DM Monitoring
Renowned BBC journalist and author Subir Bhaumik – the Editorial Director at Eastern Link in India – has been one of the most active warriors of the Indian government (widely believed in Bangladesh to be an employee of the RAW) in the realm of propaganda warfare, against Bangladesh.
He is a hyperbolic, sensationalist writer, whose writings on Bangladesh is full of inaccuracies and blatant lies, which often demonise the country as one on the verge of becoming a dysfunctional state, and tarnish the image of the BNP as the promoter of Islamist militancy along with the Jamaat-e-Islami. Quite frequently, he loves to invent the bogey of Islamist terrorism in Bangladesh.
Last but not least, his liking for the Awami League is obvious; and his portrayal of the party, its leaders, and even generals toeing the Awami line as “secular” and “pro-Liberation” tell us a thousand tales about his real intent, and who he has been working for during the last three decades or so!
Recently, he has come up with a couple of stories about some impending troubles in Bangladesh, pinpointing the BNP, Jamaat-e-Islami, and Tareque Zia as the most disruptive and destabilizing factors in Bangladesh, including a military takeover against the Hasina Regime and a recrudescence of Islamist terrorism in the country.
Bhaumik wrote an article around the 2014 Bangladesh national elections about the theory of the “string of pearls” to expose the strategy behind China’s endeavour to build deep seaports in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. At that time, China had built the Gwadar deep seaport in Baluchistan and the Hambantota deep seaport in Sri Lanka and was very deeply interested in building the proposed Sonadia deep seaport in Bangladesh.
He wrote the piece when New Delhi was worried that a change of government in Bangladesh would give China the advantage to complete the missing string in its “string of pearl” strategy. That did not happen because the pro-Indian Awami League government returned to power, helped by the Manmohan Singh GovernmentInterestingly, the Indian elections in May 2014 gave China the opportunity that it was looking for.
The defeat of the Congress Party in the Indian elections made Sheikh Hasina nervous about the BJP government, apprehending Modi would not legitimise her government through the farcical polls in January 2014.
And that Hasina would seek Chinese support to keep her regime afloat, as she did not want to go through the process of holding fresh election in Bangladesh, for the obvious reason!
Subir Bhumik was concerned with the Chinese initiatives that he felt was a Chinese plan to choke India like a necklace around its neck. In his 2018 piece (on 26th November) he also apprehended that China would win the hearts and minds of Bangladeshis by promising a mega $30 billion investment in the country, while India spent $7 billion on infrastructure projects in Bangladesh “much of it to facilitate connectivity to India’s own remote northeast”.
To be Continued…
