Historian Vikram Sampath has been under attack of Leftists and Islamists in the recent weeks, making false allegations of plagiarism against him. It was led by three professors from universities in the US, Ananya Chakravarti, Rohit Chopra and Audrey Truschke. While the allegations were proved fake, Hinduphobic professor Audrey Truschke has now launched a massive attack against Sampath, including vandalising his Wikipedia page.
It was pointed out by Vikram Sampath himself on February 27, when he tweeted that his Wikipedia page was vandalised by an editor with a history of vandalising pages linked to India.
Even as the forged signatures unravel Trangabellam continues to vandalize my @Wikipedia pg, which she joyfully acknowledges👇. Note Trangabellam created Dr Truschke’s page; vandalized @sanjeevsanyal ‘s page & also Balakot strikes!! Are they the same person – AT & TB: alter-egos? pic.twitter.com/0ByGymX8VU
— Dr. Vikram Sampath, FRHistS (@vikramsampath) February 27, 2022
The Wikipedia page of Vikram Sampath is seeing hectic edits for last few weeks, and every random allegation made against the historian was added to the article. Although Wikipedia rules say that only verified information backed by credible sources should be added to its articles, baseless allegations and plain opinions were added to the page, mostly by an editor with the ID TrangaBellam, like a Scroll article titled “How historian Vikram Sampath uses decolonisation rhetoric to make Hindu domination sound reasonable”.
As the Audrey Truschke continued to make charges against Vikram Sampath, all of them were updated on the Wikipedia page. And interestingly, the professor herself proudly announced that her allegations against Sampath had made their way to Wikipedia.
Oh look, somebody has a nice added section on plagiarism allegations.https://t.co/wYEVrE9vmM #satya
— Dr. Audrey Truschke (@AudreyTruschke) February 18, 2022
It is notable that the changed to Wikipedia were made on nearly real-time basis, which means they were added to the page immediately after the allegations were made against the historian, completely violating the Wikipedia policy of publishing only verified information.
The page had added details about an ‘open letter’ against Vikram Sampath purportedly signed by several persons in India and across the globe, a majority of which were found to be fake.
Audrey Truschke had tweeted about the letter, claiming that ‘75+ concerned scholars’ have signed it.
Open letter of support by 75+ concerned scholars for Drs. Ananya Chakravarti, Rohit Chopra, and Audrey Truschke regarding their service to the profession and academic freedom in calling attention to Dr. Vikram Sampath’s plagiarism. https://t.co/4GO10qC9PY
— Dr. Audrey Truschke (@AudreyTruschke) February 24, 2022
However, after several ‘signatories’ of the letter including Ramchandra Guha, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Sanjay Raut etc clarified that they had not signed it, the reference to the letter was later removed. It is notable that actually the name of Ramchandra Guha was not even in the letter, a name Ram Guha was there. But the Wikipedia editor assumed it to be Ramchandra Guha and added that he had signed the letter before removing the entire para.
Later, it was found that the ‘open letter’ by Audrey Truschke was filled with forged signature, and it has no mechanism to verify the identity of the signatories to make such grave allegations against Sampath. It was just an open Google document which anyone could sign by giving any name.
However, even after it was comprehensively proved that most signatures on the open letter were forged, and they were added either by Audrey Truschke or someone from her team, the Wikipedia editor TrangaBellam refused to believe that. While one prominent name after another, name of whom appeared in the letter, had clarified they had not signed it and didn’t even see the letter before, the editor claimed it was ‘not a forgery’.
In the talk page of the article, when one user had pointed out that the letter comes under forgery, TrangaBellam said that he had removed the reference to the letter, but added, “It was not a forgery but a harebrained way of using technology”. The editor implied that Audrey is not well versed in technology, and that’s why she created the open letter in such a way that anyone could sign it using any name. This raises the question, how does TrangaBellam know that Audrey Truschke is not good with technology, do they know each other personally?
Morever, this is a shocking defence of an open forgery done by Audrey Truschke, and proves that the editor TrangaBellam is highly partial to the professor, who might be personally known to her. Therefore, the editor should not even be eligible to edit the page of Vikram Sampath as he has direct interest in defaming him.
Several editors also rightly pointed out that the plagiarism section has become too large compared to the overall article. The Wikipedia page of Vikram Sampath is very brief, but now the new section added to it had increased its volume by more than double. They said that a 300 word section on the plagiarism allegations is too much for a 570 word bio. But TrangaBellam rejected all these arguments, saying that “Coverage of “alleged plagiarism” is on a steady increase,” pointing out media reports on the allegations and the case filed by the historian against it at the Delhi High Court.
There are more arguments by TrangaBellam showing that he is openly biased against Vikram Sampath, and he was showing most interest in editing the historian’s page to add as much unverified allegations against him as possible. In fact, reacting to the clarification given by Sampath to the allegations, the editor said, “I am not buying Sampath’s arguments.”
After several prominent left-liberal personalities issued statements that their signs were fraudulently added to the letter, Audrey had blamed ‘Hindu Right IT cells’ of vandalising it.
Social media user Soumyadipta also recorded the vandalism of the Wikipedia page by the team of Audrey, and said that due to this, his IP address was blocked from the site. He alleged that TrangaBellam is part of a team of Wikiepedia editors, some of whom have admin rights, and therefore they can block people who expose them.
Alert: Wikipedia Admins have blocked my IP after gaining access to my profile.
— Soumyadipta (@Soumyadipta) March 3, 2022
Both Vanamonde93 & Newslinger are Admins and have those rights.
They might be after you too.
If you have interacted with me citing specific conversations with Kautilya or TrangaBellam, please delete it pic.twitter.com/Z3HfUHVmPw
Most of the edits against Vikram Sampath in the Wikipedia page are made by one single editor, TrangaBellam, who has a history of vandalising Wikipedia pages to defame India and Hinduism. Anytime any Wikipedia adds a single line that seems to be favourable to Vikram Sampath, this editor appears and reverts the changes. And any time any allegation against Sampath appears, the same editor adds that even without verifying the facts.
The Wikipedia page of Audrey Truschke was created by this editor, and seems to regularly maintain the page of the Hinduphobic professor. This again points out to the possibility that both may be linked beyond Wikipedia.
This incident of Wikipedia editor TrangaBellam being biased towards the leftist Hinduphobic and Aurangzeb apologist professor Audrey Truschke is just one example of the larger problem at Wikipedia, its senior editors and moderators are dominated by Leftists and Islamists. Time and again we have recorded such bias of Wikipedia, and this has been confirmed by none other than Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger, who is no longer with the organisation now. He had said on several occasions that nobody should trust Wikipedia, because the site has been taken over by leftists who reject content that doesn’t fit their agenda.
