The Wiki Exploration Program, a field-based heritage documentation initiative by the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group, conducted extensive exploration in 2024–2025, photographing around 100 heritage structures each in Cooch Behar and Nadia districts of West Bengal. In some places drone cameras were used too.
The program also expanded its reach this year to include sites in Maharashtra and North Sikkim.
Speaking to The Theorist, veteran travel writer Amitabha Gupta, who has planned and participated actively in almost all of the program’s 33 phases since its inception in 2017, emphasized the diversity and dedication of the team. “All members work as volunteers and they come from various spheres of life. It is not necessary they need to have a background in history,” said Gupta.
In Nadia, the documented sites included many from the official list of more than 100 places declared heritage by the West Bengal Heritage Commission, such as the Kanch Kamini Temple and Bamanpukur Baro Masjid. In Cooch Behar, a major highlight was the terracotta Shiva temple near Gobrachhara village, a site yet to be formally recognized by the West Bengal State Archaeology Department or the Heritage Commission.
Extending Documentation Beyond West Bengal
This year, the program also explored heritage structures outside of West Bengal for the third consecutive year, including sites in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra and the remote northern region of North Sikkim.
The earlier years saw the team members documenting several heritage sites of Bihar and other areas of Sikkim.
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The team decided to include not only rarely visited sites but also well-known heritage monuments that lacked proper photographic documentation on Wikimedia Commons.
“While planning, we had realized that other than rarely visited heritage sites, popular sites are also not systematically documented on Wikimedia Commons, so we decided to include some well-known heritage sites in the list, including the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Ajanta and Ellora caves,” Gupta explained.
Apart from Gupta, those who took part in the program include Kingshuk Mondal, a naturalist; Anjan Kumar Kundu, a Radiophysics professor from Rajabazar Science College; and Dibyendu Biswas, a state government employee. Other less known caves and forts were documented too.
Capturing India’s Disappearing Heritage
Launched in 2017, the Wiki Exploration Program was developed to document lesser-known and rarely visited heritage sites across West Bengal. Since 2023, it has extended its scope to other Indian states. Backed primarily by the Wikimedia Foundation’s Rapid Fund, the program involves a small but skilled team comprising travel bloggers, photographers, and drone operators.
To date, the initiative has completed 33 phases, uploading around 40,000 images to Wikimedia Commons. Over the last six months alone, these visuals have garnered 5 million views across various Wikimedia projects.
“West Bengal has a plethora of heritage structures, some of which are not present on the internet at large as well, and the photographs taken under this program serve as the only available images of those buildings for many of them. It may not be irrelevant to mention here quite a few such monuments documented by the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group cease to exist at present and these photographs are the only evidence of them,” Gupta noted.
According to the group, they have now documented almost 85% of the built heritage of West Bengal.
