Stupendous Man

First of all, I must tell everyone outright that I have a HUGE respect towards Mahatma Gandhi. And from time to time, I keep looking for more information about this great man on Internet. Today while on such wandering, I stumbled upon Wikipedia’s entry for Mahatma Gandhi. While the article on Mahatma Gandhi seems reasonably good, one small part of the article left me perplexed, baffled and angry. The article in question is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi#Post-Independence

Click on thumbnail above and read the text squared in the red box – In the section “post-independence”, someone has mentioned that:

“Although Gandhi backed India’s annexation of Kashmir and an armed response to the tribal invasion…”

I might be picky – but err.. India’s annexation of Kashmir, and supported by Gandhi? As far as I know, Kashmir acceded to India after Pakistan tried to annex her, and not otherwise as above statement seems to claim! Why there is a official declaration of accession signed by King of Kashmir available on the Indian Government website for everyone to view. I decided to look up definition of Annexation on Wikipedia itself and this is what it had to say:

Click on thumbnail above for larger picture and look for the red square box – clearly it says:

“In international relations the term annexation is usually applied when the emphasis is placed on the fact that territorial possession is achieved by force and unilaterally rather than through treaties or negotiations.”

Which leads me to the question about the authencity of the person who wrote that part of Gandhi’s article. Did he or she seem to suggest that Gandhi supported India’s forceful annexation of Kashmir?! And he also supported India’s force against “tribal invasion”?

I immediately corrected the wording to, and thus contributed to my first Wikipedia contribution.

“After Kashmir acceded to India and following the war against Pakistani invasion, he was turmoiled inside when the Government decided to deny Pakistan the Rs. 55 crores [550,000,000 rupees] it was due as per agreements made by the Partition Council”

But the question still remains: How much damage has this done to us? Wikipedia is a great source for free information, but it comes at a risk of non factual and often irresponsible information getting embedded with actual happenings. Imagine a student reading Wikipedia for Mahatma Gandhi for a school project and the implication that can have on his impression about Gandhi. I think politically sensitive articles on Wikipedia need to be monitored on a regular basis, so that any misinformation on anybody’s part is easily rectified. I think Wikipedia in its nature is open for mischief, which has been well documented by the recent false biographies by the man in North Carolina.

What I found may be a small instance of misrepresented information, but I think we as Indians should be vigilant and should on a regular basis try to correct errors and misinformation that Wikipedia represents. Its important that we do and always try to represent the right information so that people reading about India and its history dont get misled by simple play of words.