Author: C M Naim
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: September 01, 2009
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/jaswant-notso-original/509756/0
The author of Jinnah: India - Partition -
Independence, Jaswant Singh, and its publisher, R K Mehra, have taken pains
to convince the book's readers that it is a piece of meticulous research.
"It has taken me five years," Singh
states in his introduction, "to write, rewrite, check, cross-check, seemingly
an endless process." He also mentions a research team that assisted him
in the task, highlighting the persons whose particular whose help was invaluable
to him.
As for the publisher, R K Mehra of Rupa &
Co., he said in an interview: "It's a well-researched and professionally
handled academic work..." Then he added, "Our editors had diligently
scanned the manuscript in its entirety..."
The book may have been 'researched' by an
assiduous team, but the book carries Singh's name as its author. He is responsible
for everything included in it. Further, by putting his name on the cover,
Singh lays claim to the authorship of all the book's contents, unless otherwise
indicated - i.e. properly ascribed to someone and duly acknowledged as a quotation.
Similarly, the job of any book editor or publisher worth the name is to ensure
accuracy and consistency in the text, and a full acknowledgment of other people's
wherever needed.
Sad to say, that is not the case here. I have
found several cases in the footnotes and endnotes where huge chunks have been
copied word-for-word from some source available on the web, with absolutely
no acknowledgment of the source.
(When The Indian Express contacted Mehra,
he declined to comment on the lifting of text while Jaswant Singh was unavailable
for comment. When contacted, IAS officer and former aide to the author, Raghvendra
Singh, thanked by Singh in the acknowledgments as "relentlessly searching
out new books, new sources and references," said: "What can I say?").
o On pages 481-2, there is a long (19 lines),
erudite note on the Canadian scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith. Besides being
totally irrelevant, it is a verbatim copy of a note that is available on the
web at the following link: http://www.as.ua.edu/rel/aboutrelbiowcsmith.html.
The site belongs to the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Alabama;
the biographical statement on Smith was authored by its Department of Religious
Studies.
o On page 588, the long (34 lines), equally
erudite note on Benedict Anderson and his book, Imagined Communities, is a
meticulous copy of what is available on the web at the site set up by "The
Nationalism Project." Its html is: www.nationalismproject.org/what/anderson.htm.
o Page 623 contains a note (20 lines) on the
Muddiman Committee. Singh or his research team has stolen it word for word
from the "Banglapedia" on the web. The copyright for it belongs
to the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Amazingly, the same note is duplicated
on page 630, unnoticed by the vigilant editors at Rupa & Co.
o On page 633, the author has included a note
on Ramsay Macdonald; it runs to 25 lines, and faithfully copies what the Indian
National Congress has placed on the web under the heading "British Friends
of India." It can be looked up at www.congress.org.in/british-friends-of-india.php.
o On pages 634-5, the author has presented
a long note on A K Fazlul Haq. Its 38 lines were originally written by someone
for the "Story of Pakistan" project. One can find it on the web
at: www.story of pakistan.com
Let me reiterate that none of the above carries
any indication that it was not authored by Jaswant Singh. I'm confident that
more searches of the kind I did, using key words or sentences, will turn up
many more such examples in the endnotes and also elsewhere.
I am sure that both Singh and Mehra will describe
the above as "inadvertent lapses," and call my exercise "nitpicking."
In most countries of the world, however, the same "lapses" will
be called plagiarism.
- The author is Professor Emeritus, University
of Chicago, and a National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study,
Shimla.
