, but the only reason I am restoring and retaining him is that I can't find any source denying that Nehru rejected Pakistani concessions on its military presence in exchange for plebiscite. What RS reports we include in Wikipedia as NPOV requires. I also do not agree with this DUE argument because it's relevant to the 1950s developments between India and Pakistan which were about a plebiscite.

• Titles such as 'Nehru's plebiscite offer' and 'withdrawal of plebiscite offer' are POV forks. The titles seem to be taken from or influenced by Mahesh Shankar's fringe journal article. Not good. Besides it's an incorrect title because there was no gracious 'offer' out of the blue rather there were ongoing negotiations between Nehru and Bogra before this so called offer was made and it's actual reason for failure was Pakistan's rejection of a plebiscite administrator other than Nimitz. The Cold War and Indo-pak military concerns' factors background analysis is just hypothetical opinion of scholars, which we only include for

NPOV demand of fairly representing scholarly viewpoints. KA$HMIR (talk) 09:50, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

DUE and UNDUE for the Timeline

Please note that there is a separate page for the Timeline of the Kashmir conflict. If people want to add Menzies mediation, Chester Bowles or others, that is where they can go. There have been many mediations. I have put here in my write-up, the three most important initiatives that came close to solving the dispute:

• UNCIP resolution from January 1948, which defined a three-step process, with Pakistani withdrawal being the first step.
• Dixon Plan, which awarded AJK & GB to Pakistan and Jammu & Ladakh to India, and the plebiscite to be confined to the Kashmir valley. (Mind you that the idea for this was Nehru's, which Faizan's POV edit clobbered, now reinstated by KA$HMIR.)
• "Nehru's offer", which proposed a zonal plebiscite in all areas without requiring any withdrawal.

To my mind, these were the only proposals that took both India and Pakistan's concerns into account (to varying degrees, of course). If you want to add any other initiatives, you need to at least explain why they are important. Saying that X made some unstated concession, which Y rejected, (pick your X and Y) doesn't add any value the article. Without even knowing what is being talked about, the readers have really no idea. This kind of shrubbery and innuendo is exactly why people are fed up with it. But the problem seems clear enough to me, after having read high quality sources. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:11, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

NadirAli edits

I have just reverted NadirAli's new additions over the last week or so. Once I reverted, I was shocked to see that they amounted to over 18,000 bytes. The original size of the sections modified was 23,217 bytes. So, he almost doubled them in size. I see no real justification for this bloat which covers just 5 years of a 70 year history. NadirAli, I would like to see you justify here why all this new content was needed. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 02:43, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

I was myself planning to do so, there have been more objections to the content as noted above. Capitals00 (talk) 03:08, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Concur with your action. —MBL ^Talk 15:52, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

To user:Kautilya3: This is a disingenuous argument. You yourself promised to investigate the demilitarisation issue and document the positions of both countries. Earlier you had made the outright wrong claim that demilitarisation was no issue. And now that I have added all that using what you call an 'excellent' source you are calling it undue.

Your size argument is also not good because when you yourself expanded this article when it had no details on the 1950s and you only added partial facts, you did not include the important phases of the conflict such as the Mcnaughton proposals, Dixon Mission, Graham mediation and Menzies proposal. In fact you only covered just one proposal in the Dixon mission and began pushing POV that that particular plan was the best solution. You gave just one Dixon proposal undue weight and ignored the rest of the Dixon mission's work and filled this article with opinions of the non-independent source Raghavan and gave undue weight also to Shankar. So in fact my doubling of this section by making NPOV edits and additions of important facts are actually very correct. If anything we need to cut down on the undue and non-independent sources. Keep in mind reliable does not mean independent. -- NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 02:26, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Kautilya3, I cannot express how hopelessly ridiculous the above reasoning sounds. Kautilya3 just admitted to reverting a lot of content without reading it first and his primary issue is with the amount of content which he feel is "too much". Do all contributions on Wikipedia have to be approved by Kautilya3 first? This goes against everything wikipedia stands for. I am not even going into the edit warring. --Xinjao (talk) 17:27, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Welcome to the discussion, Xinjao. The volume of text has to be proportionate, when we are discussing 70 years of history. I mentioned somewhere up above that the three important diplomatc initiatives from the 1947-54 period were UNCIP mediation, Dixon Plan and Nehru's plebiscite offer. Those are the three aspects that my text covers. Each of them has a clear rationale, gets around the various constraints of the Kashmir problem, and proposes a viable solution. Each of them came close to solving the problem, and didn't get implemented due to some tricky corners. So, explaining the solutions and the tricky corners is a contribution we make to the reader's knowledge and understanding. The rest of it is chaffe.

There is a separate article on UN mediation of the Kashmir dispute, where the details can go, but, even there, the discussion has to be proportionate. The issues need to be specified here, discussed and consensus is reached. Nothing is achieved by bullying, which is what I see going on at the moment. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:30, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Kautilya3 you have missed NadirAli's point.

• How is Dixon Plan due? The article should cover Dixon Mission in summary form and remove this excess POV about the Dixon plan sourced to the non-HISTRS political scientist Christopher Snedden and Raghavan who is not an independent source because of his affiliations with the Indian government. As NadirAli said the Dixon Plan was only one proposal in a larer mission which came to carry out demilitarisation proposals of McNaughton.
• A small section on the McNaughton proposals won't hurt either because the Dixon plan/mission has its own section. Similar should be done for Graham and Commonwealth proposals. We can remove the opinions of Shakar and Raghavan to get rid of all the space they are taking from the bare facts.
• Also you have to remove the POV fork of 'Nehru's plebiscite offer' because it comes straight out of an undue source which pushed a self-confessed revisionist POV. We know there were no generous offers, just negotiations which had succeeded with Pakistan compromising and accepting India's demand of removing Nimitz as an administrator. India turned around and backed out of the successful negotiations because of the military pact between US and Pakistan even though the Americans promised to supply similar weaponry to India. All this is sourced to the Indian political scientist Sumit Ganguly.
• This excessive use of Raghavan and Shankar to describe India's military and strategic concerns vis a vis Pakistan is undue. If it is at all to be included it should include other equally notable scholarly works such as Schaffer and Wilcox to describe American/Pakistani concerns, as per WP:BALANCE, without giving preference to either as per WP:NPOV KA$HMIR (talk) 15:02, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

I believe most of you have not read the UN mediation section or haven't understood what it says, focused on your own POVs. Note this sentence: The UN mediators tended towards parity, which was not to India's satisfaction.

India took the matter to the UN saying Pakistan had committed aggression against Kashmir, which was now legally Indian territory. It asked the UN to restrain Pakistan. The UN did not do that, even though the UNCIP confirmed the nature of the "aggression".

If you see the United Nations Security Council Resolution 47 article, you will see Josef Korbel as well as other diplomats and experts stating that the UN was only mediating between India and Pakistan. The proposals were not binding. The acceptance and implementation of these proposals depended on the goodwill of India and Pakistan. How the Security Council expected to buy the "goodwill" of India, having ignored its basic complaint, is known to itself.

It was a failed mediation. The world knows that. So, it serves no purpose in this article to give a blow-by-blow account of every mediation attempt, every proposal and every failure. I have already mentioned that there is an article dedicated for that purpose: UN mediation of the Kashmir dispute, which none of the participants here have ever read or contributed to. This shows the "flimsy and opportunistic nature" of the efforts being made here (borrowing Major Brown's words, which I just deleted).

The Dixon Plan is DUE because according to multiple reliable sources, it came close to providing a viable solution. Nehru's offer is also DUE because both parties agreed to it. So, these are proposals that are DUE.

Finally, Raghavan is a historian, a WP:HISTRS, probably the only one such on this page. I have no real idea why there is all this propaganda against him. "Nehru's plebiscite offer" doesn't come "straight out" of Shankar's article (which is based on his PhD thesis done at McGill University, in comparison to other sources being pushed, who don't even have a PhD.) It is well-known to the scholars that covered the history.

Both the the governments of India and Kashmir reluctantly acquiesced [to Nehru's proposal]. This was a dramatic reversal of India's earlier position. The earlier insistence that any settlement of the Kashmir dispute must recognize the accession of that state to India was dropped. Indeed, Nehru was now willing to offer virtually everything that Pakistan had been seeking since 1947--plebiscite for the entire state and almost immediate appointment of a mutually acceptable plebiscite administrator. What is also significant is the fact that Nehru's offer was not made under any external or internal pressure but from a genuine conviction that India must not hold Kashmir against wishes of the people.

I sincerely believe that you people keep reading propaganda and keep believing propaganda, instead of reading genuine scholars who know the facts and analysed them. Enough said. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:46, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

References

• Kautilya3 first of all please refrain from commenting about other people's research and focus on the content as they are treated in RS. You are still not accepting WP:NPOV which demands that scholarly opinions be represented according to their weight in the scholarly discourse.

• Also no importance will be attached to undue sources such as Shankar and henceforth minority opinions such as Shankar will not be given undue importance as they were done previously. Shankar himself accepts that his Nehru sincerity view is a minority view against the mainstream view among scholars on Indian intransigence.

• The issue with Raghavan is that because he was hired as an official historian by the Indian government he is not a WP:INDEPENDENT source. He is a biased source known for selection bias even from reviewers who otherwise think it's a good work. It's also undue compared to Schofield and Schaffer because his work is not about Kashmir specifically but Indian foreign policy in general, it's not a Kashmir devoted work unlike the former works.

• I also disagree with your assertion that there's no need to give a blow by blow account of the mediation. How else will readers know how the conflict progressed? The authoritative sources such as Schofield and other sources like Gupta give us a full account. I am suggesting just a summary account of each stage. The McNaughton proposal led to the Dixon Mission, which led to the Dixon Plan. Failure of Dixon led to the Graham mediation and the Indian-American tensions led to Commonwealth proposal.

• The Dixon plan being the closest thing to a solution is just one POV and not even known to be majority opinion. Howard Schaffer indeed even says it has some support in Kashmir and outside but we know nothing about any majority opinion. The Dixon plan also partially failed due to demilitarization like the rest of the stages of mediation (source: Das Gupta) KA$HMIR (talk) 12:51, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

I notice that you have completely ignored my suggestion that UN mediation of the Kashmir dispute is where the UN mediation efforts should go. Put it there, let us beat it into NPOV, and then we can see whether any of it belongs here.

As for Srinath Raghavan, he was commissioned on a two-year project in 2015 to head of team of researchers to write the history of Kargil War. (That is what people in think tanks do, work on projects.) How do you deduce that his 2010 book on War and Peace in Modern India is non-independent? Do you realize that your favourite authority on the Kashmir dispute, Howard Schaffer, spent the majority of his career in the service of the American government? Why these double standards? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:49, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

• The page in discussion is this one and not the U.N. mediation page which is a POV fork. So focus here on writing a better summary of the Kashmir Conflicts progression before writing details for the other page. Much of the content there is seemingly copy pasted from here anyway.

• Given that Raghavan and Shankar share the same viewpoint, Raghavan's opinions will be treated just like Shankar's UNDUE opinion which is a self admitted minority POV. WP on due is " Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. " and " Keep in mind that, in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors or the general public."

• So since Schaffer's analysis is in line with the majority of the reliable sources which uphold the narrative of Indian intransigence we have to give more weight per DUE to Schaffer.

• You still have failed to explain why Raghavan's substandard and undue analysis should remain on this page. Propaganda from someone who works for the transigent Indian government in the capacity of an official historian which you have admitted and who has background in the same brutal Indian military repressing kashmiris such as this has no place here. That content also don't seem to have any consensus when it got added. Much of it is also false and skewed. Raghavan does not tell us the details of why sheikh Abdullah fell out with the Indian government, he is obsessed with the Dixon Plan while completely ignoring the Dixon mission, presumably because it's an embarrassment to record that India rejected each of Dixon's demilitarisation proposals. He also leaves out the aggressive Indian military postures to Pakistan since independence and makes it out that Indian foreign and military policy was based on threats emanating from the Pakistani media and lower government echelons and then makes up a theory that India gave up on the plebiscite because it thought Pakistan was being too aggressive. He also completely ignored India's rejection of America's good faith offer to supply India with weaponry similar to Pakistan without a pact.

• This all echoes the book review where he was found guilty of selection bias. Howard Schaffer is not found to be guilty of selection bias, is a scholar with excellent credentials and his works are critically acclaimed. His book on America's involvement on Kashmir gives us better details. ~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by KA$HMIR (talk • contribs) 17:14, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

• I am sorry, the UN mediation of the Kashmir dispute is a WP:Content fork, not a POV fork – a perfectly legitimate article. This page, covering 70 years of history, should be written in summary style, mentioning only the salient aspects/events. Note that I have eliminated the section titled Withdrawal of the plebiscite offer, even though I believe it to be an extremely crucial development that froze the Indian position to the status quo for indefinite future. The amount of text that has been added by NadirAli is quite extraordinary. I will try to post here a more detailed analysis of this text, but my time in December is quite limited due to various travel/holiday plans. This will need to be resumed in the New Year.
• DUE and WEIGHT operate at several levels. The issue of how much WEIGHT to give a particular topic is one issue, and the issue of how much WEIGHT to give a particular point of view or source is quite another issue. Please keep them separate. I would definitely agree that there is an Indian point of view, a Pakistani point of view and a UN/western point of view. But, other than all these "points of view", there are facts. True historians first make sure that they have all the facts before they start making judgements. Political Scientists/International Relations experts are less focused on facts because they presume that facts cannot be fully available in their fields. So I would always put historians one notch above the others in reliability. We also need to keep in mind that new factual information becomes available with time. The fact that Pakistan consciously instigated the invasion of Kashmir in 1947 is now pretty well-established, starting with General Akbar Khan's memoirs in 1975. So all the assessments that were made prior to 1975 with the presumption that Pakistan had no role to play in the invasion are now obsolete. British and American foreign policy papers from 1940s and 1950s have become available to scholars in 1990 or so. A large number of papers from Indian leaders (Nehru, Patel, Rajendra Prasad etc.) and some Pakistani leaders (Jinnah) have also become available. Owen Dixon's papers were made available to a former UNMOGIP soldier who wrote a BA thesis and PhD thesis based on them. So, more recent sources that take all this information into account should be weighted more. Majority-minority distinctions that you are trying to push have no meaning in this context, even if we assume that you can substantiate such quantifications. Scholarly consensus cannot be decided by bean counting.

There is one point you made that I find worth paying attention to, viz., that the "conflict progressed" through the UN mediation efforts. If that is true, it would be worth finding out more. Where are the sources that talk about the progression of the conflict through the mediation efforts? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:00, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

NadirAli text

Here is a quick summary of the text added by NadirAli which I have reverted on the grounds of being UNDUE.

• UN mediation section increased by 58% (from 7,774 to 12,277 characters). The new content deals with McNaughton proposals and the impressions of American diplomats.
• Dixon Plan renamed to Dixon Mission and grown by 200% (3,234 to 9,892 characters). The new content deals with Dixon's demilitarisation ideas, proposed prior to the "Dixon Plan", and again impressions of American diplomats.
• 1950 military standoff and Nehru's plebiscite offer combined and renamed to Developments during the 1950s and grown by 52% (from 11,646 to 17,733 characters). The new content deals with Frank Graham mediation (very briefly), Commonwealth mediation, Chester Bowles's attempted mediation, and the attempted military coup in Pakistan.

The common thread that runs through all this expansion is the attempt to show Pakistan in the right and India in the wrong. India repeatedly rejected the various proposals by mediators whereas Pakistan accepted them. But the reason for India's rejection is already stated in the original UN mediation section. India demanded an asymmetric treatment of India and Pakistan, terming Pakistan as the 'aggressor'. So, this repetitious treatment adds little value to the reader's understanding of the issues. Rather, what would be of value is if there is an explanation of why the mediators wanted to give an equal treatment to the two countries. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:01, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

• I am sorry but these latest replies have no substance and what is basically being told is that Wikipedia should trash the main reliable sources for the minority of sources suiting the Indian POV, based of course on the Indian POV about the tribal invasion. Wikipedia has no mandate to just represent whatever (alleged) new information there is but to summarise and represent the corpus of reliable sources in proportion to their weight. ·

• Now lets take a look at the stuff cleverly added in fluffy language without consensus under ‘Nehru’s plebiscite offer’ and ‘Dixon plan’ and ‘1950 military standoff’. The Dixon Mission has been ignored and article is filled with POV about the Dixon Plan, there is no mention of the mediation phase where Pakistan accepted proposals but India rejected proposals which could have ensured a plebiscite. The attempt with the POV fork called ‘Nehru’s plebiscite offer’ is clearly to represent India in an angelic light using undue sources in defiance of the dominant narrative among reliable sources which blame Nehru for the fault of Kashmir dispute continuing (admitted in the conclusion of Shankar). Wikipedia cares about the majority of reliable sources and not what is recent (or alleged to be). I am sorry if the reliable sources do not support the anti-Pakistan and Indian POV. This place is Wikipedia and not an Indian government website.

• The facts are clear. India pushed a legalistic approach on Kashmir with the accession instrument despite itself having given no toss to Junagadh's instrument of accession to Pakistan and blockading, bullying and invading Junagadh before Pakistan invaded Kashmir, UN mediation was accepted by both countries regardless of how the conflict started, India rejected and Pakistan accepted the McNaughton proposals, Dixon came to implement the McNaughton proposals and put forward demilitarisation proposals all of which India trashed, then he proposed the Dixon Plan which both Pakistan and ultimately India rejected. The Indians and Pakistan could not agree on demilitarisation during Graham's mediation and the Commonwealth proposals failed because of India's rejection. By the 1950s Pakistan and India practically 'agreed' in the Nehru-Bogra talks on a plebiscite with Pakistan accepting India's demand to remove Nimitz. Then India turned around using the US-Pakistan defence pact as an excuse to go back on its word even though India was given a similar deal without a pact by the USA. Thats all the facts there are. The rest is just Indian POV, primarily from the undue Shankar and non-WP:HISTRS and non-Independent Raghavan, who is not even a historian nor has studied nor has any credentials in history (his expertise is war studies and international studies, ‘'historian’' he was only appointed by the Indian ‘’government’’) unlike reputable Kashmir authorities such as Schofield who give POV-free bare facts (your words). We on Wikipedia need to inform readers of facts documented in the reliable sources. KA$HMIR (talk) 15:39, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Can you focus on content only? I am having hard time to consider your words when you are treating reliable sources (Raghavan, Shankar) as unreliable and throwing "Indian POV" too often. Capitals00 (talk) 15:56, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

To Capitals00 the issues with Shankar and Raghavan is that they are undue, and non-independent and non-HISTRS respectively. You need to stop pushing undue commentaries especially after what other editors have said on the fringe theory noticeboard. Raghavan and Shankar are pushing revisionist POVs which are not part of mainstream discourse on the conflict (Shankar, page 16). Minority aspects and viewpoints do not deserve the space they currently have.

To Kautilya3: Wikipedia is concerned more with the 'what' and with the 'why' later but you want to go into 'why' without even telling readers the 'what'. No story can be written in such a way without a sequence of events. I now think this sentence Scholars have commented that the failure of the Security Council efforts of mediation owed to the fact that the Council regarded the issue as a purely political dispute without investigating its legal underpinnings is WP:UNDUE. Its sourced to a primary source, Korbel, and the other source Subbiah is not a mainstream source judging by the Google Scholar citation index. It is obviously a POV insertion designed to skew the article in India's favor. It was added without consensus and is completely undue under UN mediation which should have a summary of the UN mediation rather than cleverly designed POV sentences.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 19:22, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

NadirAli, I recommended several weeks ago that you make new sections for separate issues, and it looked like you accepted it. Yet you are sticking a completely unrelated issue in this section. In any case, please see the Josef Korbel page, which shows that he is eminently qualified to comment on United Nations. For further support, see the last section of this article

• Brecher, Michael (September 1953), "Kashmir: A Case Study in United Nations Mediation", Pacific Affairs, 26 (3): 195–207, JSTOR 2753284

There is also more commentary in the United Nations Security Council Resolution 47 page. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 02:08, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Coming back to the topic, the "what" is already described in the UN mediation section. Some more detail about the various mediatory missions can be added, but this can only be something like 2-3 lines. The world is not interested in all the bickering between India and Pakistan. Solutions are what they want to hear about. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 03:27, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Excuse me but where on Wikipedia says relevant information about Kashmir Conflict can not be added? We are not here to preach to the world. This is not a propaganda platform. Its an encyclopedic article on the Kashmir Conflict, not Kashmir solutions. See WP:NOTPROPAGANDA and WP:NOTADVOCATE. The information Nadir and I agree on is definitely more relevant than all the skewed information and POV propaganda pouring out of Raghavan’s and Shankar’s anti-traditionalist account. 119.160.98.193 (talk) 15:09, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

We are not "preaching" to the world. We are trying to decide what is of interest to the general reader of Wikipedia regarding this conflict, some 70 years after the events have occurred. Solutions are always of higher interest than failures. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:39, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

In Popular culture?

There are numerous books, movies about the Kashmir conflict. Can we please have a section about this? For instance, Haider definitely deserves a mention. Nihargargava (talk) 05:55, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

This article is already quite long and it covers 70 years of history. Please feel free to add it to Kashmir insurgency article. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:22, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Rfc about UN mediation coverage

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

• Summary--There is consensus to N oppose the proposed inclusion.
• Reasons--
  • There is no doubt that the UN Mediation attempts are an integral part of the topic.But, since the subject concerns itself over several sub-topics which are individual subjects, with a lot of intricate details, in their own right, the policy of due and undue weights ought to be followed.Unfortunately, none of the supporters have made a good case for it's inclusion on those grounds barring Arslan.
  • Jogi's vote being un-parsable has been discounted whilst arguments bothering on There's another crappy, POV-filled, slyly crafted section that is so big....So, this ought to be more big! has been accounted with very less weight.
• Signed by Winged Blades^Godric 15:35, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

---

Should this article include a detailed coverage of the UN mediation attempts?

The talk page section titled NadirAli edits above contains some discussion of the content that has been added and reverted. There is a separate article on UN mediation of the Kashmir dispute and, at the moment, the section Kashmir conflict#UN mediation summarises it. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 03:39, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Survey

• Of course. Not detailed detailed. But sufficient coverage on an important aspect of the Kashmir Conflict is warranted. KA$HMIR (talk) 15:14, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
• No - Not just because of a separate article for that subject but also because of the nature of edits that have been discussed a lot above. Capitals00 (talk) 15:21, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
• No - This is a high-level overview article that covers 70 years of history, as well as other analytical discussion. There is a dedicated page for UN mediation of the Kashmir dispute, that is where the details can go. There may be a case for mentioning a bit more about the various missions in the UN mediation section of this article, but no more than mentions. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:50, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
• Yes - The UN mediation, McNaughton proposals, Dixon Mission, Graham mediation and Menzies proposal are an undisputed part of the history of the Kashmir conflict and are covered as part of the Kashmir conflict's history in multiple scholarly sources, including Victoria Schofield's source which is accepted as an authoritative account of the conflict.. There can be no doubt that the history of the Kashmir conflict is relevant and WP:DUE.

Since multiple reliable sources treat this as a part of the Kashmir conflict's history it is WP:DUE. It also smacks of double standards to exclude the history of the Kashmir conflict and instead fill up its space with sections like Dixon plan, 1950 military standoff and Nehru's plebiscite offer which are only some bits and pieces of Kashmir conflict's history slyly stitched together to support a POV which is not supported in the majority of the reliable sources. One can't have it both ways.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 18:57, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

• No per WP:UNDUE. The subject can be covered but not that much material and the contributors will have to find consensus language. Chris Troutman (talk) 04:32, 7 December 2017 (UTC) pinged by bot. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 03:13, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

• Yes, Indeed proposals should be implemented.Jogi 007 (talk) 09:49, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

because...? —MBL ^Talk 10:38, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

• Yes, There can be no doubt it is relevant and important part of the history of the Kashmir conflict. A more detailed explanation was provided. Dilpa kaur (talk) 15:32, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
• No per Chris troutman. —MBL ^Talk 05:30, 25 December 2017 (UTC)
• No per Chris. (Summoned by bot) L3X1 (distænt write) 15:03, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
• Yes, Professor Michael Brecher has devoted entire chapters to the McNaughton Proposals and Graham mediation (all ultimately a part of the UN mediation) in his history of the Kashmir Conflict. These two are also amply covered in multiple reliable sources and the authoritative accounts such as Schofield and detailed accounts such as Das Gupta also give wide coverage to these as important parts of the Kashmir conflict's history.Arslan-San (talk) 10:29, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Rfc on Dixon Plan, 1950 military standoff and Nehru’s plebiscite offer

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

• Summary-NOutright removal ain't happening.No Consensus as to the finer issues of POV slant etc.
• Reason(s)-The events, irrespective of the finer details, (which somewhat varies across the versions of different scholars) has been quite-prominently covered in a plethora of sources.Quite-valid point(s) about reliability of sources and neutrality of coverage has been raised that but the current version is miles afar from nukeable.
• Way forward-Thus, the editors on both sides of the fence are requested to take the issue of reliability of Raghavan & Shankar as a source to RSN, pending which they may choose to try to work towards an alternative text for these sections that will note all the viewpoints of the scholars, while lending a comprehensive coverage of the issue but with due regards to WP:DUE.
• Signed by-Winged Blades^Godric at 16:17, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

---

Should the sections #Dixon Plan, #1950 military standoff and #Nehru's plebiscite offer be allowed to remain? The discussion on these are above. KA$HMIR (talk) 15:18, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

I've modified the RfC question to make it consistent with the guidelines: it needs to be neutral and self-contained (without relying on information from the section heading). – Uanfala (talk) 20:26, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Comments

• No -

Nehru’s plebiscite offer is a POV fork lifted out of Shankar’s journal article which was accepted by uninvolved editors, on a previous fringe theory noticeboard discussion, as undue. Shankar’s conclusion states that most important accounts agree on Nehru’s culpability n the Kashmir conflict’s persistence and throughout his paper presents his position as a ‘’revisionist’’ position which does not have acceptance in the wider scholarly community. The only other source which seems to second Shankar’s revisionist account is Srinath Raghavan who is linked to both the Indian government and Indian army, thus is not a WP:INDEPENDENT source and his account of India’s Kashmir policy is noted by scholar Kristina Roepstorff as not conforming to the traditionalist account, which also makes him WP:UNDUE. So a replacement title could be ‘Indian intransigence’ because the narrative in most reliable sources is that plebiscite did not happen because of India/Nehru intransigence, and Wikipedia’s duty is to follow the narrative of most reliable sources when presenting information to readers on a given topic.

The Dixon plan was a mere proposal during the Dixon Mission when Sir Owen Dixon came to implement McNaughton’s demilitarization proposals. Dixon proposed a number of demilitarization schemes which were rejected by India. Only once India rejected all of Dixon’s proposals did the Dixon ‘plan’ come up. The amount of space it has been given is WP:UNDUE and the article should cover the entre Dixon Mission, in summary form. The exclusion of Dixon Mission and over emphasis on Dixon plan is obviously a pro-India POV push because its designed to whitewash India’s negative role in the developments which could have otherwise allowed a plebiscite. The only justifications provided for the POV fork so far have indicated an aim of WP:PROPAGANDA.

1950 military standoff is another POV fork. It is taken from the narrative of the revisionist WP:UNDUE accounts of Shankar and Raghavan who built a theory of Pakistani aggressiveness to support their revisionist conclusion that India backed away from its verbal commitment to plebiscite on the basis that it feared Pakistani aggressiveness. This is not, however, the conclusion in the majority of the reliable sources. It is also WP:UNDUE considering that the scholarly treatment of Kashmir Conflict’s history delves into chapters such as McNaughton proposals, Dixon Mission, Graham mediation and Commonwealth proposals. The 1950 military standoff is also mentioned in scholarly sources but has the same amount of space in the sources as the stages I have mentioned in the previous sentence. KA$HMIR (talk) 16:01, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

• Yes - The three sections mentioned must remain. (I have no idea what "POV forks" refer to.) In turn, the case for their inclusion is as follows:

  Dixon Plan - covered in recent scholarly sources such as Christopher Snedden. A. G. Noorani, a constitutional scholar and a sympathiser of the Kashmiri cause, has devoted an entire column for discussing the plan and its contemporary relevance. So did Paul Bowers in a research note to the British House of Commons. We should also note that rather than placing the blame on India for the failure of demilitarisation proposals, Snedden says: Given these factors, plus the strong India-Pakistan rivalry and antipathy and their inability to agree on very much, Dixon determined that a plebiscite throughout J&K was no longer viable. Snedden does focus on the "Dixon Plan" that followed the failure of demilitarisation.

  1950 military standoff - The fact that Pakistan appeared ready to resume hostilities in 1950 is mentioned in multiple sources. Moreover, the standoff had knock-on effect on later events, Nehru's withdrawal of the plebiscite offer in 1954 citing Pakistan's belligerence, and Pakistan's signing of Mutual Defence pact with the US citing India's "aggressive posture". So I think this discussion must remain to form the thread of development.

  Nehru's plebiscite offer - Again, it is discussed in multiple reliable sources including Gowher Rizvi from which I quoted in the above discussion. Rizvi also tells us that Nehru offered "virtually everything" that Pakistan had been demanding since 1947, without asking Pakistan to withdraw from the territory it controlled. This was a truly major concession. See also Howard B. Schaffer: This was the farthest India had ever gone in offering concessions to Pakistan on Kashmir. I don't see how it can be omitted. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:23, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

References

Dixon plan-if its covered in scholarly sources then that is even more reason to delete and replace it with the section of Dixon mission as the scholarly sources cover the Dixon 'plan' as part of the Dixon Mission. It is not treated as a stand-alone. One Indian writer even calls the Dixon plan the 'last resort' in the Dixon mission. The emphasis being placed on the Dixon plan is POV pushing and not an honest documentation of Kashmir conflict's history. Worse still, whats currently written about the Dixon plan does not properly document India's responsibility for the ultimate failure of the Dixon plan and is written to suit a pro-India POV.

It is interesting you bring up A.G. Noorani although you choose to ignore that part of his analysis which is part of the mainstream discourse (Indian intransigence on plebiscite).

1950 military standoff-is written from the perspective of a non:WP:INDEPENDENT writer Raghavan who you yourself accept as representing India's security perspective. Most reliable sources do not describe the 1950 military standoff the way the Indian government's official historian describes it. Here are other accounts of the military standoff, the first by an Indian analyst. The second is from a neutral historian who is accepted as an authority on the Kashmir conflict.

In 1950 and again in 1951, for example, India and Pakistan had again teetered on the brink of war, In 1950, communal riots were raging in the Indian border states of West Bengal and Tripura and in the eastern wing of Pakistan. The riots drove several hundred thousand Hindu refugees from East Pakistan into West Bengal and about the same number of Muslim refugees from Bengal and Tripura into East Pakistan...In an attempt to nudge Pakistan on the refugee and Kashmir questions, India massed troops along its border with West Pakistan, setting off alarms in Karachi about the danger of an impending conflict. The second crisis, in 1951, emerged from Pakistani allegations of Indian troop concentrations along the Indo-Pakistani border in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The crisis dissipated after an exchange of acrimonious letters between Nehru and Liaquat in which each side accused the other of having precipitated the crisis.

By the summer there was a significant concentration of Indian troops along the borders of West Pakistan and genuine concern that the two countries might again resort to war.

With such descriptions there is no space for non-WP:INDEPENDENT Raghavan's rubbish that India massed troops along its borders with West (strangely not the East where there was a minority problem) Pakistan and along the ceasefire line in Kashmir because of outbursts by the Pakistani media and their government's lower echelons. I did not know our government ever based our foreign policy on threats from the Pakistani media. Surely we were never that weak and paranoid. We have always been stronger than Pakistan.

Nehru's plebiscite offer is obviously based upon a POV which is a minority discourse (Shankar, Raghavan and Rizvi being the proponents of this theory which Shankar accepts as revisionist and which scholarly reviewers observe as being a non-traditionalist position among scholars) among the reliable sources. It is WP:UNDUE at best and POV pushing at worst. The facts of history, keeping in mind WP:YESPOV, are that there were negotiations where a plebiscite agreement was reached until India turned around at the US-Pakistan Defence pact despite being offered a similar deal by the US without a pact. After that there are only speculations.

The revisionist theory that India was backed away from the plebiscite due to its supposed fears of Pakistan is what is being pushed through this section. It would be better replaced with the Indian scholar Noorani's analysis of Indian dishonesty from the very start in its 'commitment' - whatever it was worth - to a plebiscite, as that at least is the mainstream view and the rightful WP:DUE content. Dilpa kaur (talk) 14:59, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Dilpa kaur, the comments here should be limited to the RfC question, and not wander into content discussion (content covered, sources used etc.) Please keep in mind also WP:TLDR.

Dixon Plan - The two recent sources (Snedden and Bowers) have sections titled Dixon Plan, not Dixon Mission. With the distance of time, the importance and emphasis on the material changes. At the current time, the Dixon Plan is important, the Dixon Mission not so.

1950 military standoff - Your comments do not pertain to the RfC question.

Nehru's plebiscite offer - Amply covered in notable HISTRS (Srinath Raghavan and Gowher Rizvi) and therefore DUE. Shankar is only summarised in a single sentence as agreed at WP:FTN; I don't see the issue with that. We should not pretend that we have surveyed the entire literature on the subject and have an assessment of "majority" or "minority". -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:17, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

References

• Rather than linking non-binding essays you should keep in mind that this is meant to be an interest-free informative section on the history of Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan, not a research paper on what parts of history to learn lessons from. We are supposed to summarise the history of the India-Pakistan conflict here, not push POV of what could have been the best solution. Also your arguments are contradictory. If being in scholarly sources makes something WP:DUE, then by the same rationale Dixon Mission should be there as should be McNaughton proposals and the scholarly and diplomatic assessments of Indian dishonesty. Surveying minority/majority views is indeed not our job, you can leave that determination to the scholars such as Mahesh and Kristina who can tell us what are the traditionalist and most important accounts of the Kashmir dispute. Your detracting comments about 1950 military standoff do not stick because the standoff needs to be represented with a WP:BALANCE of WP:RS. In that case Dilpa kaur's comments and quotes of the diverse sources are right. KA$HMIR (talk) 17:30, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

• No -These sections are WP:PROPAGANDA and are written in a way to make the article follow a particular POV. According to WP:NPOV the article should instead follow the narrative curve in the majority of reliable sources; which is that of Indian intransigence in most important accounts and in the scholarly community (Shankar's article admits this). These three sections have been filled up with minority POVs and undue sources instead of giving a general overview of the Kashmir conflict's history.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 18:58, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
• Yes I'm not seeing the POV-tilt others are claiming. If there are discussions at WP:RSN prohibiting a source we could discuss that. Otherwise, I think claims of bias are coming from editors who themselves are biased. Chris Troutman (talk) 04:37, 7 December 2017 (UTC) pinged by bot. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 03:10, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
• Yes if anything that needs to be removed or shortened, it would be details of wars that appears after these 3 sections. Though these three sections are pretty important. Capitals00 (talk) 14:18, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

• No -I have been researching and investigating this contentious topics a great deal lately. And I will have to register my agreement with those asking for these sections to be overhauled. I will also give a brief examination of these contentious sections.

The basic history of the Kashmir conflict was that McNaughton proposed demilitarization scheme which India rejected and the Pakistanis accepted. Sir Owen Dixon was sent to implement McNaughton’s proposal. He came up with a number of demilitarization schemes to implement for the holding of a plebiscite. India rejected them. Then came Dixon’s regional plebiscite proposal which Pakistan did not accept because it wanted a statewide plebiscite, but ultimately it was India which rejected the Dixon plan for various reasons, chief among them being the issue of government ‘’and’’ the issue of demilitarization. Dixon was succeeded by Frank Graham who also had the task of proposing demilitarization schemes to ensure the holding of a plebiscite. The two countries could not agree. Then the Commonwealth got involved and proposed its own demilitarization scheme so that a plebiscite could be held. Pakistan accepted the Commonwealth proposals. India did not. By 1954 the Indian and Pakistani prime ministers held what are commonly called the ‘Nehru-Bogra talks’ and both agreed on holding a plebiscite. Then India abandoned the results of these talks because of the US-Pakistan Defence pact. These are the facts of history, documented in multiple WP:RS for example Schofield and Das Gupta.

After this historians enter into speculations. Speculations on the parties’ motives for each decision. Wikipedia’s WP:NPOV policy dictates stating facts as facts and opinions as opinions. Unfortunately these three sections have very little facts and more opinion. Opinion belonging to Shankar and Raghavan, both of whom are authors with multiple issues, as outlined by KA$HMIR and NadirAli.

Shankar has been accepted on a fringe theory noticeboard thread as WP:UNDUE, and also accepts in his own work that his position is not the main view in the field.

1. (Based on primary documentation, this article explores Nehru’s role in why a plebiscite was never held, and was eventually abandoned by the Indian government. It particularly addresses critics’ claims—in Pakistan and in the scholarly community—that the failure of the plebiscite option owed itself solely to Nehru’s intransigence. By this account, India’s first prime minister was never completely sincere in his commitment to a plebiscite, and had very early on determined that such a vote would not be held, a conviction that ostensibly strengthened as it became clear that India was losing the hearts and minds of a critical mass of the Kashmiri people and leadership, especially in the Kashmir valley)

2. Most prominent accounts of the Kashmir dispute attribute Nehru’s role in the failure to achieve peace to the immense nationalist, strategic, and even emotional value India’s first prime minister attached to the territory. To critics of Nehru, such high stakes created a sense of indivisibility about the disputed territory that naturally engendered an intransigence, and even insincerity, in how the Indian government of the time addressed the dispute both bilaterally and in international forums. )

3. Scholars have similarly pointed to Nehru’s occasional expression of skepticism about the wisdom and practicality of holding a plebiscite

Meanwhile Raghavan is also observed to be advocating a ‘non-traditional’ positon (Raghavan goes beyond the prevailing polarising accounts of traditionalist and revisionist scholars of Indian history. According to traditionalist historians, Nehru was a naive idealist whose policies on Kashmir and China were “flaccid and inept” (p. 2), responsible for the persistence of conflict in both cases. Revisionist historians, on the other hand, depict him as “a mindless and arrogant hardliner” (p. 2) who was all too ready to use force in handling these crises. Both accounts criticise the lack of realism in Nehru’s foreign policy. Raghavan challenges these two competing accounts, arguing that it was the combination of liberalism and realism that shaped Nehru’s sophisticated crisis management strategy. ) and is not a WP:INDEPENDENT source because he is linked to the Indian government.

In ‘Dixon plan’ we have 6 sources, 3 of whom are either Raghavan or Shankar. In ‘1950 military standoff’ we have again 6 citations, 4 of them being either Raghavan or Shankar. There are 9 citations in ‘Nehru’s plebiscite offer’, of whom 7 are Raghavan and Shankar. Whoever wrote these three sections obviously did not keep in mind WP:BALANCE and WP:DUE.

These three sections are obvious WP:PROPAGANDA and do not treat the history of the Kashmir conflict as they are treated in the main accounts of the Kashmir conflict. They are POV forks based on the Raghavan and Shankar accounts.

The main discourse among the reliable sources is that a plebiscite in Kashmir never happened because of Indian intransigence. Good faith WP:NPOV- adhering Wikipedians, I believe, will do their utmost to uphold the dominant discourse in WP:RS, in the article. But the purpose of these three sections is to minimize the facts of Dixon Mission, McNaughton because the facts in these parts of the conflict’s history obviously lead the ordinary reader to conclude that India was being intransigent on the plebiscite when it rejected all the demilitarization proposals which could have otherwise paved a way for the Kashmir conflict’s settlement. Shankar, of the ‘’minority’’ POV also admits in his apologist account that India laid obstacles to the demilitarization process.

Rather, the Indian obstacles to the plebiscite—pre-conditions regarding demilitarization and the political dispensation in the state—were motivated not by a desire to stall the process altogether, but by fear that making concessions on those issues would carry with them strategic and reputational costs in the Kashmir theater that would be easily exploited by a Pakistan that had already demonstrated hostile intentions.

Yes he does theorize in his revisionist article that these obstacles were not because of Indian ‘intransigence’, but even he ‘’admits’’ that India laid obstacles. So the obstacles India laid to the holding of a plebiscite also needs to be covered and they will be covered by incorporating the UN mediation where India’s dishonesty and intransigence was laid bare, instead of these three POV forks which aim to make India look honest and Pakistan the aggressor.

Lets take a look at what these three POV forks contain. There’s no mention in Dixon Plan that India rejected all the demilitarization proposals but there’s this sentence from a NON-WP:HISTRS political scientist Christopher Snedden that Pakistan ‘bluntly rejected’ the proposal. But there’s no mention that it was ultimately India which rejected the Dixon plan. (Since Dixon's proposals for a limited plebiscite were in fact rejected by Nehru, essentially over the means of administering such a plebiscite) Instead we have WP:WEASEL wording ‘It was not acceptable to India’ to describe India’s role in the failure of the Dixon plan. This is obvious WP:POV pushing.

1950 military standoff, basically the second paragraph in it, aims to make Pakistan look like the sole aggressor and is sourced to Raghavan whose background is in the Indian military and is obviously not a WP:INDEPENDENT source. It also fails WP:NPOV because the description of these tensions is more nuanced in other WP:RS which do not suffer from not being WP:INDEPENDENT unlike Raghavan. Pakistan is not considered solely responsible for the 1950 military tensions in all or most of the WP:RS.

Nehru’s plebiscite offer aims to show India in a good and honest light, in contradiction to the narrative in most WP:RS which attribute the Kashmir conflict’s persistence to India and Nehru’s policy. It is primarily sourced to the WP:UNDUE Shankar. Yet a reading of maximum sources tell us that far from it being an ‘offer’ there were talks between the Indian and Pakistani Prime Ministers Nehru and Bogra where they had virtually agreed to holding a plebiscite. Pakistan even accepted India’s demand of removing a pro-Pakistan American general from the potential role of plebiscite administrator. This POV fork does not mention it, presumably because it does not fit the minority narrative of Indian good faith.

The breakthrough in the Nehru-Bogra talks was holding a plebiscite and India abandoned its plebiscite commitment upon the signing of the US-Pakistan Defence pact. Because this POV fork is based on the WP:UNDUE analysis of Shankar, there’s no space in it for the fact that the USA offered to supply India with similar weaponry to Pakistan. A fact which is documented in WP:RS. This POV fork only provides space to skewed facts supporting a minority POV. Dilpa kaur (talk) 19:34, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

@Dilpa kaur: thanks for joining in this discussion. Please note that I have indicated in my !vote above other sources that discuss these topics, not only Raghavan and Shankar (whom you seem to object to). Since the discussion is about whether these sections should be deleted, the criteria to follow would be similar to those for WP:AfD, in particular WP:NEXIST. Secondly, I am wondering why you call these sections "POV forks"? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 03:40, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

I was also gratified to see your commitment to WP:HISTRS. So perhaps you will pay attention to this true blooded historian, born and bred in Pakistan, who says:

The reasons for referring the Kashmir dispute to the Security Council was not because [Nehru] wanted to procrastinate behind the U.N. shield but because he was anxious to get the Pakistani tribesmen and regular forces out of the territory so that the promised plebiscite could be held as soon as possible. There is no reason to doubt Nehru's sincerity. He was concerned that if "Pakistan's communal approach was to prevail in Kashmir, it would not only be a tragedy for Kashmir, but it would upset the whole scheme of things in India, and of course, in Pakistan. We would enter a phase of trying to exterminate each other".[34] Nehru was convinced of the right of the people of Kashmir to self-determination but could not agree to their incorporation into Pakistan simply on grounds that the majority of the people were Muslims. This would, he argued, have an adverse impact on over 60 million Muslims who had chosen (or had no choice but) to remain behind in India, would boost the sectarian forces in the country and make amicable relationship with Pakistan impossible.

What do you say to this? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 05:45, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

References

There's nothing of substance here except that someone else follows the minority POV. You need to acquaint yourself very thoroughly with Wikipedia's WP:NPOV, [[WP:WEIGHT], WP:DUE and WP:BALANCE policies. The most prominent accounts, and traditionalist historians, not Mr Rizvi, will fit the bill. Dilpa kaur (talk) 16:22, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

References

• No -I concur with Dilpa Kaur. These three sections are POV forks based off the narratives of WP:UNDUE and non-WP-INDEPENDENT sources and are designed to defy the narrative in the majority of reliable sources, to skew the history of the Kashmir conflict in India’s favour. Danish Mehraj 13:34, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

• No.. Jogi 007 (talk) 09:15, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

@JogiAsad: I'd like to remind you that RfC is not a vote. —MBL ^Talk 10:42, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

• Yes. I see plenty of complaints of PoV in the three sections, but no reasons for their removal. If they are biased, it does not justify their removal, the bias should be corrected. And, to repeat Kautilya3's question, what is a "POV fork"? Maproom (talk) 11:20, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

• Maproom. Being also opposed to these sections I will tell you a POV fork ″is created to be developed according to a particular point of view.″ POV forks by nature only allow for the development and support of a biased POV, so you can't 'fix' bias. In this case the POV forks are based on, mostly sourced to, and only allow for the pushing of revisionist and non-traditionalist POV which goes against the majority of the reliable sources n this field. KA$HMIR (talk) 17:02, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

• Yes – since they are amply covered in multiple high-quality reliable sources.[3][4][5][6] [7][8][9][10] —MBL ^Talk 05:31, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

• No, these are POV forks designed to push the undue stream from the revisionist accounts and are not an honest summary of Kashmir conflict's history as covered in the dominant reliable accounts.Arslan-San (talk) 10:34, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

• No. It takes up space from a proper summary of kashmir conflict's history, as described in RS, and fills that space up with POV. These three sections look like an Indian narrative and written by someone smitten with one of Sir Owen Dixon's proposals and with a prejudice against Pakistan. Not an honest account of the history of the conflict. These sections should get deleted. Aamiriik (talk) 14:35, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, I guess. This is a really involved matter and I'm not well acquainted with the topic at all, but from what I'm seeing so far in the RfC, those who want the sections removed haven't really made the case for removing them: in fact, the events described there appear to be covered in a slew of sources, so simply omitting the topic altogether is off the table. What the problem appears to be instead is that the coverage in those sections is not deemed to be neutral enough (at least that's the point made in the lengthy "No" comments above). Frankly, I'm not seeing neutrality issues, but if this is the problem, then the way forward is to try to work towards an alternative text for these sections that will be acceptable to both sides. – Uanfala (talk) 15:18, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Uanfala, the neutrality issues can only be addressed by deleting these sections and rewriting the 1950s' history from scratch in a way which is neutral and acceptable to the neutral editor, its not possible to neutralise text when the very headings are tilted towards POV such as ″Nehru's plebiscite 'offer' ″ since the word ″offer″ pushes a POV of Indian goodwill and Dixon 'plan' instead of Dixon 'mission' is POV as the plan is only one part of the Dixon mission. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dilpa kaur (talk • contribs) 16:28, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Reverts by User:Mar4d to intro para improvements

Since User:Mar4d reverted my edits to intro paras and invited me to talkpage, I'm here. And I hope that this User will engage in healthy discussion rather than indulging in edit warring.

Here were my problems with previous intro paras:

1. "Crimes by militants have also happened but are not comparable in scale with the crimes of Indian forces" -- seriously? Wikipedia is a balanced encyclopedia. Most of the sources provided are by biased Pakistani authors (This is not Pak Defence forum). There is no denying of Indian atrocities, but lets use objective tone here.

2. 2 intro paras on J&K state elections and their turnout -- seriously? It doesn't deserve a mention in intro paras since the internal state elections have very little to do with the conflict (apart from 1987 election).

3. No mention of LoC and cross border skirmishes and confrontation

4. No mention of Siachen conflict

5. Very little mention of Kashmiri insurgent groups and their role in civilian attacks across South Asia -- only LeT was mentioned

6. No mention of JKLF??? Are you kidding me?

7. No mention of AFSPA

8. No mention of Kashmiri Hindi exodus

9. No mention of Instrument of Accession

10. And most importantly, the entire section was poorly written - very poor sentence formation and information flow

The previous intro para was written by people who had little idea regarding the history of the conflict and its critical events -- and was rather influenced by more recent events.

The revised intro paras included citations from Western neutral sources and had included various facts and critical information pertaining to the Kashmir conflict. The 2008 and 2014 elections have very little to do with the conflict.

Lastly, I do understand that some people come from areas still stuck in stone-age, but for the rest of us, change is inevitable and Wikipedia works on the model of continuous improvement. So, the "longstanding" argument doesn't hold.

--King Zebu (talk) 15:28, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

You hoped for a healthy discussion, but your own tone isnt anywhere near that. Anyhow, out of the 571 references provided in the article, can you exactly tell me how many are 'Pakistani'? You also said: "This is not Pak Defence forum" (whatever that is), but they way you are throwing around accusations, I think you need to go through the DS on this page. As regards your 'problems'with the intro para, you need to understand that you need to provided RS to support your argument, which you aint doing. The 10 points that you have raised, please provide RS to support them, then acquire WP:CONSENSUS, and I'll be glad to have them incorporated into the article. Thnx.—TripWire ︢ ︢ ︡ ︢ ︡ ︢ ︡ ︢ ︡ ︡ ︢ ︡  ^ʞlɐʇ 07:17, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

• Comment - Heaven knows that the previous/current LEAD is ancient and POV-ridden, badly needing a rewrite. But I don't think it can be rewritten by fiat. WP:CONSENSUS would be necessary. I have no great objection to the issues that King Zebu wants to highlight, but I don't necessarily think it brings us much closer to WP:NPOV. The basic problem with the lead, as well as the current state of the article, is that it misses the point that the "Kashmir conflict" is a multi-layered one, at the international level, at the federal (centre-state) level, and the regional (intra-state) level. The current lead at least makes a half-hearted attempt to get there. (See the third paragraph.) The proposed new lead missed it again. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:50, 5 February 2018 (UTC)