EPW Article on Plagiarism

EPW has carried my article ‘Pirates, Plagiarisers, Publishers‘ in this week’s issue. Here’s the abstract:

This article attempts to rescue Indian academic research, not by denying the charges of plagiarism, but by charting an alternative trajectory of plagiarism so that each successive instance does not amplify our sense of embarrassment and crisis in the academy.

I’m slightly dismayed that they’ve printed the earliest version of my article which bears one glaring (although deliciously ironic) gaffe in the third paragraph : I’ve misattributed Benjamin Franklin’s quote on originality being “the art of concealing the source” to Oscar Wilde!

Oh well. At least I’m not alone here. Here’s Dorothy Parker on misattribution of quotes to Oscar Wilde  (Thank you, Nishant Shah!)

A Pig’s-Eye View of Literature: Oscar Wilde

If with the literate I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.

I’ve uploaded another expanded version of the article on SSRN which, I feel, makes crisper arguments about plagiarism. I think this is the version of the article that I’d prefer to be circulated.

A possible way forward would be to import the cinematic notion of plagiarism into academic writing: Not all that is unacknowledged is unoriginal (as my example from student research at law universities shows), but this does not extend to a license to appropriate all as one’s own (the example of the famous IP author who plagiarised 200 pages from a professor).

Meanwhile, Rohit De has reviewed my article on the Law and Other Things blog. In the post, he invites us to consider the salience of the recombinative account of originality (that I describe in my article) in thinking about contemporary judgment-writing in India.  Sometime back, in the aftermath of the Ayodhya verdict, I’d posted a comment on Kafila in response to a post by Nivedita Menon which somewhat considers this question. I wrote:

‘judgment’ – a reasoned deliberation based on evidence and law has now become only one of many *possible* outputs from the judiciary.

2) One big difference since the post-90s has been the total decline in the craft of judicial writing. It is almost impossible now to find a well-written decision which makes a coherent argument from start to finish (This doesn’t mean there have been no ‘good’ decisions – the Naz Foundation case strikes one as an example of a poorly written, but “at heart” good decision)

Viewed entirely aesthetically, the ‘Indian decision’ has, over the past 2 decades, acquired a fascinatingly pastiche quality. Judges liberally toss law, facts, extracts from previous judgments, personal reflections, wikipedia entries, extracts from reports etc into their word processor and anything that flies out counts as a ‘judgment’.
(Another feature of contemporary judgment writing seems to be the escalating size per judgment, which adds little analytically to the overall quality of the judgment. This seems to be an acceptable, if apologetic. substitute for ‘quality’)

Coherence is a far too exacting standard which which to judge the higher judiciary – one is grateful, in its stead, to know at least “who won”.

So, in short, Yes. I do think it is possible to apply the recombinative theory of originality to lend a modicum of respect to the fantastically promiscuous judgments that have been emerging from our appellate judiciary in the past two decades. I think this jurisprudence is “autochthonous”, despite the absurd plurality of its sources. Intellectual profligacy is the seal that distinguishes contemporary Indian jurisprudence, and attests its authenticity. (And I’m only being very slightly derisive here)

I remember posting this article from the Hindu Business Line on the Commons Law list in 2007 which provides, I think, a singular instance of the judiciary commenting squarely on its own plagiarisms.