A friend called from Chennai and in the course of our conversation (that spanned Lok Parithran, the need for an association for in-house lawyers and random regurgitation of a shared childhood) she spoke about how Kaavya Vishwanath, the Harvard-grad-cum-author who has been accused of plagiarism, is splashed all over the national dailies.
“Damn, now Harvard is going to be doubly cautious about admitting Indian women.” She complained.
The conversation set me thinking. Why would an obviously intelligent woman resort to the morally bankrupt act of plagiarism? Several years ago, I read and immensely enjoyed a book called ‘Crane’s morning’ by an unknown (at least to me) writer called Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen. Later, I discovered to my disappointment, that the book was almost entirely plagiarized from a British novel published in the 50s. Read details here.
Now, these two women have nothing in common save for an error in judgment that extracted a heavy price from them. Vishwanath paid with public humiliation and Aikath-Gyaltsen with her very life.
Whatever their respective motives, I’m tempted to simplistically wager that insecurity was an enormous component contributing to their downfall.Which makes me wonder. Why does intellect sometimes divorces a strong sense of self?
“Damn, now Harvard is going to be doubly cautious about admitting Indian women.” She complained.
The conversation set me thinking. Why would an obviously intelligent woman resort to the morally bankrupt act of plagiarism? Several years ago, I read and immensely enjoyed a book called ‘Crane’s morning’ by an unknown (at least to me) writer called Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen. Later, I discovered to my disappointment, that the book was almost entirely plagiarized from a British novel published in the 50s. Read details here.
Now, these two women have nothing in common save for an error in judgment that extracted a heavy price from them. Vishwanath paid with public humiliation and Aikath-Gyaltsen with her very life.
Whatever their respective motives, I’m tempted to simplistically wager that insecurity was an enormous component contributing to their downfall.Which makes me wonder. Why does intellect sometimes divorces a strong sense of self?
