THE EDIT WARS

How Wikipedia earned the ire of the Hindu Right

- NISHANT KAUNTIA

“IT MIGHT BE AWKWARD, but please don’t scroll past this.” In July this year, the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation launched a donation campaign in India. A banner pinned at the top of every Wikipedia article noted that fewer than two percent of users made donations and that, if those who saw the banner would contribute R150 each, the online encyclopedia “could keep thriving for years.”

For an open-source collaborative website that does not carry any advertising, the appeal was business as usual. The Wikimedia Foundation relies on contributions to maintain the website and its servers, as well as to pay its employees. According to the foundation’s financial statement for 2018–19, it raised nearly $111 million in donations and contributions, accounting for over ninety percent of its total revenue in the fiscal year. The campaign, however, was met with stiff opposition from right-wing figures in India. Accusing the website of being “full of editors who are biased, anti-Hindu and anti-India,” the columnist Shefali Vaidya tweeted to her half a million followers, “#StopFundingHate do NOT donate to @Wikipedia or @PetaIndia. They use YOUR money against you—to peddle Hindu hatred.”