I have some questions regarding Subir Bhaumik's piece ("Conspirator's Cauldron") in the May issue of Himal. I am not entirely certain that there are answers to them, but I suppose they ought to be asked. Normally I feel enormously upbeat about what gets printed on Himal's pages, and that is precisely why I am not sure about Bhaumik's piece, and not sure what your editorial policy is.
The reasons for this question are obvious. Bhaumik's explanation of a military incident between India and Bangladesh is based exclusively on the compulsions of the latter's domestic politics, one that seems to be dominated by conspiracies in the correspondent's reading of it. We all know that Bhaumik has been reporting on militancy in India's Northeast, so could it be that this has coloured his world view? He quotes intelligence agencies as sources. This is highly unusual because 'agency quoting' died many years ago due to its sheer unreliability. When you grab a phone to get information you will never be able to tell whether you are being fed or not. One can continue with this practice only at the risk of eroding the distinction between the media and intelligence outfits in the legitimate dissemination of news. Conspiracy theories have no space in the media unless proved beyond doubt, which is when they cease to be conspiracy theories. But when Himal prints them, what does that make you? Or is it that Himal is not uncomfortable with intelligence feeds?
Let me say what the danger was in this case. Bhaumik concluded that the "assassination attempts" on Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the bomb explosions at the public meetings and the border incidents, were all part of a single conspiracy to dethrone Hasina. Also part of this conspiracy was the 76 kg of explosives that the police discovered 300 metres from the podium where she was to address a rally at Kotalipara in her Gopalganj constituency. Add to this the meeting at Breda, near Amsterdam, to plot the assassination of Hasina, spearheaded by one of the accused in the Sheikh Mujibur Rehman murder case, and you have great copy, too tempting to be checked even though Himal has a man in Dhaka (whose article actually accompanies Bhaumik's).
My contention is that reading all of one country's internal problems in the light of its larger neighbour's military policy, will always be risky, simply because this is where the agencies come in and fill the information gap. Bhaumik quotes people to say that there is a conspiracy to undermine and destabilise the Awami League government, because it is seen as being pro-India and hence the recipient of New Delhi's patronage. But the pitfalls that follow these arguments are: