For US author, it’s a copy but in NCERT it’s a ‘tally’

But this opinion doesn’t tally with at least one of the US authors of World Civilization, Their History, Their Civilization.

Robert E. Lerner, Professor of Humanities at the Northwestern University and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy and the American Academy in Rome, identified some of the paras lifted by the NCERT book (cited in The Indian Express, October 7) as written by him.

‘‘It certainly is plagiarism,’’ he said via email. ‘‘And I don’t like it one bit. Four of the five passages you cited were written by me.’’ We disagree, say NCERT authors Himansu Sekhar Patnaik and Mohammed Anwar Haque leaving it to the NCERT to deal with ‘‘the complaint’’.

‘‘A number of people and materials were consulted,’’ said Patnaik, ‘‘and there is no question of lifting anything from any book. The similarity could be coincidental.’’

Patnaik said he has been teaching history for last 33 years and he does not think he needs to copy anything from any US book. ‘‘We are also aware of the Copyright Act…Opinions do tally, it cannot be called plagiarism.’’

For his part, Haque said: ‘‘Those who have reviewed the book could have a different opinion but if we have anything to say, we will write it to the NCERT.’’ And that if there were any ‘‘mistakes,’’ it could be corrected in the second edition.