Indian musical director Anu Malik struck discord this week when he found himself accused of plagiarizing the Israeli anthem, Hatikvah.
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Sunday saw Israeli artistic gymnast Artem Dolgopyat win Israel's second-ever Olympic gold. At the medal ceremony, as the Israeli national anthem rang out at the Ariake Gymnastics Center in Tokyo, viewers across India apparently realized that the song they know as Mera Mulk Mera Desh might have been plagiarized.
Malik wrote his song in 1996 for the romantic action film Diljale. According to local media, this is not the first time Malik has been called out for alleged plagiarism. Does his song sound familiar to the Israeli anthem? You be the judge.
Video: Getty Images/Moshe Shai
Viewers immediately took to social media to voice their concerns.
"Is it just me or does this song sound like the Israeli anthem?" one user wrote. "That moment when you realize Mera Mulk Mera Desh is actually the Israeli anthem," wrote another.
Israel's anthem, Hatikva ("Hope"), was adapted from a piece written by Jewish poet Naftali Herz Imber in 1877. A decade later, in 1887, composer Shmuel Cohen turned the poem into a song using a melody he knew from growing up in Romania. Hatikva was unofficially proclaimed as the anthem of the newly-established Jewish state in 1948, and in 2004, it was officially declared as the national anthem of the State of Israel.
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