Plagiarism 101: Copy, Paste and Slap Your Name On, Especially If It's Sabyasachi Amitav

Hot on the heels of all the coverage plagiarism has been receiving on Desicritics, comes the news that the content from the personal blog of Sakshi Juneja, a Desicritic, has also been plagiarised. The culprit this time around is a writer by the name of Sabyasachi Amitav, a writer with the online magazine Peace Journalism.

The offending article has since been removed from Peace Journalism's website.

Googling Sabyasachi Amitav's name pulls up a few articles, some for Peace Journalism and some for IMC (Independent Media Center) India. Googling, again, passages from a few of his articles, reveals that most of his writing, if not all, is "borrowed", without attribution, from various sources.

Here is a breakdown of his "borrowings".

1. Ragging and Society, "by" Sabyasachi Amitav appears on IMC India's website and under the dateline November 11, 2005. Portions of the text in that essay are copied from an essay appearing on Stop Ragging.org. That essay is dated August 29, 2005 and is attributed to Newindpress.com (via Shivam Vij and Mitesh's comments on Juneja's blog).

   A few of the offending lines from Amitav's essay,
   

   Two successive incidents of ragging in Ravenshaw College, which have reportedly left a student in a state of shock, pose to severely dent its image as a premier educational institution of the State.

   A Plus Three first year Commerce student Aniruddha Pradhan has gone into stupor for the last 10 days, suffering serious memory lapses, after reportedly being violently ragged by seniors in the West Hostel. Another Plus Three first year Arts student Soumendra Mitra has fled the hostel to his home in Puri.
   The city police have registered two cases, based on the complaints of the guardians of the two students, and investigation is on. Meanwhile, the college authorities have terminated the hostel membership of six seniors from the West Hostel after a preliminary investigation.

   and the same lines from Stop Ragging's website,
   

   Two successive incidents of ragging in Ravenshaw College, which have reportedly left a student in a state of shock, pose to severely dent its image as a premier educational institution of the State.

   A Plus Three first year Commerce student Aniruddha Pradhan has gone into stupor for the last 10 days, suffering serious memory lapses, after reportedly being violently ragged by seniors in the West Hostel.

   Another Plus Three first year Arts student Soumendra Mitra has fled the hostel to his home in Puri.

   The Malgodown police have registered two cases, based on the complaints of the guardians of the two students, and investigation is on. Meanwhile, the college authorities have terminated the hostel membership of six seniors from the West Hostel after a preliminary investigation.

2. Media and Godhra is another article that appears on Peace Journalism under Sabyasachi Amitav's name with the dateline September 26, 2005. The original article appears at the website of the Hindu Vivek Kendra, under the title Secular Righteousness, the article being an "An Analysis of the Editors Guild Fact Finding Report into the Gujarat violence" that occurred in 2002 conducted and presented by the Hindu Vivek Kendra.

   Amitav has been quite clever in removing paragraphs that attribute the work that has gone into the writing of that article to the original authors before pasting the rest of it onto Peace Journalism's website.

   For example, here are the first few paragraphs in the original,
   

   On February 27, 2002, the Sabarmati Express, a train which connects Ahmedabad in Gujarat, with Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, was attacked by a mob of more than 2000 Muslims at Godhra in Gujarat. The target was the Ram Sevaks who were returning from Ayodhya after taking part in a ceremony at the Shri Rama Janmabhoomi. Fifty-eight of the Ram Sevaks were incinerated in the incident. Most of them were women and children.

   In the aftermath, there was a major communal riot in parts of Gujarat, leading to the death of nearly 1000 persons, and many injured. The Muslim casualties were nearly three-quarters of the total.
   
   The Editors Guild sent a team on 'a fact finding mission' into the riots in Gujarat, post-Godhra, and the role of media in particular. The team consisted of BG Verghese (a columnist), Dileep Padgaonkar (Executive Managing Editor, The Times of India) and Aakar Patel (Editor, Mid-Day, Mumbai).

   In setting out in its task to report on the 'Ordeal by Fire in the Killing Fields of Gujarat', the Editors Guild Team follow the standard Marxist methodology. As Nikolay Valentinov (in "Encounters with Lenin") recounts Lenin telling him, "Plekhanov (a Marxist theoretician) once said to me about a critic of Marxism, 'First let us stick the convict's badge on him, and then after that we will examine his case.' And I think that we must 'stick the convict's badge' on anyone and everyone who tries to undermine Marxism, even if we do not go on to examine his case. That's how every sound revolutionary should react."

   The Editors Guild Team put the label of a convict on the Gujarati language media, and then went about the task of evaluating their reporting. Therefore, in analysing the report prepared by the Editors Guild Team, we should first discuss the ideology of the English media in India to enable us to put forward our analysis of the report. This is imperative since all the three members are from the English media.

   To do this, we have to look at the way this media has treated issues relating to India in general and Hindutva in particular, even prior to the events in Gujarat. It is our contention that the English media seems to take a special delight in perverting issues, which not only trivialises, but also enables them to avoid dealing with the essence of the issues. In the process, it ensures that sane debates do not take place, and the society does not reach an enduring solution to the problem except in a muddled way.

   In any case, even if we are to assume that the Editors Guild Report is valid in its damnation of the Gujarati language media, it was necessary for the Editors Guild Team to clearly establish that the English media in India is unbiased, instead of merely making an assumption that it is so. The Team did not even make an attempt to do so.

   The Hindu Vivek Kendra has made an analysis of the Editors Guild Report and is presenting the same here.

   and now the first few paragraphs in Amitav's essay on Peace Journalism,
   

   On February 27, 2002, the Sabarmati Express, a train which connects Ahmedabad in Gujarat, with Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, was attacked by a mob of more than 2000 Muslims at Godhra in Gujarat. The target was the Ram Sevaks who were returning from Ayodhya after taking part in a ceremony at the Shri Rama Janmabhoomi. Fifty-eight of the Ram Sevaks were incinerated in the incident. Most of them were women and children.

   In the aftermath, there was a major communal riot in parts of Gujarat, leading to the death of nearly 1000 persons, and many injured. The Muslim casualties were nearly three-quarters of the total.
   
   we have to look at the way this media has treated issues relating to India in general and Hindutva in particular, even prior to the events in Gujarat. It is our contention that the English media seems to take a special delight in perverting issues, which not only trivialises, but also enables them to avoid dealing with the essence of the issues. In the process, it ensures that sane debates do not take place, and the society does not reach an enduring solution to the problem except in a muddled way.

   Notice the lower case "w" in the last paragraph of Amitav's essay. While he has deleted "To do this," from the original, he has not bothered to convert the "w" into uppercase at the beginning of his sentence.

3. Justene Adamec points to this December 29, 2005 article on Peace Journalism's website "by" Sabyasachi Amitav, 2005 The Year of Embarassment For BJP, which is a copy of a Deccan Herald article from the day before, The rightist party that did nothing right.

   The first paragraph of Amitav's article,
   

   A year after it lost power at the Centre, BJP lost out on its much-touted ideology and discipline in its silver jubilee year and got its image severely dented by its MPs accepting cash on camera for raising questions and commission for MPLADs. Ideological "deviation" and indiscipline cost BJP its President L K Advani and a mass leader Uma Bharti in the year gone by which began on a winning note in Jharkhand and ended with a victory in Bihar even as the saffron party recovered from the Jinnah controversy and donned its role as an aggressive opposition forcing Natwar Singh to resign from the UPA Government. As Advani prepares to quit by the year-end, Rajnath Singh, Gen Next leader from UP appeared to have emerged to take his place. Unprecedented internal dissidence, perceived by BJP's opponents as a fallout of the loss of power at the Centre, plagued the "party with a difference" from Gujarat to Madhya Pradesh during 2005 which also saw the RSS being targeted for its "interference" in the affairs of its Hindutva progeny not only by leaders like Uma Bharti but by Advani himself. The suspension of Delhi strongman Madan Lal Khurana and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee openly airing his disapproval of the move, leading to the revocation of the action, was another low for the party during the year which witnessed leaders including L K Advani, Pramod Mahajan, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Uma Bharti getting embroiled in controversies trigerred by their own statements.

   and the first few paragraphs of the Deccan Herald article,
   

   A year after it lost power at the Centre, BJP lost out on its much-touted ideology and discipline in its silver jubilee year and got its image severely dented by its MPs accepting cash on camera for raising questions and commission for MPLADs.

   Ideological "deviation" and indiscipline cost BJP its President L K Advani and a mass leader Uma Bharti in the year gone by which began on a winning note in Jharkhand and ended with a victory in Bihar even as the saffron party recovered from the Jinnah controversy and donned its role as an aggressive opposition forcing Natwar Singh to resign from the UPA Government.

   Unprecedented internal dissidence, perceived by BJP's opponents as a fallout of the loss of power at the Centre, plagued the "party with a difference" from Gujarat to Madhya Pradesh during 2005 which also saw the RSS being targeted for its "interference" in the affairs of its Hindutva progeny not only by leaders like Uma Bharti but by Advani himself.

   The suspension of Delhi strongman Madan Lal Khurana and former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee openly airing his disapproval of the move, leading to the revocation of the action, was another low for the party during the year which witnessed leaders including L K Advani, Pramod Mahajan, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Uma Bharti getting embroiled in various controversies.

4. Under the title Political Awareness and Role of Media Amitav wrote an article dated October 4, 2005, which is a copy of an article appearing on Jansamachar.net under the title, Mass Media and Political Awareness dated July 17, 2002 and written by two authors, R.K. Madhavi and Dr. Kiran Ramachandran Nair.

   Here are the first couple of paragraphs from Amitav's article,
   

   The phenomenal growth in mass media channels have led to an expansion of the roles it could play in various areas apart from performing the functions of providing information, influencing public opinion and social attitudes, entertainment and bringing about greater social integration. In contemporary times, the media plays an important role in providing information through news reports and analysis, which is beneficial in assessing political performance.

   In Indian, the press has historically played a powerful role in motivating people to participate in the freedom struggle during the pre-independence era. After independence, the press has been joined by the more powerful electronic media, radio and television in communicating political information to the people. A few years ago the press was the main mass media channel which reported on political conditions prevailing in the country. But today political information is dominant on the national television channel as well as the satellite channels. All these media channels compete with one another to bring people closer to the political processes, important issues linked to them and their probable effects on society.

   and the corresponding paragraphs from Jansamachar.net's site,
   

   The phenomenal growth in mass media channels have led to an expansion of the roles it could play in various areas apart from performing the functions of providing information, influencing public opinion and social attitudes, entertainment and bringing about greater social integration. In contemporary times, the media plays an important role in providing information through news reports and analysis, which is beneficial in assessing political performance.

   In India, the press has historically played a powerful role in motivating people to participate in the freedom struggle during the pre-independence era. After independence, the press has been joined by the more powerful electronic media, radio and television in communicating political information to the people. A few years ago the press was the main mass media channel which reported on political conditions prevailing in the country. But today political information is dominant on the national television channel as well as the satellite channels. All these media channels compete with one another to bring people closer to the political processes, important issues linked to them and their probable effects on society.

If anyone comes across any other instances of this type of blatant copying and pasting by this author, please leave a comment to this post.