Last month, Wikipedia was begging for donations in order to keep going.
I
gave Rs. 3000. If things had not been rather dire under the Covid situation,
and if I had not already given to very many charities within the last six
months, I’d of course have given much more, and I am still ashamed. They also
let me know that the average donation was Rs. 150. Imagine. Wikipedia has
hundreds of millions of users; there are many multi-millionaires among them,
someone as humble as me gave 3000, yet the average donation is Rs. 150. So how
much do most donors give – five rupees, or ten?
This
brought back to mind a post that I wrote here twelve years ago: Charity and other things. Do look it up
before you read further. This post will be about charity, and whether it is
good or wise to depend upon alms (bhikhsha)
if you want to make an impact on the world, however small.
Recall
that many of the greatest religions have enjoined beggary upon those who tread
the Way – the Buddhist sramana is called a bhikhshu; the Hindu sadhu has
always been expected to survive on charity. The idea is that you live as
simply/inexpensively as you can, and put no burden on your fellow man for your
physical sustenance: you survive on whatever they give you out of the goodness of
their hearts, demanding nothing (over the millennia, it has not remained so
simple and humble: people were first taught they would acquire great merit by
giving alms to holy men, and later threatened with future hellfire and untold
torments on earth if they did not give, even unto their own near-destitution: that
is how the old churches and temples grew fabulously rich!). Look at the reverse
of the coin; numberless humble householders have been convinced, partly or
wholly, that it is one of the most important religious duties to give in
charity.
And
it has worked wonders over the ages, too. Anathapindada the sreshthi, who might be called
the Bill Gates of sixth century BCE India became a monk and gave away
everything he had to the Buddha: that is how the Sangha got going! Much more
than a thousand years later, the great Sufis like garib nawaz Hazrat Khwaja Muinuddin Chisti, quite like the even later Sikh gurus, enjoined upon their followers
that they must keep giving so that no man who came to their door went away
hungry – and the great kadhais at the Ajmer dargah remain as busy today as the
kitchens of the Jagannath temple at Puri or the langar at any gurudwara. When Akbar
visited Har ki Pauri in Hardwar he saw that thousands of mendicants were fed
daily out of the charity of the countless punya seekers who came to the ghats
daily to wash away their sins, and the donation collectors, to whom I have
talked at length tell me they take every offering from a rupee upwards, and
never raise an eyebrow when someone signs over a cheque for a million – they have
seen it a thousand times before, and Akbar was told already in the late 16th
century that it was an immemorial custom. Vidyasagar came to be called doyar sagar, the ocean of charity, with
very good reason, though no one who knows Bengalis up close will dare claim
that he was a typical Bengali. Also, in this day and age, Gates and Buffett and
other super-tycoons have pledged to give away 95% of their astronomical
fortunes to worthy causes before their deaths. And yes, after more than a
decade, Wikipedia is still going strong despite not carrying ads and not
pricing their services, aren’t they?
Yet,
surviving on pure charity, depending wholly on the goodness of your fellow man’s
heart, is very hard, very wearying, very likely to grind you down to
disillusionment, disgust and despair. Vivekananda during his wanderings across
India often went unfed, despite Kipling’s assertion that no sadhu in India ever
goes hungry; Tagore had to beg likewise to put Viswabharati on its feet, my daughter
has had pretty depressing experiences, and the pathetic way in which those who
run something as precious as Wikipedia have to beg brought tears to my eyes at
least. I, for one, though God knows how many pupils’ fees I have waived when
their parents complained of being in dire financial straits, hate it when I am
cheated by people whom I know to be well off, and have made my anger so searingly
clear to so many that I am much feared (and perhaps secretly reviled-) for it.
I won’t be greedy, I swore to myself a very long time ago, but I won’t depend
on people’s honesty and charity either – it is too untrustworthy, too
dangerous.
So I wish Wikipedia (are you listening, folks?) would stop begging and make theirs a paid service. A very nominal fee: perhaps a rupee for every time I click on any of their articles? If I click 3,000 times a year, and have to pay 3000 rupees for it, why not? They would rake in billions, I would be every kind of a crook and liar if I said I cannot afford that, and that is equally true for millions of users, including I am sure tens of thousands who earn ten, a hundred, a thousand times more than I do! This too one must remember: few people want to pay anything at all if they think that they can go on enjoying something for free. Jimmy Wales, I don’t want you to wind up for lack of funds, so think about it.
