Thrissur: The controversy over the six-page article by Ravisankar S. Nair in the Thrissur-based publication Sahithya Vimarsam alleging plagiarism and copyright violation by renowned orator and professor Sunil P. Elayidom has refused to die down even after a team of 16 prominent writers and academics issued a letter in support of Elayidom rebutting the allegations against him.
Ravisankar, who works as an associate professor in linguistics at Central University in Kasargod, had come out against the letter signed by eminent people, including historian K.N. Panikkar and poet K. Satchidanandan, by calling it ‘sixteen signs of indecency’.
In his article in the Sahithya Vimarsam’s latest edition, Ravisankar used three paragraphs of ‘Bharatanatyam-A reader’ edited by Davesh Soneji, an associate professor at McGill University in Canada, and showed that those paragraphs were translated to Malayalam and used by Elayidom for the article on Bharatan-atyam in his book ‘Anu-boothikalude Charitha Jeevitham’ in Malayalam published by Chintha Publications in 2014.
He said that more than 80 percent of the content in Elayidom’s article on Bharatanatyam was lifted and translated and presented by shuffling the same content so that it did not look like the exact copy of the article in the book edited by Soneji.
Ravisankar says that if he uses all the lifted parts of the article, there would not be space for other articles in the magazine.
“All those who have come out in support of Elayidom claim that proper references were given and Elayidom does not claim anything original. But, I will ask them about how many references were left out by Elayidom. Elayidom claims that there is new interpretation of details he collected from different sources, but there is no interpretation whatsoever in the article on Bharatanatyam,” Ravisanker said.
When contacted, Elayidom said that the prominent academics had alre-ady responded and that all details were there in their responses.
