Supreme Court dismisses plea to remove negative statements in Wikipedia article about Ayurveda

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) petition seeking deletion of negative remarks and references about Ayurveda from the Wikipedia article on the ancient Indian medical system..A Bench of Justices AS Bopanna and PS Narasimha also orally suggested to the petitioners they they can themselves edit the article in question. .The PIL, filed by the Ayurvedic Medicine Manufacturers Organisation of India through advocate Shweta Garg, said that the earticle about Ayurveda on the web-based free encyclopedia was 'maligning, defamatory and biased'. "The contents of the matter shown on Wikipedia totally malign the natural system of medicine which has a history of more than 3000 years and is widely respected and accepted the world over," the plea said.The plea alleged that the article terms Ayurveda as pseudoscientific by relying on an Indian Medical Association (IMA) article describing Ayurveda practitioners as quacks.The IMA article is absurd, prejudicied and poorly-researched in itself and affects the morale of Ayurveda practicioners the world over, it was stated. Therefore, the PIL contended that Wikipedia should have done its due diligence before relying on a 'defamatory' article for its entry on Ayurveda." ... the contents of the article does harm to the hard earned reputation of Ayurveda, built through sheer dedication and constant research over a substantial span of time ... the article published on its website is purely written by someone with a prejudiced mind to support only modern medicine/Allopathic medicine system," the petition said.The plea also alleged that the author of the IMA paper has colluded with Wikipedia to malign Ayurveda. "The article in simple.wikipedia.org does not mention Ayurveda as Pseudo Scientific as stated in this article in its main Wikipedia website. This also goes to show that this editing has been done out of duress exerted by some whose sole interest is to show that modern medicine/allopathic medicine is superior to all other forms of medicine systems.".The petition was drawn by advocates Robin Raju, Deepa Joseph and Blessan Mathews.