The fact
that noted Indian-American political commentator Fareed Zakaria was caught for
plagiarism and suspended from Time and CNN may have caused ripples in US, and
Zakaria was oozing with apology, he said he made “a terrible mistake. . . . It is a serious
lapse and one that is entirely my fault.”
But at his
home country it caused hardly any such stir. Gauging the reaction of people from
all walks of the society, it seems that at best it evoked only a casual
what’s-the-big-deal shrug.
An editor who not too long ago was caught for lifting paras from some foreign publication, but still managed to keep his job, said, “Being editor-at-large (Fareed Zakaria is editor at large at CNN) is a tough call. You travel so many places, attend cocktail sessions and read so many things that after a point you don’t remember what is yours and what it somebody else’s.” As an afterthought he said, "I feel he should not have taken paras from a well known journal like New Yorker, but maybe from some provincial publication, whose website frequently gets inaccessible due to lack of bandwidth."
An editor who not too long ago was caught for lifting paras from some foreign publication, but still managed to keep his job, said, “Being editor-at-large (Fareed Zakaria is editor at large at CNN) is a tough call. You travel so many places, attend cocktail sessions and read so many things that after a point you don’t remember what is yours and what it somebody else’s.” As an afterthought he said, "I feel he should not have taken paras from a well known journal like New Yorker, but maybe from some provincial publication, whose website frequently gets inaccessible due to lack of bandwidth."
The members
of the academic community were more amused than shocked about developments
concerning Zakaria. A research scholar, who considers ‘control C+control V’ the
greatest invention since wheel, said, "God for copying one para he is
doing all this. I know of guys who have lifted whole thesis and are now well
placed in life." He then reeled out some names which were indeed very respectable ones.
However, he
added that sometimes accidents do happen, as in the case of one of his seniors.
He had plagiarized one thesis and unfortunately the invigilator happened to be
the guy, whose thesis he had lifted! “Such incidents do happen, but are as rare
getting hit by lightning,” he philosophized.
A film
director of seventies, who had improvised many Hollywood spaghetti westerns of
the 70s into daaku films (also called
faluda western) and rode into sunset
with good fortune and some popular awards said, “This internet age is proving
to be a boon as well as bane. These days it is easy to get film footage and
other materials to copy, but it is becoming almost impossible to not get caught
by the audience.”
He recalled nostalgically that during the licence-permit raj days of the 70s, few Indians
used to go abroad and English movies were hardly screened in small towns and
television was unheard of beyond metros. In such an environment it was easy to
get away with lifting almost a whole film and pepper them with song and dance
numbers.
For most Bollywood music directors plagiarism is as inherent
in their songs, as say words like pyaar
or ishq. A Bollywood remix
lyricist amid his tight schedule took time off to share few thoughts on the
issue. “There is nothing like originality. Everything happens due to
inspiration. Even Shakespeare was not original.” Just then he broke into the latest
ad jingle for a telecom company ‘jo tera hai, woh mera hai’ to drive home his point.
I still can't believe that Fareed did it. A man of his eminence should have known that not giving proper attribution amounts to plagiarism.
ReplyDeleteIs it time to rethink the ways one copies and explore the options of seeing is at an art of transformation? All art proceeds through quotation and misquotation, with and without quotation marks, to paraphrase and adapt from memory.
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