Controversial journalist Barkha Dutt’s sister Bahar Dutt was caught in a plagiarism row when nature and wildlife writer Janaki Lenin accused her of lifting paragraphs from her 2007 essay “The Song of the Ganges Gharial”. Taking to Twitter, Janaki alleged that Bahar Dutt’s book ‘Rewilding’ has portions of her essay lifted off almost verbatim.
Reading Bahar Dutt’s ‘Rewilding’ and struck by some familiar words in the turtles & gharial chapter. In 2007, I wrote an essay for Seminar and many sentences in her chapter are almost identical. @OUPAcademic
— Janaki Lenin (@JanakiLenin) December 23, 2019
Janaki cited her own essay and shared a screenshot from Dutt’s book which were quite similar.
the benefit of the three endangered Indian crocodilians–the mugger, the saltwater crocodile and the gharial. It delineated 20,000 square kilometres as sanctuaries and set up several captive rearing projects.”
Compare with this– pic.twitter.com/vdeig3viqs
— Janaki Lenin (@JanakiLenin) December 23, 2019
Her subsequent tweets showed Dutt’s book had exact same words as her essay.
Compare with this pic.twitter.com/WYmr62Fzqs
— Janaki Lenin (@JanakiLenin) December 23, 2019
resultant overcrowding in zoos and rearing centres, and the ‘feel-good’ factor.
Compare to– pic.twitter.com/Po9BJYUxko
— Janaki Lenin (@JanakiLenin) December 23, 2019
revised from Endangered to Critically Endangered, one stop away from Extinction. It is, today, the most endangered large animal in India, more gravely endangered than the tiger.”
When I wrote in 2007, status had been revised in 2006. So “recently”. Book published in 2019 says pic.twitter.com/Q1lT9C32BW
— Janaki Lenin (@JanakiLenin) December 23, 2019
Bahar Dutt’s clarification
Dutt, however, refuted these allegations and said that she had quoted Romulus Whitaker, wildlife conservationist.
Dear Janaki
Am shocked by this allegation every single mail from Rom to me is ON record these are based on papers sent by him to me and every single quote he has shared has been attributed to him including his papers at the end in the references ..— Bahar Dutt (@bahardutt) December 23, 2019
Expressing shock at the allegations, Dutt said how her emails to Whitaker were on record and were based on the papers sent by him. She adds that the references to the papers she has used in her book are mentioned in the references section.
Janaki this is a quote from Rom to me attributed to him : If you were writing on his behalf why did you not mention ??
— Bahar Dutt (@bahardutt) December 23, 2019
To another quote, she mentioned that in her book she had attributed the above quote to Rom as it was given to her by him. “If you were writing on his behalf, why did you not mention?” she asked Lenin. Rom is also Janaki Lenin’s husband. Responding to Dutt’s clarification, Lenin reprimanded her for not putting the verbatim quotes in quotation mark.
When you quote verbatim from another text, you use quotation marks and you cite the author. Not wave me to the list of references at the end of the book. https://t.co/TMrRYI3u9a
— Janaki Lenin (@JanakiLenin) December 23, 2019
Lenin has further asked Dutt to share the email exchange between Dutt and her husband, Rom, as she has claimed.
