On Oct 19th, we attended a session by Nupur Sharma (OpIndia’s Editor in Chief) about how Wikipedia is not a “free-to-edit” encyclopedia. There is a lot of bias, both religious and political, which is nearly impossible to fix. When the Delhi riots happened, Wikipedia blatantly peddled fake news and I just checked before writing this blog – it continues the fake news to this day !!!
Do read the blogpost of mine from 2020 – Anti-India Riots in Delhi. Several accused of the Delhi riots are still in prison. The entire anti-CAA Delhi riots of 2020 were planned and executed to destabilise India. It’s a relief to know they didnt succeed totally.
In Aug 2020, Wikipedia started campaigning for donations. I had again written at that time – Should you Donate to Wikipedia?. And short answer – please don’t donate to Wikipedia especially if you are an Indian, because they are clearly anti-India.
Am re-posting a brief summary of OpIndia’s dossier on Wikipedia. Do read it. If you wish to read the entire research paper click here – Wikipedia’s War on India: A detailed dossier on how Wikipedia has become a Left propaganda tool against India
Brief summary of OpIndia’s Dossier on Wikipedia and its War on India.
Wikipedia claims that it is a free-to-edit Encyclopedia which depends on the ‘wisdom of the crowds’. However, the OpIndia research has shown that all the information on Wikipedia is controlled by a small group of people across the world. According to the dossier, there are only a handful of people who have the ultimate say in what content is added and what isn’t. It is also a handful of people who have the power to ban edits, ban editors, decide disputes, delete pages, lock pages, override content etc. There are merely 435 active administrators across the world who have sweeping powers. There are only 10 active members of ArbCom. It is also true that there are many editors and administrators who are actively paid by Wikimedia Foundation under the ‘editor retention program’. Further, Wikimedia Foundation pays many of them under the garb of giving them grants for projects. This, therefore, means that Wikipedia indeed has a solid hierarchy just as any other publishing house with strict editorial control and editorial lines that the editors and administrators’ toe.
There exists a formal business association between Google and Wikimedia with Google giving millions in grants to Wikimedia Foundation. With Google using Wikipedia to generate knowledge panels, the slanderous content on Wikipedia essentially becomes a “fact-sheet” for the relevant public person and/or organisation. Most of the times, such contentious pages about public persons and organisations are locked – which is to say that only a handful of editors and administrators would be able to edit it. Eventually, if someone attempts to correct the information or rectify the bias in the page, they are bullied, with their edits reverted and sometimes, the editors themselves banned by the administrators or senior editors. The result is that the slanderous information which Google drawn on is never rectified.
Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, has millions in donations and grants. The Endowment Fund and its assets are enough to ensure Wikipedia sustains for at least 75 years. According to the Wikimedia Endowment Fund page current, here are some notable patrons of the Tide Foundation run endowment fund which is noteworthy: Amazon – $5 million +, Google.org – $2 million +, George Soros – $2 million +, Musk Foundation – $2 million +, Facebook – $1 million +, The Rothschild Foundation – $50,000 +
In turn, Wikimedia Foundation funds Left editors, administrators and NGOs. Given that Wikimedia Foundation has a surplus of funds, which it collects in the name of Wikipedia, it becomes important to analyse where that money is going if not in “keeping Wikipedia alive”, as it claims. The Tides Foundation and the Wikimedia Foundation provides donations and grants to several anti-India and anti-Hindu organisation and elements. Tides Foundation has given grants to Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR) which has links to Islamists and Khalistanis and was formed in 2019 by two Islamist advocacy groups, Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) and Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI), Association for India’s Development (AID) which has campaigned for Naxal Binayak Sen, funded Arvind Kejriwal’s NGO and also has connection to separatists. Further, Tides has funded AMAN Public Charitable Trust (AMAN) – The trust lists several prominent organizations as partners, including the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, Tides Foundation, Ford Foundation, Oxfam, European Commission for Humanitarian Organisations, and others. Aman has received funding from the Tides Foundation, which has been linked to various organizations that promote left-leaning agendas, including anti-Hindu and anti-India narratives.
Aman Public Charitable Trust is connected to the NewsClick-China funding scandal, where it is alleged that Chinese entities funded NewsClick to disrupt Indian sovereignty. NewsClick’s founder, Prabir Purkayastha, was arrested on charges of receiving more than ₹80 crore from Chinese companies. Dilip Simeon, the Chairman of Aman Public Charitable Trust, was named in the NewsClick FIR by Delhi Police for his involvement in attempts to sabotage India’s 2019 General Elections. Tides Foundation also has worked with Alliance India, which is chaired by DY Qureshi. Links have also emerged in the research with the OCCRP, George Soros and the Adani Attack.
Tides Foundation is an organisation which funds several Left organisations, NGOs and causes. It is pertinent to note that recently, it was revealed that it was indeed the Tides Foundation, largely espoused by George Soros, which was funding the pro-Hamas protests in US Universities. As it turns out, Tides Foundation is also funding extremely nefarious elements in India, including individuals and NGOs. As we have seen, Tides Foundation has links to Islamist and Naxal supporting outfits.
Wikimedia Foundation, while it has no presence in India, funds several organisations, which promote narratives against the interest of India. It also pays several organisations to further the business interest of Wikimedia Foundation in India, without being present in India. Wikimedia Foundation funds Arts+Feminism which spread fake news about CAA in India, leading to violence. It also funds Whose Knowledge, which in turn is connected with Equality Labs and Black Lunch Table. It also funds Black Lunch Table separately.
It is pertinent to note that Whose Knowledge, funded by Wikimedia Foundation partners with Art+Feminism, Equality Labs and CIS – all of which receives funds from the Wikimedia Foundation among others. It also partners with ‘Black Lunch Table’ – which is also funded by Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimedia Foundation also funds Access Now. On the Board of Access Now is Seema Chisti. According to their website, “Seema Chishti has been a multimedia journalist since 1990, working in print, radio, and television in English and Hindi. She was Editor, Delhi with BBC (India) from 1996 to 2006. Prior to this, she worked with BBC World Service in London (1994-96) and in the television format at HTV (1990-93). Chishti has been a senior editor with The Indian Express (2006-2020).
Seema Chisti, who is the wife of Communist Sitaram Yechury and editor of TheWire, is also an advisor at National Foundation for India – which funds AMAN (as explained in the previous section) along with Tides Foundation, Ford Foundation and others. Other advisors include Dhanya Rajendran of The News Minute and P Sainath. Interestingly, Dhanya Rajendran and P Sainath, both have featured prominently in the NewsClick-China funding case (AMAN was also connected to the NewsClick-China funding case as detailed in the Dossier).
Wikimedia Foundation, as we would see later, has no presence in India. It has declared in the BBC documentary controversy that it is a foreign entity and therefore, Indian courts have no jurisdiction over it. Despite having no presence in India, it has consistently funded entities and individuals to further its own business and ideological interests in India. Many of these entities that are funded by Wikimedia Foundation are patently anti-India and have association with Islamists and Khalistanis.
Wikimedia Foundation regularly solicits donations from India. That donation, since it comes from individuals, it not against the law. However, Wikimedia not only takes donations from India, it spends millions of dollars in India as well. All of this, while refusing to submit to Indian laws. While it continues to toe a rigid editorial line on Wikipedia, it insists that it is an intermediary and not a publisher. 12. It is evident from this indicative list of edits that Wikipedia toes a distinct editorial line, many times, with the explicit funding of Wikimedia Foundation. As it turns out, even Newslinger has been funded by Wikimedia Foundation as we would see in the following section.
By definition, an intermediary is not supposed to follow a specific editorial line. It is meant to merely be a platform for the public to air their own views. However, that is not the case with Wikipedia. Firstly, as demonstrated, not everybody can air their views on Wikipedia. Secondly, only a small group of editors and administrators have the final say on the nature of content that is added in any articles, making the articles one-sided, biased, and toeing a specific ideological line. Thirdly, several of these so-called ‘volunteers’ are paid by the Wikimedia Foundation to further their ideological and business interests. And as we would see in the next section, the sources that are allowed to be quoted in Wikipedia articles also suffer the same bias, often injected by editors and administrators who are directly paid by Wikimedia Foundation. With all of these realities, Wikipedia does not fall under the intermediary category, but the publisher category – additionally – a publisher that is actively undermine the interest of India without following the law of India – financially or editorially.
In the edits and talk pages analysed, there is evidence that the editors who have been booked in Manipur for spreading disaffection (Kautilya3) and others like Newslinger (funded by Wikimedia Foundation) and Vanamonde93 have contributed significantly in keeping Wikipedia biased against India. In certain cases, like the Godhra train burning 2002 case, they insist that the cause of fire was disputed based on Left opinion pieces but reject court verdict claiming that only “reliable sources” can be cited and the court judgement is not a reliable source. They have also dismissed police statements as ‘not reliable’. There is slanderous information about the democracy and freedom in India where opinion pieces are passed off as facts and facts have been dismissed because they came from “deprecated sources”.
Wikimedia Foundation has no presence in India, however, it has a rigid editorial line, it pays its editors and administrators and funds several Indian NGOs and entities, flouting laws for intermediaries and NGOs.
In the case of Wikipedia the requirements of an intermediary are not met. While Wikipedia wants people to believe that it has no role or involvement in the nature of content that is published on its website, however, that is demonstrably untrue. There is a specific payment model that is in place at the Wikimedia Foundation to ensure that editors and administrators continue to be engaged in editing/writing activity and these editors in turn have the power to decide the editorial line that is taken in every article on Wikipedia. The editors and administrators censor information, sources and even contributors according to their decided editorial line. In such a scenario, Wikipedia’s argument about being a small NGO merely facilitating thousands of people to make information freely available to the world is a trope that does not seem valid.
Wikimedia Foundation is breaking Indian law. It is doing so by not maintaining presence in India, however, funding entities not only to further its business interest but, funding entities that spread a dangerous narrative with misrepresented facts about India and its people. Owing to the collaboration between Google and Wikipedia, most of the information that is consumed about India comes from the bias which is nurtured, fed and financed by Wikimedia Foundation. This document has traced payments by Wikimedia Foundation only to evidence that a financial trail exists.
The actual quantum of financial transactions is likely to be much higher. It is untraceable because Wikimedia Foundation is not required to reveal the Indian entities they fund in their IRS 990 form. The real cost, however, that India pays is much greater. As we watch, Wikimedia Foundation is funding and aiding the revision of India’s history and reality with misrepresented facts, crimes of omission and slander which conforms specifically to an ideological spectrum.
Beyond ideology, Wikimedia and its editors are essentially declaring that the Indian Judiciary, the police and the government is not “reliable” – but only the opinion of certain ideological foot soldiers is to be taken on face value as fact if one is to understand India and the events that shape it – past or present. With a clear financial link and the negative representation of India based on opinions and false information, given that Wikimedia has refused to submit to Indian law, claiming that it is a foreign entity, this is a fit case of foreign interference in India’s internal affairs and of a foreign entity breaking, willfully, the laws of India to further its business and ideological interests by claiming that it is a do-good NGO.
The subversion of India’s democracy has long shifted to the realm of information warfare. The threads of this digital warfare are real and present. Wikimedia Foundation plays a crucial role in the information warfare that has been unleashed against India to not only undermine its borders, its people, its history, its culture and its reality, but also its sovereignty, independence and integrity. It is therefore, of paramount importance that Wikimedia Foundation is made to submit to the laws of India.
The Dossier made the following recommendations:
- Declare Wikimedia a Publisher as opposed to an intermediary because of its distinct editorial line, the fact that it pays its editors and administrators and also because a very small group of editors and administrators, many of whom are paid, control the content and decide the editorial line on Wikipedia.
- Scrutinise financial transactions since Wikimedia has no presence in India and yet, spends millions to further its business interests in India.
- Evaluate Wikipedia under the Competition Act 2002.
- Establish browser extension that marks bias on Wikipedia pages: Wikimedia Foundation has paid thousands of dollars to Wikipedia administrator ‘Newslinger’ to create an app and a browser extension which would templatise the Wikipedia bias in the perennial sources – which essentially means that when anyone reads a website on the internet, it would be the bias opinions of Wikipedia editors that would pop up deciding which source is reliable and which isn’t. With Wikimedia Foundation and Google being hands in glove, there is no doubt that this project could be implemented. The Government of India should work on a browser extension that can potentially flag bias, misinformation, disinformation and fake news on Wikipedia articles, at the very least, pertaining to India.
Note – I have highlighted portions of the summary for easy readability.
Please do read this blogpost and OpIndia’s dossier on Wikipedia. Their anti-India stance is not acceptable.
An Eye Opener on many overlooked aspects,What doesn’t look Suspicious or Doctored _Is Exposed in Your Post.
I have spread it over to few Thinkers.
My Good Wishes.
Thanks Dr. Sudhir Kant Sharma Ji 🙏.
Bindu and Krishnan, Thanks for your perspective. I use Wikipedia myself, but know it is biased, (or “provincial” in the sense that it has a narrow focus.). I haven’t done your research, so my impromptu response is that it wants to make money. In this sense it is like every other news or publishing or advertising outlet. All broadcasting outfits have agendas. If Wikipedia is biased against India, you are letting your followers know. If I visited India, I would not trust Wiki to inform me of what to expect.