The Internet's go-to website for every imaginable piece of information, Wikipedia, launches its international heritage photo contest in India.

Dubbed as “Wiki Loves Monuments, India 2013” the photo contest focuses on the promotion of regional heritage architecture and cultural monuments of India.

The concept originated in the Netherlands in 2010 with primary focus on European heritage. It resulted in the creation of a database of 12,500 freely licensed images of monuments that can be used in Wikipedia and by anybody for any purpose. The subsequent 2011 event, added another 165,000 images submitted by over 5,000 participants, to this.

Incidentally, while the 2011 contest was marked by the Guinness Words Records as the “largest photography contest” in terms of number of photos received, the 2012 contest overtook with over submission of over 3,50,000 photos.

India's successful entry in 2012 made way for a more locally stratergised campaign to promote local and regional heritage spots. Arnav Sonara, a country organiser of the contest and an editor of Wikipedia from India, explains, “The idea is to gather and curate culturally significant images of heritage structures on Wikipedia. Last year, we had two images winning the international contest, and the first prize winner was an Indian.”

He attended the annual Wikipedia conference in Hong Kong in August 2013 as his prize.

How to participate?
Organised in association with Indian National Trust For Art and Cultural Heritage, the Indian franchise of the contest will send ten best pictures of our monuments to the international contest. 

Sonara elaborates, “Every country has a different definition of “monuments”. For the Indian edition, Archaeological Survey of India has provided an official list, which the participants must refer, before uploading”

Rules are simple—pictures should contain an identified monument and be nominated through a national contest, in our case, India. They should be self-taken, freely licensed and uploaded in September 2013, devoid of watermarks/ copyright symbols.

Interested participants can submit their entries, here

These are some of the photos received so far.

To view some of the prominent heritage structures in Mumbai, click here