Talk:Battle of Kup

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Wadda Ghallughara

2nd Sikh Holocaust happened in 1762 Tawarikh Guru Khalsa (talk) 07:47, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Battle of kup

What a none sense. correct afghan army size. and also correct the Sikh army size. I have many references of 18centory. the afghan force only has 12k to 14k or 30k.and sikh force once source says that sikh have 150k(army). One another sourcee of the 18th-century that sikh army has 200k. and women children in the battle this is only a myth. According to tahmas nama,150k sikh army According to sarul mutahrin sikh size have 2lakh And many more reference we have then correct your knowledge. 2404:3100:1007:A952:1:0:8907:D788 (talk) 17:23, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

If you have references, please link them. Please do not use 18th century works, ideally, we want 21st century texts published by experts in history. Southasianhistorian8 (talk) 02:21, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

1,Tahmas Khan, the author of Tahmas-nama in 18century.

2,-The Siyar-ul-Mutakherin, a history of the Mahomedan power in India during the last century.

3,-History of the Origin and Progress of the Sikhs by James Browne.

4 - Panth Prakash By Rattan Singh Bhangu (translated Into English By Kulwant Singh)

5 Waqiat i Durrani.

But you read tahmas nama and mutahrin and others books. 2404:3100:1004:D908:1:0:8A80:3DA8 (talk) 03:52, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

It's actually 12k to 14k or an updated version of 30k and the sikh total Army 150k or 200k.and women children are myth 2404:3100:1004:D908:1:0:8A80:3DA8 (talk) 03:55, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

We can't use these sources. They're too old. Southasianhistorian8 (talk) 04:21, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

What Wikipedia is not yours.don't write a false article .shame on these false Wikipedia editers. 2404:3100:1001:20F4:1:0:9211:91D7 (talk) 07:38, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Recent changes

@TrangaBellam can you please explain your recent edits to the page? CanadianSingh1469 (talk) 21:22, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:HISTRS. You cannot be using regional sources from barely known historians, journalists, God-knows-what, etc. Please consult publications in peer-reviewed journals, books by university presses, etc. TrangaBellam (talk) 00:11, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Most of the sources were from Universities. Most of the authors are well known. One of the sources most used on the page before your removal was from Oxford University Press. Is that unreliable? Another one is from Punjab University. Is that unreliable? Another was by. Hari Ram Gupta who was head of Panjab University's History department. Is he unreliable?

The article which you claim justifies your removal says, “This essay doesn't mean to imply that reliable non-scholarly sources are inappropriate or insufficient just because scholarly sources are available or potentially available. Finding and using scholarly sources is a best practice, not a requirement.”

Pinging @Suthasianhistorian8 @Twarikh e Khalsa and @ThethPunjabi for their input since they work in this area. CanadianSingh1469 (talk) 01:04, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

@CanadianSingh1469 @TrangaBellam

One of my main gripes with your recent changes is that you mass deleted large amounts of information from the article without consulting the talk page.It's important that when it comes to making major changes on articles, you need to first get the opinion and consensus of various editors in order to come to a final decision.Also i strongly disagree on your stance regarding "regional sources".If the source in question is published a university and is written by a Historian that does have credentials,than the information from the source itself can in fact be used.I personally think you should have only deleted sources that you couldn't confirm as being reliable while the keeping the info that is.Obviously the page has problems but i personally don't think it justifies you mass deleting information.Those are my thoughts I'm willing to listen on your thoughts aswell @TrangaBellam Twarikh e Khalsa (talk) 02:22, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

This is not a valid reason in the slightest. Any historical event is going to call upon the historians of that region, and your labeling of "barely known historians" seems like a very subjective label you can use against anything, because its a subjective metric. 2603:3015:577:100:B5DC:4A94:1EB6:72E2 (talk) 13:28, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for any confusion. I was logged out, this is my message. Usingh0663 (talk) 18:48, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

An analysis of sources

Please do not comment until the section is complete, which I will note. I appreciate your courtesy. Thanks. Here goes my evaluation of the sourcing in this article:

• Afghanistan at War: From the 18th-Century Durrani Dynasty to the 21st Century

• This is published by ABC-CLIO, a low grade publisher in social sciences.
• The volume editor is a certain Tom Lansford who is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern Mississippi with no training in Afghan history and whose area of expertise is cited as "International Security; the U.S. presidency; homeland security".
• The particular entry concerning our subject is drafted by Melodee Baines, a Training Professional at U.S. Department of Homeland Security, who did her PhD on International Political Economy on Morocco! Again, no training in Afghan history or a relevant topic.

• Bhatia, Sardar Singh. "Vadda Ghallurghara". Encyclopaedia of Sikhism. Punjabi University Patiala.

• [T]he pull of religious orthodoxy and popular sentiment was stronger, even among scholars, than was that of modern historical scholarship. This was due in part, as was pointed out at the time, to the fact that scholars in India had not been properly trained in religious studies. The strength of that pull was subsequently reflected in the multi-volume encyclopedia of Sikhism launched by Punjabi University at that tim under the general editorship of Professor Harbans Singh.

  In this new encyclopedia [Brill's Encyclopedia of Sikhism] that tension has been dealt with in a way that appears to represent a clear victory for modern critical scholarship [backhandedly implying that the previous one didn't.]
  — John C.B. Webster, reviewing Brill's EoSikhism, Vol. 1

• W. H. McLeod, doyen of Sikh Studies, agrees in his introduction to The A to Z of Sikhism. The encyclopedia was not written from a historical-critical method and despite much sound work, accepted traditional narratives at face value.
• Now, these are evaluations at large. McLeod himself had written some of the entries in the encyclopedia — so, we need to find the reliability of the author of the entry "Vadda Ghallurghara". I can find nothing on "Sardar Singh Bhatia" except that he was inducted as a Senior Research Fellow in the production of the fourth (and last) volume of the encyclopedia and that he edited a volume of essays titled The Sikh Tradition: A Continuing Reality (Essays in History and Religion) which has been cited twice since publication.

• Singh, Patwant (2007). The Sikhs. Random House Digital, Inc.

• Singh was a decent writer of broad-sweep trade histories — like the one being discussed — but these cannot be classed as rigorous academic scholarship which is a must, given the contentious nature of our subject.

• Sinha, Narendra (1936). Rise of the Sikh Power. University of Calcutta

• A source from 1936 that is, the days of British Raj?

• Khazan Singh (1914). History and Philosophy of the Sikh Religion

• Ditto. Atleast, Sinha was a proffessor at Calcutta University; Singh appears to be, ahem, a colonial bureaucrat!

• Singh, Bhagat Lakshman (1923). Sikh Martyrs. Lahore Book Shop.

• Ditto. Besides, Singh was a Sikh reformer (great!) and I am not sure how does that confer academic reliability.

• Syad Muhammad Latif, The History of Punjab from the Remotest Antiquity to the Present Time

• Ditto, this source being from 1891.

• Kalaswalia, Kartar Singh. Teg Khalsa (in Punjabi) (10th ed.). Bazar Mai Sewan, Amritsar: Chatar Singh Jiwan Singh Pustakan Wale

• Under no circumstances we are going to accept a vernacular source, about 80 years old, from a publisher of no renown. Kalaswalia had no academic training either and was a Granthi.

• Shani, Giorgio (6 December 2007). Sikh Nationalism and Identity in a Global Age. Routledge

• This is undoubtedly a reliable source but not for the purpose of enumerating the casualty count in a historical battle.
  The only reason this exists is because of POV-pushing; somebody wished to support a particular count and went about gathering any and all sources that mentioned the figure. See "Backward Editing" on Levivich's u/p.

• Sandhu, Gian Singh (28 March 2023). Who Are the Sikhs?: An Exploration of the Beliefs, Practices, & Traditions of the Sikh People. Archway Publishing.

• Self-published source.

• Sobati, Haracaran (1990). The Sikh Psyche: A Study of the Fictional Writings of Bhai Vir Singh. Eastern Book Linkers.

• Cited in only three works since publication. Neither the publisher nor the author — notwithstanding his academic qualifications and career — commands any significant repute. Unsure, I am, on the reliability but wise to not use for extraordinary claims like the one in the article.

• Singh, Ganda (1959). Ahmad Shah Durrani, father of modern Afghanistan. Asia Publishing House, Bombay.

• Jagjeet Lally views this work as highly comprehensive — after all, Singh was a trained historian — but also unbearably hagiographic.
• Mujeeb Rahimi's magisterial State Formation in Afghanistan: A Theoretical and Political History has much to offer:

  Another good example of state-sponsored work in English, to my understanding, is the biography of Ahmad Shah Abdali by Ganda Singh. I assume this is the most extensive work yet undertaken in English to explore the life of Ahmad Khan Durrani. The book has been written in close collaboration with the Afghan government, as is evident from the foreword, acknowledgements and the sources. It has been used widely by English writers as a valid reference, as is noticed in Dupree and Gregorian’s work. A close look at the methodology, and some of the narratives of the book, makes one wonder at the acceptance of the book as academic research. It is merely a reflection of the official discourse on Afghanistan, the Afghans and the other nodal points of the narrative.

  Endnote: [O]n one hand, [the content] shows the sort of sources on which [Ganda Singh] relies in narrating historical events, and on the other, indicates how PhD research was conducted at the time.
  — p. 124-125

• I wonder how other than by excising the source, we as wikipedians, can separate the wheat from the chaff.

• Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs

• This was published in 1963; a second edition came out in the 90s but that had only to do with including recent Khalistani affairs
• We are again dealing with a trade-book; Singh had no academic training in history and never held any academic position either. Singh failed to master historical methods — see Broomfield's scathing review about the work being as good as a century-old colonial history or I might quote McLeod himself who had helpfully summarized other reviews:

  Sardar Khushwant Singh's first volume has already been reviewed in several periodicals, but almost all of the reviews seen by the present reviewer have concentrated upon the second and third sections of the book (the post-Guru period). The principal criticism which has been made of these two sections is that they offer little more than a chronicle of political events and of the activities of the soldiery. Social conditions and religious development are largely ignored, and little effort is made to analyse the events which are recorded. The criticism is a valid one, but having been made several times it requires no repetition.

  [McLeod focuses on the first section and notes severe issues of translation, interpretation, etc.]

  A history of the Sikhs is certainly needed and Khushwant Singh has provided us with a highly readable one. It is as good as any other attempt in the same field, but it is not a field where the competition is severe. Something appreciably better was required and this we have not been given.
  — McLeod, W. (1966). A History of the Sikhs. Vol. 1: 1469–1839. By Khushwant Singh, pp. xiii, 419. Princeton, Princeton University Press; London, Oxford University Press, 1963. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 98(1), 85-86.

PLEASE DO NOT rebut my analysis in this section; post your comments in the one below. TrangaBellam (talk) 11:23, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Now, how does usage of borderline-unreliable sources — in particular, Ganda Singh — affect our content? I will show two examples:

TrangaBellam (talk) 16:46, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Response to Analysis

@TrangaBellam Can you please share an excerpt from rahimis source that criticizes Ganda Singhs work? Thanks Twarikh e Khalsa (talk) 16:17, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, done. TrangaBellam (talk) 16:36, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

@TrangaBellamThank you Twarikh e Khalsa (talk) 16:39, 29 July 2023 (UTC)