Anu Malik, our mulk’s unoriginal wonder

We waited a bit before opening our mouths on this issue for two reasons. One, Anu Malik stole wholesale the tune of Israel’s national anthem way back in 1996, passing off ‘Mera mulk, mera desh’ for the film Diljale as his own. So, if the rip- off was detected 25 years after someone was listening to the anthem ‘Hatikvah’ being played while a gymnast was on the Olympic podium on August 1, we thought a fortnight later would be good enough to see if Malik or the Israelis made any more noise. (Neither has.)

The second reason for waiting is tactical. By highlighting this filmi patriotic song two days before Independence Day — the scene in the song depicts August 15 flag-hoisting and other patriotic activities like farming and not starting a fight — we figured that not only can we amplify the plagiarist Malik is, but we can also magnify how much we, as a mulk, tolerate, even encourage, being unoriginal. Call Malik’s looting of a 19th-century tune by Samuel Cohen and Israel’s anthem since 1948 — never mind dozens of other melodies — ‘technology transfer’, ‘appropriation’ or ‘jugaad’, the man has made his mark on Bollywood playback music thanks to the public’s cheering on such daylight robbery. We may as well keep paying him for his looting and pilfering, and sing along, ‘Mera Malik, mera desh…’.