This looks like too much of a coincidence..! I wonder what @RajeevSrinivasa<\/a> and @WSJ<\/a> have to say about it.. pic.twitter.com\/v1JUa1UhRw<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Amit Malviya (@malviyamit) July 25, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n My first instinct was to ignore these allegations\u200a\u2014\u200ato me they seem thin even by social media standards. But by now they have been shared on Twitter by scores of people, some of whom<\/a> have tens of thousands of followers. Many of those sharing<\/a> this graphic are widely viewed as supporters of the BJP or its Hindu nationalist parent organization, the RSS.<\/p>\n The comments on Malviya\u2019s tweet suggest that the graphic accusing me has also been shared on Facebook and WhatsApp. So I feel compelled to issue a point-by-point rebuttal.<\/p>\n At the heart of the plagiarism charge is the suggestion that my op-ed \u201cIndia\u2019s Incredibly Shrunken Presidency<\/a>\u201d was lifted from a column by Rediff columnist Rajeev Srinivasan titled \u201cSreedharan for President<\/a>.\u201d We both believe that India\u2019s presidency has been monopolized by politicians who shut out eminent professionals, and among those we both feel would be worthy of the Indian presidency are the Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati. Beyond that the pieces bear little obvious similarity\u200a\u2014\u200aeven a casual observer ought to be able to spot the clear difference in our prose styles\u2014 but they\u2019ve been arranged in a table to suggest the opposite. Here is my rebuttal to each of the six points in the widely circulated graphic shared by Malviya and others:<\/p>\n 1. Both Srinivasan and I argue that the Indian presidency is poorly served by (mostly mediocre) politicians, and that the high office ought to be occupied instead by distinguished Indians drawn from all walks of life. Ostensibly, because Srinivasan made this argument in June, and my column followed a month later, I must have got the idea from him.<\/p>\n Except that lamenting the monopoly of politicians on India\u2019s presidency is hardly uncommon. Here\u2019s my own column<\/a> from July 2015, on the death of President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, a rare non-politician president. My argument then: \u201cKalam was also the only president since the philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who held office from 1962 to 67, to elevate qualifications for the office beyond mere party loyalty or a talent for politicking. Unlike almost every other president during the past five decades, Kalam got the job on the strength of his achievements outside politics.\u201d<\/p>\n And here\u2019s Tunku Varadarajan arguing<\/a> in August 2015 that India should break \u201cthe suffocating grip of geriatric politicians\u201d on the presidency by nominating the cricketer Rahul Dravid.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not using these examples to claim that Srinivasan, or anyone else, lifted the idea of writing about the merits of India elevating a non-politician president from my 2015 column. I\u2019m merely pointing out that others, including me, have argued the case for eminent citizens before. Odds are that someone in India likely made this argument as early as the 1970s, when the decline in the presidency set in. This is not plagiarism by any stretch of the imagination.<\/p>\n 2. Both columns suggest Jagdish Bhagwati as a worthy candidate for the presidency. This is true, but the way the information has been presented is highly misleading. Since Srinivasan and I both believe that India\u2019s presidency has been poorly served by professional politicians it\u2019s hardly surprising that we both suggest potential alternatives.<\/p>\n Srinivasan\u2019s top suggestion, reflected in his column\u2019s title, is technocrat E. Sreedharan, known in India as the Metro Man for his project management skills. But he also mentions, in passing, the novelist O.V. Vijayan, the Congress politician Shashi Tharoor, and the scientist R.A. Mashelkar, among others. I consider fewer names. Here\u2019s the relevant sentence from my column: \u201cFor India\u2019s unimaginative leaders, the idea of elevating the great trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati, the industrialist Ratan Tata or the erudite cricketer Rahul Dravid to the presidency would be dead on arrival.\u201d<\/p>\n In short, both Srinivasan and I suggest several names\u200a\u2014\u200aten by my count\u200a\u2014\u200aof potential non-politician presidents who may have been considered in ideal circumstances. Only one<\/em> of these happens to be common to the two columns, but that one is highlighted in the graphic to suggest plagiarism. Suffice to say that Bhagwati, who I\u2019ve hosted<\/a> at AEI and whose book on the Indian economy I reviewed<\/a> for the WSJ in 2013, is hardly someone I\u2019m unfamiliar with.<\/p>\n 3. Both columns mention the size of the presidential palace, Rashtrapati Bhavan. This one is almost too ridiculous to deserve rebuttal, but here goes anyway. First, the two descriptions are not that similar. Srinivasan refers to a \u201c300 acre estate\u201d while I talk about a \u201c340-room sandstone palace.\u201d<\/p>\n Second, like countless others, I\u2019ve mentioned the grandiosity of India\u2019s presidential palace before. Here\u2019s a\u00a02012 piece in Foreign Policy<\/a>\u00a0where I write about \u201cthe palatial 340-room estate completed in 1929 for the viceroy of British India.\u201d And here\u2019s the relevant portion from the 2015 column linked to above: \u201cYou were as likely to see Kalam being jostled by students as dining with a dignitary in the 340-room presidential palace built for Britain\u2019s viceroy during the Raj.\u201d<\/p>\n Again, I\u2019m not suggesting that Srinivasan plagiarized me because he wrote about \u201ca 300 acre estate\u201d five years after I wrote about \u201ca 340-room estate.\u201d There are only so many ways to describe a building. In fact you would find it hard to find\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0description of Rashtrapati Bhavan that does not refer to the size of the estate or the number of rooms or the sandstone used to build it.<\/p>\n 4. According to the graphic, Srinivasan wrote of former presidents that \u201cnot many of them have shown excellence in anything\u201d while I say the current president, Ram Nath Kovind, \u201chas not earned his job for displaying any particularly outstanding qualities of heart or head.\u201d 5. Both columns mention presidents Radhakrishan (1962\u201367) and Kalam (2002\u201307) as outstanding former presidents, exceptions to the rule of mediocrity. Again, this is true, but it\u2019s something I\u2019ve talked about before both in my column and on Twitter.<\/p>\n From my 2015 column, repeated from above: \u201cKalam was also the only president since the philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who held office from 1962 to 67, to elevate qualifications for the office beyond mere party loyalty or a talent for politicking.\u201d From\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0in January this year: \u201cAs India marks\u00a0#RepublicDay<\/a>, I can think of only three presidents out of 13 who had the stature for the post: Prasad, Radhakrishnan & Kalam.\u201d<\/p>\n As India marks #RepublicDay<\/a>, I can think of only three presidents out of 13 who had the stature for the post: Prasad, Radhakrishnan & Kalam.<\/p>\n \u2014 Sadanand Dhume (@dhume) January 26, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Once again, I\u2019m not accusing Srinivasan of plagiarism because he happened to make a similar observation to the one that I made in a column two years ago, or in a widely shared tweet six months ago. If you go down the list of Indian presidents and exclude the career politicians, Radhakrishnan and Kalam are the obvious standouts. There\u2019s even a question on\u00a0Quora<\/a> comparing the two of them.<\/p>\n Some people, such as the writer\u00a0Keshava Guha<\/a>, believe that the educationist Zakir Husain (1967\u201369) belongs on the list too. In his column linked to above, Varadarajan mentions Kalam, Radhakrishnan and Husain \u201cas men who merit our ungrudging respect.\u201d Either way, that two columns mention Kalam and Radhakrishnan as great presidents is hardly an earthshaking coincidence.<\/p>\n To put this in a U.S. context, it\u2019s a bit like asking people to name the best American presidents. If five writers come up with a list that includes both Lincoln and Washington it doesn\u2019t mean that they all copied each other. It suggests a broad consensus on the question.<\/p>\n 6. Both Srinivasan and I mention that some of the least distinguished former presidents have been loyalists of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Again, the language in the graphic could hardly be more different. Srinivasan uses the term \u201cpersonal retainer,\u201d whereas I speak of \u201ca string of mediocrities\u201d and highlight some of the most egregious examples.<\/p>\n Neither Srinivasan nor I mention all of the mediocrities by name in our columns but, as with the best former presidents, I would argue that there\u2019s a strong consensus on the worst ones: Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (1974\u201377), Giani Zail Singh (1982\u201387) and Pratibha Patil (2007\u201312). I name Patil in my column, but many of my Indian readers would know that the man in the bathtub immortalized in\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0cartoon was Ahmed, and that the person who promised to sweep the floors for Indira Gandhi was Zail Singh.<\/p>\n To sum up, Malviya\u2019s insinuation hinges on ignoring my work that predates the allegedly plagiarized column, selectively highlighting aspects of my column to draw parallels with Srinivasan\u2019s, and portraying commonplace observations as earth-shaking coincidences. (They both say Rashtrapati Bhavan is big!) Ironically, if I used exactly the same examples as in the graphic I could accuse Srinivasan of plagiarizing\u00a0my<\/em>\u00a0earlier work. Of course, this is preposterous. I have no reason to believe that Srinivasan did not come to his views about the decline of the Indian presidency independently. For the most part we concur on what went wrong, even if we have largely different ideas\u200a\u2014\u200ashared admiration for Bhagwati notwithstanding\u200a\u2014\u200aon who would make a good president for India.<\/p>\n What\u2019s important here is not the allegation, but what it says about the BJP. Heading into the 2019 general elections, the party clearly recognizes the power of social media to destroy reputations and intimidate critics. No other political party in India is as well-organized, or as willing to play\u00a0dirty<\/a>. My own problems with what I call the \u201cHindutva Troll Army\u201d erupted last year after I\u00a0criticized<\/a>\u00a0Modi\u2019s decision to suddenly scrap 86 percent of India\u2019s currency notes by value, but they have deepened after I expressed my\u00a0concerns<\/a>\u00a0about the BJP\u2019s appointment in March of Yogi Adityanath,\u00a0a hate-spewing Hindu monk<\/a>, to lead India\u2019s largest state, Uttar Pradesh.<\/p>\n Unlike many people, I have the resources to fight back against innuendo and intimidation.\u00a0But imagine for a moment that you\u2019re a reporter for a small Indian publication, or working at an unknown think tank. Say the wrong thing and an entire online machine\u200a\u2014\u200acomplete with WhatsApp groups, fake news sites and tens of thousands of dedicated followers\u200a\u2014\u200acan swing into action to undermine your reputation.<\/span>\u00a0The\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0recently wrote about this\u00a0here<\/a>. The\u00a0Financial Times<\/em>\u00a0reviewed a book that looks at the BJP\u2019s social media operation\u00a0here<\/a>. Fake news-busting site Alt News has\u00a0chronicled<\/a>attacks on the noted Indian columnist Tavleen Singh for sharing a photograph of the squalor of Adityanath\u2019s hometown, and the wild-eyed\u00a0allegation<\/a>\u00a0that TV journalist Barkha Dutt had hitched a scooter ride with an Islamist terrorist.<\/p>\n Organized online smear campaigns are what we have come to expect in Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s Turkey and Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia. As long as BJP President Amit Shah empowers the likes of Malviya, it is also increasingly the reality in Narendra Modi\u2019s India.<\/p>\n Having written for international publications for nearly two decades\u200a\u2014\u200afirst as a journalist and then as a columnist\u200a\u2014\u200aby now I\u2019ve grown used to the usual charges flung by some of those who happen to disagree with me. If I earned a dollar every time someone on Twitter accused me of being a shill for the ruling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":4358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"an_content_type":[],"coauthors":[130],"class_list":["post-4351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Vivek](\"http:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2017\/07\/Selection_28_07_2017_002-923x1024.jpg\")
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\nAgain this falls into the category of \u201ctoo silly to rebut\u201d but, for the record, there\u2019s absolutely no similarity in phrasing here, and we are not even describing the same person. The substantive point, about most Indian presidents being chosen for largely political reasons, is one I\u2019ve made before, including in the 2015 column on Kalam shared above.<\/p>\n\n