Thursday, August 16, 2012

Subcontinental plagiarism - 2

On my previous post, Beyond put an interesting comment. Also, when I shared this article with my friends privately on email, I received few more interesting replies. I guess, it deserves a post.

1. Beyond said: "I read by chance a 1975 'Readers Digest' (RD) which I found in a second hand shop in Islamabad. Few days later, I was listening to late Ashfaq Ahmad in one of his famous talk show. A complete article was taken out of the RD about graciousness of heart.I was so really surprised".

2. A friend informed me that Ghalib completely plagiarized a 'sher' of Persian poet  Bedil:


Bedil sher was: 
Bu-e-gul,nala-e-dil,dood-e-cheragh-e-mehfil
Her k az bazm-e-tu barkhast,pareshaN barkhast

Ghalib sher was:
Bu-e-gul,nala-e-dil,dood-e-cheragh- e-mehfil
Jo teri bazm sae nikla,so pareshaN nikla

3. It is said that Rabindranath 'Tagore's Gitanjali is fully plagiarized in style from Saadi's Gulistan-o-Bostaan and Hikayaat.

4. Allama Iqbal's central idea of poetry -  "Khudi" -  is fully obtained from Nietzsche

5. Kamal Ahmad Rizvi's central characters of super hit "Alif Noon" are 100% lifted from Hollywood's Laurel & Hardy as today many Pakistani/Indian movies and TV serials are copy cats... (though name is a short version of PTV's boss at that time - Agha Nasir)

I guess list goes on..!

2 comments:

beyond said...

i know its wrong to copy but a part of me says that a lot of good characters would be lost if it was not be given in urdu.who reads the english lit. that deeply any way.more than 70% of the population in pakitan cant read much so through these tv or literature sources,atleast some of the goodness is passed.i dont know.

mystic said...

I fully understand the intent. I have no issue with good faith. But at least a passing reference should be to original work...