723 The Moral Rights of Authors (with Mira T Sundara Rajan) | My Last Book with Radha Vatsal

Summary

Episode 723: The Moral Rights of Authors (with Mira T. Sundara Rajan) | My Last Book with Radha Vatsal

In this compelling episode of The History of Literature podcast, host Jacke Wilson delves deep into the intricate concept of moral rights of authors with renowned expert Mira T. Sundara Rajan. The conversation seamlessly transitions to insights from novelist Radha Vatsal, offering a multifaceted exploration of authorship, legal protections, and the evolving landscape of literature in the digital age.

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Introduction to Moral Rights

Jack Wilson sets the stage by differentiating moral rights from traditional copyright. Using a vivid analogy of an artist selling a painting, Jack illustrates the limitations of economic rights once a work is sold:

"Do I, as an artist, have the ability to stop my art from being used in this way, even if I sold it?"
— Jack Wilson [02:56]

He underscores the emotional and ethical ties authors have to their creations, questioning the extent of control authors retain post-sale.

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Understanding Moral Rights with Mira T. Sundara Rajan

Defining Moral Rights

Mira T. Sundara Rajan provides a foundational understanding of moral rights, emphasizing their non-economic nature:

"Moral rights are any rights and prerogative that flow from the act of authorship, so from just being an author, which are not purely economic in nature."
— Mira T. Sundara Rajan [24:45]

She explains that moral rights primarily include:

1. Right of Attribution: Ensuring authors are recognized as the creators of their work.
2. Right of Integrity: Protecting the work from derogatory treatments that could harm the author's honor or reputation.

Moral Rights vs. Copyright

Mira elucidates the distinction between moral rights and copyright:

"Copyright is an umbrella term which covers a great many different types of rights... Moral rights, on the other hand, are about the relationship between the author and their work."
— Mira T. Sundara Rajan [23:06]

While copyright deals with the economic aspects and distribution of a work, moral rights focus on preserving the personal connection and integrity of the author's original vision.

Global Perspectives on Moral Rights

Mira highlights the international variance in moral rights legislation:

"The United States is the one country in the world where authors do not have moral rights."
— Mira T. Sundara Rajan [34:07]

She contrasts this with countries like France and Germany, where moral rights are robustly protected and often enshrined in law, influencing how works are treated even posthumously.

Moral Rights in the Digital Age and AI

The conversation pivots to the challenges posed by digital reproduction and Artificial Intelligence:

"Authors have created these works, investing their time, their life, their resources... They weren't created to become fodder for machines."
— Mira T. Sundara Rajan [52:51]

Mira expresses concerns over AI's ability to utilize existing works without respecting the moral rights of original authors, emphasizing the need for legal frameworks to address these emerging issues.

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Case Studies and Real-World Implications

The Danish Approach to Deepfakes

Jack references a Guardian article about Denmark's proactive stance on AI-generated deepfakes:

"Denmark is defining a deepfake as a very realistic digital representation of a person... This is something that really affects us as authors and artists."
— Mira T. Sundara Rajan [27:40]

This initiative aims to strengthen protections against unauthorized digital imitations, showcasing a legislative effort to uphold moral rights in the face of technological advancements.

Historical Analogue: Lascaux Cave Paintings

Mira draws parallels between ancient expressions of authorship and modern moral rights:

"The handprint is something unique, even more than a name. It's unique... It connects us with the works and the artists of the past."
— Mira T. Sundara Rajan [42:43]

She uses the Lascaux cave handprints as early manifestations of the desire for attribution and recognition, reinforcing the timelessness of moral rights.

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Navigating the Future: Policy and Advocacy

Legislative Efforts and Challenges

Mira outlines ongoing global legislative efforts to address moral rights in the digital era:

"In Europe, they've adopted something called the AI Act... akin to moral rights, because they're talking about things like attributing the information associated with AI systems."
— Mira T. Sundara Rajan [51:14]

She highlights the AI Act as a pioneering effort to regulate AI's interaction with creative works, emphasizing the balance between innovation and protection of authors' rights.

The Role of Advocacy and Social Consciousness

Mira stresses the importance of policy development and social awakening:

"We need an awakening of social consciousness about human creativity... We're in a position to make critical decisions here."
— Mira T. Sundara Rajan [57:09]

She calls for proactive engagement from authors, artists, and the broader community to influence policy and prioritize the protection of creative integrity.

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Special Segment: Radha Vatsal on Her Last Book Choice

Transitioning from legal frameworks to personal narratives, Radha Vatsal, a celebrated novelist, shares her poignant choice for the last book she would ever read:

Embracing Ancestral Literature

Radha reveals her deep connection to her great-great grandfather's work:

"If it was the last book I was reading, I think that's the book I would like to have."
— Radha Vatsal [68:15]

She discusses her discovery and appreciation of "Karangilo", a historical novel set in 13th-century India, highlighting the timeless relevance and personal significance of ancestral literary works.

Reflections on Historical Fiction

Radha expresses her admiration for historical fiction as a medium that bridges generational gaps:

"Each little story... I really felt like he was like this wise and warm contemporary, just kind of sitting beside me telling me a story."
— Radha Vatsal [75:44]

Her reflections underscore the enduring impact of storytelling and the importance of preserving creative legacies.

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Conclusion: Advocating for Authors' Rights

Jack Wilson wraps up the episode by reiterating the urgency of enacting moral rights laws to protect authors and artists in an increasingly digital and automated world. He invites listeners to join the forthcoming podcast tour and engage with the broader community to advocate for the recognition and preservation of creative integrity.

"Damn it. Let's get these laws passed and do something. Let's catch those AI machines and make them do tricks..."
— Jack Wilson [77:16]

The episode serves as both an informative exploration of moral rights and a passionate call to action for the literary community.

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Key Takeaways

• Moral Rights Defined: Beyond economic benefits, authors have inherent rights to attribution and integrity of their works.
• Global Diversity: While countries like France and Germany robustly protect moral rights, the United States lags significantly.
• Digital Challenges: The rise of AI and digital reproduction poses new threats to the preservation of moral rights.
• Legislative Efforts: Progressive laws, such as Denmark's deepfake regulations and the EU's AI Act, exemplify endeavors to safeguard authors' rights.
• Personal Narratives: Insights from authors like Radha Vatsal highlight the personal and enduring value of literary legacies.

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For more information on The History of Literature Podcast and to join the upcoming literary trip to England in May 2026, visit historyofliterature.com or follow them on Facebook.

Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hey folks, it's Jack, here to promote something that's a little special. Not a thing and not a service, an opportunity for you to have an experience. The History of Literature Podcast is going on the road and you can join us. Our first stop is literary England, the land of Dr. Johnson and Jane Austen and Tolkien and C.S. lewis. Oh, and Dickens. Oh, and Shakespeare. Perhaps you've heard of him. This isn't a trip where you march from site to site checking off boxes. Seen it, seen it, seen it, seen it. This is a week plus a little more traveling with me and Emma and a group of other fans of literature. All of us enjoying our conversations, our chance to learn and grow and be inspired by these writers and their works that we love so much. With special visits along the way from past guests of the show your favorites who will deepen our appreciation for what we're seeing. So please consider it. We would love to have you. You can learn more by going to John Shores Travel that's S H O R S and look for the upcoming trip to England with Jack Wilson. Or reach out to [e-mail] and we will tell you all the details. It's going to be in May of 2026, but act now to secure your spot. Space is limited and let's all spend some quality time together enjoying literature and enjoying life. Abercrombie's viral denim sale is back and Spotify listeners get an extra 15% off with code Spotify AF. Abercrombie is known for their denim with 30 to 50% off all jeans. Find out how denim should fit. Shop the viral denim sale in the Abercrombie app online or in stores. Valid in stores and online through August 11, 2025 in US and Canada. Excludes clearance price reflects discount code. Valid in US and Canada through August 11, 2025. Exclusions apply. See details online. Hello. Today on the podcast we talk to Mira T. Sundara Rajan, an expert in international copyright law, about the history of a concept. The moral rights that authors have in their works. How did that develop? How do things stand today? And what fresh hell are we expecting in the future? Or maybe fresh heaven? Let's not be too pessimistic. And then we ask novelist Radha Wattsal what she would choose as the last book she will ever read. All coming up today on the History of Literature.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Foreign.

[Jack Wilson]

Here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. The moral rights of authors how does that differ from copyright? I've always wondered, and now I know, thanks to today's guest and her book and the conversation that I had with her. She can explain it better than I can. But you might think of it this way. Let's say I'm a painter. Oh, I wish. Talk about a dream come true. Let's say I'm a painter. I sell my painting to a gallery owner. We'll call him Mr. Lover, first name Arthur. So Art Lover then sells the painting to someone else. We'll call him Mr. X. I can't really control that, can I? That sale. I've sold the painting already. We don't restrict the rights of other people to sell or give away objects that they've purchased. Art Lover is free to do what he wants with the painting after he buys it. But then let's say Mr. X turns out to be an advocate of the Nazi party, a great promoter of a political cause that I want nothing to do with, and he uses my art for his purposes. Maybe it's a painting of a mother and child and he wants to put it on every street corner and advance his pernicious theories of white supremacy. Or let's raise the stakes. Let's say I'm a black artist or a Jewish artist. I'm a black, Jewish, gay artist. An art lover has sold my painting to the Nazis. Or let's change the facts a bit. Maybe I'm a vegetarian and I've painted a beautiful picture of a cow in a field because I want to remind people of the beauty and dignity of animals. And I sell it to Art Lover, who assures me that he loves animals too and he wants to hang the picture in his galley. And I agree because more people will see it and will hopefully persuade them to cut meat out of their diet. But then Art Lover dies, his children need the money and they sell the painting to a fast food chain who wants to use my beautiful, dignified cow in their ad campaigns. They're going to feature the painting and write Hungry so are we as the slogan beneath, they're adding a big bottle of ketchup coming out of the sky. It's the complete opposite of everything that I stand for. The whole reason I made the painting. I can't sleep at night thinking about the way this is going to lead to millions of hamburgers being eaten. My art, which was designed to save these cows, is going to lead to their slaughter. Do I, as an artist, have the ability to stop my art from being used in this way, even if I Sold it. What if you painted a portrait of Jesus and someone was going to use it to sell something you didn't want or was going to display it in a, in a museum and have some kind of. You get the idea, right? Same question can go for music and of course for literature. Artists have to be paid somehow for their efforts. That's a good thing. But when they sell their work, is that it? There's nothing left. There's no ability to control anything after that. And what about AI? We hear about this all the time. How can a machine compete with something as rich as human intelligence and the output of billions of human beings? We've been at this for thousands of years. We know some things, we've learned some things. How can machines catch up? Well, you might think that all that creativity and intelligence, machines could never replicate it, right? Well, what if you fed all of that human output into your machine? Maybe that would give you a big head start. The machine can learn some things from all based on all that creativity. And Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta executives allegedly even said, yeah, this, you know what, what we're doing here probably does violate some copyright laws, but there's no other way to do it. There's no other way to make these machines as smart as we need them to be, so we have to do it. Well, really? You have to? That's your justification? Because there's no other way to do it? And I know what you're thinking, listeners. You might say, well, fine, maybe, maybe they should throw a few pennies at the authors, make sure they're paid at least for having their, their works go into this giant mill and be ground up into information for these machines. Let's at least pay the authors. Well, what if the author really does not want their work to be used as part of this effort? What if that's like the vegetarian worried about the use of the cow painting? Or the musician who doesn't want his song played at the political rally and by a candidate that he or she hates? Do we just say, sorry, you're not allowed to care anymore. Thanks for being such a creative person, but you sold it. Now shut up and let us use your stuff. Hmm? Now we could say, yeah, well, this is inevitable. Why fight it? But guess what? We believe in copyright law. Copyright laws have worked. We accept that you can't just play music whenever you want. Or you can't take a best selling novel and then type it up yourself and sell a rival copy. At one time you could do that. But laws and a legal regime grew up to stop that because otherwise, who would write books? Why would you write a book if as soon as you started publishing it, some other publisher jumped in, started publishing the works of Charles Dickens or Arthur Conan Doyle and said, I've got a Sherlock Holmes book too. It's a lot like that one. But guess what? Mine's got a nicer cover. Or mine's sell mine a little cheaper. And they could sell it a little cheaper because they weren't paying the author. So we got some laws that stopped it. And so we come to the concept of moral rights of authors. The legal concept has been around for a while. Could it grow and mature to make our world a better place? We'll talk to our expert, Meera T. Sundara Rajan in a moment. But first, here's a recent news article that shows just how live and ongoing these issues are. Headline this is from the Guardian newspaper. Headline Denmark to tackle deep fakes by giving people copyright to their own features. Subhead Amendment to law will strengthen protection against digital imitations of people's identities. Government says. And they have a picture of the late Pope Francis wearing a puffy jacket. It was an AI generated image made up. How do you stop it? That seems as hard to do as stopping people from using text, right? Or your painting or your novel or your poem. How do you stop people from just using an image? Well, let's hear the article to see what the Danish government is planning to do. Article quote the Danish government is to clamp down on the creation and dissemination of AI generated deepfakes by changing copyright law to ensure that everybody has the right to their own body, facial features and voice. The Danish government said on Thursday it would strengthen protection against digital imitations of people's identities with what it believes to be the first law of its kind in Europe. Skip ahead a little bit. It says it defines a deepfake as a very realistic digital representation of a person, including their appearance and voice. And then it talks about the Danish culture minister who's hoping that the bill is going to send an unequivocal message that everybody has the right to the way they look and sound. You can't just use that for your own purposes. You can't take that, take a real person and say. He says, human beings can be run through the digital copy machine and be misused for all sorts of purposes. And I'm not willing to accept that. Well, will that work? Let's hope. He's hoping that other European countries will follow Denmark's lead. He's going to Try to work it out with the EU and. And hopefully get it. Denmark, I guess, is going to be. Have the EU presidency coming up and hoping that's going to spread it to other countries. I have no idea if this is going to work and if something similar might be applied to stories and novels and poems and other forms of art, to say you've got a right to how it's used, even if it's being published by someone else who has paid you for that right. That doesn't mean that you want your work of art that you made to be used for just any old thing or in any old way. Is there something in me that longs to see these. I don't know if it's going to work, but is there something in me that longs to see more protections in place? Yes. In the great battle of humans versus machines, guess what? I'm on the side of the humans. And in the great battle of artist versus exploitation of artist. I know where I stand there, too. Do you remember, I guess you have to be an old man to remember the Far side, that comic strip that used to run in newspapers. I guess you have to be an old man to remember what newspapers are, too. And there was a movie. Do I have to explain what movies are? There was a movie called Free Willy. I have to explain that, I assume to at least half the audience here. There was a movie called Free Willy, which was about a whale named Willie. And there was a boy who was trying to get Willie liberated from the aquarium or wherever they were holding Willie to do whatever they were doing to Willie, performing experiments on him or whatever. And this boy wanted to free Willie. That's what the movie was called. And you know what those movies are like. They're all about the whales and how we should all do the right thing. And nothing against whales. I agree with that. As a concept, we need to be good to the whales. But the twisted mind of Gary Larson of the Far side had a cartoon, a comic, where there was a big poster that said Catch Willie. The subhead beneath that was, and make him do tricks. I laughed out loud at the irreverence of that because we were all told, free Willy. Yes, we all know that's the right thing to do. And here's a. Here's a poster that says, Catch Willy and make him do tricks. And like I said, I'm all in favor of animals running free or swimming free, but when it comes to machines, I don't have this eagerness to say, let's let the machine. Let's free the machines. My attitude is let's catch the machines and make them do tricks. I want a calculator that makes it easier for me to balance my checkbook, or a computer that makes it easier for me to type and print out my words. An Internet that lets me post my humble little musings as a podcast and lets you, dear listeners, download and listen to them as you wish. Thank you technology. Bless you, machines. We have harnessed you to make our world better. But I don't want to work for machines. I don't want the machines to write the words while I just sit back and dumbly take them in. I don't want the I don't want the machine to to do a podcast that people listen to. I want to do the podcast. Machines can help me do it. I don't want others to use machines to get filthy rich from my podcast, or from my friend's book, or from my fellow human beings painting can the law catch up with this sentiment or do anything about it? Our guest today will explore that issue with us after this. This is an ad by BetterHelp. Folks, there's a lot of noise out there and information coming at you all the time and it's hard to know where to turn. Somehow you've got to find a way to set some boundaries and cope. You want to be the best version of yourself. That's the goal. But how do you know what will work for you? Sometimes when you're overwhelmed, it can help to talk to someone. That's what BetterHelp is for. They've served over 5 million people around the world, putting them in touch with over 30,000 therapists at the click of a button. 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[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

We got a lot of work to do.

[Jack Wilson]

Alien Earth on Hulu this Ship Collected Monsters and Final Destination Bloodlines on HBO Max.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Death is coming for our family.

[Jack Wilson]

The Disney Hulu HBO Max Bundle plans starting at $16.99 a month. All these and more streaming soon. Visit Disney plush Hulu HBOMaxBundle.com for detail. Foreigning me now is Mirati Sundara Rajan, who was here before to discuss the work of her great grandfather, the Tamil poet and thinker Bharati, also known in India as the Supreme Poet. As it turns out, Mira is not only an author and expert in the works of her illustrious ancestor, but one of the world's leading experts in copyright law. Holding a Doctorate of Philosophy in Law from Oxford University, she's here today to discuss her book, the Moral Rights of Authors and from the Birth of Copyright to the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Mira Sundara Rajan, welcome back to the History of Literature.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Thank you so much. Jack. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you again. I'm delighted.

[Jack Wilson]

So let's start with the basics here. What do we mean by the term moral rights?

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yes, I'm very glad you asked that question. And it's a concept that is extremely simple to understand and is going to be intuitively accessible to every single one of your listeners today.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, and I wanted to point out that the book is aimed at lawyers and non lawyers, so it's technical but also something for the general public as well.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yes, and that's actually a very important point because it's always a bit tricky when you're getting involved in scholarship to this depth because you do want to make sure to reach the audience that includes some change makers within the legal community. So there is definitely digging in to some depth of the legal history and what different legal provisions there are in different countries and so on, including, of course, the United States.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

But at the same time, it's very much a work of advocacy for authors and artists and for culture as well. So basically, it is available to help you if you are an author needing some resources in this area, as so many of us are at the moment. And also just to anyone who is interested in everything that's going on at the moment, there is a lot of knowledge there and a point of view.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

And so to go back to what you were asking me about the moral rights, what are they all about? Well, it's something totally intuitive, and I would like to answer that question by giving a little summary of a short story that, as you've noticed, I know is a sort of a prologue to the book.

[Jack Wilson]

And this involves your great grandfather.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yes, it is actually a story that my great grandfather wrote. And so I made a little quick translation for the prologue, a short translation. And the story's called the Blacksmith and the Poet. The Poet and the Blacksmith. And in the story, a poet is just walking along a street, and he hears his song being sung by someone. And he stops in the street. He's just riveted to the spot because the singing has garbled his music, his poem. It's not quite as he wrote it, in fact, far from it. And so the poet is just horrified, actually glad his song is being sung, but just horrified about this garbled version. So he realizes that the song is coming out of the door of a blacksmith shop. And he goes over to the shop and he enters, and there's the blacksmith. And his shop is beautifully organized with all his implements and tools of the trade and everything. And so the poet starts to go around the shop and busies himself taking things off the shelves and putting them back in the wrong place and just making a complete mess. And so the blacksmith is just furious. And he pulls the poet over and he says, hey, crazy man, what do you think you're doing in my shop? And the poet says, well, this is exactly what you were doing to my song when you were singing it just now. I'm the poet who wrote it.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

And so that, in a nutshell, is what moral rights are all about.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. And so, I mean, we're familiar with copyright law and we talk about copyright law, but I sense that there's a difference here, practically speaking. How do you conceptualize the difference? Is it equivalent or is it. Is moral rights broader than copyright law?

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yeah, that's a great question. And I think it's helpful to just take a step backwards and look at copyright for a minute because we use this word copyright and it sounds like we're talking about a thing, you know, something that's kind of homogeneous and monolithic. But actually copyright is an umbrella term which covers a great many different types of rights, as many of your listeners who are authors will know at a practical level, because when you sign a contract, there are some rights that you keep as part of copyright. There are some you might license or give away. So copyright includes all of those things under its umbrella. And basically people who work in this area, they like to categorize the rights under copyright law within two categories. One being the economic rights, so basically the right to license your work for payment and so on. And then the other category being the so called moral rights. And I like to explain it this way because it really highlights what moral rights are about. So essentially they are any rights and prerogative that flow from the act of authorship, so from just being an author, which are not purely economic in nature. So notably, there are two kind of fundamental moral rights that are recognized. One which should be obvious to everyone, I think, is the right to be recognized as the author of your own work. So for example, I couldn't take one of your books and remove the name Jack Wilson and put my name Meera T. Sundar Rajan and claim to be the author of that book. You know, that would violate your moral rights of attribution, even if you were.

[Jack Wilson]

Going to give it away and you weren't going to make money, or even if it wasn't a book that I was selling and making money from, even separate from the idea of, well, who gets to make money from this output? It would offend me and it would put me in the position of the poet with respect to the blacksmith of just like, this is just not something you should do to something that I made and is important to me.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yes, exactly, that's right. And I think that's a key insight. Clearly there is an economic aspect to all of this because your reputation as an author is tied to the connection you have with your works. And at some level, people buy your books because of your reputation. So there is that kind of link to the economic side of things. But I think all that tells us is that all of these issues are kind of inextricably intertwined because there is a deeper issue of I am the author, I created this thing. There's a matter of truth involved here. And this can kind of go both ways. But we see a lot of issues coming up now about what kind of person was the author and how do we interpret what they wrote in relation to their personal life. I'm thinking about the very sad stories that emerged with Alice Munro recently, for example, and understanding the truth of what someone wrote, the context, you know, who that person is, and just the fact that a person is an author of their work. It's about that. It's about preserving that sort of historical truth or reality. And then, of course, at the personal level of the author, there's the question of the harms you suffer when someone essentially takes your work away and takes away the feeling of pride that you have in it, the feeling of reaching out to the public, of wanting recognition for that thing that you put so much of your life into. So there's an idea of moral harm involved there as well.

[Jack Wilson]

Now, are moral rights codified anywhere in the world? I don't think they are in the United States, as far as I know. Or are they folded into what we think of as copyright law? Or are we talking about sort of shaming people and saying this isn't something you should do because of moral rights? Or is there a way that this is recognized by the law?

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Absolutely. So you're absolutely right to differentiate between the United States and other countries. So let me start by saying that in all countries of the world, every country that I'm aware of, and I have looked at the copyright laws of hundreds of countries. So all copyright laws include moral rights of the author. There's a reason for that. So actually, your question was an excellent one because it kind of highlights the history. So as you mentioned, the subtitle of my book is from the Birth of Copyright to the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, we can go back. So where did copyright begin and what did it first include?

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Well, surprise, surprise. Copyright first began as a right of authors in their work. Modern copyright started back in the early 18th century. And the first modern copyright statute is considered to have been a law called the Statute of Anne, which was under Queen Anne in the United kingdom back in 1709, 1710. And that piece of legislation became like the prototype law that then later got exported to the United States, Canada, so many other countries, basically the whole English speaking world, where you derive copyright law from this foundational Statute of Anne. And back at that time, there was actually a period of decades when people were lobbying for copyright law, including many prominent authors, notably John Locke. Milton was another one who actually wrote about copyright and the reason for that is because prior to the adoption of the Statute of Anne, there was a system of censorship that was prevalent in the realm in the United Kingdom, in the British realm, where basically the printers had permission from the sovereign to print. So it was something called a charter, and they were called the Stationers Company, this group of publishers that was authorized by the monarch to print books. And what that effectively meant was that the monarch could supervise everything that was going to be published in the realm. And if you've studied your British history at all, you'll be aware that monarchs don't tend to react with great positivity to differences of opinion or criticism. You know, off with your head.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. It's a. It's a built in sensor.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yes, exactly. And so by the time the 1600s rolled around, English literature, philosophy and intellectual life were thriving and there was a real need for free speech in order for all of that to develop and really to just take the society forward. And so many authors recognized this and they essentially lobbied the government for a copyright act that would take away this privileged relationship between the Stationer's company and the monarch and actually locate the right to publish one's own work within the person of the author. And so this was a landmark moment when for the first time, the government went ahead and created this law that essentially said, okay. And it actually says this in the act. It says, we want to encourage the writing of books by people who have knowledge. We want to encourage people to share that knowledge. And so we're going to recognize that authors invest their life, their effort, everything into the creation of these works. And they are the ones who should have the right to decide on publication.

[Jack Wilson]

And I'm guessing that with the rise of literacy and with, with printing presses and that technological development and so on, authors would say, you know, this doesn't just have to be the preserve of some aristocrats or people who have a patron and that kind of thing, but there may be a way that I can write something that people will purchase and I could make a living as an author. Or maybe they were saying, everybody's reading my stuff and I'm not making any money from it, and that's not fair.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yes, I think both of those things are true, actually. And I think that also they were looking around at themselves and thinking how dynamic and how interesting it could be if their ideas were able to spread freely among people and if people could be having discussions about them in coffee houses, which had started around that time as well.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. And my guess is publishers would want it too, to say that if they're going to take the risk of printing up a book and setting the type and all of that, it's not a cheap thing to do. But then if as soon as it gets some success, everybody else can jump in and pirate it and water down your market for it, that that's not a good way to protect publishers.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Absolutely. And actually you've hit upon a key point because looking at the historical development, the stationers, of course, that privileged coterie of publishers that was tied to the monarch, they fought tooth and nail to avoid this eventuality. But then when the copyright law was adopted, they tried to argue that their rights continued to exist anyway under the common law, which of course is a non written code of conduct that also exists in the tradition of British law and of all of our countries that are derived from the British system, including here in the United States States in various ways. And so throughout the 18th century, there were a series of court cases where the up and coming publishers actually went to court to try to stand up for the copyright law. So exactly the point you're getting at, saying that this was in their interest as well, to be able to secure the rights with a relationship with the author and go ahead and have a market in the works that they were going to publish. And it was going to be a free market, and that was key.

[Jack Wilson]

Now, speaking of the publishers, I could use some clarity on the moral rights that an author who publishes a book, what moral rights do they retain in that work? And to what extent are those rights surrendered to the publisher in a typical arrangement?

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

This is an extremely important question and I'm wondering, Jack, can I backtrack a tiny bit before answering it?

[Jack Wilson]

Sure, sure.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Just because you asked me another question that's related to this, which I didn't quite get to answer, which is what is the situation of the United States with respect to moral rights? And I kind of need to answer that one to deal with this whole issue of the rights that we keep and the rights that we give away and so on. So to go back to the United States situation. So let me say this loud and clear. The United States is the one country in the world where authors do not have moral rights.

[Jack Wilson]

That doesn't sound good.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

This usually does tend to lead to some consternation when I explain this. Yeah, unfortunately it's true, and a lot of explanations are given for this. But I think the truth of the matter is that the importance of moral rights is very well recognized in the United States, just like anywhere else. But for various reasons having to do with the legal history and the emphasis on the whole kind of transactional, economic side of copyright, the idea of moral rights has been kind of slow to find its way into any legislation. So it does exist in a very limited way for visual artists. And the situation is all the more anomalous because there is actually an international agreement, a very venerable international agreement called the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which was finalized in 1886. And Victor Hugo was one of the key people who actually created the Berne Convention.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. So just so I can be clear on the visual artist, so would that be that even if an artist, let's say a painter, sells a painting and no longer owns it, but yet they would still retain a kind of moral right over the reproduction of that painting or the way that it. It might be used in a work, as a picture, in a book, or as a poster or something like that?

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yeah, something like that. I think the key point there is, and I'm not talking now about US Law, because under US Law, there are so many limitations and qualifications and so on, but the principle is exactly that, that even after you part with your economic rights, after you sell them, after you have a contract for someone to use them, whatever, you, as the author still, or artist in this case, still retain your moral rights in the work. So, for example, if you had a painting that was on display in a gallery and the gallerist wanted to display it under some kind of really unflattering neon lighting, this is something that potentially would violate your moral right of integrity, as it's called, by not displaying the work in a way that shows it as you intended.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

You know, that shows it. That is an accurate depiction, for example, of the colors in the painting.

[Jack Wilson]

Right?

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yeah. It very much depends on the particular instance of treatment or mistreatment of the work, which also is rooted in the history, because you asked me if this was protected by legislation, is it codified? And it is codified in other countries outside the United States, like the uk, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, so on. But it emerged historically as case law by artists and authors going to court. Originally in France, back at the beginning of the 19th century, when, as you pointed out, authors were becoming a major social force and books were important, they would go to court and complain to the judges about mistreatment of their work. And gradually this principle was built up by the courts that you couldn't do things that were actually abuses, you know, that they considered to be abuses of authorship, like removing Authors, names from works that they had created or doing things that would, you know, for example, publishing a text and eliminating parts of it, things that undercut the integrity of the work as it was created and intended to be presented to the public.

[Jack Wilson]

Does it protect characters? Would you consider that moral rights? I'm thinking of Arthur Conan Doyle and wrestling with Sherlock Holmes knockoffs and that kind of thing.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yeah, yeah. Well, potentially. I mean, it depends on how the particular arguments are framed and the particular things that happened in that instance of treatment or mistreatment of the characters. For example, I could see a situation where, let's say there was some kind of a novel was written and Sherlock Holmes was presented as an ally of the Nazi party in Germany. You know, that's something that I could definitely see that being a moral rights violation. I can even think of precedents for that. Yeah, but it's a very interesting question because as you probably have in mind, the character of Sherlock has been the subject of many copyright litigations here in the United States, some of which have been successful in terms of limiting certain uses that could be made of the Sherlock character until the works are actually out of copyright protection, which is always for a limited term, of course.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, okay. So what are the countries where the protections for moral rights are the strongest? And what does that look like?

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yeah, so probably the country where the rights are strongest would be France. That is the traditional answer to that question. And it is, because going back into history, that's where the idea emerged for the first time in the French courts. But then and throughout Europe, once different countries started to notice what was happening in France, the idea traveled really quickly, and Germany became a very quick early adopter of the moral rights idea as well. But what they did was they adapted it to the German cultural context in various ways, and that's essentially what's happened. So it's kind of credited with being a European idea at the origin, but then it has spread far and wide, as I've mentioned, and each country has looked at the theory and kind of adapted it for the reality of creation in that particular cultural context. And just to say as well, even though we consider Europe to be the modern birthplace of moral rights, the moral rights idea has been around for much, much longer than that. Like, much longer even than copyright. You know, we can actually find analogues for moral rights going back to the Roman times, to ancient India, to ancient Ireland. I mean, this idea is not something new.

[Jack Wilson]

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[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

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[Radha Vatsal]

See mint mobile.com.

[Jack Wilson]

Let me ask you about your cover of your book. What? Speaking of traveling back in time, what does that show and how does it relate to moral rights?

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yeah, absolutely. So the COVID shows a detail from the Lascaux cave paintings which I think are around 40 to 50,000 years old. Somewhere in there. It all kind of blurs for me after 40,000 years. And I think it's a very beautiful and striking image. It's actually a close up of a hand. And if you go into the history of what happened, people who study these caves, they say that the people who made the paintings would actually leave their handprints on the walls as well. And so some of these handprints, at least, are presumably the handprints of the artists who made the paintings. And so to me, this is like kind of the first example of an assertion of the moral right of attribution.

[Jack Wilson]

This was mine, right? This was something I did.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Exactly.

[Jack Wilson]

I'm putting my handprint on here to show the world and everyone who comes after to look at this that it was done by me.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yeah, exactly. And if you think about it, it's actually a very appropriate form of attribution as well, because the handprint is something unique, even more than a name. It's unique. But at the same time, when we look at those pictures, that hand looks just like my hand or your hand. So it connects us with the works and the artists of the past.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Now, what work did you do to trace back the owner of that hand and make sure that you weren't violating his or her moral rights when you used the Reproduction of the image on the COVID of your book?

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

That's a very good question. And I'm afraid I had to sort of take that on faith that at this stage the artist would be happy for their work to be disseminated in this form, in this context, and would not consider this to be a violation of moral rights. It's a valid question, Jack, let me just say, because actually, in many jurisdictions, including France, the moral rights are actually considered to last forever. The reason being exactly this, that the link between the artist and the work is something that exists forever. That artist will always be the creator of that painting, and that link can never be severed.

[Jack Wilson]

But what do we do after the author's death? I know copyright law. There's various ways that the heirs can continue to benefit on the economic side of things, and that seems fair and right. At the same time, it seems like children and grandchildren would want to make sure that the art is protected from misuse and so on, even after the author or artist has passed away. So is it basically the same kind of terms that we're used to thinking about with copyright law? Or as you mentioned, it lasts forever, but how do we put that into effect?

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yeah, absolutely. So the duration of protection is generally chosen by the different countries. So there's quite a bit of variation. The principle lasts forever, but in many countries, the moral rights are actually time limited to the same duration as copyright law, not because they don't recognize the principle, but I think as a practical matter, because the further protection poses a lot of difficulties. So in those countries, like Germany, for example, where the moral rights last for the same duration as the economic rights, it works exactly as you said. So those who inherit the copyright also have an obligation, really to make sure that they protect the attribution and integrity interests in those works as well. So to make sure that they're not harmed and that the author continues to be recognized as the author of those works, where the rights continue forever, it gets more complicated and countries try different things. So sometimes there will be a government department that is charged for taking care of the works that have fallen into the public domain. And that can be really problematic because, you know, surprise, surprise, very often governments themselves are the ones who end up violating moral rights. I've seen several cases like that, notably involving India and Norway, countries that are very different. So there are different kinds of solutions that that are sought out. France doesn't have a government agency, but they have a perpetual protection for moral rights. And the courts have actually gotten involved in trying to balance the permanent Moral rights against the creative prerogatives of people who want to use those works now. And that's kind of a new doctrine that's come into French law that the courts are introducing. So it's a very subtle area where there's a, I think, a really noble principle at the heart of all this, which is very challenging to protect and practice in many ways.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, okay. Speaking of challenges, let's bring things forward, and before we get to AI, which I think is going to be its own little topic here, let's talk about just modern technology in general. Has the Internet and the digital age and the age of easy transmission and reproductions, has that presented any particular challenge for moral rights?

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yes, absolutely. So there's a very interesting progression there because, of course, we've seen the huge challenges for copyright law, first of all, presented by the Internet and so on. And many authors have found, of course, that once your work is available online, it's very hard to control what happens to it after that, the uses that are made and so on.

[Jack Wilson]

It's not like the old days where you could go find the publisher of it and the sheriff could show up and seize the printing press or all the copies and it could be pulped, or you could catch them in the mail and try to protect things that way, or at the stores that were selling them. But now it can move a million miles in a second and come from anywhere and spread before anybody has a chance to track it down and stop it.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yeah, absolutely. And so all of those challenges are there in moral rights as well, in the sense that people can do things with the works that are. It's just very hard to control the uses that people are making of the works. But there is an interesting counterpoint to this, which is that with the creation of digital data, a lot of information, of course, is online, and you now have the ability also to trace works in a way that you couldn't before. And I'll give you a fascinating story to illustrate this, which involves actually music. And it's the story of a pianist, a classical pianist named Joyce Hatto. And Joyce Hatto had been a pianist several decades ago who was very well known and then kind of faded into obscurity. And all of a sudden, recordings started to appear on the classical music market made by Joyce Haddow, and they were actually produced by her husband, which is a piece of information you can keep in mind for a minute, who was a recording engineer. And people started to listen to these recordings, and they recognized Joyce Haddow from before and the classical music community got very excited about this. A lot of reviewers had positive things to say. So she kind of emerged from obscurity through these recordings and became a really famous pianist again. And things were going along like this until one day, I think it was in New Jersey, someone who was a big classical music fan took a recording of hers that was on a CD and put it into their computer, wanting to make that usable on the computer. And then the tracks on the CD came up and were identified as being by other pianists. And the person who was using this thought, well, what's going on? Why am I not seeing that Joyce Haddo is the maker of these recordings? And so the whole thing got uncovered as a fraud, which had been carried out by her husband. The recording engineer who had literally gone online, found recordings by various other musicians, slightly altered them, and put them out again as hers. But the alterations couldn't conceal the fact that when you matched up those files with existing files, that there was a match. And so these kinds of opportunities to identify works. So underscoring the right of attribution, the moral right of attribution are now possible through technology as well. So it's almost as if the economic rights and the moral rights are affected by technology in two different ways.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Because the moral rights somehow fit the architecture of technology much better. And in fact, I think we're seeing some interest in moral rights now on the part of legislators and policymakers in different places because they're starting to realize that the moral rights can also help to enforce copyright because of this kind of compatibility or harmonization with technological architecture, if that makes sense.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Well, when I was giving those examples of. Well, it was easy in the old days where you could just go to the. The printing press and have the person arrested or something. That's not so easy to do. If you're talking about a printing press that's somewhere, you might not even know where it is, or it might be offshore or some other country or something. And how do you even trace it back to where it's coming from? All that in the analog world could be very expensive and require a lot of travel and so on. And so the idea that you could sit at your computer and maybe kind of scan the Internet to see if you can find instances of your work being used or misused. It does make sense. Okay, so that brings us to AI. What exactly is happening with AI and how are the moral rights of authors and artists implicated?

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yeah, well, I think what's happening with AI is very sobering and I'm sure that a lot of people who are listening will have come across this in some way because we're seeing a situation where with a lot of the services that are now being made available by AI, it's possible to just generate text, or images for that matter, very easily. And the way that these technologies have been built is by ingesting large amounts of pre existing material, a lot of which just is based on works of authorship and in many cases works that are very much still protected by copyright and moral rights.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, that's the thing. I mean, they're protected by copyright, which seems like its own. I mean, that feels to me like outright theft. But even to be protected by moral rights seems to me like it shouldn't just be that anybody who wrote something would then have it go into an engine, which is essentially kind of. I think most authors throughout history would probably be opposed to the idea that a machine is going to write a play or a novel or a poem or a screenplay. So they would probably be opposed to the idea that their work contributed to that in some way.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that really goes to the heart of the matter because even before we decide whether any particular use is a violation of any particular right, you know, which is a very. It's a legalistic question. It's one that needs to be resolved many times over. But even underlying those, there is this really fundamental point, which is that authors have created these works, you know, investing their time, their life, their resources in every sense of the word. They want those works to be available to the public, ideally in some form that makes sense in terms of that original creative undertaking. They weren't created to become fodder for machine. You know, I don't know what to call it. Machine generation, let's use the technical word. And so there is this very basic issue, which is what moral rights are about, which is that of the relationship between the author and their work and maintaining the integrity of that relationship, which I think very clearly is challenged by AI. And I say this as someone who has been a, a technological optimist throughout my career. And that goes back to Bharati, by the way, who had great hopes for technology and the betterment of humanity through technology. And I think in that sense I do very much continue to be an optimist. And even as a layperson, I can think of many contexts in which AI could be an incredibly beneficial tool. But this is not one of those areas. You know, I think here we're really facing something existential that is not Existential in the sense of devalorizing human creativity? Not at all. But I think the problem is more that we as a society have kind of given away our creativity, and we don't, as a society, look upon creativity as our greatest asset anymore. I don't think that this was the case in the past. I think that creativity was much more recognized and prioritized in the past, even at the time of the censorship regimes. It's not that the regimes didn't recognize the value of creativity. Of course they did. They thought it was the most dangerous thing in the world. So now we're in a situation where somebody seems to think that what machines can do is as valuable as human creativity and perhaps more valuable in many ways than human creativity. And to me, this is the fundamental problem. We haven't put enough importance on fostering human creativity, and instead we're kind of thinking that we're going to outsource this to machines, and somehow that's going to make something better for someone, and we'll.

[Jack Wilson]

Not only outsource it to machines, but on machines that would be incapable of doing it without the human creativity that we're willing to just gather up and throw to the machines like it's food that we're throwing onto the floor of a caged animal.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't have said it better myself.

[Jack Wilson]

Which is a. You know, that idea just occurred to me. It popped into my head. And now that it's going out on the podcast, maybe it'll be scooped up and thrown into the AI machine. So we'll benefit from that, too. So are you optimistic at all? Are there any countries where. I mean, what needs to happen? What's being proposed in terms of a legal framework or social framework, anything that seems like it will stop this?

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yeah, and I think both of those things need to happen. We need policy development to have a sober, rational, reasonable look at this and try to chart a course for us with these technological developments. With AI, we need to have laws in place to tell us what direction we should be going in. And we need to have an awakening of social consciousness, I think, just about human creativity, because it's. I think authors and artists, we exemplify, you know, these people exemplify human creativity at a very high level. But honestly, in every walk of life and in almost every activity that people are engaged in that is meaningful to them, creativity is just such a key component of that. So there is this whole question of social priorities. And just, I think looking at the world and the state of the world, Today, Today I just read that apparently many scientists are saying that global warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius since the industrial era is now impossible to reach. And just looking at the state of things today, you know, we need creativity more than ever before and a change of social attitudes and priorities. A shift definitely needs to be underway.

[Jack Wilson]

Just to stay on climate change for a moment. The idea that even though a problem seems massive and enormous, that it doesn't mean it's inevitable, you know, that it feels the same way with AI. I've heard advocates of AI just sort of say, well, yeah, we thought we probably were violating some copyright law here, but there was no other way to do it, you know, that, that it had to happen in order for AI to work. And so they went ahead and did it. And it feels sometimes like progress is, you know, it's a version of progress or it's a feeling of the next step, but it just feels like, well, just get out of the way. You can't do anything about it. It's too big for any one person to stop and, and the forces that want it to happen are just going to continue to kind of ram it down the throats of the rest of us.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Yeah, I think that's right. And this always makes me see red whenever I hear about something being inevitable in that way. You know, there's nothing inevitable about any of this. After all, who are we as human beings? We're supposed to have some intention, some decision making ability, some ability for critical thinking. That's what our education system is supposed to be creating in us. So no, I don't think there's anything necessarily inevitable about anything. Take something like a technology like the nuclear bomb. It's not inevitable that we're going to make and use nuclear bombs. You know, that's something where actually there are very, very strict international guidelines. And of course we're seeing huge international tension around this right now. But for the past 50 years and more, this is not an area where we're going forward with a sense that it's inevitable that we're going to do more and we're going to undertake this path of destruction. You know, of course we're not, because we are thinking beings and we know that that's not a path we want to follow. So I don't think AI or any technological development is any different. And people who say that it's inevitable and it had to be done this way, what they are doing is something actually much more sinister, which is that they're saying they can do it this way, and they are going to go ahead and do it and not worry about little inconveniences like the human rights of the people whose work is being consumed as fodder by these technological processes. And again, Jack, you know, I really want to emphasize, I don't want to be called a technological pessimist for saying any of this, because that is not the idea behind the comments that I'm making. Technology is the essence of how we progress as human beings and as societies. But we are in a position to make critical decisions here and in the policy and legal community. What we're actually seeing is just great difficulty coming to grips with the need to make policy and to lead on policy. So in other words, there's very little rule setting happening at the moment. There's a lot of discussion, but there is a sense, I would almost call it a sense of panic that I'm feeling in a lot of the policy and legal communities that I know about and that I'm in contact with where, oh my goodness, we've got to make sure that we don't over regulate so that AI doesn't get ahead in some other country and that country gets the economic benefits about it and we end up getting left behind. I think that's the sort of subtext without necessarily having a clear picture about what those economic benefits are, who is going to receive them, how society as a whole is going to benefit, because these are all choices that should be made by policymakers, how to prioritize these things and try to make the technology beneficial in a broader sense. So we are seeing some glimmers of hope. For example, the United States Copyright Office, which has not extensively developed policy in this area. So no one has, but at least they've come out and said that works that are created by AI are not eligible for copyright protection in the United States. And that's a really important step, I think, going right to that fundamental question of authorship and just saying, okay, the Copyright Office has said AI is not, not an author in the same sense in which a human being is. And so copyright law, which essentially was there at the origin to protect the livelihood of authors and authors, right to free speech, their right to feed their families, as you were starting to say a few minutes ago, you know, AI doesn't need to feed itself or its families. So we don't want the same system of rules to be invoked for the protection of works made by AI. So that's been a really positive step. Except now what's happened is the director of The Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter was the person actually leading those initiatives and she has lost her job. So in this country now, we're a little bit in limbo. We don't know what's next. In Europe, they've adopted something called the AI act, which is actually the first such act in the world. So they've been before the United States, United States in this area, and they've tried to create what they call a risk based system, where depending on the kind of AI it is, they have certain, essentially checks and balances in place where you're going to make sure that the development of the AI, the kinds of materials you put into it, sort of the whole picture involving the growth of that AI is going to be scrutinized and subject to checks and balances at every stage. So I would almost call that a system akin to moral rights, because they're talking about things like attributing the information associated with AI systems and maintaining the integrity of information that's circulating in the infosphere and so on. So I think they're aiming at all of the right things. But EU legislators are also now talking about, especially in France, which is ironic, they're talking about, well, maybe have we gone too far? Are we going to do too much to hinder the progress of AI? So there's really this tension. Best news of all, maybe, which I mustn't fail to mention, is what's happening in the uk because they really are involved in a tense, almost standoff at the moment, because the government has tried four times to pass a bill that would allow AI systems to use the works of authors and artists as fodder, as you put it, and that has been opposed every time. So the bill has not passed. It has been opposed by the other government body and not allowed to pass. And while that bill has been under discussion, as many listeners might have been following, a number of prominent authors, artists, musicians, anyone who seems to be really in a position to speak out and have their voice heard on these issues, they have been going to the news. There have been numerous articles in the BBC's coverage, you know, where people have been saying this is something that really affects us as authors and artists. We feel this is wrong and AI systems should not be allowed to essentially piggyback on our efforts and then spit out these products which undercut what human creators are trying to do in so many ways. So it's a very uncertain landscape right now, and I think it's a time to speak out, especially for those who are involved in the creative professions to take a lead on this and to make their voices heard At a time when it's really important, it's a time.

[Jack Wilson]

To speak out, and we want people to speak out, to be well informed. And maybe the best way to do that is to start with your book. The Moral Rights of Authors and Artists from the Birth of Copyright to the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Mira Sundara Rajan, thank you so much for joining me again on the history of literature.

[Mira T. Sundara Rajan]

Thank you very much, Jack. I really enjoyed talking to you, and I hope that people take heart going forward.

[Jack Wilson]

And finally today, we talked to a novelist, Radha Wattsal, one of our favorites here at the podcast. After she and I discussed her novel number 10 Doyer street, which tells the story of an Indian woman journalist investigating a Chinatown murder in the New York of the 1900s, I asked Radha this special question. Okay. We're joined now by Radha Vatsal, author of several historical mysteries, including number 10 Doyer Street. Radha, this question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists or describe one that has not yet been written.

[Radha Vatsal]

So I thought about this question long and hard, and I think the last book, if it's supposed to be my last book, I don't know, why am I gonna die afterwards? Not really clear.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, it could be that or maybe it could be you decide to give up reading. I guess nobody's chosen that so far, but.

[Radha Vatsal]

Well, so I thought that my last book should be a book that I'm actually reading now, which is a novel written by my great great grandfather who wrote historical fiction.

[Jack Wilson]

Wow.

[Radha Vatsal]

And so it's called Karangilo, and it's set in India in the 13th century. And I was really surprised. I read it in its English translation, and I was surprised at how much. How much I enjoyed it, how weirdly contemporary it felt, and how I would like was. Felt like I was being told this rollicking tale by my great, great grandfather, who I found I agreed with on a lot of things. So it. It really just felt like this very special reading experience. And so if it was the last book I was reading, for whatever reason, I think that's the book I would like to have.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Well, that's smart. I mean, obviously, we hope that this is not the last book that you read, but it's. So it's nice that you're not putting things off, because for a lot of people, they say they're saving one, but Then you never know what happens. Lightning can strike and so on. But anyway, setting that aside, which is kind of morbid, when did you learn that your great great grandfather was also a writer? Is this something that you always knew when you were growing up and so on?

[Radha Vatsal]

No, I didn't really know about it. My mother, I mean, I guess my family knew about it, but nobody thought. Well, what's really interesting about this book. So it was published in 1866 in Gujarati, which is one of the major languages of India. And it has never been out of print since.

[Jack Wilson]

Wow.

[Radha Vatsal]

It's been in print for what? I don't know, my math is bad, but like nearly 150 years.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Radha Vatsal]

And it was used until very recently in schools and things like that. That and my mother, who's a historian and started working with a Gujarati translator and they've been doing translations and so she translated it into English and it was published in India by Penguin in India in 2015. And so it was there on my bookshelf, like waiting to read. But I always was like, you know, grandfather, some books read in 13th century India. Oh my God, you know, this is not going to be fun. And boy, I, I really have to say I was surprised and just enchanted by the whole thing. And I was really, what, what really blew me away and I'm actually trying to write an essay about it was how liberal his views were on so many things, on women. And it's the story of the conquest of this Hindu kingdom of Gujarat by, by a Muslim from Delhi, a Muslim sultan from Delhi. So. But how non judgmental he is about any of that stuff. It really kind of blew me away and gave me a lot to think about.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Now did you feel a, a special link to him or to write historical fiction in particular?

[Radha Vatsal]

Well, the historical fiction and you know, it's funny because I never thought of it that, oh, he and I both, both write historical fiction. So yeah, we have multiple writers in the family. And then his son, my great grandfather, wrote this wonderful biography about him and about the city in which he lived, which was also recently translated. And so I read that and it was again, really eye opening. But yeah, I would say a lot of people in my family write and a lot of them write about history.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. What a gift that is for you to have this novel where, you know, I was thinking about that the other day. I mean, most of us, or a lot of us, I guess I should say, you know, our parents are kind of indispensable to who we are and our grandparents are Often very influential. And then you get to great grandparents and it becomes kind of at a remove where I was lucky to know them a little bit, some of them. But for the most part, what I value about them is the stories I heard from my parents and grandparents who would talk about their great, you know, my great grandfather or grandmother, and they would remember, they would tell me about the things she would say or the experiences they had together. But then when you get to great, great, it becomes really pretty remote from me. And, you know, it would be my grandfather's memory of his grandfather kind of thing. But, you know, so I never feel like you could really know them from that because I didn't spend any time with them. And even my grandparents maybe would have told me about things that they only remembered from being a child and not have a kind of adult understanding of them. But, but to be able to read a novel like that where you get his views and his voice and to spend time with him in that way, it must have been really something. Do you think you were putting it off because you thought it might be kind of emotionally powerful, or did you just think, this is so long ago and written about a period that's so long ago. I don't really think it's going to resonate with me.

[Radha Vatsal]

Yeah, I think it was the latter. I think I was nervous that it wasn't going to resonate with me and I was nervous that it might have views in there that I really just don't like.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Like the people who, Americans, white Americans in particular, they don't want to do the, the DNA genealogy trace back and everything because they're worried they're going to find out their, their ancestors were slaveholders and that kind of thing.

[Radha Vatsal]

Yeah, and. Exactly. And it's very interesting because as my family has been very, very liberal and particularly when it comes to women for generations, and in my grandmother's generation, her sister and others like, were very like, did a lot in India's sort of political and public life. So they were big public figures. And then this great grandfather was also very liberal and raised his daughters in a very liberal way. But somehow I thought by the time it came to the great, great grandfather, like, like, surely he couldn't have also been like that, you know.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Radha Vatsal]

And so I think I was kind of just nervous and I was like, oh, maybe this stuff because my mom was like, oh, you know, it doesn't really read like a, a modern novel and it doesn't, it has, like, lots of digressions and stories within stories and stuff. It was the first. It's considered the first novel written in Gujarati. So it's was also written in a very kind of Indian storytelling style. And I was like, concerned that. That I just. Yeah. That I would just not like it or not like his writing or. Or something like that. I was. And what I felt was like that each little story, all of his characters, I. I really felt like he was like this wise and warm contemporary, just kind of sitting beside me telling me a story was really quite, quite special.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Okay, tell us again the name of the book and the name of your great, great grandfather.

[Radha Vatsal]

The name of the book is Karan Khelo.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, yeah, I think I have it here. K A R A N G H E L O.

[Radha Vatsal]

Exactly. Yep, that's the novel and it means foolish Karan. And it's again, it's based on a true story about this king of Gujarat called Karen who basically lusted after his prime minister's wife and abducted her. And then the prime minister got angry and went north and told the Sultan of Delhi, this Muslim ruler, to come and conquer Gujarat. And that's what happened and that's what the novel is about.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, so it's Karangaylo by Nand Shankar Mehta.

[Radha Vatsal]

Well said, well pronounced and meta is.

[Jack Wilson]

M E H T a people may be familiar with that last name.

[Radha Vatsal]

Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, well, this is really exciting. I'm gonna go check this out. And I guess the version for me to read as an English speaker will be the one translated by your mother.

[Radha Vatsal]

Yes, and that was the version I read too, since I am not fluent in reading Gujarati.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Okay. Radha Vassal, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.

[Radha Vatsal]

Thank you. It was lots of fun, as always.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, there we go. My thanks to Radha Vatsal for that quick cameo. And of course, Tamira T Sundara Rajan. Both of those two are artists who have some moral rights. Damn it. Let's get these laws passed and do something. Let's catch those AI machines and make them do tricks and then we can all celebrate over a pint of something tasty in London and in Oxford and in Bath. Yes, that's right. It's the History of Literature podcast tour in May of 2026. Check it out at John Shores Travel or by heading over to historyofliterature.com where we have links to the itinerary. We're going on the road and we would love to have you join us for a fun and meaningful holiday. We will connect with one another. That's our goal. Human beings connecting before the machines take over. Are they saying that to one another? Catch human and make them do tricks? Let's hope not. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time. Behind every great meal is a person with a story to tell. Hear them on Culinary Characters Unlock the podcast that reveals the lives behind the food Hosted by me, David Page, Emmy Award winning journalist and creator of Diners Drive Ins and Dives as I talk with everyone from culinary legends to mom and pop standouts about the creativity, grit and passion that shape the food we love. Follow culinary characters unlocked on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind every Empire are the People History Tried to Forget. Lost Roman Heroes tells the stories of the remarkable characters who shaped Rome from its mythical beginnings to its final fault. Each episode blends armchair storytelling, sharp historical insight, and a bit of humor to bring these lost figures to life. From generals to scientists, from rebels to empresses, from priests to politicians, these lost Roman heroes have one thing in common. They stood up for civilization when the bad guys threatened, and in doing so, they changed the course of human history. If you're into history that's vivid, surprising, and deeply human, this show's for you.