JASWANT SINGH is in the news again for all the wrong reasons. After an unceremonious expulsion from BJP for giving an empathetic outlook on Mohammad Ali Jinnah in his new book titled, ‘Jinnah: India- Partition- Independence, the same manuscript has raised controversy again, though the point of contention this time seems to be different.
Initially, the dispute was on Singh’s pro Jinnah stance that supposedly raised a big question mark on his right wing political allegiance. Evidently, Singh committed treason and treachery, notwithstanding the BJP ostentation declarations of tolerance and objective judgement towards the other front post partition. However, this time the problem seems to be of a different nature. Singh has been accused of plagiarism in his book by a University of Chicago professor who has identified footnotes, endnotes and paragraphs copied word by word from the web with no acknowledgement of source.
The manuscript seems to have caused a slew of misfortunes for the septuagenarian ex-BJP leader. First, it was incurring the wrath of his BJP ex-colleagues who not only disowned him but also made a spectacle out of it. Second, a University professor levelled allegations of nitpicking on Singh. While, the expelled BJP leader attempts to feebly defend himself, his jinxed book became news without even making it to the stands and earned a negative verdict without a fair trial. All for doing something that has been prevalent for centuries and is still practiced across the world, irrespective of the industry, or society, or demographical differences: Ctrl C and Ctrl V.
Undoubtedly, a school going child would be able to tell that “Ctrl C and Ctrl V” is the one touch mantra for duplicating anything that isn’t copyright protected. The evolution of Google, the world’s strongest information search engine has further facilitated matters, enabling the user to transfer ideas, concepts and creations within a matter of seconds. The phenomenon of “Copy, Paste” is immoral yet indisputably unavoidable.
Invariably, the amount of original content in the world is very limited, yet every hour and every minute more and more content, whether verbal, audio, visual or audio-visual is being put out for display in the public domain. Instead of opposing this, it is important to understand that the process of information dissemination functions in a cyclic pattern with every new source picking up already existing matter and making further value additions to it. So, every research motivates another different stream of research by drawing parallels from it and adapting it according to their respective requirements. This is the underlying principle behind all dissertations, research work and most importantly, behind some of the most successful Indian films and musical scores.
Almost nothing about Bollywood is original, yet Indian film makers are more gifted than their Hollywood counterparts, since it takes nothing but sheer talent and skill to copy something from it basic framework to the slightest details, then recreate an Indianised version of the same and yet effortlessly get away without anything even close to a reprimand for copyright violation. Not just nascent filmmakers but also the elite masters of the trade practice this art, the only difference being that their adaptations aren’t considered as plagiarist works but as inspired creations of a storyteller whose masterpiece would otherwise have wilted away into oblivion.
Music is no exception. Lyrics, scores and even entire compositions are flicked, repackaged and sold with a different name and contributor. What else would explain the feeling of déjà vous? Incredibly, obsolete artists aren’t the only victims of such blatant plagiarism, veterans and maestros aren’t spared either. RD Burman, AR Rehman, Eagles, Coldplay and many more musicians of international repute would testify to that.
So the next time you suffer from tedium, try identifying the Hollywood counterparts of all your favourite Indian films. Surprisingly, you would find an unabridged version of almost every Indian film that you count. But then again, you can play this game with almost everything that has moolah as a catalyst for it: food, books, music, fashion, trends... the list is long. While on one hand, the world cherishes and appreciates these inspired masterpieces knowing fully well where they originate from, they find another Jaswant Singh to condemn and continue to revere Google.
It would only be fair to say that almost every major industry in the country is equally party to this crime since their cannot exist just one autonomous player and innovations are bound to happen naturally.
However, proponents of plagiarism need not take comfort since it does not excuse or endorse plagiarism of any kind. Instead, it merely seeks to suggest that replication to some minimum extent is inevitable and necessary for the evolution of better ideas and works. What encompasses plagiarism and what doesn’t needs to be explained with a little more clarity since this seems to be the crux of the debate. Would it have been perfectly permissible if Singh were to fill the pages of his manuscript with content from other sources, as long as he credited them for it?
