Wikipedia abegging

 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 16^th 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.