By now almost everyone would be aware of the name Fareed Zakaria and the recent row involving the man. If not then let us do a small rewind for you. Fareed Zakaria, is an Indian-American journalist. He was the editor at Time magazine, as well as hosted a show at CNN. He was recently at the receiving end of a lot of flak when his work came under scrutiny, following charges of plagiarism. Here is an interesting article from Firstpost.com writer Vivek Kaul, who talks about how Fareed Zakaria is drawing so much attention from all sides, for his plagiarizing acts, but how our own Indian film industry, walks scott-free. Vivek Kaul uses Bollywood blockbuster, Sholay, to express his point of view.
Fareed Zakaria himself admitted to have borrowed portions from New York magazine's columnist Jill Lepore work, for his own column, where he talked about gun control in America. On the other hand, Bollywood is one of the biggest film industries of the world, and plagiarizing has been a part-and-parcel of its working, passing by everyday in the name of 'inspiration. Writers Salim-Javed's best Bollywood work, Sholay, is seen as the most 'inspired', western curry flick ever.
Fareed Zakaria
Vivek Kaul makes an interesting point, that giving any attribution for heavily borrowed....err inspired work has never ever been a norm in Bollywood, saying that, "Fareed Zakaria, unlike Salim-Javed, is unlucky to be living in an era where copying something, and passing it off as your own creation, is getting more and more difficult. Zakaria is just finding that out."
The writer further writes, "When Salim-Javed did Sholay, the times were different. People were not as much aware as they are today and it was easy to pass off someone else’s work as your own. In fact, the writer duo even went to the extent of creating a background for how they had been inspired in writing the “Veeru ki Shaadi” proposal scene. They got away with it. Zakaria clearly didn’t."
Though Vivek Kaul has just used one Bollywood film, Sholay, as an example to explain his point. But we are all too well-aware that Bollywood is bent too heavily under the burden of 'borrowing'. Whether it is film stories, dialogues, lyrics, music or any other aspect, we don't shy away from getting 'inspired' ever. But at least, our Indian film industry people are smart enough to know how to and from where to get 'inspired'. Maybe Fareed Zakaria forgot the fact that the he was actually lifting verses from one the most widely read magazines. Not an intelligent choice, we would say Mr. Zakaria.
What more perplexes many is that why a renowned and respectable journalist such as Fareed Zakaria did get involved into plagiarizing? Zakaraia, became a columnist with the Newsweek magazine in 2000 and then became the editor of Newsweek International. In 2010, he was honored by the prestigious Padma Bhushan Award, by Indian Government, for his contribution in the field of journalism. Zakaria was even hosting his own show, Fareed Zakaria GPS, on CNN, since 2008. What made the man who had accomplished so much, to risk it all?
Being a respectable journalist, with such a long standing career, saying that Zakaria never had any personal point-of-view or any personal understanding of news, would be redundant. And of course, Zakaria, would know how stringent the present age copyright laws are. Furthermore, the technology of discovering plagiarism in work is quite easily accessible. Even a Goggle search can help one in finding out whether an article is lifted or not. But the question still remains, why did Fareed Zakaria do it? In a statement Zakaria said, "Media reporters have pointed out that paragraphs in my Time column on gun control, which was also a topic of conversation on this blog, bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore's essay in the April 23rd issue of The New Yorker. They are right. I made a terrible mistake."
Doesn't quite make sense Mr. Zakaria, does it? Well just to end with an old Hindi line, ‘Nakal mein bhi akal ki zaruraat hoti hai.’
(This article was first published on www.popcracker.com. To read more interesting articles on pop-culture visit www.popcracker.com)
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