Plagiarism in India
February 17th, 2007 — VyomaI get up this morning. It is a nice Saturday morning that I planned to spend by lazing around and doing some good original work for Splat. And as always, I open my Thunderbird to check out the updates on my tracked feeds, and I find this post, Recurring Themes: Two Topics I Don’t Cover Now, by Jonathan Bailey at Plagiarism Today.
I am an Indian, and the other authors here are all Indians. There are instances where my friends would say that I am more a non-Indian than a Indian because I take some stances that speak of Universal Brotherhood or something along those lines. But yet, I identify myself as an Indian and I am proud of it.
But that post by Jonathan, evoked a response of anger on the post in me.
India is the world’s most populous democracy and a rising Internet power. However, it seems to have an unusually strong problem with plagiarism. This problem is echoed by colleagues of mine that teach high school and college in India as well as mainstream media reports .
How could he generalize?
We here at Splat strive to give quality content. The illustrations that are made for each posts are made by be. The articles written here are written by either me or Rosy or Vinny or Akhilesh. None of us plagiarize. There is Thilak at TechBuzz; he does not plagiarize. There is Sourjya at Chaos-Laboratory; he does not plagiarize. There is Mayank at ReviewSaurus; he does not plagiarize.
Why does he generalize that Indians are plagiarists?
Then I held myself from any outburst, and read the full post. To Jonathan’s credit, he actually does not generalize.
For whatever reason, India seems to be struggling with these issues unusually hard. Most Indian writers are good and honest, but the rate of plagiarism incidents has been so overwhelming that it threatens to put a taint on the entire country.
Yes, indeed. Most Indian writers are good and honest.
And I have to agree with him that there have been instances of plagiarism involving Indians. The content stolen from Splat seems to have been done by an Indian. Thilak too faced a similar situation, where the scrapper was an Indian. (Sourjya faced a similar situation, and the plagiarist was not an Indian). There seems to have been incidents caused by few of them that seems to tarnish all of us Indians.
India has had a unique culture. Most of the literature are dated as long back as 3000 BC or more (note, I have not done any research on this - it is an estimate). And owing to that, most of the literature are in public domain. The mythologies like Ramayana and Mahabharata, have long passed the copyright period of the original authors and numerous derivatives have been authored and created that enriches the culture.
It seems like in view of this, the younger generation and the ones with malicious intent do not seem to grasp the implications and imperatives in creating literary and other forms of works. After years of colonial rule and very recent attainment of self-rule, Indians are just entering the world of main stream literature and internet. We as Indians, need to get the grasp and bearing of things as soon as possible, lest our image would be tarnished by such incidents.
That said, we should not at any point generalize and put all Indians in the same bucket. Overwhelming majority of serial killers are Caucasian white males. That does not mean that all Caucasian white males are serial killers and rapist. They, for most part are good people with moral values. In the same way, Indians are good people and have moral values that include respecting copyrights of others, in general.
Conclusion
There are two conclusions here.
One, is a call for Indians to understand the implications of copyright of other people. Understand what they are and educate others. You may wish to go through some of the articles at Splat (Copyright Protection, Creative Commons And Public Domain), or you can head over to Jonathan’s blog, Plagiarism Today for an exhaustive source.
Second, do not generalize such incidents and make a judgment about all Indians.
PS: I just could not help but include that Conclusion subheading. It is a technique used by Jonathan at Plagiarism Today. I casually asked his permission to use it when I feel like, and he gave it. Even though it is just an ‘idea’ and does not come under copyright, I just wanted to put some pun. 
Seriously though, to plagiarists out there - If you want to make derivative works, just ask the copyright holder for permission. In most of the the cases they would agree or otherwise, they would state their terms.
February 17th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
I just wanted to state again that my goal was NOT to generalize about Indian writers. I have no idea why so many plagiarism stories come out of India or involve Indian writers. If you look at the Desipundit links I point to, you see quickly that there is a lot of news in that area.
I have had many conversations with Indian writers about this topic and most are at least as disgusted, if not more, by plagiarism than I. It’s strange, on one hand the majority of Indian writers do take such a strong stance against plagiarism, like yourself, but there seems to be a very vocal minority that sees no problem with it. However, that’s true here in the U.S. too.
After writing the article and pondering it some more, I realized that much of the issue of nationality is because few people on the Web note if a plagiarist is from the U.S., EU or another “Western” country. Nationality isn’t mentioned in those cases. However, in cases involving Indian, Chinese or Russian (among other nations) it almost always is considered a factor.
It’s a strange double standard, one that I don’t fully understand but will have to touch on later.
Still, the point is, I did not intend to make any generalization, just a note that stories about Indian plagiarism have hit my inbox so frequently that I can’t keep up.
However, considering that India is a country with over a billion people, that’s not entirely a surprise. I just hope that most people don’t think a few plagiarists taint the reputation of an entire nation.
I’m very sorry if it seemed as if I was passing off generalizations, that was not my goal.
Great follow up article on it by the way!
February 18th, 2007 at 4:38 am
Jonathan, no need to apologize.
You were not generalizing. It just felt to me that you were generalizing and that too, it was my mistake. I did not read your post fully and I was jumping on conclusions. I realized that you were not generalizing, and just wanting to stop reporting on that issue at the end of the post, but at the end of it, I felt that there would be others who would generalize or have the inclination towards doing that.
I just felt like responding to it and giving a sort of other side of the story.
And double standards is something that is present in almost all society. We just need to interact with each other more, and try to iron it out.
And thank you Jonathan, for dropping by.
February 18th, 2007 at 5:36 am
Great writeup. Well, we all agree that the plagiarism is a problem and most of us agree that one has to fight against it.
Although I’m an Indian, but I’ll have to agree that there are many Indians who just don’t understand the term COPYRIGHT. I remember an incident where in, I was discussing the case of desimartini.com (they seem to have copied the design of facebook.com) with my friend and what my friend is convinced about that it is OK to copy the stuff of other people, as it proves that their content, design was so good that few people copied it. (http://www.reviewsaurus.com/2007/01/19/desimartini-gets-updated-looks-like-facebook-this-time/)
I tried to explain him that there is something called credit, but he just could’nt understand.
So, as I said that the problem is the lack of knowledge about copyrights..and this is not only the problem with any specific country but with the whole Internet world.
February 18th, 2007 at 5:50 am
Mayank, I would not exactly state that ‘many Indians do not understand the term copyright’, but would state that ‘many do not understand the term copyright’.
We see Indians not understanding the term copyright, because we are Indians and we happen to interact with them more. But in general, I have seen many instances where the copyright infringement was done by non-Indians and they were not identified by their nationality (as mentioned by Jonathan above).
The issue is that we have a larger populous that get involved in this field and as a result, naturally, there could be more instances where we find the ‘Indian’ thrown around.
I just wanted to make a call out to all Indians to understand Copyright, because we are under heavier scrutiny than any other of any other nationality. And I also wanted to make a point that one should not generalize these incidents and draw pictures of Indians as plagiarists.
February 18th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Oh well, I was not saying that it is just Indians, who need to understand the term copyright. If you want to take a look at the classic example of everyone involved in plagiarism, then you can simply go to any forum and see how your own work, will be published in else’s name.
Well, the point is that what steps can be take to stop this thing, but I think that plagiarism is like SPAM which will increase every year and we will have no control over it….or may be like viruses…where the battle is going on from years and still there is no end to this war.
February 18th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Mayank, plagiarism, and all sorts of malpractices like feed-scrapping seems to be on the rise as better technology gets developed.
The internet is more like the wild west that we see in Clint Eastwood movies where there is no order.
We need to educate and create awareness that let people know of the implication of copyrights - try and explain them the cases, and let them decide on right and wrong. If enough social stigma is created against plagiarism, then I think it would control the amount of such acts if not stop it altogether.
February 18th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
WOW! Thats the word that comes to my mind after I read the articles published by Vyoma and the follow-up comments from others. I must confess that I have never given much of a thought about Plagiarism, copyright and copyright infringment, but nevertheless I knew in a very generic way what those terms/phrases meant. So, I’m another of those minority Indians who are awake to the said menace.
Moreover, to add my own two cents towards this all too important topic of discusion, alongside data/idea thefts is the aspect of Trademarks and Logo thefts that are so common in India and elsewhere. Trademarks and corporate logos, nowadays mean a lot in terms of branding and marketabilty and hence money. You walk one furlong on our streets and you will come across fake Gucci’s or Armani’s lined up without the original owner’s consent on brand name usage. The most possible reason to these thefts, that one can come up, is the general attitude of Indians (let me talk about Indians alone now) is to care less for others’ properties or ideas. As Pavan K Verma says in his book “Being Indian”, Indians are selfish believers of “any means to an end” and any action taken towards the end is purportedtly justifiable for a supposedly good cause! Unless, this cycle of justifying any means to an end is not stopped, India and Indians will, in all probability, be generalised as “Thieves” and who is to be blamed for this negative comment, but ourselves. So the mantle is on the silent minority to voice its concerns and make the offending majority aware of their actions and the bad name that their actions are bringing on to the nation.
Come on India, show the world that you say no to the witch of Pliagiarism and to all her sinister sisters.
February 18th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Hmmm. It seems like Akhilesh has given a twist to the story.
I was more focused on the copyright issue, but it seems like he has put a strong case in terms of pirated and fake products. It seems to be rampant in Asia, and India does not seem to be behind in that aspect.
And yes, Akhilesh. This calls for us, who know of these things to actually educate and create awareness.
One odd fact that comes up is that we are not taught about these things in our moral science classes as kids. In moral science classes, acts of stealing and fraud were condemned. Then why is the issue of intellectual property skipped?
Speaking of such education in India, is it even present elsewhere in the world?
March 5th, 2007 at 8:59 am
i am a research scholar at one of india’s premioer universities. i am in the social scieneces. i have noticed many cases of plagiarism (even word-to-word copying) in many research papers published both by ph.d students as well as faculty. how can i report this and who do i report this to?
March 7th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Well, Seema. In terms of plagiarism in the real world, it is considerably difficult to track and penalize as compared to the online world.
What you can do, is contact the officials of the university through a memo giving exact details of the case of content theft. I am not very well aware of the proceedings in universities, but they might have a ‘ethics counselor’ or some one of similar stature to whom you may approach. If you are in doubt, then you can approach any senior member of the university council or of similar level and bring notice to the case.
October 14th, 2007 at 3:51 am
The plagiarism in academic body is often more serious. The two cases come to mind: that of B.S. Rajput (www.geocities.com/physics_plagiarism) and that K Kumar (www.geocities.com/electrical_plagiarism). Both of these are/were head of their institutions.
October 14th, 2007 at 4:06 am
Thanks for dropping by, Anjeneya and telling your opinion on plagiarism in academics.
November 20th, 2007 at 4:48 am
hey i have chunks of what i wrote being stolen off.. passed off as somebody else’s in an online magazine.. ne idea how does one deal with that…
November 20th, 2007 at 4:58 am
Hi Supriya. It is really a sad thing to happen.
I would suggest that you first contact the online magazine and bring it to their notice. If the infringing content is not removed - you could send official take down notices to them and to their hosts - this usually takes care of it.
Also, have a read through Jonathan’s Plagiarism Today site. It has a wealth of information that you could use.