Thread by @sohinichat

5 Sept is a good day to remember Prof Jadunath Sinha who filed a case of plagiarism against Prof Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan in Aug 1929 for deriving substantive portions of his book Indian Philosophy Vol II from Sinha's Indian Psychology of Perception Vols 1 + II (image Wikipedia)

Radhakrishnan was one of the examiners of Sinha's thesis at Calcutta University along with Sir Brajen Seal. Sinha is reported to have been a brilliant student who won several awards including the Premchand Roychand studentship. Here's Sinha's Amazon page amazon.in/Books-Jadunath… +

Sinha sued for Rs 20,000. Backing his claim was the fact that Sinha had published parts of the theses he said Radhakrishnan plagiarised from in 1924 + 1926. Radhakrishnan sued Sinha back for Rs 100,000 ++
A good precis on the row:
roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?opti…

Radhakrishnan was already a big name, and said to be backed by Syama Prasad Mukherjee. SP helped the two settle the matter out of court. It's interesting that Radhakrishnan chose to settle rather than clear his name. Also interesting is that a book on this row is unavailable ++

Barin De's "A Reported Case of Radhakrishnan's Literary Piracy" is available only in libraries abroad, in the British Library in London and in one of the libraries of the Oxford University according to this resource ++
worldcat.org/title/reported…

It's good that Radhakrishnan's legacy of plagiarism is alive in India where academics are frequently accused of it. They learnt well from their teacher. Here is one story, mentioning JNU's Anand Ranganathan (who denies plagiarism) #TeachersDaySpecial
theprint.in/science/11-pap…

Note: Prof Sinha continued to go on to a distinguished career in philosophy. Radhakrishnan went to celebrated heights, becoming vice president and president. When BR Ambedkar's book on the Buddha was sent to him with a request for funding for publishing, Radhakrishnan refused ++

because he is believed to have said that he had written on Buddhism as well.