Bollywood will never stop copying. Superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s recent speech on success delivered at AIMA (All India Management Association) on 26 September was as inspirational as a blockbuster Bollywood movie. Alas! It lost its charm when a startling discovery was made about plagiarism. Parts of Shah Rukh Khan’s speech were ripped off from author J.K. Rowling’s commencement speech delivered at Harvard in 2008 titled Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination.
We have reproduced parts of Shah Rukh’s speech that was copied word- to –word from J.K. Rowling’s speech
• Shah Rukh Khan’s speech
Let me tell you. Poverty is not an ennobling experience at all. Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. I had seen my parents go through it many times. It means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. (Start from 1:17:06)
• Original J.K. Rowling’s version
I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. (Start from 5:48)
• Shah Rukh Khan’s version
But I’d like to tell you that life is not just a checklist of acquisitions, attainments and fulfillments. Your qualifications and CVs don’t matter, jobs don’t matter. Instead, life is difficult and complicated and beyond anyone’s control and the humility to know that by respecting your failures will help you survive its vicissitudes.
• Original J.K. Rowling’s version
Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes. (starts from 10.46)
There you go. That’s a verbatim frame by frame copy of J.K. Rowling’s speech just the way it happens in our movies. Now we know it’s human to err but to get inspired and then refusing to acknowledge the source smacks of typical Bollywood arrogance.
What’s surprising though was to see Shah Rukh Khan, often known for his spontaneity and street smart eloquence, reading his speech from a paper just like a politician. And from the looks of it the actor didn’t look comfortable at all. Now we don’t know who wrote the speech for Shah Rukh Khan but this was one blunder that the actor could have done without.
Here is the entire speech.
• Original J.K. Rowling’s version
• Shah Rukh Khan’s version
The JK Rowling plagiarism was originally pointed out by Agratha Dinakaran in her blog link
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