Opinion - Letters to the Editor   

Plagiarism charge

It is difficult to sympathise with Kaavya Viswanathan, accused of plagiarism. The similarities between her work and that of Megan McCafferty's are too blatant to be brushed aside as unconscious or unintentional slips. The adverse media publicity is fully deserved because that is the only safeguard against intellectual dishonesty. It is not difficult to find talented young writers in India who, for fear of penury, are forced to take up lucrative professions for a living. Our sympathies should be with them, and not with somebody who already enjoys the comfort of an affluent background and indulges in plagiarism.

Binod Sreenivasan,
Leeds, U.K.

Often it is parental or peer pressure that leads to such short cuts. Lack of confidence tempts a fledgling writer to trudge on the intellectual crutches of others. Kaavya's "internalisation" plea is unconvincing. As a writer she should have known that internalisation should lead to assimilation and synthesis, not repetition.

Jacob George,
Changanacherry, Kerala

Ghost writing, a concomitant of plagiarism, has almost become a major industry, particularly in Indian universities. Even senior professors resort to this reprehensible act without compunction. This trend must be stemmed. Scholars and students must be motivated to have access to original sources keeping in mind that a historian should quarry his own stone and build his house with his own hands.

C. Paramarthalingam,
Madurai, T.N.

Kaavya's internalisation claim reminds one of Roald Dahl's The Great Automatic Grammatizator, which talks of a machine created to write stories. It can create an entire manuscript if a few words of the plot are keyed into it. Kaavya's case only adds to the woes of an ever-dwindling book-reader populace.

Bharath Sundaram,
Chamrajnagar, Karnataka

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