Vikram Sampath is an Indian
popular historian
Popular history is a broad genre of historiography that takes a popular approach, aims at a wide readership, and usually emphasizes narrative, Personality type, personality and vivid detail over scholarly analysis. The term is used in contradistin ...
, noted for authoring biographies of
Gauhar Jaan
Gauhar Jaan (born Angelina Yeoward; 26 June 1873 – 17 January 1930) was an Indian singer and dancer from Kolkata. She was one of the first performers to record music on 78 rpm records in India, which was later released by the Gramophone Compa ...
and
V. D. Savarkar
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (), Marathi pronunciation: inaːjək saːʋəɾkəɾ also commonly known as Veer Savarkar (28 May 1883 – 26 February 1966), was an Indian politician, activist, and writer.
Savarkar developed the Hindu nationali ...
.
Sampath was born in
Karnataka
Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...
. After academic training in engineering, mathematics, and finance, he worked in banking. In 2008, he published a history of the
Wadiyar Dynasty of Mysore—a childhood fascination. He published a biography of Gauhar Jaan to critical acclaim in 2012, and won the Yuva Puraskar in English literature from the
Sahitya Akademi
The Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, is an organisation dedicated to the promotion of literature in the languages of India. Founded on 12 March 1954, it is supported by, though independent of, the Indian government. Its of ...
. The next year, Sampath published a biography of
S. Balachander
Sundaram Balachander (18 January 1927 – 13 April 1990) was an Indian veena player and filmmaker. He directed, produced, and also composed music for a few of his films. Balachander was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1982. He died of a hear ...
to positive reviews.
In 2013, Sampath left his job at
Hewlett-Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
and began a
PhD in
ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is the study of music from the cultural and social aspects of the people who make it. It encompasses distinct theoretical and methodical approaches that emphasize cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dim ...
and history at the
University of Queensland
, mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work
, established =
, endowment = A$224.3 million
, budget = A$2.1 billion
, type = Public research university
, chancellor = Peter Varghese
, vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry
, city = B ...
. In 2019 and 2021, he wrote a two-part biography of Savarkar that was held to be an uncritical work by most critics. In September 2021, he was selected as a Fellow of the
Royal Historical Society
The Royal Historical Society, founded in 1868, is a learned society of the United Kingdom which advances scholarly studies of history.
Origins
The society was founded and received its royal charter in 1868. Until 1872 it was known as the Histori ...
. In February 2022, multiple academics accused Sampath of
plagiarism
Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thought ...
; Sampath denied the allegations and responded with a lawsuit.
Early life and education
Sampath's father, Sampath Srinivasan, was a
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
**Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nativ ...
banker and his mother, Nagamani Sampath, was a
Marathi
Marathi may refer to:
*Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India
*Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people
*Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece
See also
*
* ...
housewife.
[The skeptics called me a royalist](_blank)
- Kumar, Smita Balram. Jade. He was raised in
Bangalore
Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...
and completed his schooling at the
Sri Aurobindo Memorial School and
Bishop Cotton Boys' School
Bishop Cotton Boys' School is an all-boys school for boarders and day scholars in Bangalore, India, founded in the memory of Bishop George Edward Lynch Cotton, Bishop of Calcutta. The school has been described as "The Eton of the East".
Th ...
.
He was trained in
Carnatic music
Carnatic music, known as or in the Dravidian languages, South Indian languages, is a system of music commonly associated with South India, including the modern Indian states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, an ...
since the age of five; among his teachers were
Jayanthi Kumaresh
Jayanthi Kumaresh is an Indian Veena musician. Jayanthi comes from a lineage of musicians who have been practising Carnatic music for six generations and started playing the Saraswati Veena at the age of 3. Her mother, Lalgudi Rajalakshmi, was h ...
and
Bombay Jayashri
"Bombay" Jayashri Ramnath is an Indian Carnatic vocalist, singer, and musician. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi movies. Born into a family of musicians, Jayashri represents the fourth ge ...
.
Sampath graduated from
BITS Pilani
Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani (BITS Pilani) is a Deemed university in Pilani, Jhunjhunu, India. It focuses primarily on higher education and research in engineering and sciences. After expansion to a campus in Dubai, it has b ...
with a dual degree in Electronics Engineering, and a master's degree in mathematics.
Against the wishes of his professors, who wanted him to pursue a PhD in
topology
In mathematics, topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformations, such ...
, he shifted to finance and obtained an MBA in Finance from
S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research
The S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) is a private non-profit post-graduate management school based in Mumbai, India. Founded in 1981 under the aegis of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, The institute offers several full-time and par ...
.
In October 2017, Sampath received a doctorate in
ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is the study of music from the cultural and social aspects of the people who make it. It encompasses distinct theoretical and methodical approaches that emphasize cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dim ...
and history from the School of Music at
University of Queensland
, mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work
, established =
, endowment = A$224.3 million
, budget = A$2.1 billion
, type = Public research university
, chancellor = Peter Varghese
, vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry
, city = B ...
, Australia.
Career
Sampath worked at
GE Capital
GE Capital is the financial services division of General Electric.
The company currently only runs one division, GE Energy Financial Services. It had provided additional services in the past; however, those units were sold between 2013 and 2018 ...
in
Gurgaon
Gurgaon (pronunciation: ʊɽɡãːw, officially named Gurugram (pronunciation: ʊɾʊɡɾaːm, is a city located in the northern Indian state of Haryana. It is situated near the Delhi–Haryana border, about southwest of the nationa ...
for about eight months till December 2005, before switching to
Citibank
Citibank, N. A. (N. A. stands for " National Association") is the primary U.S. banking subsidiary of financial services multinational Citigroup. Citibank was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, and later became First National City ...
's Global Decision Management Team at Bangalore, where he continued till March 2008.
He went on to join
Hewlett-Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
, where he stayed till July 2013.
He was a former senior fellow at the
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library
The Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML) is a museum and library in New Delhi, India, which aims to preserve and reconstruct the history of the Indian independence movement. Housed within the Teen Murti House complex, it is an autonomous ins ...
and is the founder-director of the Bangalore Lit Fest as well as the
ZEE Group
Essel Group, (also known as Zee Group) is an Indian multinational conglomerate holding company and corporate promoter headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. The company has had business interests in mass media, infrastructure and packag ...
's ARTH: A Culture Fest.
In February 2014, Sampath was appointed as the Executive Director of the Bangalore regional center of
Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts
Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi is a premier government-funded arts organization in India. It is an autonomous institute under the Union Ministry of Culture (India), Ministry of Culture.
History
The Indira Ga ...
for a three-year tenure but he resigned in August 2015. The same year, he resigned from the Bangalore Lit Fest, after writer-invitees criticized his opposition to the
Award Wapsi campaign.
Works and reception
Wadiyar Dynasty
Sampath's first book, published in 2008 by
Rupa Publications
Rupa Publications is an Indian publishing company based in New Delhi, with sales centres in Kolkata, Allahabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Jaipur, Hyderabad and Kathmandu.
Genesis
Rupa Publications was founded in 1936 by D. Mehra and R. K. Me ...
, was a history of the
Wadiyar Dynasty
The Wadiyar dynasty (formerly spelt Wodeyer or Odeyer, also referred to as the Wadiyars of Mysore), is a late-medieval/ early-modern South Indian Hindu royal family of former kings of Mysore from the Urs clan originally based in Mysore city. ...
of Mysore. The topic had him captivated since coming across the "humiliating portrayal" of Wadiyars in
The Sword of Tipu Sultan
'
''The Sword of Tipu Sultan'' is an Indian historical drama that was first broadcast on the DD National in February 1990. Based on a novel by Bhagwan Gidwani, this drama was a portrayal of the life and times of Tipu Sultan, the 18th century ru ...
and similar "misrepresentations" in later life.
Sampath claimed inspiration from
Arun Shourie
Arun Shourie (born 2 November 1941) is an Indian economist, journalist, author and politician. He has worked as an economist with the World Bank, a consultant to the Planning Commission of India, editor of the ''Indian Express'' and ''The Times ...
and
Ramachandra Guha
Ramachandra "Ram" Guha (born 29 April 1958) is an Indian historian, environmentalist, writer and public intellectual whose research interests include social, political, contemporary, environmental and cricket history, and the field of economics. ...
but admitted that his was not a "historian's point-of-view"; the lack of an academic training coupled with an equal disinclination to either the Marxist Left or the Hindu Nationalist Right apparently served him well.
The work was proof-read by
Suryanath U. Kamath
Suryanath Upendra Kamath (26 April 1937 – 21 October 2015) was an Indian historian who served as the Chief Editor of the Karnataka State Gazetteer from 1981 to 1995.
Early life
Kamath was born in a Konkani language, Konkani-speaking family ...
.
A review in ''The Hindu Literary Review'' noted the work to be unprecedented judging by the span of time it chronicled; Sampath's attention to the minutest of details was admired in particular.
However, his methodology—mundane documentation of all sides to a story, absent any historical analysis—was criticized as were his "inane" judgments on
Marxist historiography
Marxist historiography, or historical materialist historiography, is an influential school of historiography. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography include the centrality of social class, social relations of production in class-divided soci ...
.
Pavitra Jayaraman's review in ''
Mint
MiNT is Now TOS (MiNT) is a free software alternative operating system kernel for the Atari ST system and its successors. It is a multi-tasking alternative to TOS and MagiC. Together with the free system components fVDI device drivers, XaA ...
'' found the work to be a "page-turner", that attested to the years of work Sampath had put in the project. Another review in the ''
Business Standard
''Business Standard'' is an Indian English-language daily edition newspaper published by Business Standard Private Limited, also available in Hindi. Founded in 1975, the newspaper covers the Indian economy, infrastructure, international busine ...
'' found Sampath to have surpassed all other works produced on similar themes in a non-academic context; he had made excellent use of the archives to draft a "riveting narrative".
Gauhar Jaan
In 2012, Sampath published a biography of
Gauhar Jaan
Gauhar Jaan (born Angelina Yeoward; 26 June 1873 – 17 January 1930) was an Indian singer and dancer from Kolkata. She was one of the first performers to record music on 78 rpm records in India, which was later released by the Gramophone Compa ...
, who was India's first classical musician to record on the gramophone. He had chanced upon Jaan, in the Royal Archives of Mysore, while researching for the previous book.
All reviewers commended Sampath's meticuluos archival work despite the scarcity of sources on figures like Jaan. Ethnomusicologist Peter Manuel found Sampath to have had sketched an "informative and evocative portrait" of Jaan and her politico-cultural milieu notwithstanding a non-schoarly approach that lacked in citations; his work was hailed as a groundbreaking contribution to studies of
Hindustani music
Hindustani classical music is the classical music of northern regions of the Indian subcontinent. It may also be called North Indian classical music or, in Hindustani, ''shastriya sangeet'' (). It is played in instruments like the violin, sit ...
.
Partha Chatterjee, reviewing for ''
Frontline
Front line refers to the forward-most forces on a battlefield.
Front line, front lines or variants may also refer to:
Books and publications
* ''Front Lines'' (novel), young adult historical novel by American author Michael Grant
* ''Frontlines ...
'', found his portrayal of Jaan as "poignantly beautiful". Harbans Singh, reviewing for ''
The Tribune ''The Tribune'' or ''Tribune'' is the name of various newspapers:
United States Daily California
*''Oakland Tribune''
* ''The Tribune'' (San Luis Obispo)
*'' San Gabriel Valley Tribune''
Indiana
*''Kokomo Tribune''
*'' Peru Tribune''
* ''The Trib ...
'', spoke highly of Sampath's nonjudgmental scholarship and forceful recreation of the cultural world inhabited by Jaan. ''The Hindu Literary Review'' admired Sampath's nuanced chronicling of the dichotomies that arose with regimes of princely modernity. However, Sadanand Menon, reviewing for ''
Outlook
Outlook or The Outlook may refer to:
Computing
* Microsoft Outlook, an e-mail and personal information management software product from Microsoft
* Outlook.com, a web mail service from Microsoft
* Outlook on the web, a suite of web applications ...
'', found the book be filled with a "glut of
edantic and tiresomedetail"; the work was held to be an amateurish attempt at reconstructing history.
The book has been translated into
Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
and
Marathi
Marathi may refer to:
*Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India
*Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people
*Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece
See also
*
* ...
. It has also been adopted into an eponymous play by Lillette Dubey and
Mahesh Dattani
Mahesh Dattani (born 7 August 1958) is an Indian director, actor, playwright and writer. He wrote such plays as ''Final Solutions'', ''Dance Like a Man'', ''Bravely Fought the Queen'', ''On a Muggy Night in Mumbai'', ''Tara'', ''Thirty Days in S ...
''.''
Ashutosh Gowarikar
Ashutosh Gowariker (born 15 February 1964) is an Indian film director, actor, screenwriter and producer who works in Hindi cinema. He is known for directing films "set on a huge canvas while boasting of an opulent treatment".
His is particularl ...
acquired film rights for the book in 2017.
Digital Music Archive
While working on the book, Sampath set up a private non-profit trust in collaboration with
Manipal University
Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) is a private deemed university located in Manipal, India. The university also has campuses in Mangalore, Bangalore and Jamshedpur in India , and global campus in Dubai and Malacca (Malaysia). As of ...
to digitize vintage gramophone recordings and make them freely accessible to public, with funding from
T. V. Mohandas Pai
T. V. Mohandas Pai is a Padma Shri Awardee and the current Chairman of Manipal Global Education (Manipal University). He was a former director of Infosys, and Head – Administration, Education, and Research, Financial, and Human Resour ...
.
In 2015, Sampath donated the collection to the
Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts
Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi is a premier government-funded arts organization in India. It is an autonomous institute under the Union Ministry of Culture (India), Ministry of Culture.
History
The Indira Ga ...
. Since 2013,
much of the archive has been accessible for free on
SoundCloud
SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform and music sharing website that enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is one of the largest music streaming se ...
.
As of 2021, it includes almost 15,000 records, with 7,000 digitized.
S. Balachander
Sampath's third book, published in 2013, narrates the life of
Veena
The ''veena'', also spelled ''vina'' ( sa, वीणा IAST: vīṇā), comprises various chordophone instruments from the Indian subcontinent. Ancient musical instruments evolved into many variations, such as lutes, zithers and arched harps.< ...
maestro
S. Balachander
Sundaram Balachander (18 January 1927 – 13 April 1990) was an Indian veena player and filmmaker. He directed, produced, and also composed music for a few of his films. Balachander was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1982. He died of a hear ...
. Balachander was a controversial figure and Sampath received
hate mail
Hate mail (as electronic, posted, or otherwise) is a form of harassment, usually consisting of invective and potentially intimidating or threatening comments towards the recipient. Hate mail often contains exceptionally abusive, foul or otherwise ...
from various quarters;
however, he was extensively helped by Balachander's family (and widow) during research.
Overall, Sampath found Balachander to be a much-misunderstood and maligned genius.
T. M. Krishna
Thodur Madabusi Krishna (born 22 January 1976) is an Indian Carnatic vocalist, writer, activist, author and Ramon Magsaysay awardee. As a vocalist, he has made a large number of innovations in both the style and substance of his concerts, ther ...
found Sampath's work to be "engaging"— it was a detailed and rare portrait of the various stages of Balachander's life, situated in the proper socio-musical context.
However, Krishna noted a couple of errors on musical history of South India.
A review in ''Frontline'' commended Sampath for situating a well-researched, detailed and objective biography of an enigmatic figure within the broader interplays of
Carnatic music
Carnatic music, known as or in the Dravidian languages, South Indian languages, is a system of music commonly associated with South India, including the modern Indian states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, an ...
. The book has been translated into
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
**Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nativ ...
.
V. D. Savarkar
Sampath's fourth book is a
biography of V. D. Savarkar published by
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.[Open
Open or OPEN may refer to:
Music
* Open (band), Australian pop/rock band
* The Open (band), English indie rock band
* ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969
* ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999
* ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001
* ''Open'' (YF ...]
'' magazine,
Manu S. Pillai
Manu S. Pillai (born 1990) is an Indian writer and popular historian.Known for his works on the Travancore monarchy and the history of Princely India, he is most famous for his debut book, The Ivory Throne, which is about Rani Sethu Lakshmi ...
praised Sampath's meticulous research and his persuasive case of Savarkar as a martyr who had sacrificed his youth for the cause of nation; however, Sampath's methodologies—especially the uncritical acceptance of Savarkar's self-laudatory memoirs—were sharply criticized, and Sampath was held to have not achieved the necessary distance of separation required for an objective biography.
Janaki Bakhle, an associate professor of Indian history at
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, echoed concerns similar to Pillai — despite the meticulous and thorough research, it remained a wholly uncritical biography, with him accepting every primary source at face-value; Sampath's interpretation of concurrent historical events were also faulted as non-objective and lacking in updates from relevant scholarship.
Similarly,
P. A. Krishnan found the work to be a "sympathetic biography" in a review at ''
Outlook
Outlook or The Outlook may refer to:
Computing
* Microsoft Outlook, an e-mail and personal information management software product from Microsoft
* Outlook.com, a web mail service from Microsoft
* Outlook on the web, a suite of web applications ...
''.
Salil Tripathi
Salil Tripathi is an American author and editor. He is Chair of PEN International's Writers in Prison Committee. He is a contributing editor to ''The Caravan''. and Mint.
Biography
Tripathi was born in Mumbai. He was educated at the New Era Sch ...
found Sampath's choice of language and analyses to "give away" his obvious bias despite the façade of neutrality; particular attention was drawn to the cavalier descriptions of any massacre perpetrated by Muslims as "genocides."
In contrast, Swati Parashar, a professor at the
Gothenburg University
The University of Gothenburg ( sv, Göteborgs universitet) is a university in Sweden's second largest city, Gothenburg. Founded in 1891, the university is the third-oldest of the current Swedish universities and with 37,000 students and 6000 s ...
, admired Sampath's comprehensive and contextual treatment of Savarkar, and found the book to be a "must-read". Madhav Khosla, professor of Political Science at
Ashoka University
Ashoka University is a philanthropy-driven private university located in the National Capital Region (NCR), India, focusing on a liberal education in the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Sciences. The university is on a mission to buil ...
, found the book a "useful historical narrative". In ''
The Telegraph
''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include:
Australia
* ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...
'',
TCA Srinivasa Raghavan described the book as "a straightforward, no-fuss narrative without hyperbole and hero worship".
Baul
In 2022, Sampath, composer
Ricky Kej
Ricky Kej (born 5 August 1981 - Dhaka, Bangladesh) is a multi-Grammy Award-winning Indian music composer and environmentalist. He has performed at venues in over 30 countries including at the United Nations headquarters in New York and Geneva. ...
, and scholar Rajib Sarma produced a documentary film, ''Who is Baul'', about the mystic
Baul
The Baul ( bn, বাউল) are a group of mystic minstrels of mixed elements of Sufism, Vaishnavism and Tantra from Bangladesh and the neighboring Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam's Barak Valley and Meghalaya. Bauls constitut ...
tradition of
Bengal
Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...
, directed by Sairam Sagiraju.
Honors
For his book on Gauhar Jaan, Sampath was awarded the first Yuva Puraskar in English literature by
Sahitya Akademi, India and the Excellence in Historical Research Award by
Association for Recorded Sound Collections
The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and study of sound recordings. Established in 1966, members include record collectors, discographers, and audio engineers, togeth ...
;
Sampath was also accorded with a visiting fellowship by
Berlin Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (german: Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin) is an interdisciplinary institute founded in 1981 in Grunewald, Berlin, Germany, dedicated to research projects in the natural and social sciences. It is modeled ...
. In September 2021, he was selected as a Fellow of the
Royal Historical Society
The Royal Historical Society, founded in 1868, is a learned society of the United Kingdom which advances scholarly studies of history.
Origins
The society was founded and received its royal charter in 1868. Until 1872 it was known as the Histori ...
.
Plagiarism allegations
In a letter to the president of the
Royal Historical Society
The Royal Historical Society, founded in 1868, is a learned society of the United Kingdom which advances scholarly studies of history.
Origins
The society was founded and received its royal charter in 1868. Until 1872 it was known as the Histori ...
, dated 11 February 2022,
Audrey Truschke
Audrey Truschke () is a historian of South Asia and an associate professor at Rutgers University. Her work focuses on inter-community relations in medieval South Asia, especially during the Mughal Empire. In 2017, she was conferred with the John ...
, Rohit Chopra, and Ananya Chakravarti accused Sampath of
plagiarism
Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thought ...
and requested that Sampath's membership be revisited and his scholarship be thoroughly examined.
They included sections from a 2017 publication by Sampath, which were minimally paraphrased from works of Vinayak Chaturvedi and
Janaki Bakhle without explicit attribution.
Another cited example was from his biography of Savarkar, in which a paragraph was nearly identical to that in an undergraduate student thesis.
Chaturvedi expressed his disappointment at Sampath's lack of ethical standards;
Bakhle requested that Sampath offer a public apology for what was unequivocal plagiarism and retract the publication.
Sampath rejected the allegations, and filed a defamation suit in
Delhi High Court
The High Court of Delhi (IAST: ''dillī uchcha nyāyālaya'') was established on 31 October 1966, through the ''Delhi High Court Act, 1966'', with four judges, Chief Justice K. S. Hegde, Justice I. D. Dua, Justice H. R. Khanna and Justice S. ...
seeking costs of 2 Crore INR ( USD).
He stated that the 2017 publication was the transcript of a speech, where he had properly included appropriate attribution, and emphasized that the sources remain cited in the bibliography section. The biography paragraph was similar due to dependence on a common source.
In response, the authors highlighted that referencing a publication was not a free pass to reproduce content;
Bakhle also pointed to the implausibility of numerous footnotes in any speech.
However, none except Chakravarti submitted to the jurisdiction of the Court. On the first hearing, an
interim order
The term interim order refers to an order issued by a court during the pendency of the litigation. It is generally issued by the Court to ensure Status quo. The rationale for such orders to be issued by the Courts is best explained by the Latin leg ...
was passed restraining Truschke and others from publishing the letter or any other defamatory material; multiple tweets to such effect, that were published by Truschke despite the order, were asked to be pulled down a week later and again, in May.
Notes
References
Further reading
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sampath, Vikram
Writers from Karnataka
Historians of India
21st-century Indian historians