https://x.com/i/status/2040793802886234169
@JethmalaniM
Dhurandhar did not just break records. It broke the pretence of an entire ecosystem.
Dhurandhar has turned into a public flogging of the usual frauds, Bollywood’s aman ki asha chorus, Wikipedia’s editorial fixers, and the imported critics who cannot bear an unapologetic India.
The Dhurandhar fight has exposed something much bigger than one film page.
It has exposed Wikipedia’s central fraud: it presents itself as a neutral encyclopedia, but on contentious subjects it often behaves like a political battlefield controlled by a small editorial class. Wikimedia itself says Wikipedia is governed by volunteer editors, that neutrality is a bedrock policy, and that the Foundation does not control article content. That is the theory. The Dhurandhar episode showed the practice. I remember
@UnSubtleDesi and @OpIndia_com show their fradulent behaviour in an investigation few months back.
But when does a blockbuster Indian film become politically inconvenient? What happens? Not a calm summary of dispute. Not a balanced note that critics differ. Instead, an edit war erupts over whether the first line should brand the film “propaganda,” and Wikipedia has to lock the page so only “experienced” editors can shape it.
That alone should alarm people.
Because the moment a page is locked, Wikipedia stops being the romantic fantasy of “anyone can edit” and starts looking like what it often really is: a gated republic of veteran editors, procedural jargon, and ideological muscle memory.
Even Jimmy Wales had to step in. And made a rare intervention and pushed back on Wikipedia itself taking sides in the lead on a contested issue.
If neutrality is such a sacred principle, why did it require founder-level intervention to stop the encyclopedia from speaking in one voice on a live political dispute?
Who decides which sources are “reliable”? Who decides what gets “due weight”? Who decides when “consensus” has been reached? Wikimedia says this is an open and transparent community process. In reality, these rules are interpreted by entrenched editors who can close discussions, privilege favored sources, and freeze their preferred framing into the page.
That is the scam, that even @elonmusk keeps pointing out.
To my mind, this is why so many India-related fights on Wikipedia feel eerily familiar.
Because a small, highly active ideological left-wing radical editor class can dominate disputed pages, and once that happens, neutrality becomes whatever that class can proceduralize. That is not crowd wisdom. That is narrative capture by people who know the rulebook better than the reader ever will.
And anonymity makes the problem worse.
Wikimedia openly defends pseudonymous editing as protection for volunteers. Fine. But anonymity also reduces accountability when editors with strong ideological priors end up shaping politically explosive subjects read by millions. When the work is unpaid, anonymous, and intensely fought over, the obvious inference is that many of the most obsessive editors are not detached saints but partisans and ideologues.
This is why the “free encyclopedia” branding is so misleading.
Free is not the same as neutral.
Open is not the same as fair.
Visible edit histories are not the same as balanced outcomes.
The Dhurandhar row simply made the machinery visible.
A blockbuster Indian film depicting terror, memory and retaliation could not just be reviewed.
It had to be framed.
It had to be morally pre-labelled before the reader even arrived.
That is why I do not buy the innocent story anymore.
Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia. On polarised subjects, it can become a laundering machine that converts ideological preference into reference-text authority.
And yes, to me, the larger pattern looks less like random volunteer eccentricity and more like a global ultra-left editorial reflex hardening into platform power.
The Dhurandhar page did not damage the film.
It damaged Wikipedia.
Because it reminded millions of people that behind the benevolent gray interface is not some oracle of objective knowledge, but a human hierarchy of anonymous volunteers, procedural gamers, and ideological radical left-wingers trying to stamp their version of reality onto a page the world is told to trust.
https://x.com/rahulsagar/status/2040262532301275223
@rahulsagar
How many times the term "propaganda" appears in the
@Wikipedia
entry for
Dhurandhar 2 25
Wolf Warrior 2 3
Top Gun: Maverick 1
