we feel more comfortable when our experiences fall into some sort of order or comprehensible structure or can be explained clearly. That is why we turn to faith, to feelings and to conspiracy theories if some kind of political response is involved. At various levels of plausibility, we are willing to believe rigged elections, faked landing on the moon, oil companies/big pharmaceuticals/big corporations in general working overtime against interests of the common man, government covering up the foreign incursions or conflict among various members of the Cabinet and a dark hand swinging the stock up and down on the Wall Street or Dalal Street. We are inclined to take the conspiratorial view of political events without much proof because some of them make rational sense, even without visible smoking guns.

It is only human to hold emotional beliefs and unprovable theories. At times it makes one feel guilty as political stories are without evidence, but still they are logically possible and even very probable.

Conspiracies, real or imagined, are not new. In classical times, Athens accused Socrates of conspiring to introduce new gods and corrupting the youth of the city. Ancient Rome was a hotbed of conspiracy and political assassination. Roman Church and European Kings and Dukes were perpetually conspiring against each other until Napoleon decisively cut the Pope to size.

However, a distinction needs to be made between conspiracy and conspiracy theory. A conspiracy is an event (or series of events) that has actually taken place. A ‘conspiracy theory’ is a belief in a conspiracy that may or may not have taken place.

Conspiracy theories or theoretical conspiracies usually have an ideological basis that could be political or religious. Since modern politics derives from European history, it will be appropriate to cite a few examples from European history. For example, alleged papal plots against Protestant Europe from the Counter-Reformation onwards were universally believed. In the 17th century witchcraft conspiracy theories prevailed. Freemasons, Jews, Fabians, ‘One World Government’ supporters (whoever they might be), Communists, Small Greys (aliens), the KGB, the CIA and/or the US government were and are still to some extent suspect in the eyes of some people for conspiring to take over the entire world order.

We are constantly beset by conspiracy theories and a ‘respectable’ literature of conspiracy theory has evolved and serious research is going on conspiracy theory. Seminars and conferences on conspiracy theory are held from time to time.

Among the important and high profile conspiracy theories is the longstanding J.F. Kennedy set of theories of varying levels of credibility—about why and how he was killed; by contract killers hired by Cubans or the Mafia. Now several theories have emerged about 9/11. One intriguing 9/11 suggestion throws up an Israeli government connection because, as the theorist says, “only the Israelis were clever enough to make it work.” The plethora of such ‘theories’ has generated its own literature, including Richard Hofstadter’s influential The Paranoid Style in American Politics and other Essays, first published in 1964, after JFK’s assassination, and still in circulation. Hofstadter, a critic of conservative Americans, argued that assassination was a ‘recessive gene’ in US politics.

Conferences on conspiracy theory have led to two developments: the academic view that conspiracy theories deserve serious study and examination as social/cultural phenomena and, that some conspiracy theories might have a basis in evidence. For instance, a two-day session at the University of London’s Birkbeck College in 2001, on conspiracy theories, the topics included: The popularity of conspiracy theory as a mode of explanation; Did the supposedly scientific and rational thought of the Enlightenment, or other intellectual movements, undermine the foundations upon which these theories were constructed, or did they merely alter their forms? Why were witches, heretics and religious minorities perceived in conspiratorial terms? Why was the outbreak of the French Revolution frequently explained in conspiratorial terms, and why did European rulers and their subjects remain obsessed with conspiracies both real and imagined?

For the classroom teacher, conspiracy theories can be both pleasant and unpleasant distraction. A teacher recalls a most enjoyable though very heated debate in his history class, about Roswell and Area 51 (US government/alien conspiracy), which had nothing to do with the French Revolution that he was supposed to be teaching to that class, but it led to an intense discussion about assessment of evidence. The US lecturer Marcus LiBrizzi uses conspiracy theories to motivate his students. However, classroom discussion involving conspiracy theories needs careful preparation because of the intricacy and complexity of many of the theories.

The greatest problem with conspiracy theories is their shifting grounds, mainly because there is usually great eagerness amongst advocates of conspiracy theories to mistake coincidence for conspiracy and they are difficult to prove/disprove. For example, as a sceptic, one might say, ‘JFK was NOT KILLED by a second shooter on the grassy knoll.’ But how to prove it?

Then, most conspiracy theories are wrapped in circular logic. Typically, the arguments go: ‘Freemasons secretly control the world.’

‘But there’s no evidence that they control the world.’

‘That’s because they are doing it in secret!’

Or, ‘Yasser Arafat did not die of natural causes. He was poisoned’. This despite no evidence of poisoning in a 500-page post-mortem medical file of the concerned French medical authorities. The conspiracy theorists would say that the French medical authorities tested only for KNOWN poisons and Arafat was killed by an UNKNOWN poison. Circular logic!

Conspiracy theories especially attract the adolescents (and delayed adolescents), because they appear more colourful than a fact-based alternative. That JFK was killed by a whole host of assassins and conspirators rather than by a solitary gunman is surely more raving; and so is to believe that Harold Holt was spying for the Chinese and was whisked away by a Chinese submarine instead of drowning in the surf.

Thriller writers know the emotional lift of gaining ‘inside knowledge’ and use the clandestine nature of their narrative to make the reader feel as an ‘insider’ in their esoteric world. Dan Brown, in his The Da Vinci Code [2004], uses this factor most effectively and succeeds in turning a badly written book into a best seller.

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