Vinayak Damodar Savarkar The Delhi High Court Friday restrained four academics and a journalist from further publication of a letter accusing historian Dr Vikram Sampath of plagiarism with respect to his two-volume biography of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The court also said the defendants would not post anything defamatory against him on any platform, online or offline.
The letter written by US-based academics Dr Audrey Truschke, Dr Ananya Chakrabarti and Dr Rohit Chopra on February 11 was addressed to the Royal Historical Society where Dr Sampath is a fellow. They asked the society to subject Sampath’s body of work to scrutiny.
Seeking damages of Rs 2 crore and 100 rupees and a permanent injunction against the defendants, Sampath in his petition said that the letter was part of an “international smear campaign” to discredit him because “he has shown the academic courage and gumption to challenge the prevailing narrative around a historical figure”. The court was told that he has given references to the work of other scholars wherever the same has been mentioned.
After hearing Sampath’s counsel on Friday, Justice Amit Bansal said that he has made a prima facie case for grant of an interim injunction and the continued publication of the letter has been causing “considerable damage” to his reputation and career.
Twitter told the court that it is only an intermediary and would take down any tweet on orders of the court. The court, however, said that it was not passing any direction to the micro-blogging site at this stage. It also refused to pass any order for deletion of two tweets made by journalist Abhishek Baxi and academic Ashok Swain, but restrained them from publishing the letter or anything defamatory against Sampath.
Advocate Jawahar Raja, representing Chakrabarti, argued that Sampath has referenced some of the articles, “but when you are actually borrowing the entire idea then the kind of referencing will determine whether it is plagiarism or not”. When Raja opposed passing of the interim order, the court said that it was not asking the academics to withdraw the letter at this stage.
The court will hear the suit on April 1. It has sought replies to the suit from the defendants in the meantime.
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