On Plagiarism: A Point of View

Plagiarism signifies ‘literary theft.’ The larger meaning of the term covers ideas, thoughts as well as expressions. The recent news coverage of a certain book authored by a teen-ager whose arrival into the literary market was first hailed as an event but who soon seems to have given rise to carping criticism on the score of literary theft is the occasion for this article.

Those who have been subjecting the teen-age author’s work to criticism citing plagiarism as the ground therefore, seem to have pitched certain groups of words occurring in stray passages of the work, traced them to their ‘origin’ in other and earlier works by other authors. The groups of words they have reproduced do not even – it can be seen–possess pretensions to fine literary flourishes. Even if fine literary flourishes expressing fine ideas were to have been reproduced, the reading public may have to be thankful for at least temporary access thereto. This is one way of looking at it. The sin hinted at as having been committed by the teen-age author is ‘plagiarism.’ Is it really a sin? This is the question to which we must seek an answer. In a sense, this act and such acts will permit of comparison to action to usher in the socialistic pattern of society in the world of the mind, the world of thought. In the fashioning of such a society in the material world, the powers-that-be are supposed to take resources from the haves and to pass them on in some way or other to the have-nots. One may pardonably maintain that similar is the attempt by a writer at taking from the ‘haves’ with a view to passing them on to the ‘have-nots.’ In the world of letters, there are so many turns of expression, phrases, groupings of words either presenting familiar things/ideas from a refreshingly new angle or presenting new ideas which, on mere knowledge thereof bring pleasure. That the method of gaining knowledge thereof is of secondary significance, one may hold without incurring blame.

To repeat, the passages on which the recent news coverage has published criticism do not appear to be anything but groupings of words without literary pretensions. The words might just have surfaced in the mind of the author, from the sub-conscious into the conscious when the author was writing, without its having to give rise to an impression or conclusion that there was deliberate attempt by the author at claiming credit therefor, assuming for a moment that they possess particular attraction even as a fine idea finely expressed.

From another angle too, the matter requires a constructive view. The readers will be well aware of the fine rhyme:

‘THOUGH OLD THE THOUGHT AND OFT-EXPRESST
IT IS HIS AT LAST WHO SAYS IT BEST.’

Even when a person, honouring the requirements of kala, desha, varthamana appropriateness, uses someone else’s thoughts or expressions, this rhyme provides justification therefore holding it to be no sin but making it out to be a commendable attempt at reaching the fine thing to the notice of a larger public than would otherwise be the case.

Ideas and thoughts (this will go for expressions too in a sense) possess a certain characteristic that anyone ready and feeling free to criticize any work on the score of plagiarism should take note of. There are two phenomena imposing limits on the power and reach of thought: ‘the fullness or poverty of experience that meets the mind,’ and ‘the power of conception’ which brings with it ‘a wealth or poverty of formulative notions with which the mind meets experience.’ Great ideas are held to be ‘the only riches that one shares without ever dividing them.’ And the remarkable thing about ideas and thoughts is that the style/process of thinking of one person at one end of the world might be no way dissimilar to that of another at another end of the world. And the thought/idea born out of it may be simultaneous even.

Association of ideas is an ever fertile source of fresh ideas or of novel ways of looking at familiar things. There is no human law which renders it impossible or dishonest for two persons at two ends of the world thinking up – through association­ – ideas on virtually identical lines and giving expression to them in virtually the same way. Research into which was the earlier conceived and expressed to get ready for leveling against either the charge of plagiarism will be futile and wasteful of effort. (so long as the author is not aiming at a degree through a thesis claiming originality therefor.)

In a semi-serious, semi-comic way, ideas have been likened to ‘tramps, vagabonds knocking at the -door of your mind.’ Is there any human law which forbids simultaneous entry of such tramps into two minds at more or less the same time? Or even successive entry?

Similar will be the case with thoughts that take their birth in intuition.

It is said: ‘In the realm of thought every person performs innumerable abortions each minute of the waking day.’ Similarly in the world of thought, each person may be conceiving and delivering thoughts, separated perhaps one from another in point of space; but the minds where the thoughts are forged may be working on surprisingly identical lines. We can see by a casual study even of proverbs etc., of different countries that ageless truths are uttered with the utmost ease and ‘identicality’ (!) of expression. Need one waste time over finding substance for the charge of ‘plagiarism’ in such matters, where awareness of such finely and tersely expressed truths should be welcomed as means of enrichment of knowledge of things of beauty and wisdom and of enrichment of ways of looking at and thinking about and describing experience?

Literary criticism surely has much nobler things to aim at than getting locked into such an unproductive way?
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“Whether you realise it or not, you are directly or indirectly responsible for every thing that happens to you. You blame ‘life’, ‘fate’ or ‘other people’ or ‘government’. People should love life and pour their resources prodigally into the task of living. Then by an inherent law of nature, life pays them in their own coin. As they have given, so they have received. Life does not let you down. Happiness is not a gift or accident.”
-HAROLD SHERMAN