Dear Mihir,
Let me at the outset state that I am a fan of your writings and
eagerly look forward to reading your columns in Business Standard
I am not the typical Internet troll who pounces on anything
remotely offending the Hindu right or whatever if such a term exists.
I would put myself as a seeker who has started ;a little bit late though,
on the journey of our past .Our as in not restricted to any particular region
or religion but a shared past to which we all belong to.
In this journey of discovery one thing I have tried is to minimize
as far as possible is the influence of my
ideology, my leanings and shed whatever analytical framework and analyze any
fact in a dispassionate manner.
I can’t help but think that you have wily nily superimposed your
existing ideology/leanings in pronouncing the verdict “The authors who write the
"path-breaking" studies that "Western-style academia doesn't
want you to read" are in fact, most likely, peddling outlandish work that
would easily fail the standards that the existing body of work has had to meet”
In
passing this verdict you have analyzed a tweet by Mr.Malhotra without looking at the context in
which that tweet was made. (given
below)
Sanskrit
language has no quotation marks , yet scholars cited, others for 1000 yrs. .Western
standard not the only way to acknowledge
I don’t know the context in which this tweet was made but having
read a few of his books the central message that came across was that all our
discovery /understanding of Indian History was from Western perspective/framework/standards .We
have looked at our histories from the standpoint of the West. If you try to
analyze our history from an Indian perspective /framework it gives rise to an
alternate point of view. I am not commenting on which standard is right or
wrong but the awareness of this bias is important. Once a person is aware of
his bias then it is an individual’s choice on what to believe. I have digressed
a bit .If you look at the tweet from a standards perspective then a different conclusion
may arise.
However I am not for a moment condoning plagiarism if it exists.
If you look at the scroll article that you have used to draw your conclusion
there is also a tweet from Mr.Malhotra End
note stating “This section draws heavily on Author XYZ suffices by all norms .No need to restate after each
para
There’s also one quote form Mr
Malhotra in that article (quoted below)
Malhotra,
of course, denied the charge of plagiarism and passed off the lack of
acknowledgements and the presence of unmarked verbatim quotes as “cosmetic”
errors
Apart from Scroll I decided to
dig in and find some more dope on the allegation of plagiarism and there’s also
a link on the rebuttal of the charges by the Hindu right J .It quotes each paragraph of the book and the page number
of the paragraphs and also the rebuttal page wise.
Now as an unbiased observer if I look at all the facts before me I
would conclude that it’s not a case of plagiarism but not following the practice
of referencing the author after the end of every page. In this case the
reference was given at the end.
Apart from referencing issues there’s also the charge of taking a
quote from one context and using it in different context. Well as long as the
quote is referenced I don’t think that’s plagiarism. You can say that he didn’t
follow the practice of mentioning at the end of the page.
As for using it in different context; well I guess that’s why we
have different interpretation of the classics. It’s shaped by the writer’s
perspective and humanity is none the worse for it
