Fake in India? Nehru Wiki edit sparks war of words between Congress and BJP supporters in Twitter

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: For regular Wikipedia users, a case of anonymous edits to the Jawaharlal Nehru Wiki (reported by TOI on Wednesday) was just another instance of problems that arise out of crowd-sourcing information. The reactions on social media, however, took a dramatic turn once Congress supporters unleashed a political campaign against the BJP government on what they called #GOIForgedWikipedia.

NIC, when contacted, sought time to respond citing preoccupation with the Digital India event in New Delhi. Concerned official will read the relevant material and issue a statement at the earliest, a spokesman said.

Regardless, the #GOIForgedWikipedia hashtag, first used by the Twitter handle @skull_baba whose homepage is dominated by former PM Manmohan Singh's photograph, began trending soon. The attack was focused on the government's high-profile Digital India project inaugurated on Wednesday.
Supporters like ?@GauravPandhi, whose bio states he is part of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee's IT cell, said, "This is misuse of Govt machinery to feed Sanghi propaganda and Government of India is accountable, should come out clean." Another supporter, ?@Save_India tweeted: "After Make In India comes Forge in India."

In a flurry of puns about 'Photoshop Sarkar' and other politically motivated quips, many ignored the fact that the edits were revised by Wikipedia editors almost immediately.

Pranesh Prakash, who runs the software tool that tracks anonymous government edits from India, told TOI that there were attempts to politicize the issue soon after he tweeted about these on Tuesday. When Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi tweeted, "Sanghis getting exposed every single day", Prakash replied, "To be fair, this could have been *anyone* from within the NIC network.:)."

Eventually, BJP supporters retorted, with ?one @anandwalu dubbing the Congress protest anti-Muslim. One edit said Nehru's grand father Gangadhar Nehru was a Muslim. "So what if Gangadhar was Ghiyasuddin? Why so ashamed of being a Muslim?" @anandwalu asked.

Others brought in the UPA's corruption scandals; some suggested that NIC could've been hacked. To which, ?@yogiofindia had a reply closer to getting to the bottom of it: "Wikipedia can be edited by anybody. But if NIC network is hacked then govt should look into it."