“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” – John F Kennedy, January 20, 1961

Like so many of my generation, I was mesmerised by this speech delivered by the young and photogenic president. It had become fashionable to cite this particular passage as an instance of an inspiring leader. And I believe it continues to give goose-bumps even to the young generation today.

About 30 years ago, I developed a passion for Kahlil Gibran works. And it was then that I came across the following passage:

“Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in a desert.” – Kahlil Gibran (1925).

To the best of my knowledge no one has till date accused President Kennedy of plagiarising, although the similarities are there for everyone to see. The Kennedy speech continues to occupy a place in the pantheon of great speeches of all time and is referred to over and over again. And very few people actually know about its provenance. Gibran scholars have in recent years made the point, but given Kennedy’s legendary status, have desisted from making the plagiarism charge.

The whole episode came to my mind when I read about the travails of Fareed Zakaria. Fareed has been suspended from his exalted position of being TIME magazine’s roving editor following the discovery that he had plagiarised two passages in his article, from that written by a law professor in The New Yorker. It was a stupendous fall for a person who was until recently being touted to be the first Indian-American Secretary of State.

Let me add here that I am personally not a Fareed Zakaria fan. I have always maintained in person as well as in my writings that he has been vastly over-rated as a political analyst. He certainly has a degree of articulation, but his analysis and prophecies fall well short of what I would normally expect from a columnist in magazines such as Newsweek and TIME.

I recall that I had harboured similar reservations about his parents. Dr Rafiq Zakaria was undoubtedly an Islamic scholar of repute, but his lifelong attempt to create a secular constituency for himself always lacked conviction. His writings do reveal a passionate dislike for Mohammed Ali Jinnah and his opposition to the two-nation theory was intense. But then let us not forget that Jinnah was regarded to be a secularist and many who opposed him had suspect secular credentials (the obvious exception of course being that late Mohammed Currimbhai Chagla). Zakaria dabbled actively in politics and was a minister for a while – but again, his political somersaults did him no service.

Fareed’s mother, Fatima Zakaria had been appointed Deputy Editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, then the highest-selling weekly in India. I recall Bikram Vohra, who had once worked with the magazine, writing that Fatima was appointed purely for political and nepotistic reasons and could not write to save her life. She has now, I believe, taken to editing the coffee-table magazine at the Taj Hotel.

I have also not had an opportunity to read the offending article and the one from which it was reportedly plagiarised. But I am forced to wonder – when does plagiarism start and where does it end.

My edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines plagiarism as:

pla·gia·rism
noun
1. an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorisation and the representation of that author’s work as one’s own, as by not crediting the original author:  Synonyms: appropriation, infringement, piracy, counterfeiting; theft, borrowing, cribbing, passing off.
2. a piece of writing or other work reflecting such unauthorised use or imitation

And here is where we run into difficulties.

Everyone who writes is influenced all the time by what he or she has read earlier and tends to rely on words and phrases that he or she had read which he or she was not previously familiar with and which the writer might feel may be appositely utilised. But how many times have we actually attributed every phrase or expression we use to the author who penned the article where we first saw it?

That effectively makes plagiarists out of all of us.

My own view is that if we copy the entire idea which had its provenance elsewhere, that is a clear instance of plagiarism. Additionally if we habitually use major portions of an article including multiple passages and pass it off as our own, that would constitute plagiarism.

But if we tend to include sporadic use of expressions which have been borrowed from elsewhere, then we run into multiple problems.

As I have said, I am not sure of the details of this alleged plagiarism which has been admitted by Fareed. My sincere hope would be that the literary community would put their heads together and work out a consensus of a concrete and acceptable definition of what should be included in this category.

Failure to do so would result in absurdities such as the one which happened in one US presidential election.

Neil Kinnock, leader of the Labour Party in the UK once made a riveting speech in May 1987:

“Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn’t get what we had because they didn’t have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand.”

Later that year in the US presidential primaries, Joe Biden delivered the following passage in a speech in September, 1987:

“Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go a university? Why is it that my wife… is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? …Is it because they didn’t work hard? My ancestors who worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come after 12 hours and play football for four hours? It’s because they didn’t have a platform on which to stand.”

Biden was accused of plagiarism and was forced to withdraw from the contest. He never contested presidential elections again, and only in 2008 was elected as the Vice President and Barack Obama’s running mate.

The price Biden paid was really heavy. But was this alleged “plagiarism”? If indeed it was, was it any worse than what Jack Kennedy did?

It may be unfashionable to speak out in favour of Fareed and I am not doing that. I am just adumbrating that there is a very grey element in how we tend to see the nefarious practice of plagiarism. We would do ourselves a big favour by commencing a debate on it, lest another absurdity results which may end up victimising another Biden-like figure.

Image Source: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/detroitchamber/7298338358/sizes/l/in/photostream/]