A national debate around plagiarism has been sparked in India following accusations made against writer Rajiv Malhotra. Here, Swati Dhingra challenges the notion that plagiarism increases societal welfare. She argues that it is not hard to cite, and that presenting someone else’s work as your own is unegalitarian in the increasingly competitive academic world.
Earlier this month, historian Richard Fox Young charged an influential Indian-American writer of plagiarism. The writer, Rajiv Malhotra, has written four books on Hinduism, and argues that the way Hinduism is taught in the west denigrates its traditions. Young posted extracts from Malhotra’s books revealing that Malhotra had apparently plagiarised material from various books, particularly Andrew Nicholson’s book Unifying Hinduism [i]. This was followed by several web posts by well-known author, Ananya Vajpeyi, calling fellow scholars, writers and academics to join the war on the error of plagiarism.
There have been endless posts on the matter and the plagiarism and the discussion has grown into a national debate (see for example here). Being an economist, I will keep the moral question aside. Yes, of course, you should give credit to the original thinker, that would be the right thing to do. I want to ask instead in economic parlance: does plagiarism increase societal welfare? If people could freely steal ideas, wouldn’t it enrich the body of knowledge, through freer flow of ideas. Then in the grand scheme of things, plagiarism should be fine? I am going to give two reasons why this is not true and, why plagiarism requires corrective action.
First, plagiarism at best means that the writer is lazy and the work is shoddy – the writer couldn’t even be bothered to reference what’s incorporated. Free flow of ideas would happen just as easily if the original writer’s name is added. Every word processing program now comes with a footnote or bibliography feature, so this is a trivial task. In fact, citing others is great because they even help you with your dirty laundry. The computer scientists know this all too well. The free software movement lets a programmer copy other people’s work and modify it. As the code references the contributors’ names, programmers can ask the original contributors for help with any unanticipated glitches with the code. My co-authors and I have written successfully to several contributors to clarify or fix issues with their code and ours, so there are organic improvements to the body of knowledge all the time.
Second, plagiarism is unegalitarian because the plagiarising self-proclaimed pundits benefit at the expense of typically junior academics. It takes two hours to re-hash a piece of scholarly work whose original author probably spent two years doing the necessary research behind it. Academic jobs are getting harder and harder to come by and basically until most young academics write a book or `become’ a pundit or consultant later in their career, they are stuck with at least ten years of stress scrambling for tenure at a job that pays relatively little [ii]. Each citation counts and plagiarism of your original piece can be absolutely devastating, especially if it happens before you have formally published your work in a journal.
To sum up, it’s painless to cite people and doesn’t really take away from the glamor of being a thinker. Reputations matter and we need to name and shame people who plagiarise so that they don’t drive out the less connected original researchers. But most importantly, a systemic change is needed because plagiarism is rampant and comes with few penalties. For instance, 24% of responding editors to a survey of economics journals said they had encountered at least one case of plagiarism in a typical year. Yet less than 19% of responding journals had a formal policy regarding plagiarism (Enders and Hoover, 2004). Publishers need to take strict action and give credit or co-authorship to the original writers. So yes, it’s time to join the battle against the individual plagiarisers and the institutional inaction against plagiarism.
Endnotes
[i] This line has been subsequently edited out from the entry on Rajiv Malhotra on Wikipedia, but the content is available here.
[ii] A couple of years ago CNBC published an article on how university professors had the least stressful jobs. The real experiences of young academics are in this article that went viral a couple of years ago, and from which I’ve taken the above lines.
Image credit: flickr/Maik Meid CC BY-SA 2.0
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the South Asia @ LSE blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please read our comments policy before posting.
About the Author
Dr Swati Dhingra is a Lecturer in LSE’s Department of Economics.
“Learning from the Rajiv Malhotra affair”
(http://koenraadelst.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/learning-from-rajiv-malhotra-affair.html)
is a far more sensible summary of the situation that Mihir Sharma’s rant.
Prof. Dhingra,
I would like to mention 3 core points:
1. First let us take charge of Plagiarism:
The fact remains that Rajiv has extensively cited Nicholson in both the chapters of the book, (chapters for which major noise is being made). 12 out of the 30 Endnotes in Ch.8 of Indra’s Net refer to Nicholson. Further in the same chapter there are numerous invocations of Nicholson. Similarly in Chapter 11, Nicholson is mentioned enough number of times.
I request you to go through the blog https://traditionresponds.wordpress.com/ for further details.
2. The fact as it later came out was that Nicholson uses Indian sources heavily with only partial attributions.
Why such a charge was not made on Nicholson at the first instance. I suggest you read Rajiv’s response on these charges and then review this article. The response is here: http://www.niticentral.com/2015/07/21/rajiv-malhotra-on-nicholson-references-in-indras-net-324859.html
3. You are completely missing the bigger picture. Issue is not confined to plagiarism and the concerted effort is to undermine his credibility. Please refer to this Firstpost article BY R. Jagannathan where he highlights the bigger picture http://m.firstpost.com/india/rajiv-malhotras-net-plagiarism-charge-shows-no-longer-man-ignore-2349652.html
Aditya
Malhotra cited Nicholson so many times and in so many contexts, that it is hard to see bad intention on Malhotra’s part. There are grounds to see the issue as one of errata, not plagiarism.
Why not see the controversy as a battle for research funds? Malhotra’s critics are worried about Malhotra’s forthcoming book. The forthcoming book will probably bring down the importance of Sheldon Pollock’s research. After that it will be harder for Pollock to raise funds in India. (American universities are interested in raising funds in growing economies like India, China, … )
The author has falsely compared plagiarism with the Free Software based GPL license, where you are allowed to take someones else source , extend it but the same rules apply that you being the source of new knowledge, someone else could take yours and then the chain goes on. Indian knowledge based systems when one has to compare follows the same pattern. Andrew Nicholson , Sheldon Pollock and Other western Indologists have taken Indian knowledge under the Free license and then have applied strict intellectual property rights as if they own it. Then any Indian author summing up or identifying concepts in modern parlance has plagiarized the Western source.
Western Indology sources has stolen and plagiarized Indian vedic and yoga traditions , worse distorted them to suite their needs, propaganda and foreign policy. Lets debate that.
Hello ,
The article is a call to unite against plagiarism , agreed , but has the author of this article read indra’s net ? . If she has done then she forgets to mention that the book cites the so called original thinker 30 times . Nicholson is a so called original thinker because his work is inspired from hindu thought , which originated in india , now has Nicholson or any one of these sacrosanct authors from the left spectrum given credit to the great rishis and sages who were the original people who had this experience?
Dr Swati
1. There are at least 30 references to Nicholson’s work in Rajiv Malhotra’s book.
2. Nicholson has himself used the work of Indian authors of yore and texts without acknowledging them.
3. Nicholson’s work is not original but a copy of Indian authors
4. Nicholson has become famous due to this wrong accusation.
5. Young has been targeting Rajiv for year’s as Rajiv has been identifying Western authors denigrating India, Hinduism without adequate understand and in many cases these Western authors have malicious intent.
Regards
Hari Raghavan
Toronto
Swati Ji,
I wonder if you have had chance to read his books or at least review the response to the accusations from the writer Rajiv Malhotra. I was a PhD student myself in 1960’s in USA and am very well aware of competitive culture in the academic world. I chose to move to working world.
I am intimately familiar with the subject matter. Rajiv may have broken some minor traffic rule but his research is perfect. Please read his books and response.
Yash
I’ve read all four books by Rajiv Malhotra including the ones where the alleged plagiarism occurred. In my opinion it is a case of avoidable infraction rather than outright plagiarism. Why? Because the intent to plagiarize is not there. If he were really keen on stealing someone’s work he would not cite that author or his book 30 odd times in his own work. Also, Malhotra has a far bigger and better reputation to protect. I don’t think he’ll knowingly do anything to ruin it. Furthermore, reading Nicholson’s work one does get the sense of deja vu at some places. Maybe his own work should be assessed by Sanskrit and other Indian language scholars in the field because the unauthorized lifting of an idea is the worst kind of plagiarism. If found true, then the question of plagiarism by Rajiv Malhotra does not even arise. So, I think the blogger is in an unnecessary hurry to brand him as a convicted plagiarist. I don’t know about the blogger, but I’ve had a brief interaction with Rajiv Malhotra in 2014 here in Toronto. I mentioned to him that while reading his ground-breaking books I had felt that the way he cites references makes it a little harder to read his work, and that he is very generous with his references, and that often the same reference ends up being cited with different number even in the same chapter, etc. etc. He very graciously accepted that observation, and said that he’ll have to talk to his editorial people about that. But plagiarism, I don’t think so.
Why does she assume that the plagiarism complaint is valid?
Go here for an independent rebuttal
https://traditionresponds.wordpress.com
Also why is the background and context in which these allegations are made are ignored?
Badly needed perspective from Rajiv Malhotra:
http://www.firstpost.com/living/decolonising-indology-rajiv-malhotra-wont-follow-rules-set-west-2356234.html
It seems that the author takes for granted that the allegations of plagiarism are true. I have read the book and have counted at least 29 acknowledgements to Nicholson’s work.In addition, there are many more indirect references. The context makes it clear that the author is Nicholson even when his ideas are paraphrased. Thus, there is another side to the story which the author should have also studied and, at least, referred to. That would have made the article balanced and objective.
Swati being an economist has rightly raised strictly “economic” issues regarding plagiarism–does it enhance social welfare and it is unegalitarian. But I would like to ask Swati whether she has read in full both the works–of Rajiv Malhotra and of Nicholson. If so, did she notice how many times Rajiv Malhotra has cited Nicholson and how many times he ought to have but did not? If she has not read the books in full, is it fair to bring up the work of Rajiv Malhotra in her article on plagiarism. Fox is not a credible support to base an article on. Perhaps Swati does not know that Fox is notorious for trying to intimidate persons he does not agree with in his work of Christian mission. Ananya Vajpayi despite her academic past is opposed to Rajiv Malhotra on ideological grounds and is an acolyte of Sheldon Pollock, Nicholson’s mentor for his PhD. My observations are relevant because Swati’s article implies that Rajiv Malhotra is guilty of plagiarism, though her arguments against plagiarism are fresh in the current debate.
R.Venkatanarayanan
Why do you assume that the plagiarism complaint is true and use it as an example.
It would be good to provide a more balanced commentary by reading Rajiv Malhoitra’s rejoinders and also read the book to see if the complaint is true or not.
Hello Ma’am,
My hearty congratulations to you for recognizing the plight of young academics when they get plagiarized. In this case, I have heard some people saying that Nicholson in fact didnt do original work but plagiarized the work of a little-known academic called Dasgupta. I wouldnt be surprised actually because as far as I have read, Nicholson is in not really a historian, but works at a seminary. But in any case, I think this is very wrong.
may I know how much time it takes for moderation ?? and what is your criteria of evaluation??
Please see our comments policy here https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2012/06/06/comments-policy/
Since when did plagiarism charges are fought using online petitions? If the charges are real, why are they not taking the proper route to fight it?
You should know the below, before concluding
1. Indra’s Net is out in the market for around 20 months. Why these charges now, that too after the announcement of Rajiv’s new book, Battle for Sanskrit?
2. I am not sure how much History does Sri. Richard Fox Young know to be called a Historian but he is a Evangelist working for a Christian Seminary in Princeton, NJ.
3. 35-40% of all his tweets are to Sri. Rajiv Malhotra. So at worst he is a nuisance and best a Troll.
Also all charges have been rebutted long long back.
“Each citation counts and plagiarism of your original piece can be absolutely devastating, especially if it happens before you have formally published your work in a journal.”
The secrets of this ‘citation-business’ are not secrets any more. Try reading Dr.Prodosh Aich’s Lies with Long legs (2004) & Truths: 500 Years of European Christians in History (2015).
Thanks for your comments. Please note the author does not support or deny the charges made against Rajiv Malhotra, she is feeding into the wider discussion about plagiarism that have been sparked by the accusations.
Dhingra’s article is misleading in suggesting that there is a debate on the merits of plagiarism or implying that Rajiv Malhotra advocates it. He has always argued against plagiarism for reasons similar to those mentioned in this article. Malhotra’s argument is that he did not plagiarize, and that Western academia is imposing its stylistic requirements on others.
Society has certain standards of ethics, which are often universal, and certain standards of etiquette, which aren’t. Plagiarism involves ethical issues when an author claims originality for ideas or for creative expression. Malhotra accepts these standards. He has extensively cited Nicholson (30 times), and his core thesis is, in any case, quite different Nicholson’s, and so he makes no claim to Nicholson’s ideas. The primary issue that has been raised is his use of words from Nicholson’s book without the use of quotes. Malhotra’s claim is that the use of quotes is a matter of Western etiquette; since the fragments that he used have no value as creative expression, there is no ethical issue involved.
Rather than the debate Malhotra’s facts or arguments, his opponents have indulged in name-calling. In addition, they ignore that fact that actually Nicholson has extensively plagiarized ideas from traditional Indian scholarship.