I'm baffled to see someone with a long contribution to the FOSS and Wikimedia movement *not* assuming good faith and attacking publicly in the first place. Lest we forget, the UCOC highlights:

"2.1 MUTUAL RESPECT — Respect all Wikimedians to show respect for others. In communicating with people, whether in online or offline Wikimedia environments, we will treat each other with mutual respect." (the sub-clauses further detail about empathy and other required behavioural attributes)

Also, long movement association does not and should not give impunity to exhibit bad behaviour. It's in fact the opposite, meaning, those with longer association are expected to go an extra mile to ensure the Wikimedia movement becomes healthier and not hostile. I'm sure Mahatma Gandhi, who Abhijit has quoted, would have wanted that.

Also, "post-colonial India" is equivalent to "Independent India" but only more specific. (more on that evident from how Goa and erstwhile independent states, such as the Gadajata states in Orissa, were annexed after 1947) "Post-colonial" is a more historically objective term here. So, "post-colonial" is not a bad framing to highlight with specificity for everything after the colonial British rule. It's laughable to think that "post-colonial" glorifies the colonial rule when it does the exact opposite in certain contexts.

I find it offensive to even think that it's okay to erase the labour of hundreds and thousands of our peoples (emphasis of "peoples" as we are an extremely diverse country with multiple ethnicities, religions, genders, castes, and cultures) that resulted in the so-called colonial-era heritage. For sure the colonial-era heritage was built with labour of people of this country even the architectural style might reflect Victorian one. How could we even wipe off the hard work of our own ancestors? I think, a 21st-century reimagination of cultural heritage would always place human labour above architectural style, and that doesn't just apply to only colonial-era heritage but all the heritage.

I have personally never met Medhavi and others at he Heritage Lab, but have been reading about their work for the last few years. To say the very least, the language on their site, above all, is very well written. For someone who went to an Indian language-medium school (as a perk, English classes are taught in Indian languages!), I don’t find the language to be against the Wikimedia movmenent. I think it's a welcome step for a non-Wikimedia affiliate to run a campaign that would eventually encourage Wikimedians to contribute to Wikimedia movement. For the sake of argument, one might say that it's better to run a similar campaign with their preferred choice of vocabulary to compare the outcomes with another campaign with vocabulary they don't agree with. It's certainly an area to study if use of the term "post-independence" yields better result than a campaign that uses the term "post-colonial even though I'd caution against burnout of volunteers.

I think it's an absolute waste of collective time at a rather distressing time when thousands of lives are lost in the name of claiming thousands of years of glorious past in an ongoing and "post-oppression" attack on civilians.

But all that is outside of this campaign. I'll refrain from responding to any post in this thread that derail the actual conversation.

Subhashish

On Wed, 8 Nov, 2023, 2:44 am Dr. Abhijeet Safai, abhijeet.safai@gmail.com wrote:

(Reposting with minor corrections*) Dear All,

It is very disturbing to see this kind of language for a past president of Wikimedia Foundation's India Chapter! I do not want to go into merits of stands each one are having (for the sake of argument, let's even believe that Sudhanwa sir is wrong here), but this kind of language is not our heritage is for sure!

This could have been said in a better way too without accusations (please note once we start accusing, we cannot cry foul when another person accuses us in return). I strongly condemn all these baseless accusations. I know Sudhanwa sir in person and it will take many lives for us to understand his greatness and his contribution to Wikipedia and Open Source movement! (BTW he is pioneer of FOSS activities in Pune). He is so great that I also do not know his greatness in totality. I have understood it in bits and pieces these things indirectly, because he does not tell them by his own mouth.

This kind of thinking (pacifying) is definitely not mine and I have learned it from Mahatma Gandhi from his book titled 'My Non Violence' which can be found on this https://www.mkgandhi.org/mynonviolence/my_nonviolence.htmlink. It is freely available in public domain. I strongly suggest people to read.

Thanking you, Yours sincerely,

-- *Dr. Abhijeet Safai* (Election Committee Member of Wikimedia Foundation's India Chapter Elections in 2017) -- *Dr. Abhijeet Safai* *Certified Base SAS Programmer* *SAS Certified Clinical Trials Programmer*

On Wed, Nov 8, 2023 at 3:51 AM medhavi gandhi medhavigandhi@gmail.com wrote:

...

Dear Sudhanwa,

As the founder of The Heritage Lab, your email came across as very amusing to me.

Allow me to elaborate -- in the "heritage labs" (gosh, I wish you would get the name right at least) - we don't "build heritage". Actually heritage refers to something we "inherit". What we do is create ways for people to access and engage with that inheritance, specifically cultural inheritance.

I would normally pass off your response as a very typical 'troll-behaviour' one, and ignore it -- but you're a member of the Wiki community and I find it important therefore to urge you to understand terms such as *post-colonial and post-independence*. The post-colonial period typically begins with independence but the challenges and issues faced by India in these phases can be distinct -- post colonialism often involves addressing the specific legacies of colonialism (ones that we continue to suffer today).

I'm usually up for a debate - but why I find your response to be typical of "Troll behaviour" is that *your comment lacks any research on our work *-- you simply tried to discredit us and "rant". When you use words like "seems like" -- you make it very clear that you could not be bothered enough to check the link and understand if we have at all covered ancient India / or other "thousands of years of history, culture and heritage" in other ways. If you had indeed bothered, you would probably come across some interesting stories - like one about a 2000 year old artefact clicked by a Wiki-community member during our campaign last year.

*What I find shameful *about this entire exchange is that you, a Wikipedian -- who is meant to check for reliable citations before editing a Wiki page and is meant to gather information in an appropriate manner in order to spread knowledge, couldn't even cross check before writing an email to the entire list.

I wish you better mental health and positivity this festive season. There is enough hatred in this world and we don't need more of this behaviour.

Thanks, anyway. Medhavi

ᐧ ᐧ

On Tue, 7 Nov 2023 at 13:04, < wikimediaindia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Invitation for Wiki contests and fellowship by The Heritage Lab (Satdeep Gill)
2. Re: Invitation for Wiki contests and fellowship by The Heritage Lab (Sudhanwa Jogalekar)

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Message: 1 Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2023 08:21:57 +0530 From: Satdeep Gill satdeepgill@gmail.com Subject: [WikimediaIndia-l] Invitation for Wiki contests and fellowship by The Heritage Lab To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: DA4A5DF8-8666-4608-9807-1DCAE99D87F0@gmail.com Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=Apple-Mail-545A37AD-382D-4FB9-B91A-F728F8FECE69

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Message: 2 Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2023 10:48:18 +0530 From: Sudhanwa Jogalekar sudhanwa.com@gmail.com Subject: [WikimediaIndia-l] Re: Invitation for Wiki contests and fellowship by The Heritage Lab To: Wikimedia India Community list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: < CA+Ho68wfS3Gv4oChR6hwOMvC1ftL4sk0WT1ZaR2P5iwwgw9uQQ@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="000000000000d3596e0609891987"

I am wondering what kind of heritage these people are building in heritage labs!!

Even the theme says post colonial India!!

Looks like they have nothing to do with our history, culture, heritage of thousands of years.

Probably, they still want to remain in the colonial India heritage. That can't even say post independence activities.

Shameful. And Wikipedia is supporting it in the name of spreading knowledge!!

On Tue, Nov 7, 2023, 8:22 AM Satdeep Gill satdeepgill@gmail.com wrote:

...

*Forwarding the following message on behalf of Arunesh Varade, The Heritage Lab*

Hello everyone,

The Heritage Lab https://www.theheritagelab.in/culture-events/ is organizing two Wiki contests <

https://www.theheritagelab.in/world-heritage-week-contest-monuments-museums/... in

...

the month of November on the occasion of World Heritage Week and Wiki

Asian

...

Month.

First contest is an edit-a-thon where open access content from GLAMs

would

...

be uploaded on Wikimedia Commons with relevant data to improve the accessibility of these images.

The second contest is where people can share the stories of visiting museums. It can be a photo essay, illustration, etc. The submissions in this contest will be uploaded on Commons and the best entries from them will be rewarded.

We have exciting prizes for the winners so we look forward to your

active

...

participation in both these events.

Further, we have also opened applications for the second edition of

Open

...

Knowledge Fellowship https://www.theheritagelab.in/open-knowledge-museums-india/ where we host a cohort of fellows to research and create new knowledge about

Indian

...

art and cultural heritage and contribute the same to Wikimedia

projects.

...

Please pass on the word to the people who would be interested in being

a

...

part of this.

Thanks and Regards, Arunesh Varade on behalf of The Heritage Lab _______________________________________________ WikimediaIndia-l mailing list -- wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to

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