The New Nation - Internet Edition

Mostafa Kamal Majumder

The Amar Ekushey Book fair this time has been marked by the publication of a record number of over 1500 titles. The rush of people to the fair has also been more than ever before. The practice of sequencing the publication of most books to mark the great day has been mainly to make good use of the month-long rush of readers for new books. Many good books are published during the fair every year. The programme attracts people from all over Bangladesh.

However, alongside the good books there are also some publications which are marked for piracy of materials from other books. And this is neither new nor unique, as the practice has been there in many countries. But in recent years complaints have been made against copying books in their entirety and their publication under different covers and names. Some writers of Bangla books from India have often made such complaints against some writers in Bangladesh. So serious are sometimes the allegations that foreign writers abuse some local writers for using even the mistaken pages of their books which they could not correct due to oversight.

The practice of piracy here is, however, quite old. Way back in the late eighties a radio listener complained that a number of paragraphs of one of his writings on environment were read out in a magazine programme of Bangladesh Betar (then called Radio Bangladesh) without making mention of either the author or the publication. At that time programmes of Bangladesh Television were aired only in the second half of the day, and satellite television programmes were unknown to the people. In the morning thus radio programmes used to attract a large number of listeners. The author said he was listening to some sentences very familiar to him being read out. Soon after the end of the magazine programme he opened a publication and confirmed that those were actually written by him more than a year before that event.

A journalist from an English language newspaper received huge appreciation for his report on micro-nutrient deficiency in foods that stunted the growth of children in the mid-eighties. Amir Hossain Khan, the pioneer of nuclear chemistry in Bangladesh on whose research findings the story was based, invited the newsman to his office to welcome him for making his work familiar not only to fellow scientists in Bangladesh but also those abroad, particularly one in India. The Indian scientist expressed his willingness to share experiences and do collaborative work. Appreciating the work the Indian scientist sent Amir Hosain Khan the photocopy of a news report which the latter shared with the newsman. The journalist was apalled to see that his byline report published earlier in a Dhaka daily was printed verbatim under a different byline in a major Indian English daily published from South India. Amir Hossain Khan did not look at the byline, because he knew he had divulged the findings of his study only to the newsman he was talking to and praised him for spreading the same to India. The newsman later talked to the man who did the piracy and sought to know its reason. The reply was, 'The day was dull and I had no other story to pick up for wiring to the paper.'

In a similar incident in the second half of the nineties, anti-nuclear activists from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka paid a visit to Bangladesh. They talked to newsmen to make their ideas known. A leading Dhaka daily did a good story out of the interaction. However, before the hardcopy of the paper hit the stands in Dhaka its soft copy put to the Internet edition at night was lifted by another journalist for use in a feature syndication service based in India and spread to the world. The poor author of the story discussed the matter with his colleague Mrinal Krishna Roy and sought guidance as to whether he should lodge a complaint with the publishers of the feature service. 'This would cost the job of the Dhaka-based man,' he said and advised his junior colleague to forgive the pirate for the piracy.

Let Amar Ekushey be an occasion for intellectual pirates to stop their piracies and strengthen the quest for excellence in writings.