Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 India’S Nuclear Debate Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 India’s Nuclear Debate Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

Series Note War and International Politics in South Asia Series Editor: Srinath Raghavan Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, and Lecturer in Defence Studies, King’s College London, University of London.

Th is Series seeks to foster original and rigorous scholarship on the dynamics of war and international politics in South Asia. Following Clausewitz, war is understood as both a political and a social phenomenon which manifests itself in a variety of forms ranging from total wars to armed insurrections. International politics is closely intertwined with it, for war not only plays an important role in the formation of an international order but also a threat to its continued existence. Th e Series will therefore focus on the international as well as domestic dimensions of war and security in South Asia. Comparative studies with other geographical areas are also of interest. A fundamental premise of this Series is that we cannot do justice to the com- plexities of war by studying it from any single, privileged academic standpoint; the phenomenon is best explained in a multidisciplinary framework. Th e Series welcomes a wide array of approaches, paradigms and methodologies, and is interested in historical, theoretical, and policy-oriented scholarship. In addition to monographs, the Series will from time to time publish collections of essays.

Also in this Series Fighting Like a Guerrilla: Th e Indian Army and Counterinsurgency Rajesh Rajagopalan ISBN 978-0-415-45684-5

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Indian Foreign Policy in a Unipolar World Editor: Harsh V. Pant ISBN 978-0-415-48004-8 India’s Nuclear Debate Exceptionalism and the Bomb

PRIYANJALI MALIK Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

LONDON NEW YORK NEW DELHI First published 2010 by Routledge 912–915 Tolstoy House, 15–17 Tolstoy Marg, New Delhi 110 001

Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Transferred to Digital Printing 2010

Typeset by Star Compugraphics Private Limited D–156, Second Floor Sector 7, Noida 201 301

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

ISBN: 978-0-415-56312-3 Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

I Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric, 1947–1990 31

II Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s 95

III Deﬁ ning and Defending India, 1990–1996 127

IV Confronting the Nuclear Option: Th e CTBT and Sovereignty 174

V Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT 207

VI Defending Nuclear India 246

Conclusion 267

Epilogue 274 Glossary 311 Bibliography 313 About the Author 341 Index 342 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Acknowledgements

This project started out as a cloud of incoherent ideas as I wandered about the University Parks in Oxford, trying desperately to come up with a viable research project for my DPhil thesis. It probably would have stayed that way but for the help, guidance, encouragement and patience of several people, only some of whom are mentioned here. First of all, a huge thank you to my supervisors, Professors Judith Brown and Henry Shue. Th ey agreed to take me under their wing despite their numerous other commitments when I found myself suddenly supervisorless at the end of my fi rst year. Professor Brown immediately imposed some structure on my ramblings and helped me tease out a coherent story. Both she and Professor Shue were unfailing in their patience (and good humour) along the long and winding road to the fi nish line as I produced fi rst a fi ancé, then a wedding and fi nally a baby to keep me distracted. My thanks also to Professors Sir Adam Roberts, Avi Shlaim and Andrew Hurrell for bridging the gap between academic advisors and mentors to become family. All three played a big role in getting me to Oxford and keeping me there. Dr Yuen Foong Khong always had a smile and words of encouragement to help me along the way. Oxford, in general, was a wonderful place to park myself, and the Ian Taylor Scholarship that Merton College off ered me freed me from the tedious anxieties of worrying about where my next meal might arrive from, allowing me to concentrate on my work instead. Beyond the dreaming spires, Dr Rahul Roy-Chaudhury at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) listened to endless versions of my thesis and still managed to sound enthusiastic about it. Dr W.P.S. Sidhu may have had

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 to suﬀ er fewer iterations only by virtue of not being in the same country as me, but he willingly read portions of my thesis at very short notice and sent me thoughtful and detailed comments on my work. Th e IISS library has been wonderfully patient in letting me have several books out on a disgracefully long loan. Finally out of Oxford, Sir Jeremy and Lady Greenstock welcomed me and the thesis into the Ditchley family after I (allegedly) turned viii ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Sir Jeremy’s previously capable deputy to mush. My thanks also for being most understanding of (and probably amused by) my inability to sit quietly as an observer at the back of the room at all the conferences I was privileged to attend. I was very lucky to have Professor Kanti Bajpai as my external examiner. His thoughtful comments are refl ected in the fi nal manuscript, though what may be less evident but no less important is the encouragement that I received from him throughout the time I was researching my thesis. Several people were extremely generous with their time, gently challenging my ideas while imparting new information. Of them, Lieutenant General V.R. Raghavan was perhaps the most indulgent, patiently hearing me out on several occasions over the course of the three years of my research. Dr Rajesh Rajagopalan invited me to speak at a seminar at the Centre for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament (CIPOD), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), which was extremely useful in testing out my thesis as I was about to wrap up. A big thank-you as well to Joshua Huminski, who was wonderful in double- checking some facts and ferreting out new information at very short notice as I scrambled to fi nish the manuscript. Dr Nilanjan Sarkar at Routledge and the Commissioning Editor of this series, Dr Srinath Raghavan, have been incredibly patient in the long wait for this manuscript. Srinath, especially, has been very accommodating and cheerful as life kept overtaking my thesis and pushing it further and further down the road. After the initial trauma of dealing with the possibility that I might remain a student for the rest of my life, my parents have been amazingly enthusiastic and supportive of this whole venture, even politely reading various bad drafts when they were sent their way. It was of course understood that they would help set up interviews, look out for (and make!) newspaper clippings and not ask too many questions about why the thesis wasn’t fi nished when I said it would be. My mother-in- Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 law helped me cross that fi nal mile by baby-sitting her very energetic granddaughter while I desperately turned the thesis into a book. My husband, Ashish Bhatt, probably didn’t realise that he was marrying my thesis as well as me. Luckily, this double commitment does not seem to have scarred him too badly. He has had to suff er this project from the day we met and, if he was ever bored of it, he never let on. Th ank you for living and breathing this endeavour with me and for exhorting me on whenever the end seemed to fade out of sight. Acknowledgements ( ix

Our daughter, Rehmat, was most considerate in waiting for the thesis to be submitted before arriving. All in all, my growing family has helped me keep perspective when it all seemed to get a bit much. Without their unﬂ agging enthusiasm and support, this project would probably have been ﬁ nished earlier. No doubt it would have been the poorer for it. Th is book is dedicated to them.

M Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Introduction

India, constituted as she is, cannot play a secondary part in the world. She will either count for a great deal or not count at all. Jawaharlal Nehru, 19461

Until 1998, oﬃ cial Indian rhetoric nurtured an image of New Delhi as a tireless crusader for global nuclear disarmament. Th is image was largely supported by the country’s intelligentsia and middle classes for it sat well with their self-images of their nation. Th en on May 11, 1998, the newly appointed BJP-led government announced without warning that India had tested three atomic devices at the desert site of Pokharan in Rajasthan.2 Unlike the earlier nuclear test of 1974 which most Indians rarely discussed, the government this time did not qualify the detonations as ‘peaceful nuclear explosions’: to the contrary, oﬃ cial declarations then and in subsequent weeks unambiguously stated that these were weapons tests.3 For a country that had long prided itself as the land of Gandhi, Buddha and Nehru, of non-violence and disarmament (even if reality did not match the rhetoric), the great public enthusiasm with which these tests were greeted raises questions about what they symbolised. A poll conducted by the Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB) on the afternoon of May 12, 1998, in six metropolitan cities revealed overwhelming support for Pokharan II, as the tests came to be called.4 Of an urban, largely middle-class group of respondents, 91 per cent ‘approved’ of the tests; only 7 per cent said they ‘disapproved’ and 2 per cent were unable

1 Jawaharlal Nehru, Th e Discovery of India (Calcutta: Signet, 1946), p. 50. 2

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Th is was followed by two further tests on May 13, 1998, at the same site. 3 Ministry of External Aﬀ airs, External Publicity Division, Press Statement of May 11, 1998, concerning India’s nuclear tests; Ministry of External Aﬀ airs, External Publicity Division, Press Statement of May 13, 1998: ‘Planned Series of Nuclear Tests Completed’, both at http://www.ipcs.org/newDatabaseIndex2. jsp?database=1005&country2=1998 (accessed on August 10, 2007). See also, Prabhu Chawla, interview with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, ‘India is Now a Weapons State’, India Today, May 25, 1998. 4 Th e BJP referred to them as ‘Shakti’, the female embodiment of strength. 2 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

to off er an opinion. About 78 per cent of the respondents stated that they felt more ‘secure and safe’ as a result.5 Th is support declined in subsequent months, especially after Pakistan tested six devices roughly a fortnight later, but the balance nevertheless remained strongly in favour of those who approved of the BJP’s decision. Moreover, as additional opinion polls revealed, support for the tests cut across party affi liation and class barriers, with the caveat that elite opinion proved less supportive of an overt nuclear weapons stance.6 Why did people celebrate, and had attitudes towards nuclear weapons moved away from the earlier position of supporting nuclear disarmament?7 What did the tests at Pokharan symbolise? Th is study examines the apparent widespread support for the BJP’s nuclear tests by analysing the debate in India on nuclear policy in the decade of the 1990s. It looks at how this policy became an important part of the public discourse in India — a country where despite passionate government advocacy for disarmament, nuclear policy has not featured prominently in the public debates that sustain Indian democracy — and in so doing reaches for a greater understanding of what nuclear weapons symbolise in these discussions. In the process, this study will argue that the country’s nuclear assets help defi ne a political image of India — one that situates the country regionally and globally, as well as domestically. Accordingly, India’s atomic arsenal defends a certain idea of India — that of a modern, independent but above all, sovereign state occupying a position of global infl uence on the international stage.8

5 Cited in Amitabh Mattoo, ‘India’s Nuclear Policy in an Anarchic World’, in Amitabh Mattoo, ed., India’s Nuclear Deterrent: Pohkaran II and Beyond (New Delhi: Har Anand Publications, 1999), p. 11. 6 Ibid., pp. 12–13. 7 As late as 1995, opinion polls appeared to support the contention that Indians were ready to renounce their nuclear option in certain conditions. For example, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 an India Today poll conducted on the streets of nine major metros in December 1995 found that amongst adults of varying educational backgrounds, 68 per cent were willing ‘to give up the option of making atom bombs’ if the nuclear powers were prepared to do the same; only 29 per cent disagreed with this proposition. See Raj Chengappa, ‘Testing Times’, India Today, December 31, 1995. Th ough the respondents to this poll formed a larger and more diverse collective than the urban elite and middle-class studied in this book, their response is still indicative of the attitudes of India’s attentive public. 8 Th e term ‘idea of India’ is borrowed from Sunil Khilnani’s inﬂ uential work. See Sunil Khilnani, Th e Idea of India (Delhi: Penguin, 1999). Introduction ( 3

In tracing the history of the debate over nuclear policy in the 1990s, this study therefore sits at the intersection of at least three disciplines — international relations, history and politics. While the main thrust of the work seeks to explain the growing support amongst a select group of India’s educated public for a more assertive nuclear policy, which situates it in the fi eld of international relations, it also illuminates a topic that has received little attention in International Relations (IR) studies, which is the manner in which educated Indian public opinion was steered in support of a highly secretive government policy.9 Th e limits of this interaction, as indicated in this book, help shed light on the workings of Indian democracy, thereby contributing to the fi eld of politics, while also providing a history of the self-imaging of India as a global and regional player by its attentive public. Examining the Nuclear Debate, 1990–99 Th is review of the debate on nuclear policy covers the years leading up to the nuclear tests of 1998 and ends with the 1999 encounter with Pakistan in Kargil, Kashmir. Th e year 1990 marks a natural entry point for this study: it ushered in the fourth non-Congress government in independent India’s history, thee of the four previous ones having lasted less than a year and none having displayed any semblance of stability; the end of the Cold War changed New Delhi’s global calculations, especially regarding the Soviet Union, relations with the United States and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM); the drawing down of hostilities between the former Cold War adversaries also allowed other concerns such as non-proliferation to rise in the global agenda; and India weathered a series of internal crises, from verging on bankruptcy in 1991 to growing domestic political and communal violence and insurgency. Th e near concurrence of these developments raised questions about India’s future and where its security lay, which resonated in the introspection that marked the lead up to the Golden Jubilee of Indian independence in August 1997. Th e encounter with Pakistan over Kargil at Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 9 While the fi rst few books in the series of War and International Politics in South Asia have adopted a Realist approach to international relations, this study seeks to ‘unpack’ the state. While not denying the importance of systemic factors in shaping the security calculus of a state, this book suggests that what goes on inside the state is important too. Ignoring the fi rst and second images would suggest an element of certain inevitability about India’s declaring itself a nuclear weapons power. Yet, as this study seeks to show, that was not the case: the support for weaponisation was cultivated. 4 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

the end of the decade, in contrast, immediately tested Indian assumptions about what the country’s new nuclear status had achieved for it. Over the course of the 1990s, Indians had to contend with rising international pressure over non-proliferation (and human rights and the dispute over Kashmir, which, in Western eyes merited concern given India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities). Th is external scrutiny of the country’s nuclear intentions paradoxically privileged an aspect of policy that rarely received attention outside offi cial circles amongst an attentive public traditionally defensive about New Delhi’s autonomy in foreign aff airs and defence. Th e 25-year review and subsequent indefi nite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the negotiation of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) also occasioned much international pressure being brought to bear on New Delhi to draw it into the non-proliferation fold. Within India, this was seen as an infringement of New Delhi’s sovereign right to make its own decisions on how best to manage its security in a world where nuclear weapons would continue to exist. Security and nuclear weapons were thereby brought together, as an examination of public discussions on the topic illustrates, but more in a political sense than a military one. Kargil tested this understanding of nuclear weapons. Yet it showed that despite the fears of a nuclear exchange that were freely voiced outside the country, within India nuclear weapons continued, by and large, to be seen as primarily political objects. The Importance of the Debate A closer look at the public debate on nuclear policy sheds light on the apparent change of heart regarding nuclear weapons within the country. Indians were and remain proud of their country’s disarmament credentials, pointing to how, from Jawaharlal Nehru onwards, New Delhi had consistently promoted global nuclear disarmament, backed by its own policy of nuclear restraint. In the early 1990s, Indians cited the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Rajiv Gandhi ‘Action Plan’ of 1988 as the latest proof of India’s commitment to comprehensive nuclear disarmament within a reasonable time frame.10 And while global nuclear disarmament remained a worthy if distant oﬃ cial and popular goal, ‘elite India’ — which forms

10 Rajiv Gandhi, ‘Action Plan for Ushering in a Nuclear-Weapon-Free and Non-Violent World Order’, Speech to the Third Special Session on Disarmament, United Nations General Assembly, June 9, 1988, CD/859 (hereafter ‘Action Plan’). Introduction ( 5

an infl uential segment of the ‘public’ studied in this thesis — appeared to prefer that the country hold its nuclear fi re. A poll conducted in late- 1994 revealed that a sizeable majority of 57 per cent of the country’s urban elite favoured continuing with the government’s stance of neither developing nor renouncing nuclear weapons; 8 per cent were ready to renounce India’s capability altogether; in contrast, 33 per cent advocated a more muscular nuclear policy.11 Among those polled, a clear majority (58 per cent of those in favour of government policy and 42 per cent of those advocating nuclear weapons for India) felt that India could renounce nuclear weapons if presented with a global, time-bound plan for nuclear disarmament.12 Th e intelligentsia, at least, did not appear to demand any imminent move towards an overt nuclear weapons posture. Most seemed satisfi ed with the government’s policy of maintaining ‘the option’ — a catch-all phrase that eff ectively enabled postponing a decision on what to do with India’s nuclear capability. Yet this same group formed part of the larger urban public who approved of the BJP’s nuclear tests in 1998. Th is study seeks to account for the shift in opinion by examining public discussions on nuclear policy during this period. Th e nuclear question surfaced in the lead- up to the indefi nite extension of the NPT when Western capitals led by Washington DC tried to get New Delhi to ‘cap, roll-back and eliminate’ its nuclear weapons and join the NPT regime. Th e subsequent debates on India’s options vis-à-vis the CTBT, culminating in the rejection of that treaty, served to shift nuclear policy from the inside of newspapers to their front pages and leading editorials. In light of this change, it is all too easy to dismiss India’s earlier espousal of nuclear disarmament as hypocrisy, a commitment that was shed at the fi rst available opportunity. An examination of attitudes towards nuclear weapons for India before the tests, and signifi cantly, just after, reveals that Indians remain deeply ambivalent about their atomic arsenal.

11 Appendix B, ‘Complete Results and Tabular Data of the Kroc Institute

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Opinion Survey’, in David Cortright and Amitabh Mattoo, eds, India and the Bomb: Public Opinion and Nuclear Options (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), p. 117. Th e poll was conducted by MARG amongst a selected sample of professionals, academics, bureaucrats, politicians, military and police offi cials, and arts and sports personalities, who were defi ned for the purposes of this study as part of the infl uential elite, in seven major cities of the country. 12 Ibid., p. 123. 6 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Th ough the middle classes and the intelligentsia generally expressed satisfaction with Pokharan II, very few of this group were actually pressing for nuclear tests before the BJP decided the issue for the country. Most refl ective Indians continue to argue, after 1998, that India and the world would be better off without any nuclear weapons.13 Moreover, the slow pace at which India is weaponising its nuclear assets reveals a reluctance to adopt in full the nuclear posture of the fi ve original nuclear powers.14 Th is would indicate that for most Indians interested in this topic, nuclear weapons are not an end in and of themselves, but a means to a goal. In this view, New Delhi’s nuclear assets guarantee not so much the sanctity of India’s borders but rather, a certain political idea of India. In the process of examining this domestic nuclear debate, this book will also seek tangentially to shed light on how international non- proliferation pressure may have been counter-productive. Tradition- ally, nuclear policy has not attracted much attention from India’s elite and middle classes beyond a tight circle of strategic analysts, defence experts and academics. Th is is in keeping with Indian attitudes towards defence — which have been to largely leave such matters to the experts and to government.15 Yet the overt pressure brought to bear on New Delhi in the early 1990s to fall in line with the non-proliferation regime, to the point that most of New Delhi’s dealings with the remaining superpower, Washington, were refracted through the prism of non-proliferation, privileged India’s nuclear policy for an intensely political public. It moved the subject from defence (as in nuclear weapons) and made it a question of foreign policy. Nuclear policy thus emerged as a marker of New Delhi’s ability to withstand external compulsions, especially at a time when events had conspired to produce a weak government trying to hold together a battered economy. As a result of these anxieties, this policy became a rallying point for nationalist sentiment, a symbol of India’s sovereignty and independence. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

13 Most prominently, India’s nuclear doctrine states the country’s preference for a nuclear-weapon-free world. 14 For more on this, see Ashley J. Tellis, India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001). 15 See also ‘Preface’ to Kanti P. Bajpai and Amitabh Mattoo, eds, Securing India: Strategic Th ought and Practice (New Delhi: Manohar, 1996), p. 9. Introduction ( 7

Introducing ‘Attentive India’ Th is study of the public debate on nuclear policy concentrates on the discussions that occurred amongst those in India who have traditionally concerned themselves with foreign policy, a group that roughly corresponds to Gabriel Almond’s ‘attentive public’.16 Th ough Indians as a whole are an intensely political people and have traditionally taken a keen interest in matters of governance, economics and development, interest in foreign aff airs has largely remained the preserve of the urban middle- and upper-classes; the rural population (with a lower income distribution), has tended to focus on more parochial matters. In terms of numbers, ‘attentive India’ is tiny. Drawn from the middle- and upper-middle class, this group of highly educated individuals, fl uent in English and who use the language to cut across regional and cultural divisions within the country, form an urban elite whose political compass points to New Delhi. Th ey seek to infl uence policy largely through debate.17 Th is is a group that regularly reads one if not two newspapers, subscribes to a couple of magazines or journals and considers it important to be well informed on political and economic developments within and outside the country. Such pressure as it can bring to bear on policy is largely public: behind-the-scenes negotiations and lobby-group politics have not succeeded in gaining a foothold in Indian political life or in infl uencing the process of foreign and defence policy-making. Given the nature of public infl uence on foreign policy and also the fact that governments are voted in and out of power on more parochial issues such as infl ation or reservations for ‘backward castes’, this is not an examination of the infl uence of public opinion on foreign or

16 Gabriel Almond, Th e American People and Foreign Policy (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1960). 17 Th ough somewhat similar to Gabriel Almond’s ‘attentive public’, the minority of the general public who are interested in foreign, economic and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 defence aff airs in India tend to focus on defi ning an idea of independent India through development and foreign policy discussions. In matters of defence, the interaction is less obvious or infl uential. Further, ‘attentive India’ is probably a more fl uid concept than Almond’s attentive public, if only because the ‘elite’ of Almond’s categorisation, who infl uence the attentive public, are less remote from the group they seek to infl uence in India. Cf. Almond, ibid., 139ff . 8 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

defence policy.18 It is instead a look at how opinion amongst India’s attentive public — the collective that actually cares about foreign, and to smaller extent, security policy — shifted from supporting nuclear abstinence for India as articulated by oﬃ cial policy, to accepting a more muscular nuclear policy, though without actually demanding nuclear weapons or arguably, voting in the BJP to ‘exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons’, as promised in its manifesto.19 Further, in focussing strongly on the public discussion, this thesis does not seek to provide a history of nuclear policy-making in India. Th e closed and secretive nature of New Delhi’s nuclear decision-making precludes outsiders from undertaking this exercise with any degree of certainty. Th e nuclear establishment has been exceptionally impenetrable, with virtually no documentation of any important nuclear decisions, including the actual decisions to test.20 Further, the government does not operate a system of declassifying whatever little information exists about the programme.21 On the other hand, discussions amongst the attentive public about nuclear policy, however hampered by the absence of oﬃ cial knowledge on the subject, have contributed to the vibrant political dialogue that sustains Indian democracy.

18 As the BJP learned, approval for its nuclear policy did not translate into more votes. Th e party lost power in the three legislative assembly elections held six months after Pokharan II, mainly on account of spiralling prices caused by the uncertainty of the nuclear tests. Th e price of onions is generally a more explosive election issue in India than security policy. 19 BJP election manifesto, published on February 4, 1998, at http://www.bjp. org/newsite/index.php?ﬁ le=s-viewcategory&tag=manife99.htm&catid=9#bb (accessed on November 10, 2004). Th e BJP received 25 per cent of the popular vote. During the elections, the party focussed more on its commitment to build a temple in Ayodhya, its relations with minorities and its promise to abrogate Article 370 of the Indian Constitution which accords special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Moreover, nuclear weapons are now part of the Indian political landscape: no party, since 1998, has campaigned for unilateral Indian Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 nuclear disarmament. 20 Th is is certainly the case with the 1974 test as the Janata Government under Morarji Desai apparently searched without success for documentation of Mrs Gandhi’s nuclear decision-making. See K. Subrahmanyam, ‘Indian Nuclear Policy, 1964–98 (A Personal Recollection)’, in Jasjit Singh, ed., Nuclear India (New Delhi: Knowledge World for IDSA, 1998), p. 30. In all likelihood, the BJP government adopted a similar approach in 1998. 21 Ibid. Also see George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb: Th e Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), 170ﬀ . Introduction ( 9

Privileging the ‘Debate’ For attentive India, an independent nuclear policy eventually became equated with Indian sovereignty. Th e association is not without precedent: the debates in France over nuclear policy (especially after the Fifth Republic tested a nuclear device and declared France a nuclear power) were enmeshed in ideas of sovereignty and the need to redress French weakness vis-à-vis her Western allies.22 However, the debates about the place of nuclear weapons in France, Britain and the United States occurred after these countries declared themselves nuclear powers. (Very little is known about whether any discussion was permitted in the Soviet Union and China.) Moreover, Argentina and Brazil (and to an extent, Germany after reunifi cation) too came under increased pressure around the same period as India (and Pakistan) to renounce their nuclear weapons capability. Yet, these countries did not experience the same level of impassioned debate on the topic and the termination of their nuclear weapons programmes was apparently not perceived as an attack on their sovereignty.23 South Africa’s voluntary disarmament (albeit in the face of considerable international and domestic scrutiny) is the exception but the apartheid system under which these decisions were taken eff ectively stifl ed any democratic debate on the matter.24 Th e only other state where non-proliferation pressure was expressly and publicly identifi ed as a threat to state sovereignty was Pakistan, though various Pakistani governments repeatedly expressed a willingness to sign the NPT and adhere to non-proliferation measures if India led the way.25 Israel, of course, forms a separate category as its nuclear weapons have never been acknowledged. Th e Israeli public have been willing

22 Wolf Mendl, Deterrence and Persuasion: French Nuclear Armament in the Context of Policy, 1945–1969 (London: Faber and Faber, 1970). 23 See, Mitchell Reiss, Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain their Nuclear Capabilities (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson, 1995); Mitchell Reiss and Robert S. Litwak, eds, Nuclear Proliferation After the Cold War (Washington

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 DC: Woodrow Wilson, 1994); Kurt M. Campbell, Robert J. Einhom and Mitchell B. Reiss, eds, Th e Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider their Nuclear Choices (Washington DC: Brookings, 2004), pp. 32–37. 24 Reiss, Bridled Ambition; David Albright, Mark Hibbs, ‘South Africa: Th e ANC and the Atom Bomb’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 49:03 (April 1993). 25 Samina Ahmed, ‘Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program: Turning Points and Nuclear Choices’, International Security 23:4 (Spring 1999), pp. 178–204. 10 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

accomplices in the offi cial nudge-and-wink approach which has couched the country’s nuclear capability in the assurance that ‘Israel will not be the fi rst to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East’.26 Examining the debate over nuclear policy will further understanding of why attentive India came to perceive a need for nuclear weapons in the 1990s. Th is topic has received relatively little attention as traditional scholarship on why states ‘build the bomb’ tends to focus on explaining policy, which in turn leads to one of a range of interpretations.27 An important exception is a study by Cortright and Mattoo in the mid- 1990s which sought to examine public attitudes towards nuclear policy, but this only looked at ‘elite’ opinion in India at one particular point in time.28 Th ere has been little other work on what might infl uence public opinion on this topic over a given period. Scholarship explaining India’s nuclear weaponisation has instead generally fallen within four categories: security threats (especially from the nuclear arsenals of China and Pakistan), which require a nuclear response; domestic politics, specifi cally a weak government seeking to cash in on the supposed benefi ts of a more muscular nuclear policy; the role of scientists and the strategic–scientifi c enclave in hijacking a national security issue to promote their agenda; and fi nally, the status and prestige that nuclear weapons are believed to bestow on the possessor state.29

26 Even after Mordechai Vanunu provided details of the programme to Th e Sunday Times (London, October 5, 1986), the taboo within Israel on discussing its nuclear programme has prevailed. See, Aluf Benn, ‘Israel: Censoring the Past’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 57:4 (July/August 2001), pp. 17–19; Avner Cohen, ‘Th e Bomb Th at Never is’,Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 56:3, (May/June 2000), pp. 22–23; Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). 27 See Scott Sagan, ‘Why do States Build Nuclear Weapons? Th ree Models in Search of a Bomb’, International Security 21:3 (Winter 1996/97), pp. 54–86. 28 Cortright and Mattoo, India and the Bomb. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 29 Sagan maps out three explanations by including under domestic politics the role of politicians, bureaucrats and other coalitions that may form between scientists and military personnel. Sagan, ibid. Th ere is a wealth of scholarship on these lines that explain India’s weaponisation. For example, Sumit Ganguly, ‘India’s Pathway to Pokharan II: Th e Prospects and Sources of New Delhi’s Nu- clear Weapons Program’, International Security 23:4 (Spring 1999), pp. 148–76, focuses on the security imperatives, as does Bharat Karnad, in ‘A Th ermo- Nuclear Deterrent’, in Mattoo, ed., India’s Nuclear Deterrent: Pokharan II and Beyond (Delhi: Har Anand, 1999), pp. 108–149; George Perkovich privileges the Introduction ( 11

Th ere are compelling aspects to each of these four sets of explanations, but none on its own can adequately explain the timing, the perceived need for nuclear weapons, the continuing Indian support for global disarmament and residual anti-nuclearism. Additionally, these motivating factors do not exist at the same level. Th e explanations encompassed in Sagan’s domestic coalitions model single out the ‘enablers’ of weaponisation, or the agents who promote the programme. While the agents may be necessary to carry out the tests, focussing solely on them (which helps account for timing) fails to explain the existence of an environment in which these tests are regarded as a means of addressing some underlying perception of insecurity. At the same time, theses dealing with security and status concentrate on the possible motivations for the decision to ‘go nuclear’ without fully accounting for the timing of nuclear decision-making. In part, these gaps refl ect the priorities of much of the early scholarship on nuclear policy that fl ourished during the Cold War. Th e original decisions to develop nuclear weapons were taken in secrecy and a role for such weapons was discussed only after the existence of a national arsenal was declared. Public debate had no role to play in the policy deliberations on testing or developing nuclear weapons for the fi ve nuclear weapon states.30 Once the NPT was negotiated, the non- proliferation regime it ushered in discouraged states from making their nuclear ambitions public lest they fall foul of the regime (whether or not they were a signatory to this treaty).31 Indeed, the recent cases of states that have either crossed the threshold or considered doing so underscore this tendency. India has thus been the notable exception

scientiﬁ c enclave in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb; the question of status is obliquely addressed in Raj Chengappa’s Weapons of Peace: Th e Secret Story of India’s Quest to be a Nuclear Power (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2000); and the domestic compulsions of the BJP are the focus of the study by Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik, South Asia on a Short Fuse: Nuclear Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Another recent approach privileges domestic considerations by looking at the ‘National Identity Conception’ of key players. See Jacques E. C. Hymans, Th e Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 30 Once again, this discussion omits the Soviet Union and China, since it is not clear that a debate could ever take place in these countries. 31 Th e case of Israel epitomises this secrecy. See Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, 137ﬀ . 12 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

in that the place of nuclear weapons was vigorously discussed by its attentive public despite the lack of accurate information on the country’s weaponisation programme.32 Unlike other nuclear states, Indians debated the place of nuclear weapons before the weapons themselves were acknowledged.33 Democracy and Disarmament Th e obverse of discussions on the need to ‘go nuclear’ are debates on disarmament, specifi cally, national engagement with the need to give up a country’s nuclear arsenal. Here the record is even more dismal in contrast to a general, global discussion on the need of all nuclear weapons states to disarm. George Perkovich suggests that democracies might actually fi nd it more diffi cult to do so because of the political pressures exerted on governments by oppositional politics.34 Th e few examples of nuclear rollback to date appear to support this contention, for robust democracy has not been an abiding feature of any of the countries stepping back from the nuclear rubicon. Th e Libyan example is instructive, for the reasons for giving up Tripoli’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programme seem to have more to do with the Gadhafi regime’s assessment of its best interests than with any popular pressure exerted on the government.35 Argentina and Brazil’s

32 Even in Pakistan, the debate has not been nearly as vibrant, largely due to a measure of censorship imposed by the military on all matters relating to security. 33 Th e idea of needing to harmonise nuclear weapons with conceptions of national identity and image is not unique to India, though this is the only country where this project has explicitly been undertaken with public opinion favouring a more muscular stance. Th ere has been a vigorous debate in Germany as well about the place of nuclear weapons, leading to a third and unequivocal rejection of the option after reunifi cation. A similar exercise occurred in Japan; however, the Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato expressly stated to US President Lyndon Johnson when they fi rst met in 1965 that ‘Japanese public opinion will not permit this [a decision by Japan to develop nuclear weapons] Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 at present, but I believe that the public, especially the younger generation, can be “educated”’ (Emphasis added); see Jennifer Mackby and Walter B. Slocombe, ‘Germany: Th e Model Case, A Historical Imperative’, and Kurt M. Campbell and Tsuyoshi Sunohara, ‘Japan: Th inking the Unthinkable’, both in Campbell, Nuclear Tipping Point Why State Reconsider their Nuclear Choices (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2004), p. 222. 34 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, 459ff . 35 Wyn Q. Bowen, Libya and Nuclear Proliferation: Stepping Back from the Brink, Adelphi Paper 380 (London: Routledge for IISS, 2006). Introduction ( 13

renunciations of their nuclear programmes started before either country became a democracy; conversely, Ukraine’s relinquishing of Soviet nuclear weapons seems to have been delayed by democratic pressures exerted by the country’s Parliament, motivated by historic fears of Russia.36 Certainly, the only case of nuclear disarmament — that of South Africa’s in the early 1990s — appears to bolster this thesis. It developed its nuclear weapons in complete secrecy under the white regime in the 1970s and 1980s. However, Pretoria joined the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state in July 1991, despite suspicions amongst the international community and the African National Congress (ANC) that it had developed nuclear weapons.37 Under increasing pressure, President F.W. De Clerk announced at a special session of Parliament (also covered by national radio) that South Africa had built ‘a limited nuclear deterrent capability […] of seven nuclear fi ssion devices’ which had been ‘dismantled and destroyed’ in 1990 before it joined the NPT.38 He added that all the documentation concerning the programme had also been destroyed. To allay fears that South Africa might be withholding information, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was invited to go ‘anywhere, anytime’.39 Th e South African case seems especially potent for the thesis about democracy and disarmament, for the development and dismantlement occurred without any form of wider democratic discussion or debate, under white minority rule. Th e reasons for the trajectory taken by the nuclear weapons programme has been the subject of considerable conjecture, for not only did the white government destroy all documentation related to the programme, it also refused to explain any of its actions in any thorough, systematic form. Th ere is also no authorised history of this programme. In other words, debate on the topic has been systematically suppressed. Th e only offi cial reasons that have fi ltered through argued that South Africa’s security had improved with the

36 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 See the examples of Argentina and Brazil in Reiss, Bridled Ambition, 45ff . On Ukraine, see Perkovich, ibid., p. 461; Reiss, ibid., 89ff . 37 Albright and Hibbs, ‘South Africa’; Reiss, Bridled Ambition, 7ff .; David Albright, ‘South Africa and the Aff ordable Bomb’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 50:04, (Jul/Aug 1994), pp. 37–47. 38 Joint Publications Research Service, Proliferation Issues 93–009 (March 29, 1993), cited in Reiss, ibid. 39 Reiss, p. 19. 14 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

ceasefi re along the northern border in Namibia, the phased withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola, the eventual independence of Namibia and the end of the Cold War. Yet how nuclear weapons could have addressed any of these insecurities remains unclear. In the absence of any clear motives, it is commonly accepted that the white government dismantled the weapons programme because it could not stomach the thought of a black government controlling nuclear weapons as would have undoubtedly happened once the black majority rule that South Africa was heading towards occurred.40 (Th is line of reasoning was not lost on attentive India in the early 1990s either.) South Africa’s case is clearly exceptional. In no other country has nuclear weapons been so strongly associated with minority rule. As a result, the ANC was adamantly opposed to the suspected (and then confi rmed) nuclear weapons programme which for them represented all that was discriminatory and inequitable about apartheid rule. In the words of Nelson Mandela, the ‘human and technical resources’ absorbed by this programme was ‘disgraceful’.41 Th e ANC therefore had no diffi culty in rejecting nuclear weapons, despite the fact that no other country that had developed such weapons appeared willing to give them up, for reasons seemingly related to security and prestige. Democracy then was clearly not exerting pressure on the ANC to try to turn back the clock to re-enter the nuclear club. Yet, plebiscitary politics is often seen to be a signifi cant obstacle to unilateral disarmament. In India, this extended further to a popular antipathy towards unilateral non-proliferation measures, pushing instead for a universality of equal commitments. Certainly, New Delhi pointed to the raucous democratic noise over the CTBT in 1996 to indicate its inability to sign a treaty that would be perceived to be inimical to India’s interests. (Similar discussions reportedly occurred when India refused to cede further ground at the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group in Vienna in September 2008 that might have committed New Delhi to additional non-proliferation obligations. Indian representatives Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 held out for a ‘clean’ waiver that would allow members of the group to

40 For more on the white government withholding information on the nuclear programme from the ANC, despite the power-sharing talks that preceeded the ﬁ rst free elections, see Albright and Hibbs, ‘South Africa’. 41 See Nelson Mandela, ‘Science and Technology in a Democratic South Africa: An ANC perspective’, Speech to Centenary Conference of the South African Institution of Mechanical Engineers, August 30, 1993. Introduction ( 15

conduct nuclear commerce with India, citing their political inability to accept anything less.) New Delhi’s allergy to being singled out for non-proliferation pressure is commonly taken to be the vestiges of anti- colonial sensitivities bubbling up at richer and more powerful states trying to infl uence its defence and development priorities. However, India is not the only country balking at unilateral disarmament despite a long (and fairly credible) track record of passionate disarmament advocacy. Th e United Kingdom is the only other nuclear democracy that has witnessed any signifi cant debate on nuclear disarmament.42 Th e Cam- paign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) came together in February 1958 after the UK carried out its fi rst hydrogen test in November 1957. From the outset, CND campaigned for unilateral disarmament with a host of distinguished fi gures including the philosopher Bertrand Russel, playwright J. B. Priestly, historian A. J. P. Taylor and Canon John Collins of St Paul’s Cathedral, lending the movement gravitas and heft. At the peak of its popularity in the early 1960s, it perhaps attracted the sympathy of one-third of the UK’s population with 33 per cent of those polled agreeing that their country should ‘give up its nuclear weapons completely’.43 Despite that brief spark, CND did not manage to alter Britain’s nuclear posture signifi cantly (though it may have hindered its cooperation with the US, especially over the placing of US missiles on British soil.) About 60 years later, CND is on the fringes of popular debate. It is not even clear that the movement can take any real credit for the reductions in British warheads that have taken place until now. Th e Labour government decided to halve Britain’s warheads in 1997 to less than 200 but without any indication that it was seriously considering moving towards zero. Th en in March 2007, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair narrowly won a vote in the House of Commons (with the help of Conservative Party MPs) in support of his plans to renew the

42 In the United States, a movement called SANE was launched in 1957, but

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 its aims were more moderate, focussing on bringing an end to the testing of nuclear weapons. David Cortright, Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 134ﬀ . 43 Peter Hennessy, Th e Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War (London: Allen Lane, 2002), p. 105. Despite this brief spark, its membership never crossed 110,000, a ﬁ gure reached at the height of the nuclear insecurity of the early 1980s. See Finlo Rohrer, ‘Whatever Happened to CND?’, BBC News Magazine, July 5, 2006. 16 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Trident missile system, involving the development of new nuclear- powered submarines at an approximate cost of £20 billion. Th e plans indicate that Britain intends to depend on its nuclear weapons until 2050 at least.44 CDN protested against the decision, but more than its opposition, it was the Labour back-bench rebellion against Blair’s proposal that captured public attention.45 Despite some rumblings, the government was able to carry the day. Despite the huge bill attached to the renewal of the Trident system, Britain did not seem ready to consider giving up its reliance on its nuclear weapons. Yet the Trident debate is only a continuing manifestation of an old reluctance to seriously consider complete nuclear disarmament. Not only was Britain not interested in unilateral disarmament, the idea that had motivated CND — that it might lead by example — was soon proved untenable. As A. J. P. Taylor remarked 20 years after the fi rst heady demonstrations, ‘We made one great mistake which ultimately doomed CND to futility. We thought that Great Britain was still a great power whose example would aff ect the rest of the world. Ironically, we were the last imperialists.’46 In the end, it was precisely because Britain was not a great power that its nuclear weapons could not be given up, for they were the only things standing between Britain and middling-power status in the post- war, decolonising world. Th is might have aff ected democratic debate on unilateral disarmament, but Taylor’s idea of leading by example should not be dismissed too lightly either. Unfortunately, the example that most states seem to be looking for is that which might be set by the United States and Russia. With roughly 5,000 nuclear warheads each, controlling between them roughly 95 per cent of the world’s nuclear warheads, they have a fair amount of disarming to do. Yet, until recently, both were silent on disarmament, giving the other nuclear weapons states the space to hold back on their Article VI obligations (under the NPT). Th is may be changing in the United States. US President Barack Obama’s remarkable speech in Prague on April 5, 2009, has jolted the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 nuclear debate out of its complacency.47 Th ere had been stirrings in this

44 Deborah Summers, Hélène Mulholland and Mathew Tempert, ‘MPs Vote to Renew Trident’, Guardian, March 14, 2007. 45 Ibid. 46 A. J. P. Taylor, A Personal History (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983), p. 227. 47 Ian Traynor, ‘Barack Obama Launches Doctrine for Nuclear-free World’, Guardian (London), April 5, 2009. Introduction ( 17

direction with the old Cold Warriors, George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn proposing a serious and considered debate on global disarmament in 2007 and 2008. However, lacking the eloquence and authority that Obama’s speech enjoyed, interest in this proposal had been somewhat measured. In their opinion, nuclear disarmament was in America’s security interests; Russia and the United States had to lead the way, followed, in due course by the other nuclear weapons states.48 Of course, Obama has stated a presidential (and personal) aspiration, galvanised partly by the desire not to have the 2010 NPT Review Con- ference tread the same disappointingly futile path of the 2005 one. Th e United States and Russia also have an opportunity to lead by example in negotiating the successor to the current Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, due to expire in December 2009. Yet, how Obama’s goals play out in the US when they are put to the mercy of America’s untidy democratic process, or even beyond the US, when they hit entrenched thinking and interests in other nuclear states, is far from clear. He did caution, after all, that his goal of complete nuclear disarmament may not be achievable in his lifetime.49 It remains to be seen whether Obama’s electrifying promise of ‘yes we can’ can overcome the refl exive ‘no we can’t’ that has stymied global disarmament for 60 years. If so, what Sir Michael Quinlan had referred to as ‘the gut instinct’ on security (that is later clothed in more rational arguments), which in his opinion governs nuclear policy-making might yet be open to question as the whole issue of the actual security benefi ts of possessing nuclear weapons is debated thoroughly and honestly.50 Moreover, the question of the eff ects of democracy on disarmament should not be dismissed without further probing. Decisions about nuclear weapons — because of the technicality of establishing a nuclear programme and the security implications of continuing with it — are profoundly undemocratic aff airs. A handful of men sitting in a closed room have decided on embarking on the nuclear programmes of the United States, the UK, France, India (and possibly Israel) without any Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

48 George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, ‘Toward a Nuclear-Free World’, Th e Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008. 49 Traynor, ‘Barack Obama Launches Doctrine…’ 50 Sir Michael Quinlan, quoted in Peter Hennessy, ‘Conclusion’, in Peter Hennessy, ed., Cabinets and the Bomb, British Academy Occasional Papers 11, (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2007). 18 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

wider discussion at all. Th e same probably holds true for the USSR and China, and of course Pakistan and North Korea. Decisions to proceed up or down with a nuclear programme rarely involve wider democratic discussion even in democracies — India’s nuclear programme being a case in point.51 It is only when the question of giving up the programme is raised that democratic pressures appear to kick in. Yet, it is not clear that the same raucous dissent that apparently ties offi cials’ hands on disarmament could not be channelled towards an appreciation of the benefi ts of unilateral disarmament, especially if it is also accepted that nuclear weapons are not militarily useable weapons. In the end, perhaps it does boil down to ‘gut-instinct’: to the fears that policy makers might mortgage their country’s future security for the sake of current global popularity, even if that security is only intimately tied to a place at the top-table. Debating ‘Nuclear India’ Nuclear policy had not fi gured prominently in attentive India’s concerns at the start of the 1990s. Th is relative neglect was a consistent feature of public engagement with the programme since it began in 1948, barring the brief spark of interest during the mid- to late-1960s when China’s nuclear tests provoked animated discussion. Debates over the ‘nuclear option’ that had been carefully nurtured by offi cial India since it rejected the NPT in 1968 languished under the benign neglect that allowed attentive India to acquiesce in the government’s postponing of a decision on what this was an option to do. At the start of the 1990s, attentive India was much more exercised by the state of the economy and India’s apparent declining global infl uence. Th e country’s international weakness appeared magnifi ed by the pressure brought to bear on New Delhi to fall in with the NPT regime as non-proliferation rose in the agendas of the former Cold War adversaries. Th ose following the debate resented the fact that India’s foreign and defence policies Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

51 Winston Churchill refused to tell his cabinet about Britain’s decision to undertake nuclear weapons research, codenamed the ‘Tube Alloys Project’ in 1944, despite advice to that end from his advisers. When he returned to power in 1951, Churchill was amazed to ﬁ nd that the Attlee government had managed to keep the expenditure of GBP 100 million pounds on the nuclear weapons programme secret from the Parliament. See Hennessy, ibid., ‘Th e Nuclear Certiﬁ cate’. Introduction ( 19

could be infl uenced by those whose aid and trade New Delhi desperately required. Th e unwelcome Western interest in the country’s nuclear intentions shone a spotlight on India’s ‘option’, turning it into a test of New Delhi’s ability to defend its policies and set its own goals. Th e CTBT negotiations, in which attempts were made to force India’s accession to this treaty by requiring its signature (along with the 43 other states possessing nuclear reactors) was projected internally by the government, and seen by attentive India as a blatant infringement of the country’s sovereign right to decide which legal obligations it wished to enter into. With these debates, perceptions of security shifted from a focus on the sanctity of India’s borders to New Delhi’s independence of action. Nuclear policy thereby became totemic of India’s sovereignty. Symbols, however, are all very well if a country can aff ord them, politically, economically, militarily and ideologically. One of the reasons for the growing inchoate sense of insecurity amongst India’s attentive public during this period lay in the weakness of the economy and the importance that economic policy was assuming in foreign policy. Th ese considerations fed the popular view that nuclear weapons would prove prohibitively expensive, ensnare India in a costly arms race and invite punitive sanctions; opposition to ‘going nuclear’ therefore arose not so much from ethical beliefs as from fears that the country could not aff ord such weapons. For a post-colonial state that was still struggling to overcome the considerable economic handicap with which it had started its independent existence, where security for a great majority of the population lay in their ability to acquire the basic essentials of daily existence, economic calculations played an important part in deciding how best to secure the future. Yet ethical considerations too could not be dismissed entirely: Indians set great store by their belief in Indian exceptionalism, borne of the non-violent freedom struggle and New Delhi’s ability, in the early years of the Cold War, to provide a viable alternative to bloc rivalries. Nuclear policy thereby became entangled in an ongoing debate over whether India should continue to believe in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 exceptionalism, nurtured by Nehru’s vision and idealism, or if it should behave more like a ‘normal’ state, trading in moralpolitik for realpolitik. Th e outcome of this weighing up would decide how its security could best be guaranteed. Th is thesis charts the interaction of these competing ideas about the Indian state as they inﬂ uenced the debate on nuclear policy. On one side is a set of contending goals of the state, created by alternative 20 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

perceptions of security, whether arising from economic strength or from military capability, prompted by the necessity of having to divide scarce economic resources between two competing ends. Th e interaction of these two objectives has pulled policy along a continuum or dyad, with the two aims at either end, as illustrated in the fi gure.52 Th is security dyad, in turn, interacts with another dyad that defi nes alternative conceptions of India as a non-violent state, versus a ‘normal’ member of an international community where power and infl uence fl ow from military capabilities. Hence, ideas about the appropriate form of security for post-colonial India have been sketched on a palimpsest of competing ideas about ‘India’ — a state whose actions are guided by realpolitik against the India of Gandhi and Nehru, of Indian ‘exceptionalism’.

Figure 1: The interaction of the security and identity dyads

INDIAN EXCEPTIONALISM DEVELOPMENT

Anti-nuclearism, Nehru’s tryst with destiny nuclear disarmament

Nuclear Debate

Sovereign equality, Nuclear weapons territorial integrity

SECURITY REALPOLIT1K

As the debates on nuclear policy show, the struggle to adapt nuclear weapons to the idea of India touches on all four of these poles. On the one hand, nuclear weapons, by the token of Western deterrence theory, stood for military security. But, as the same deterrence theory also convincingly demonstrated, this security demanded a heavy ﬁ nancial Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 investment in the paraphernalia of deterrence. It would require of India’s government diﬃ cult decisions about the allocation of scarce economic

52 Th e word ‘dyad’ is a mathematical term representing an operator formed by two vectors. Since vectors are imbued with direction, a ‘dyad’ captures the sense of movement, of tending to push in one direction or another, depending on the strength of competing vectors, or forces. In this thesis, a dyad signiﬁ es two competing sets of priorities faced by national governments. Introduction ( 21

resources, perhaps diverting these funds from the arguably pressing needs of development and the attempt to provide a decent standard of living for all citizens. On the other hand, some Indians contended that the global nuclear debate was deeply fl awed and hypocritical since it allowed fi ve nuclear nations to assume great infl uence in a non- proliferation regime that privileged their possession of nuclear weapons on security grounds while denying all other states the same means of ensuring their own security. Unless Indians wanted to remain relegated to the managed group, the reasoning continued, they would have to take it upon themselves to break the self-imposed shackles of nuclear restraint and cross the threshold into nuclear weapon status. Yet, there was a counter-argument to this, for crossing the rubicon would require a break with a history of Indian exceptionalism which had prompted New Delhi’s passionate anti-nuclear advocacy and which had allowed the country to adopt the moral high ground, an approach that had served the materially poor state well for decades. Th ere were sound security reasons that proponents of overt weaponisation could summon in favour of their case. In this view, the regional and global nuclear environment is deeply inimical to India’s security. Th e country faces a nuclear threat from China, with whom it shares the longest disputed border, a legacy of the 1962 war, which in and of itself has left deep scars. China refuses to recognise the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, has ballistic missiles targeted at Indian sites, and moreover has helped keep New Delhi off -kilter by proliferating missiles and nuclear weapon designs to India’s other diffi cult neighbour, Pakistan.53 Yet for most analysts, the Chinese threat is long-term: the more immediate challenge emanates from Pakistan, with whom India has fought three wars, has an ongoing, unremitting war of words over Kashmir, and whom New Delhi accuses of fomenting insurgency in various parts of the country, especially Kashmir. Accordingly, Pakistan’s nuclear capability, confi rmed since the late 1980s, has allowed Islamabad Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 53 Th ese explanations were also proff ered to the international community by Prime Minister Vajpayee in his letter of May 13, 1998, to US President Bill Clinton. See ‘Text of Vajpayee’s Letter to Clinton’, Th e Hindu, May 14, 1998. Some scholars have emphasised the China-threat. For example, see Brahma Chellaney, ‘South Asia’s Passage to Nuclear Power’, International Security 16:1 (summer 1991), pp. 43–72; Vijay K. Nair, ‘Th e Structure of an Indian Nuclear Deterrent,’ in Mattoo, ed., India’s Nuclear Deterrent. 22 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

to indulge in nuclear blackmail. Any future war with Pakistan therefore contains the risk of escalating into a nuclear exchange.54 These considerations notwithstanding, there were those who argued that India did not need nuclear weapons for its security. Indian exceptionalism, forged in the furnace of the independence movement, had led India’s new leaders to reject the tenets of realpolitik that apparently guided the policies of other states in the international system. After all, as Nehru had explained, ‘[w]e stood as an unarmed people against a great country and a powerful empire’.55 Rather than falling in line with a system in which power fl owed from a state’s military capabilities, Nehru sought to change the rules of the game. India would of course be safer in a world without nuclear weapons, but it was also equally arguable that this ethical approach would save New Delhi the need to divert economic resources to military requirements. Th is stand also allowed India to assume a position of prominence in the international community by off ering an alternative vision of global politics. However, the waning infl uence of the NAM as the Cold War ended resulted in New Delhi losing a platform from which it could exercise a leadership role. Noting the decline of a credible moral basis for assuming a prominent global posture, some declared that New Delhi needed to be more assertive of India’s military potential, especially its unacknowledged nuclear capabilities. Th e country’s attentive public never failed to remind the world that the nuclear fi ve were also the fi ve permanent members of the UN Security Council. Further, India’s lobbying for a permanent seat at the Council in the early 1990s had received a chilly reception. As former Prime Minister I. K. Gujral explained after the tests, he had mentioned to President Bill Clinton in 1997 that for him, the door to the Security Council was guarded by an invisible

54 See K. Subrahmanyam, ‘Capping, Managing or Eliminating Nuclear Weapons?’ in Kanti P. Bajpai and Stephen P. Cohen, eds, South Asia After the Cold War: International Perspectives (Boulder CO: Westview, 1993), pp. 175–92; Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 General K. Sundarji, Th e Blind Men of Hindoostan: Indo-Pak Nuclear War (New Delhi: UBS, 1993); Devin T. Hagerty, ‘Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia: Th e 1990 Indo-Pakistani Crisis’, International Security 20:3 (winter 1995–96), 79–114; Neil Joeck, Maintaining Nuclear Stability in South Asia, Adelphi paper 312 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for IISS, 1997). 55 Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘Firm Adherence to Objectives’, Speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Paris, November 1948, at http://www. indianembassy.org/policy/Disarmament/disarm1.htm. (accessed on June 15, 2004). Introduction ( 23

sign which declared that only those with the bomb or money were welcome inside. For India, Gujral observed, ‘it’s easier to have a bomb than money’.56 Th e implications seemed clear: exceptionalism had had its day and it was now time to play by the rules of the game. Most advocates of nuclear weapons in India see them primarily as political weapons, as K. Subrahmanyam, one of India’s foremost security experts, explains. In his view, such weapons are the currency of power, the ‘million pound note’ that will never be cashed and which allow India to ‘be a player and not an object of this global nuclear order’.57 Further, the nuclear programme, struggling under sanctions since the 1974 test, has become a focus of nationalist pride; Indians take great satisfaction in the ‘indigenous’ nature of the programme which completely ignores the considerable foreign assistance that has gone into establishing the nuclear estate in the country.58 In a land where tangible technological achievement has at times been in short supply, the nuclear programme has become a rallying point for claims to advanced scientiﬁ c prowess and progress.59 In the turbulence of the 1990s, when India struggled to redeﬁ ne its global role, these ideas tended to come together to push New Delhi’s attentive public towards a more assertive policy, to force it to confront the ‘option’ which had allowed security arguments to coexist with moral ones in retaining nuclear capability but refusing to weaponise it. Sources Th is examination of the nuclear debate in India relies on sources that are available to people outside government. Since Indian democracy has engendered a freewheeling debate on government policies (with the

56 Suman Guha Mazumdar, ‘Rationale for Nation’s Nuclear Test is Explained’, India Abroad, July 17, 1998. Gurjal said he explained to Clinton that Indians possess a ‘third eye’ that allow them to ‘see’ intuitively; hence he could discern the invisible barrier to India’s entry into the Security Council. 57 Amitav Ghosh, ‘Countdown: Why Can’t Every Country Have the Bomb?’,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 New Yorker, November 2, 1998, p. 189. 58 Itty Abraham, Th e Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science Secrecy and the Postcolonial State (London: Zed Books, 1998). 59 Hence Gujral declared that the demonstration of the Indian scientists’ achievements through the May 1998 nuclear tests, and their ability to produce supercomputers and satellites proved that India can no longer be considered a ‘third world country’. See Mazumdar, ‘Rationale for Nation’s Nuclear Tests is Explained’. 24 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

exception of core strategic issues, and even that may be changing in the wake of India’s fi rst ‘televised war’, Kargil), there is a wealth of informed press commentary on nuclear policy. Th is is especially the case as this policy bestrides foreign, economic and strategic issues, all of which come together to create and sustain certain ideas about what ‘India’ signifi es, and by extension, what role it should play internationally. Th e print media in India, especially the English language newspapers, are traditionally very political off ering fairly independent critique of South Block’s policies.60 Th e Indian press is free and vibrant, with 2,856 daily newspapers published in 1990, of which 209 were in English.61 Th ese enjoy national circulation. Th e four main newspapers — theTimes of India, the Hindustan Times, the Indian Express and the Hindu, all of which have a circulation of several thousand — are published in all major cities and towns.62 Th e focus on the English press is justifi ed as the most widely circulated dailies, which promote a more ‘national’ agenda that focuses on foreign, economic and security policies, are all published in this language.63 Th e regional presses, in contrast, tend to

60 South Block is one of the two long, low buildings that fl ank the approach to the Presidential palace. It houses the Ministries of Defence and External Aff airs and the Prime Minister’s Offi ce. Opposite it, the North Block houses the Ministries of Finance and Home Aff airs. 61 US Library of Congress, ‘Th e Media’, in India: Country Study, 1995, at http://countrystudies.us/india (accessed on November 10, 2007). 62 Th e fi rst three are based in Delhi and the last in Chennai (Madras). Taking into account the fact that most copies of these papers are read by several people, this fi gure actually underplays the print media’s substantial potential for infl uence. 63 Th e Offi cial Language Act (1967) recognises the use of English in addition to Hindi (the national language of the Union of India) in conducting the work of government, a necessary step in a country so linguistically diverse. Th ough it is probably not spoken fl uently by more than 4 per cent of the population, it remains the common language of the influential elite. Incidentally, the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 proportion of people conversant in English is higher, even if they would not consider themselves fully literate in the language. See GOI, ‘Offi cial Language Policy of the Union’, at http://www.rajbhasha.gov.in/dolpolicyeng.htm (accessed on November 10, 2007); GOI, ‘Th e Offi cial Languages Act, 1963 (as amended, 1967) at http://rajbhasha.nic.in/dolacteng.htm (accessed on November 10, 2007); Annika Hohenthal, ‘English in India — and Who Speaks English to Whom and When?’, at http://www.postcolonialweb.org/india (accessed on November 10, 2007); ‘English’, US Library of Congress, India: Country Study, 1995, at http://countrystudies.us/india (accessed on November 10, 2007). Introduction ( 25

promote a more parochial agenda.64 Th e major periodicals thus possess great potential to draw the country’s elite into a national debate and have been employed for this purpose repeatedly, providing ‘a patchily democratic public service’, according to one observer.65 Other fora are more limited in their circulation but nevertheless reach those who pur- port to advise on or discuss foreign and security aff airs, and include Strategic Analysis, the journal of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA); International Studies, the journal of the International Relations Department of Jawaharlal Nehru University; and the Indian Army’s Combat Journal, Indian Defence Review, India Quarterly, etc. More accessible, and certainly widely read, have been magazines such as India Today, Outlook and Frontline.66 Further, as the electronic media was liberalised in the 1990s, television began to play an increasingly important role in shaping the debate. ‘Talking heads’ on Star TV, NDTV and Zee News (and BBC and CNN) began to educate and infl uence an attentive public who were also being off ered uncensored views — with the entry of foreign news channels — of how the world viewed India. Th e spread of the internet later in that decade also helped fuel interest in defence and foreign aff airs with websites such as Tehelka.com and Rediff on the Net democratising debates on foreign and defence policies through interactive ‘chat rooms’ that contributed to a proliferation of views and opinions. Th e media commentaries are supplemented by interviews conducted mainly in India with infl uential strategic analysts, journalists, commentators, and military and civilian offi cials, some of whom were still serving at the time of the interviews. Th ese conversations fi ll in the picture that emerges from piecing together the press commentary, especially where participants in the debate have been able to explain their reasons for pushing the debate in the direction that they did.

64 Th is is not to discount the role of the Hindi press which boasts the two largest dailies, the Dainik Jagran and Dainik Bhaskar. However, these enjoy virtually no circulation beyond the Hindi heartland of the north and so cannot

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 promote a national debate. 65 Sagarika Ghose, ‘Indian Media: A Flawed yet Robust Public Service’, in B. G. Verghese, ed., Tomorrow’s India: Another Tryst with Destiny (Delhi: Viking, 2006), p. 163. 66 Th ere are others such as Th e Economic and Political Weekly and Seminar which style themselves as more reﬂ ective and ‘serious’ periodicals. However, the other three mentioned above, while less self-professedly pedantic, nevertheless are quite political. 26 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Th ough not attempting to decipher policy, these interactions provide a picture of a debate that was slowly coming in line with undeclared government policy. In other words, a dual process was set off in attentive India’s engagement with nuclear policy. On the one hand, this collective began to take a greater interest in nuclear policy and educate itself on the implications of being wedded to ‘the option’ in a world where threshold nuclear weapons states were increasingly being pushed towards renouncing their nuclear capabilities. On the other, the strategic–scientifi c enclave, who were privy to a greater degree of knowledge about the country’s atomic estate (and, in some cases, had a vested interest in a nuclear weapons programme), began to push public opinion in the direction of a more muscular policy.67 Taken together, attentive India appeared by the mid-1990s to be moving towards adopting a harder line on its nuclear option. Developing the Argument Th is study charts attentive India’s growing interest in nuclear policy in the 1990s to draw out the manner in which New Delhi’s independence of action in this fi eld was perceived to be linked to India’s sovereignty, its global and regional position and the ongoing nationalist project of defi ning India for the next 50 years of independence. Accordingly, Chapter One looks back at the history of the debate till 1990 to show that historically, nuclear policy did not rate highly amongst the concerns of attentive India. It discusses the Nehruvian basis for India’s passionate disarmament advocacy through the years which linked New Delhi’s approach to disarmament with Indian exceptionalism. Th e development of the rhetoric on disarmament and nuclear weapons is also traced during the initial Chinese nuclear tests of the mid-1960s, India’s rejection of the NPT and fi nally, India’s single, surprise nuclear test of 1974 which was played down internally as a ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’. Apart from the brief but fervent discussion

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 sparked by China’s nuclear tests between 1964 and 1966, nuclear policy did not surface in any serious, sustained manner as a topic for elite

67 Part of the pro-bomb lobby comprised retired bureaucrats and scientists of the atomic estate who enjoyed close ties with the establishment and probably continued to receive intelligence briefi ngs and who were thus able to infl uence and refl ect government thinking on this matter. See also, David Cortright and Amitabh Mattoo, ‘Elite Public Opinion and Nuclear Weapons Policy in India’, Asian Survey 36:6 (June 1996), p. 550. Introduction ( 27

debate in the ﬁ rst four decades of India’s independent existence. Even the engagement with China’s tests demonstrated Indian ambivalence towards nuclear weapons, for while some demanded an atomic riposte to Beijing’s explosions, it is not clear that the required response needed to do more than demonstrate nuclear capability to Indians themselves. Similarly, India rejected the NPT not because it wanted nuclear weapons, but because it wanted to preserve its freedom of manoeuvre in this area, which may or may not have eventually led New Delhi down the route to weaponisation. India’s nuclear ambivalence continued through the 1980s when New Delhi mixed serious disarmament proposals with sporadic developments in its missile programme (and a covert weaponisation of its nuclear capability), all of which were well received within the country.68 Chapter Two examines the nature of the debate in greater detail. For a country as intensely political as India, defence has traditionally not been a topic of widespread interest. It is therefore useful to look more closely at the arenas in which foreign and defence policies were aired, who participated in these discussions, and with respect to this topic, how nuclear policy was perceived at the start of the 1990s. In pre- paration for the subsequent chapters describing the development of the debate, this chapter lays out the broad positions staked on nuclear policy by the select circle of strategic analysts and media commentators who looked at the topic. What emerges from this survey is that such deliberations as did occur on nuclear policy pitted those who argued in favour of a more muscular policy against an oﬃ cial wall of silence that still baldly stated India’s preference for global nuclear disarmament. Th e few who argued against nuclear weapons did so on economic grounds. For a country that prides itself on its Gandhian heritage, the absence of a more robust opposition to nuclear weapons for ethical reasons is itself a remarkable development that has not received much attention within India or outside. As Chapter Th ree demonstrates, nuclear policy was not a major concern for India’s attentive public as the country entered the decade of its

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 golden jubilee of independence. Domestic political instability, economic problems, communal violence, and growing threats of insurgency and separatism in some border regions proved much more worrying. Even

68 While most commentators and scholars date the start of India’s weaponisation eﬀ orts to 1988–89, some believe that it may have begun earlier in the decade. E-mail exchange with W. P. S. Sidhu, November 7, 2007. 28 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

the confrontation with Pakistan in 1990, which for outside observers certainly carried the risk of a nuclear exchange, was seen within India as only a potential conventional military encounter. Yet, nuclear policy could not be ignored altogether either for non-proliferation had risen in the agendas of the former Cold War adversaries, and New Delhi increasingly found that the trade and aid it required to get its economic house in order was tied to a more pliable position on non-proliferation, human rights and Kashmir. India’s nuclear option was becoming a burden on its foreign policy, seeping into the interstices of discussions on the future of India, domestically, regionally and globally. Th e defi ning and defending of this ‘idea of India’ reached a decisive point during the deliberations over the CTBT as Chapter Four explains. Th ose strategic analysts in favour of a more muscular nuclear policy had begun to fi nd a growing audience for their views as international pressure on India to sign the NPT and fall in line with that regime diverted domestic attention to nuclear policy. Attentive India found itself forced to confront the hitherto vaguely defi ned and little understood ‘option’ that had been defended so vigorously since New Delhi rejected the NPT in 1968. At the same time, more hawkish strategic analysts and commentators focussed on the discrimination encapsulated in the nuclear order which the indefi nite extension of the NPT made permanent, presenting a declaration of India’s nuclear assets (with or without a test) as a way of repudiating any attempts to decide for the country how best to manage its security. Th e ‘Entry-into-Force’ clause of the CTBT greatly helped them in this exercise for it allowed this group of analysts and the government (who had by then apparently decided for reasons of its own not to sign the treaty it had co-sponsored in 1993) to reject this treaty on the grounds of protecting India’s sovereign right to decide which treaties it wished to accede to. At this point nuclear policy entered mainstream discussions amongst the intelligentsia, becoming explicitly associated with India’s sovereignty. Th e government too joined in the debate: the matter was repeatedly Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 raised in Parliament, where the Minister for External Aff airs declared more than once that a national consensus supported his government’s stance on this treaty. It was against this backdrop of the linking of nuclear policy to New Delhi’s freedom of action that the BJP came to power months after the fi ftieth anniversary of Indian independence. As discussed in Chapter Five, it is not clear whether the BJP were indeed voted in to conduct nuclear tests; the desultory debate on what to do with India’s ‘option’ Introduction ( 29

might well have continued in the face of the three-year deadline imposed by the CTBT’s ‘Entry-into-Force’ clause had not the BJP decided for India what exactly the option stood for. Ironically, the party’s fait accompli succeeded in sparking the fi rst meaningful debate on nuclear policy in decades. Th ough the tests were initially greeted with great enthusiasm, a more nuanced approach to Pokharan II began to emerge as attentive India grappled with the ramifi cations of overt weaponisation of the subcontinent, the economic consequences of engaging in nuclear deterrence and the loss of India’s moral authority in the fi eld of disarmament. Th e doves could fi nally emerge. Yet, despite the very considerable arguments they could summon to their cause, theirs remained a minority view. On balance, attentive India proved willing to accept the negative repercussions of breaking with international expectations and India’s own history in order to demonstrate New Delhi’s independence in setting its own security and foreign policies. Th e concluding chapter assesses what ‘nuclear India’ means to the country’s attentive public. Kargil tested the euphoria over India’s new atomic security. Th ose within the country who had assumed that the nuclear weapons of Pakistan and India would maintain a nuclear peace were forced to revise their calculations in the wake of the fourth military encounter between the two neighbours over Kashmir. Yet Kargil was not treated as a potential nuclear fl ashpoint by attentive India who chose instead to see this as a conventional engagement. Th is approach supports the contention that most refl ective Indians do not view nuclear weapons through the Cold War prism of war-fi ghting; for them, these are purely political tools. In light of this, it is perhaps unsurprising that when the draft nuclear doctrine was released in August 1999, those discussing it focussed on the politics and economics of what was proposed rather than grappling with the fi ner points of nuclear deterrence. Th e defi ning and defending of ‘nuclear India’ remained very much a political exercise. In conclusion, the decade examined in this study saw some dramatic changes in the way attentive India engaged with the country’s foreign,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 and significantly, defence policies. In the course of this exercise, attentive India was forced to shed or revise certain Nehruvian ideas that had formed the bedrock of New Delhi’s policies and rhetoric during the ﬁ rst 50 years of independence. Th is is not to say that these Nehruvian ideas are obsolete: the fact that Indians remain ambivalent about their demonstrated nuclear prowess and explicitly treat their atomic arsenal as political weapons indicates that India retains some vestiges of its 30 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

historic antipathy to Cold War ideas of nuclear deterrence. Th e deﬁ ning of India will continue as the republic negotiates the next 50 years. It remains to be seen how a vision of nuclear India will be incorporated into this exercise that seeks to delineate the country globally, regionally and domestically.

M Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 I Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric, 1947–1990

I am not afraid of the future. I have no fear in my mind, and I have no fear, even though India, from a military point of view, is of no great consequence. I am not afraid of the bigness of great powers, and their armies, their ﬂ eets and their atom bombs. Th at is the lesson which my Master taught me. We stood as an unarmed people against a great country and a powerful empire. Jawaharlal Nehru, 19481

On May 18, 1974, the Buddha smiled. So the story goes that this was the code used to inform Mrs Gandhi of India’s ﬁ rst successful nuclear test near the desert village of Pokharan, though all involved with the project at the time have denied agreeing upon or using this cipher.2 Yet the legend persists, perhaps because it knits together so many contradictions that mark modern India. In juxtaposing the Buddha and the ‘bomb’, it forces into uneasy cohabitation India’s much proclaimed Gandhian heritage of non-violence which celebrates the Buddha as the apostle of peace and led New Delhi to champion global nuclear disarmament from independence, with the country’s quest for modernity as symbolised by an underground nuclear explosion.3 Popular domestic unwillingness to confront the implications of a demonstration of this ‘absolute weapon’

1 Nehru, ‘Firm Adherence to Objectives’.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 2 Chengappa, Weapons of Peace, pp. 2–4. 3 As Ziba Moshaver explains, conducting a fi rst nuclear test as a contained underground explosion was a diffi cult feat for a developing country to pull off in isolation, without the benefi t of help from countries with previous experience of nuclear explosions. See Ziba Moshaver, Nuclear Weapons Proliferation in the Indian Subcontinent (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan 1991), 109ff . Th at India had signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty, outlawing atmospheric explosions, does not detract from this achievement. 32 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

also led to public acquiescence in the offi cially sponsored fi gleaf of calling the experiment a ‘Peaceful Nuclear Explosion’ (PNE). Th is perhaps explains the curious silence that followed this one, unexpected test. India again defi ed international expectations, if not internal beliefs, by choosing not to conduct any follow-up experiments to the 1974 test (even if these could have been justifi ed on the grounds of civilian applications of the technology). Talk of the happenings of May 1974 eventually died down till, to all appearances, refl ective Indians outside offi cial circles seemed to have contracted a certain amnesia about their country’s demonstrated ability to develop nuclear weapons. In short, the history of the debate on India’s nuclear policy in the decades between independence and the early 1990s is one of long quietude punctuated by semi-offi cial, desultory discussion about India’s role as a self-appointed crusader for nuclear disarmament. In many ways, the PNE typifi es the curious lack of engagement with nuclear policy by educated Indians who are otherwise quite ready to engage in lengthy discussions on politics, the economy and matters of social justice. During the period covered in this chapter, attentive India appeared to acquiesce in the offi cially encouraged reticence over nuclear matters. What little debate surfaced tended to be offi cially sponsored and managed, given the government’s tight control of all information pertaining to the nuclear industry and defence. Unsurprisingly, it focussed on the image that offi cial India wanted to project — that of India as a responsible member of the international community working tirelessly towards global nuclear disarmament. Th is fi tted well with Indian self-images of exceptionalism and allowed an otherwise weak and poor state to assume a much more infl uential position in the assembly of nations than might be merited by the conventional markers of international infl uence. Th e converse of this approach was that close scrutiny of the functioning of India’s nuclear power projects, built with the stated purpose of providing the energy to power India’s industrial progress and therefore the recipient of much government largesse Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 despite their terrible record, was quietly discouraged. As with most things in modern India, the state of the nuclear debate too can be traced back to Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s fi rst Prime Minister. His fascination with science and technology has been well documented.4

4 Jawaharlal Nehru, Autobiography, revised ed., (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1962); M. J. Akbar, Nehru: Th e Making of India (London: Viking, 1988); Judith M. Brown, Nehru: A Political Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 33

Equally well-known was his deep unease with nuclear weapons. Nehru’s infl uence on nuclear policy, which sits at the cusp of foreign and defence policy, is enduring. As he virtually ran foreign and defence policies single-handedly for most of the 17 years of his premiership, he created the foundation for what followed, especially as none of his successors could match his vision or charisma. His was an ambitious legacy, containing contradictions best managed by Nehru’s statesmanship. On the one hand, Nehru’s leadership placed India at the forefront of the struggle for universal nuclear disarmament, a position which over time informed India’s (both offi cial and attentive) strident rejection of all measures of nuclear weapons control that fell short of complete nuclear disarmament. Th is was a position infl uenced by his ideas of Indian exceptionalism and his strong anti-colonial impulses which required a universality of measures. On the other though, there is an equally strong Nehruvian legacy of silence, secrecy and a suppression of dissent, which discouraged any peer review of the nuclear programme and bred an abiding antagonism to any attempted international control over the nuclear estate. Th e motives for this have been much debated. Whatever the impulses guiding Nehru, the outcome of his policy meant that that such public discussion as did occur focussed largely on India’s disarmament diplomacy, avoiding serious questioning of the functioning, purpose and record of the growing nuclear estate. Th is chapter highlights some of the important developments in the public nuclear debate from independence to 1990.5 In doing so, it will help to identify the trends and domestic and international developments that established the tone of the nuclear debate, such as it was, at the start of the 1990s. It took 24 years for India to decide what the test at Pokharan in May 1974 signifi ed, and this chapter explains some of the reasons for this hesitation. It concentrates mainly on Prime Ministers and some key offi cials in the Ministry of External Aff airs (MEA), as, until 1998, the Prime Minister was the only person charged with formulating nuclear policy, given the watertight secrecy surrounding the nuclear estate. Disarmament, coming under the purview of the MEA was often Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

5 Th e historical overview will be short, to allow more space for a discussion on the debate. Comprehensive histories (which vary according to the authors’ biases) may be found in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb; Subrahmanyam, ‘Indian Nuclear Policy’; Abraham, Th e Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb; Bharat Karnad, Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security: Th e Realist Foundations of Strategy (Delhi: Macmillan, 2002). 34 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

led by the External Aff airs Minister, but in years when the country’s foreign minister was weak, or when the Prime Minister retained the external aff airs portfolio, disarmament diplomacy emanated from the Prime Minister’s Offi ce. Further, because of the degree of importance attached to such diplomacy, largely for reasons of self-image and prestige, various Prime Ministers chose to make important nuclear announcements themselves. Since most of the discussions on nuclear matters were offi cially managed, this meant that the Prime Ministers wielded an extraordinary amount of infl uence on the course of the nuclear debate. The Nehruvian Legacy Most educated, English-speaking Indians will be able to recite some part of Jawaharlal Nehru’s midnight address to the Constituent Assembly of India on the night of August 14, 1947.6 Th e ‘tryst with destiny’ became, for this group of people, shorthand for thinking about India’s place in the world. It was a remarkable speech: Nehru wove into this lyrical welcome to the dawn of freedom a sober reminder of the great economic, social and communal challenges ahead. And yet, mired as India was in the turmoil of partition while negotiating the hazy contours of an emerging new order, Nehru still celebrated, in this, and in his later ‘Message to the Press’, this ‘fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the east .[…]’7 Nehru had placed India fi rmly in the international community, not just as a member, but as a leader, a trailblazer that would create a swathe of free, sovereign, lands through the old colonial holdings in Asia and Africa. Th e elements that would mark India’s nuclear policy were em- bedded in Nehru’s midnight address. To begin with, he mentioned India’s unique position in the world, established by history but given substance by ‘the father of [the] nation’, Gandhi, whose ‘unworthy followers’ he and other Indians may have been from time to time. Th ere

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 was also the need to defend freedom, to continue the anti-colonial struggle in a world where ‘[p]eace has been said to be indivisible; so

6 Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘Tryst With Destiny’, Speech to the Constituent Assembly of India, August 14, 1947, in Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speeches, vol. 1, (Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1958), pp. 25–27 (hereafter, Nehru, Speeches). 7 Nehru, ‘Message to the Press’, in Nehru, Speeches, p. 27. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 35

is freedom’.8 Anti-colonial sensitivities would continue to run high in India in decades to come and would infl uence perceptions of attempts by the great powers to assume control of any negotiations concerning international relations to a much greater degree than was normally appreciated outside the country. And fi nally there was the enormous challenge of development, of lifting millions of people out of abject poverty and allowing them to appreciate the benefits of political freedom. 9 Th is development challenge would govern much of India’s initial fascination with technology in the hope that large factories, modern science, and, signifi cantly for this study, nuclear technology would allow India to provide for an equitable economic order in the shortest possible time. In August 1947, Nehru and his cabinet became leaders of a state whose boundaries were still unclear; in these circumstances he and his colleagues were faced with the task of creating a new foreign policy and of defi ning security and determining how that security would be assured. Th ese tasks devolved largely upon the Prime Minister, partly because of Nehru’s strongly global approach to politics and partly because of the lack of experience of most of his colleagues in thinking beyond the freedom struggle.10 Th at Nehru had resolved the tension between military security and development, or the security of a basic standard of living for as many people as possible, in favour of the latter is clear from his speeches and decisions from the time he assumed offi ce. In his view, the defence budget needed to be curtailed so that

8 Nehru, ‘Tryst With Destiny’, p. 26. 9 Writing in 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru spoke of the ‘terrible poverty of the people and the destitute condition of the masses. Th ere was lack of food, of clothing, of housing and of every other essential requirement of human existence’. See Nehru, Discovery of India, p. 477. Nehru’s — and under his guidance, the Indian National Congress Party’s — chosen method of tackling this problem was through rapid, mass-scale industrialisation. Th is, Nehru hoped, would solve chronic shortages of essential materials, ensure economic self-suﬃ ciency

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 for India, produce a more equitable distribution of income, and in relying on the ‘progressive’ means of science and technology, lift the country from the ‘backwardness’ into which it had slipped during colonial rule. 10 Nehru retained the foreign aff airs portfolio, which he dominated, almost to the exclusion of his cabinet. As Chairman of the Planning Commission, he was also able to shape defence spending and policy to a much greater extent than might have been possible under a strong defence minister. See Brown, Nehru, pp. 189ff , 317ff . 36 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

desperately required scarce resources could be diverted towards addressing the terrible poverty that trapped most of the country.11 For Nehru, independence was as much an economic condition as it was a political one.12 Creating a Nationalist Project Th e association of India’s nuclear programme with the nationalist project of post-colonial nation-building did not occur accidentally. ‘Hagiographic’ accounts, in the opinion of one observer, of the charismatic founder of India’s nuclear programme, the physicist Homi J. Bhabha, have now made it commonplace that his return to India to teach was motivated by patriotic impulses.13 Th e truth is probably more prosaic: denied jobs in British universities despite his excellent Cambridge degree and deliberately excluded from what he suspected were eﬀ orts towards developing the atom bomb, because of the colour of his skin, he returned to create opportunities in his native land in 1939.14 Even shorn of its patriotic shine, Bhabha’s story still contained the elements of identity, racism and denial that would power the nuclear programme in the decades that followed. Once settled in India, Bhabha set about establishing a nuclear research institute to undertake the cutting-edge work he had been denied in Europe. As he wrote in a grant-seeking letter to the Sir Dorab Tata Trust in 1944, ‘When nuclear energy has been successfully applied for power production in, say, a couple of decades from now, India will not

11 At the time of independence, 55 per cent of India’s population was deﬁ ned as subsisting below a standard ‘poverty line’ and its per capita income had not increased for half a century before independence. Vijay Joshi, ‘India’s Economic Reforms: Progress, Problems, Prospects’, Oxford Development Studies 26:3, (1998), pp. 333–50. Th e infant mortality rate in 1945 was 146 per thousand births; even 20 years later, in the mid-sixties, average life expectancy hovered Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 at 49 years. World Bank, ‘World Development Indicators’, cited in its ‘India Country Brief’, at www.worldbank.org.in (accessed on June 5, 2004). 12 Nehru’s writings on the subject are quite emphatic on this point. See, for example, Nehru, Autobiography, pp. 166, 183ﬀ ; Khilnani, Idea of India, p. 71. 13 Abraham, Th e Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb, pp. 34ff. 14 Abraham, Th e Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb, pp. 38–43. See also, Ashis Nandy, ‘Homi Bhabha Killed a Crow’, in Zia Mian and Ashis Nandy, eds. Th e Nuclear Debate: Ironies and Immoralities, (Colombo: Regional Centre for Strategic Studies/Fellowship in South Asian Alternatives, July 1998). Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 37

have to look abroad for its experts but will fi nd them ready at hand.’15 With this letter, self-suffi ciency had been woven into the fabric of India’s nuclear programme from its very inception. Th e request was successful; the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) was established the following year with a budget of Rs 80,000 and Bhabha as director. Yet, Bhabha’s letter to the Trust was not just a sales pitch; he truly believed in the potential for nuclear energy to open up enormous development opportunities. His reasoning rested on two assumptions: the fi rst, that increased electricity consumption would automatically enable increased industrial activity; and second, that India’s hydroelectric and conventional fuels would be inadequate to meet all of India’s energy needs. He further argued that nuclear energy was aff ordable and an attractive option given the ability to produce electricity in remote areas far away from the raw materials required for its generation, unlike coal-generated electricity.16 Not all these assumptions were valid, but Bhabha’s eloquence and belief swayed those he had to convince. Th e fi rst stage in this programme was to master nuclear reactor technology, which Indians eventually managed with British technical help and fuel; the fi rst ‘Asian’ nuclear reactor — Apsara — went ‘critical’ in 1956. Bhabha and his team then cast about for a research reactor, which they got from the Canadians in 1955. Under the terms of the agreement, the Canadians off ered to build a 40 megawatt natural uranium reactor that would be moderated with heavy water supplied by the United States (the name — Canadian–Indian Reactor, US, or CIRUS — refl ected the multiple partnerships) and help fi nance it, under the terms of another agreement called the Colombo Plan.17 However, in this quest India’s eff orts were not entirely ‘innocent’ for Bhabha (with Nehru’s backing) went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the reactor that he fi nally got from the Canadians was under very lax safeguards.18 Incidentally, Indian accounts insist that the Canadian reactors were

15 Quoted in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 16. 16 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 27. 17 Ibid., p. 27. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 18 Th e plutonium used in India’s 1974 device was obtained from this reactor. Indian scientists managed to produce the fuel rods that were to be loaded into the reactors just in time for the ﬁ rst loading of the plant, a feat which apparently caused some comment amongst the Canadians. See Raja Ramanna, Years of Pilgrimage (New Delhi: Penguin, 1992), p. 71. Apart from proving their expertise, however, this little detail was important for it strengthened India’s case in claiming the right to reprocess any plutonium that came out of this plant. See Abraham, Th e Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb, p. 121. 38 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

chosen because it would eventually allow India to be self-suffi cient, with India providing half of the natural uranium used in the reactors. How- ever, according to Homi Sethna, the Canadian technology was chosen (with the requirement that India supply half the fuel) because it was the only one India could aff ord. It did not have enough foreign exchange for any other way.19 Central to Bhabha’s plans of power production was his three-stage process for generating nuclear energy which was adopted by the Indian government in 1958. Bhabha presented this plan to the Conference on the Development of Atomic Energy for Peaceful Purposes, held in New Delhi in November 1954. According to his blueprint, India would fi rst develop natural uranium fuelled reactors (with Canadian assistance). When these burned to generate power, they also produced plutonium as a by-product. Th e second stage involved building reactors that would use the plutonium generated in the fi rst stage and burn that with thorium, which India had in abundance. Th e plutonium–thorium mix, when burned in these reactors would produce uranium (U-233) as a by-product. Th e third and fi nal stage involved the burning of the U-233 and thorium to produce more U-233 than was consumed. If all went to plan, the three-stage process would ensure unlimited quantities of U-233 and thorium to generate electricity.20 Bhabha’s ambitious plan did not go entirely unchallenged for the physicist Meghnad Saha questioned his ability to deliver, especially since the promised research reactor was not ready by 1954 as he had earlier declared.21 Yet, with the Prime Minister’s backing, Bhabha was able to carry the day. His infl uence and power over the nuclear programme would only grow each year at the expense of any proper debate on the aims and achievements of the costly atomic estate that he had built up around him and without any peer review of his programmes. India would pay the price for this later when his ambitious targets for power generation were repeatedly scaled back and still constantly missed. Yet, in the beginning, the promise of nuclear power was seductive: it held Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 out the possibility of an assured way for India to meet its development challenges and cast off its legacy of colonial impoverishment.

19 Perkovich’s conversation with Homi Sethna, recorded in an endnote. See Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 27, endnote 78. 20 Ibid., p. 26. 21 Abraham, Th e Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb, chapter 3, esp. pp. 70–82. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 39

Security through Development For Nehru, imperialism was an economic process, driven by the momentum of capitalism amongst the imperialists, rather than any inherent belief in racial superiority.22 Th is Marxist reading of history led to an understanding that unless the Indian government actively undertook to promote economic development, the country would remain vulnerable to economic imperialism.23 Nehru’s solution lay in turning to the state to provide the engine for growth through the promotion of heavy industry that would ﬁ nance the redistributive economic and social policies of the state. For him and his advisers, this represented a rational policy that could lift India from centuries of backwardness, illiteracy and superstition. India could then enter and keep abreast of the current age, symbolised most dramatically by his ‘temples of modernity’ — gleaming steel plants, enormous dams and shining new nuclear power plants.24 Nuclear energy was vital to the project of state-sponsored industrialisation. It was to provide the electricity necessary to power the large industries that were meant to place India on a sure economic footing, which in itself had security implications.25 Nehru’s expectations of rapid economic development were encouraged by the physicist Homi J. Bhabha, a close friend who had established the TIFR in 1945 to promote research in nuclear physics in India.26 Both men believed that economic development depended on the supply of power, and

22 Nehru wrote about this in Th e Discovery of India, eg., chapter 7, ‘India Becomes for the First Time a Political and Economic Appendage of Another Country’. 23 Khilnani, Idea of India, pp. 72ﬀ . 24 Th ese sentiments were eloquently voiced in his speech on ‘Th e Necessity of Atomic Research in India’, in S. Gopal, ed., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, vol. 1 (Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1984), pp. 377–79. 25

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 As Khilnani explains, in the Congress Left’s understanding, these heavy industries needed to be placed in the control of the state both to provide the resources to build the other industries required by a modern state and for security reasons, to ensure that India had the resources to defend itself. Khilnani, Idea of India, p. 72. 26 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 16. As the atomic complex in India was established, Bhabha gained control over the running of India’s nuclear programme, so that at the time of his death, he was Chairman of the Atomic 40 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

given India’s relatively poor conventional energy resources, nuclear energy, in addition to representing the pinnacle of modern science, off ered a seemingly logical way to address the shortfall. Th at India also possessed the largest known reserves of thorium, a potential nuclear fuel, also added to the attractiveness of the idea.27 Bhabha believed that India could develop nuclear power at costs comparable to the price of generating electricity from conventional sources.28 Th is understanding would eventually be institutionalised in the Second Five Year Plan (1955–1960), which envisaged nuclear energy as an alternative to conventional energy. At the time, the peaceful atom held out the promise not just of abundant electricity too cheap to be metered, but also of the ability to make massive strides in agriculture and medicine through radioisotopes, cheaper desalination for irrigation, aff ordable excavation and mining; in short, it ‘opened up limitless possibilities for human development, prosperity and overabundance.’29 Th e importance that Nehru attached to nuclear energy can be judged by the fact that the Atomic Energy Act was introduced in and passed by the Parliament in April 1948, less than a year after independence, clear- ing the way for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to be established in August of that year.30 Th e discussion of that bill is signifi cant: apart from demonstrating how thoroughly Nehru dominated the debate, some of the points raised about secrecy, peer review and intentions fl agged

Energy Commission (AEC), Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), a senior civil service position in the government, and Director of both TIFR and the atomic energy establishment in Trombay which after his death was renamed the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). Th at Nehru and Bhabha were very close may be judged by the fact that outside the family, only two men called him ‘bhai’ (brother): one was the socialist Jaya Prakash Narayan, and the other was Homi Bhabha. Akbar, Nehru, p. 53. 27 J. P. Jain, Nuclear India, vol. 2 (New Delhi: Radiant, 1974), p. 4. 28 Homi J. Bhabha, Statement at the First International Conference on the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, August 1955, cited in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 27., 29 Nehru, quoted in ibid., p. 15. 30 Another sign of Nehru’s personal commitment to atomic energy was his chairing of the ﬁ rst meeting of the Atomic Energy Research Committee (AERC), which was established in 1946 to promote nuclear physics research in universities, just 12 days after independence, in August 1947. See W. P. S. Sidhu, Embracing Indo-US Strategic Cooperation, Adelphi Paper 313 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for IISS, 1997), pp. 21–22. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 41

discrepancies that would bedevil Indian attitudes towards the nuclear programme for decades. Th e Indian Atomic Energy Act, modelled on the British Atomic Energy Act but with more stringent provisions for secrecy, provided for state control over all nuclear materials, particularly thorium and uranium. Nehru justifi ed this measure on the grounds that India’s thorium deposits had to be protected from any possible exploitation by industrialised countries in a colonial manner; it would also apparently reassure the United States and the United Kingdom that they could co-operate safely with India.31 Coming as it did so soon after the horrors of Hiroshima, it was perhaps incumbent on Nehru to introduce this bill with an affi rmation of India’s peaceful intentions and the urgent development needs that could best be met by nuclear energy.32 Yet protestations of peaceful intentions could not paper over the room for ambiguity about India’s intentions built into this bill by the provisions for strict secrecy. One parliamentarian, chemist Dr B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, warned of the potential of excessive shielding to divert science and technology to military applications.33 Another parliamentarian S. V. Krishnamurthy Rao observed that the Indian Act provided for a greater sheltering of the programme than similar US or British legislation for programmes that had stated military applications. He therefore sought clarifi cation on whether ‘secrecy [was] to be insisted upon even for research for peaceful purposes?’34 As he pointed out, in the UK, sequestration only applied to research for defence applications. Faced with this challenge, Nehru was forced to concede that he did ‘not know how to distinguish between the two’.35 Nehru had acknowledged that intentions alone could not insulate a nuclear programme from military applications. Yet, instead of picking up on this, Parliament let it rest with the exception of one intervention from Shiban Lal Saksena who, arguing as ‘a realist’, declared the necessity

31 Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech to the Constituent Assembly of India, cited in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 18. 32 Itty Abraham provides an insightful discussion on the discrepancies in an avowedly peaceful programme requiring such strict provisions for secrecy. See Abraham, Th e Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb, pp. 48ﬀ . 33 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 18. 34 Constituent Assembly of India (legislative) Debates (hereafter CAI Debates), 2nd Session, vol. 5, April 6, 1948. 35 Ibid. 42 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

of preparing for defence in an environment where the only eff ective way of stopping war was ‘when we have got the means or power of having our might felt all over the world. […] Until we have the capacity to use atomic energy for destructive warfare it will have no meaning for us to say that we shall not use atomic energy for destructive purposes’.36 Incidentally, all three parliamentarians were prominent Congressmen, which indicated that criticism of the bill was quite separate from party politics. Nehru however had the last word. Th e bill had already been passed before the discussion, and his intervention served not to infl uence the voting but to change the manner in which the nuclear programme was to be perceived offi cially. His only response to Saksena’s intervention was to acknowledge that the ‘associat[ion of] atomic energy with war’ was an unavoidable ‘context’ of the present. He then moved on to the potential for nuclear technology to provide power, which represented a development of enormous importance. Having already raised the bogey of colonial control of India’s nuclear programme, he now proceeded to enlarge on the theme of imperial subjugation. Drawing parallels between India’s backwardness and its loss of freedom two centuries earlier, he now presented the nuclear industry as a fl agship of modernity that would steer the country into a modern, prosperous age. Turning to the broad, historical sweep that came to him so naturally, he argued:

Consider the past few hundred years of history, the world developed a new source of power, that is steam — the steam engine and the like, and the industrial age came in. India with all her many virtues did not develop that source of power. It became a backward country in that sense; it became a slave country because of that.[…] Th e point I would like the House to consider is this, that if we are to remain abreast of the world as a nation which keeps ahead of things, we must develop this atomic energy quite apart from war — indeed I think we must develop it for the 37

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 purpose of using it for peaceful purposes.

36 Ibid. 37 Ibid.; italics added. For further commentary on this speech, see Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 19–20. For a more ambiguous reading of Nehru’s intentions, see Ashis Nandy, ‘Homi Bhabha Killed a Crow’. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 43

Nehru had thus eff ectively woven a security component into the programme, but security as economic self-suffi ciency and modernity. It set the stage for the nuclear programme to be intimately connected with the project of nation-building, self-reliance and demonstrable advanced technological prowess. Th is was visible when India’s first reactor, Apsara, went ‘critical’ in 1956. Th e development was celebrated as the fi rst ‘indigenous’, ‘Asian’ reactor to start functioning; the self- congratulation conveniently elided the extent of foreign assistance to the project, which went beyond the barely acknowledged design help to include critical components, plans and vitally, the fuel rods.38 Th e logical culmination of the projection of nation-building on to the nuclear estate occurred in May 1998, when the Prime Minister of India ‘congratulat[ed] the scientists and engineers who ha[d] carried out these successful tests’ and the country celebrated as cutting-edge a science that was essentially decades old by then.39 The shroud of secrecy had another, more pernicious effect. It eff ectively sheltered the nuclear estate from any peer review, making it not accountable for its vastly ineffi cient running and persistent massive underperformance over the years in providing its stated objective, nuclear energy.40 Th e possibility of this development, fi rst tentatively

38 Abraham, Th e Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb, p. 85. 39 Th is is not to discount the diﬃ culty of conducting contained underground nuclear explosions. However, the reception of the tests as demonstrative of an immense technological achievement exceeded what might be expected as a celebration of national science. It went beyond feting just technology to celebrating modernity and, for a brief moment, moving away from bullock-carts and ‘a cow- dung economy’ that, for many Indians, formed everyday reality. Th e phrase is from Mrs Gandhi, quoted in H. N. Sethna, ‘India: Past Achievements and Future Pro- mises’, IAEA Bulletin 14:6 (1972), pp. 36–44. Mrs Gandhi had referred to the achievement of India’s nuclear programme despite the cynicism of those who had spoken disparagingly ‘of a cow-dung economy’ aspiring to nuclear energy. 40 By 1970, AEC Chairman Vikram Sarabhai was forced to acknowledge that Bhabha’s target of 8,000 to 10,000 MWe of electricity by 1980 would not be

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 met. And yet his scaled down, ‘ambitious but achievable’ goal for 1970–80 of 2,700 MWe of installed capacity proved unattainable as well. By 1995, capacity had reached only 2,200 MWe, with most plants operating at about 40 per cent of load. See Atomic Energy and Space Research: ‘A Proﬁ le for the Decade 1970–’80’, (Atomic Energy Commission, GOI, 1970), quoted in Jain, Nuclear India, vol. 2, pp. 5–6; Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 153; Virginia Foran, ‘Th e Case of Indo-US High Technology Cooperation’, Survival 40:2 (Summer 1998), p. 86. 44 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

raised at the debate over the Atomic Energy Act of 1948, was echoed in 1954 by a leading physicist Meghnad Saha who challenged Bhabha over the secrecy that was shielding his nuclear empire from any eff ective peer review.41 By then, the atomic estate had already failed to live up to some of Bhabha’s initial lofty claims, especially that of building a nuclear reactor by that year. Saha wanted an oversight committee for the atomic establishment comprising scientists and politicians; he further sought to take some of the research out of the sheltered confi nes of the atomic energy complex in Bombay and disperse it in universities. Saha lost that battle, and the public conference of prominent scientists held in November 1954, ostensibly to discuss oversight but really to rubber- stamp Nehru’s and Bhabha’s earlier provisions, provided the only real attempt at establishing peer review of the programme.42 Th ereafter, the nuclear estate would develop in complete secrecy, shielded by legislation and a draconian Offi cial Secrets Act that discouraged any close questioning of the purposes or functioning of the programme. And yet, the ambiguity remained. As Nehru concluded in his peror- ation in 1948,

Of course, if we are compelled as a nation to use it for other purposes, possibly no pious sentiments of any of us will stop the nation from using it in that way. But I do hope that our outlook in regard to this atomic energy is going to be a peaceful one for the development of human life and not one of war and hatred.43

By 1962, when Nehru presented the Lok Sabha with a revised Atomic Energy Act which strengthened the state’s control over all aspects of the nuclear industry and provided even more comprehensive shields for the programme, ambiguity had changed subtly to a degree of ambivalence, a reluctance to acknowledge its dual nature. As Itty Abraham notes, the declaration of peaceful uses was dispensed with in the preface to the bill which had no legal standing.44 Yet Nehru was easily able to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 deﬂ ect the few calls for a weapons-oriented programme that arose during the passage of this bill.45 Of course, this may have been due in

41 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 26–27. 42 Ibid. 43 CAI Debates, op. cit. 44 Abraham, Th e Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb, pp. 114ﬀ , 118. 45 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 38. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 45

large part to Nehru’s passionate opposition to nuclear weapons and his parallel advocacy of nuclear disarmament, but it could also have refl ected a lack of conviction on the part of those who called for militarisation of the nuclear programme. Security through Exceptionalism After August 1947, the former jewel in the Imperial Crown could easily have become another impoverished, third-world state, plagued by the problems of nation-building in an international environment where power and infl uence fl owed from a state’s economic strength and military capability. Instead, India managed to increase its global infl uence, emerging as a constructive, if at times inconvenient (and perhaps, preachy), voice of reason as global politics coalesced into the refl exive hostility of Cold War politics. None of this was fortuitous. Jawaharlal Nehru had very clear ideas about how India should wield infl uence in global aff airs well before the country became independent. Given his conviction that the country could not aff ord to allocate scarce resources to excessive militarisation (at least until after the 1962 war with China), his solution was to pursue a policy of ‘defence by friendship’.46 Nehru’s approach to security policy was therefore to place it fi rmly in the realm of the political. He believed India’s decolonisation record, its history of Gandhian non-violence and satyagraha (which roughly translates as the ‘truth-force’) imbued the country with a special status that the international community would seek to preserve. Based on this assumption, Nehru created a foreign and defence policy that sought to combat racism and imperialism, pursue world peace, work towards the revival of Asia in global politics, redefi ne relations with Europe, and fi nally and most signifi cantly for a new, poor and militarily vulnerable nation, keep India out of the Cold War by staying non-aligned with either of the two blocs.47 Nehru’s moralistic, even idealistic, stance on achieving world peace through disarmament and ensuring security by addressing underlying mistrust rather than by building up arms may have been grounded in Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

46 Michael Edwardes, ‘Illusion and Reality in India’s Foreign Policy’, Inter- national Aﬀ airs, 41:1 (January 1965), p. 49. See also, Ashok Kapur, India’s Nuclear Option: Atomic Diplomacy and Decision-Making, (New York: Praeger, 1976), p. 96. 47 Brown, Nehru, p. 245. 46 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

pragmatic considerations, but it created expectations about India’s behaviour that even Nehru would struggle to fulfi l.48 It made eminent sense for a poor and vulnerable state to defl ect attention from arms races and stress the value of non-violence and disarmament. Yet, independent India’s fi rst couple of decades were anything but non-violent, and New Delhi’s claims to exceptionalism began to wear thin in the wake of the war with Pakistan over Kashmir in 1947, police action in Hyderabad in 1948, language riots in the south in the early 1960s, and, most damagingly, the military seizure of Goa in 1961. For a country that had long lectured others on renouncing force in international aff airs, the military action to ‘free’ the Portuguese colony exposed India, and especially Nehru, to damaging criticism. John F. Kennedy apparently declared to the Indian Ambassador to Washington, ‘you should not have preached morality for fourteen years. You had no business to indulge in the holier- than-thou attitude when you are just like any other nation’.49 Yet India, judged ‘just like any other nation’, struggled to maintain any position of infl uence within the international community. New Delhi’s leverage in global politics was based on the idea of Indian exceptionalism.50 Without it, India was just another poor and weak third world state. Th e full extent of the country’s vulnerability became humiliatingly evident with the debacle of the 1962 war with China. Th is defeat demonstrated that India’s security could not be entrusted solely to diplomacy. Th ough the United States, along with Britain and Canada, readily came to New Delhi’s aid, Nehru’s credibility, both within and outside India, was greatly undermined by his having to turn to the West for support.51 It did not help that Nehru had not updated Parliament on the deterioration of relations with China. Th e consequent blame that was laid at his door severely damaged many of his policies on defence, particularly his reliance on diplomacy to bring China into the comity

48 Sumit Ganguly, ‘Th e Prime Minister and Foreign and Defence Policies’, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 in James Manor, (ed.), Nehru to the Nineties: Th e Changing Offi ce of the Prime Minister in India (London: Hurst, 1994), pp. 140–41. 49 Cited in Harish Kapur, India’s Foreign Policy, 1947–92: Shadows and Substance (Delhi: Sage, 1994), p. 131. 50 Ibid., pp. 124–130. 51 Th e policy of non-alignment was also severely undermined when Nehru requested assistance from the United States and other western nations. Michael Brecher, ‘Non-Alignment Under Stress: Th e West and the Indo-China Border War’, Pacifi c Aff airs 52:4 (winter 1979–80), pp. 612–30. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 47

of nations.52 Nehru was forced to concede, ‘[t]here is no non-alignment vis-à-vis China. Th ere is no Panchshil vis-à-vis China’.53 After this defeat, India’s elite abandoned the Nehruvian rhetoric on containing military budgets and avoiding arms build-ups. Indian defence spending virtually doubled between 1962 and 1964.54 Th ough Indira Gandhi’s government justifi ed the 1971 war with Pakistan as self-defence, India’s transformation into ‘just another state’ continued, till, by the late 1980s, after Indira and especially Rajiv Gandhi had attempted power-projection through massive military build-up and modernisation drives, India had eff ectively abandoned its commitment to exceptionalism.55 Despite these developments, anti-nuclear sentiments outlived practice. Th e energy, eloquence and passion with which Nehru campaigned for nuclear disarmament created a momentum that the country was happy to coast with after his death. Nehru’s intentions in creating India’s nuclear programme have long been debated, with both hawks and doves claiming him for their own. Indeed, his role in completely shielding this programme, in giving Bhabha the leeway for creating a potential weapons-oriented programme, leaves room for some doubt.56 Yet, his tireless campaigning for complete nuclear disarmament tells a diff erent story. Each time he referred to nuclear energy, he invoked the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, demonstrating a conviction beyond oratory. Nehru referred to his visit to Hiroshima to meet with survivors in 1957, the fi rst by another head of government, as a ‘pilgrimage’. In light of the Pokharan tests, his speech at the Peace Memorial rings with irony for he declared, ‘Th e world must choose between the path of violence symbolised by the atom bomb and the path of peace symbolised

52 Brown, Nehru, p. 317; Ganguly, ‘Th e Prime Minister and Foreign and Defence Policies’, p. 144. 53 Cited in A. G. Noorani, ‘India’s Quest for a Nuclear Guarantee’, Asian Survey 7:7 (July 1967), p. 490. ‘Panchshil’ refers to the ﬁ ve principles of peaceful co-existence that were meant to govern relations between China and India,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 and which had been formally written into the 1954 ‘Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between the Tibet Region of China and India’. 54 Ganguly, ‘Th e Prime Minister and Foreign and Defence Policies’, pp. 144– 45. 55 Kapur, India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 134–37. 56 See M. V. Ramanna, ‘Nehru, Science and Secrecy’, Anumkti (August 1998), at http://www.geocities.com/m_v_ramana/nucleararticles/Nehru.pdf (accessed on June 10, 2004). 48 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

by the Buddha’.57 Th ese words echoed views he had expressed repeatedly over the years. Th ere were other, concrete actions. In 1954 he called for a committee of scientists to explain the eff ects of nuclear war on humanity — a step that eventually translated into the Pugwash Conferences.58 Two years later, he commissioned an offi cial study into the eff ects of nuclear explosions.59 Nehru used every possible forum — from the United Nations when he spoke out against the increasing fear and mistrust that could take the world into another devastating war, to visits to foreign countries when he denounced nuclear tests, to his own parliament, to make absolutely clear his and his country’s opposition to nuclear weapons.60 Th e culmination of these eff orts was the successful negotiation of a Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT). When this treaty was opened for signature in Moscow in August 1963, India was the fourth country to sign, after the three original sponsors. Th ough the partial ban was less than the complete halt on testing that Nehru had called for in 1954, he presented it as a positive fi rst step in the right direction. Th is fl exibility would notably be absent in India’s position over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), in the mid-1990s, as discussed in chapter four. In Parliament, Nehru’s speeches on nuclear disarmament went beyond his personal convictions: he appeared to be educating his colleagues on what India’s stance on nuclear tests and proliferation ought to be. Hence his proposal for a ‘Standstill Agreement’ made in the Lok Sabha on April 2, 1954, after the US hydrogen test on March 1, 1954, produced an explosion so powerful it overwhelmed all measuring instruments, sought not only to present a four-part plan calling for an immediate moratorium on testing, but also to inform his colleagues on what

57 Quoted in G. G. Mirchandani, India’s Nuclear Dilemma (New Delhi: Popular Book Services, 1968), p. 3. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 58 M. S. Swaminathan, ‘Lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’, Editorial, Th e Hindu, August 6, 2005. 59 Government of India, ‘Nuclear Explosions and their Eﬀ ects’, New Delhi, June 1956 and October 1958. 60 See, for example, Nehru’s speech to the General Assembly in November 1948, in Paris; his condemnation of the Soviet decision to resume nuclear tests at the Non-Aligned summit in Belgrade on September 2, 1961 (New York Times, September 3, 1961, pp. 1, 8); various speeches to Parliament, including the Standstill Agreement of April 2, 1954. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 49

Indian representatives had lobbied for so far at the United Nations.61 Interestingly, the Hindustan Times the next day carried the full text of the Prime Minister’s speech, in addition to a short article on the event under a four-banner headline.62 Further, though one of the headlines declared, ‘Small States Must Assert Th emselves’, Nehru had actually not singled out any state in particular, declaring that this was a matter of concern for ‘peoples and nations everywhere, whether we are involved in Power blocs or not’. In his view, the threat posed by the overwhelming destructive capacity of the hydrogen bomb was so great that ‘mankind has […] to assert itself to avert calamity’.63 Yet his speech appears to have been interpreted as a way of allowing militarily weak and small states to cast a deciding vote in international relations. Th is was of a piece with Nehru’s approach to international relations, and the understanding that he bequeathed to India of the country’s role in infl uencing the tide of global politics. As he explained to the General Assembly in 1960, all states in the international system had a legitimate interest in the direction of global negotiations, especially on matters of security. ‘Most of the people sitting here have practically nothing to disarm although we are greatly interested in the disarmament of others so that war may not break out and destroy the world’.64 In other words, peace was indivisible, giving all states an equal stake in negotiations aimed at reducing confl ict. Nehru was also adamant that all states must have a say in negotiations that might aff ect their development prospects. Th is was, naturally, more important for developing countries where fears of potential colonial exploitation added a security dimension to fears of manipulation. As a result, Nehru, while championing disarmament and speaking of the barbarity of nuclear war, emerged as a vehement opponent of proposals for the international control of nuclear materials and technology, as put forward in the Baruch Plan of 1948 and Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ proposal of 1954.

61 Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘Standstill Agreement’, Statement of the Prime Minister

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 in the Lok Sabha, April 2, 1954. 62 ‘Standstill Agreement on H-Bomb Proposed [sic]; Nehru’s Appeal to World Powers; Four Point Plan Outlined; Small States Must Assert Th emselves’, Hindustan Times, April 3, 1954. 63 Ibid. 64 Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘Control of Nuclear Energy’. Speech to the United Nations General Assembly, October 5, 1960, cited in Kapur, India’s Nuclear Option, p. 108. 50 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Nehru’s rejection of these two proposals established the basis of New Delhi’s enduring opposition to any international plan that sought to impose safeguards and inspections on India’s nuclear facilities.65 India’s rejection of the Baruch Plan at the United Nations clearly articulated the Indian government’s concerns that the agreement might limit the country’s access to development technology and materials.66 Similarly, Nehru’s rejection of the ‘Atoms for Peace’ proposal was strongly grounded in concerns that the international controlling body established by this plan would own and control all nuclear raw materials and processing facilities. As he remarked in a statement on this proposal in the Lok Sabha, giving any body, but especially a body that was nominally independent of the United Nations and possibly run by the Great Powers, such vast jurisdiction over an area that could aﬀ ect a developing country’s economic future, could have serious repercussions on India’s development. In his opinion,

it would not be right to agree to any plan which hands over even our raw materials and mines to any external authority. I would again beg the House to remember the major fact that atomic energy for peaceful purposes is far more important to the underdeveloped countries of the world than to the developed ones. And if the developed countries have all the powers they may well stop the use of atomic energy everywhere including in their own countries, because they do not need it so much, and in consequence, we might suﬀ er.67

His underlying concern seems not to be the fact of the control as much as who would exercise it. At this time, the United States and the Soviet

65 India’s allergy to safeguards also arises from Indian sensitivities to any perceived infringement of sovereignty. Th e Indian–Canadian nuclear agreements with dual inspections provisions reﬂ ect this touchiness, for India proved amenable to Canadian inspections of the nuclear reactors they supplied only after Ottawa agreed to reciprocal Indian inspections of the Douglas Point Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 reactor. See Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Option, pp. 27–29. 66 India’s rejection of the Baruch Plan was conveyed to the United Nations by the Indian ambassador to the UN, Mrs Vijayalakshmi Pandit, Nehru’s sister. She stated that international control of nuclear materials including thorium, of which India had the world’s largest reserves, would deprive India of a valuable source of economic development. Ibid., p. 21. 67 Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘Control of Nuclear Energy’ Speech to Lok Sabha, May 10, 1954, in Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian Foreign Policy: Selected Speeches, September 1946–April 1961 (New Delhi, Government of India, 1961), p. 194. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 51

Union had started working together on nuclear energy. Nehru wanted to prevent the setting of any legal precedent that would encourage the superpowers to act in concert in establishing emerging rules and norms of a possible nuclear order, without being constrained to take into account the interests of all states.68 Making very clear his reservations relating to the nature of international control over nuclear materials to the Lok Sabha, he stated: ‘Either you make the body of control as big as the United Nations, with all the countries represented, or it will be some relatively small body with the Great Powers sitting in it and lording it over’.69 With this statement, Nehru fi rmly linked discrimination to disarmament. Over the years, Indian diplomats increasingly emphasised the political nature of disarmament, especially during the negotiations leading up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and later, most forcefully, at the CTBT negotiations. Nehru’s legacy, however, remains diffi cult to capture in simple, clear brush-strokes. He managed contradictions and nuance with a fi nesse that his successors could only aspire to. On the one hand, he certainly created the political space for a weapons-oriented nuclear programme to fl ourish. On the other though, his repeatedly expressed abhorrence of the eff ects of nuclear weapons and the related tests, arms races and increasing mistrust removed the political will necessary for India to embark on a weapons-oriented programme. Th is is not to say that there were not voices calling for a weapons programme. But these remained in the minority, completely overshadowed by Nehru’s towering presence. Even after the defeat by China in 1962, when Nehru faced calls for India to acquire nuclear weapons during the fi rst Parliamentary session after the brief war, the Prime Minister was able to carry the day.70 Th e demands resurfaced during the discussion on the budget for the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) in March the following year. Nehru’s response was instructive. ‘On the one hand, we are asking the nuclear powers to give up their tests,’ he declared. ‘How can we, without showing the utter insincerity of what we have always said, go Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

68 Kapur, India’s Nuclear Option, p. 99. 69 Nehru, ‘Control of Nuclear Energy’, p. 193. 70 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 46. Th e primary supporter of a more robust policy was the Jana Sangh, a predecessor of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Th e party had been pro-nuclear from the beginning. See also, Moshaver, Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, pp. 38–40. 52 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

in for doing the very thing which we have repeatedly asked the other powers not to do?’71 Th e problem that would plague Indian diplomacy for decades was already becoming visible: India’s strategy was in danger of becoming a victim of its own success. Indians had argued with such conviction against the horrors of nuclear war and deterrence to occupy the moral high ground that they could not abandon this line of argument without exposing themselves to charges of hypocrisy. Rejecting this would result in not just a loss of prestige but of global infl uence, leaving India just another weak, poor, third-world nation. Retaining the country’s global infl uence through this strategy was a task that Nehru left his successors to struggle with, and the diffi culties of doing so were immediately apparent after his death. Managing the Nehruvian Legacy Lal Bahadur Shastri was an unlikely successor to Jawaharlal Nehru. A Gandhian with little international experience, he found himself grappling with defence and security almost as soon as he acquired his somewhat tenuous grip on power, with China’s fi rst nuclear test occurring months after his investiture. His weakness made his personal convictions immaterial and reduced any room for the fl exibility that had marked Nehru’s approach to nuclear policy. Without the benefi t of a confi dent leadership in this area, nuclear rhetoric continued in the same direction, even though policy appeared to have inched forward slightly with Shastri’s announcement in late November 1964 that he had authorised the nuclear estate to go ahead with preparations for a subterranean nuclear explosive project. At the time, the signifi cance of the announcement was not appreciated by either parliamentarians or the journalists who covered this Parliamentary debate: what was being demanded in the Lok Sabha at the time was not technological updates but a rhetorical commitment for or against an unspecifi ed

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 ‘bomb’. Shastri also found himself challenged by another Nehruvian legacy, that of non-alignment, which came under immense pressure when his government conducted a somewhat half-hearted search for a nuclear guarantee. In sum, the fi rst few years after Nehru, which included Shastri’s short tenure and Indira Gandhi’s fi rst few years as Prime Minister, were marked by attempts to reconcile the diff erent strands

71 Quoted in Mirchandani, India’s Nuclear Dilemma, p. 23. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 53

of Nehru’s nuclear policy but without the benefi t of his confi dence and charisma that had allowed it to contribute to ideas of Indian exceptionalism. The China-threat and the Beginnings of a Meaningful Nuclear Debate Th e nuclear explosion at Lop Nur on October 16, 1964, was not unexpected. Apart from what the Chinese had made known about their intentions from the late 1950s, the US produced a defi nite warning when Secretary of State Dean Rusk stated on September 29 that a Chinese test was imminent.72 Indeed, an editorial in the Statesman in late August noted that calls within India for nuclear weapons might increase when the expected Chinese test occurred; yet critical food shortages within India at the time, compounded by rising infl ation, only added to the country’s developmental challenges and made it all the more important that people keep in mind the costs that would have to be borne in channelling funds to a nuclear weapons programme.73 Further, ‘in the absence of an adequate delivery system, the bomb would make little diff erence to India’s military strength’.74 Th e guns versus butter dilemma which would paralyse Indian opinion on nuclear weapons for years to come had been clearly spelled out in anticipation of China’s test. Yet, when the actual test occurred, Indian opinion was more exercised over the consequences of Nikita Krushchev’s fall from power, which had occurred the day before. Th e Indian press devoted greater column space to analysing Soviet politics than the strategic and political implications of the explosion.75 Th e debate soon picked up with newspaper editorials arguing for and against India acquiring nuclear weapons, though on the whole, those favouring a continuation of government policy predominated.76 One prominent exception was Inder Malhotra: writing before the expected test, he rehearsed the arguments against the bomb — India’s image and its adoption of the high road; the fact that the US and the USSR could be counted on to protect the country from Chinese nuclear aggression; that Indian exceptionalism would Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

72 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 43–45, 65. 73 Editorial, Th e Statesman, August 24, 1964, quoted in ibid., pp. 64–65. 74 Ibid., p. 64. 75 Mirchandani, India’s Nuclear Dilemma, p. 25. 76 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 67. 54 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

rally international opinion in its favour and deter China from a nuclear attack; and fi nally, and most urgently for India then, economic considerations — before concluding that security had to be addressed, whatever the price.77 After the tests, this line of argument would only become more vociferous. Over the years, the debate would boil down to the two positions taken by Th e Statesman in these two editorials: whether India should or could bear the economic cost of developing its own nuclear weapons. Gandhian morality had, for the most part, already been dispensed with. A debate on nuclear policy had fi nally taken off , with India’s attentive public now free to voice their opinions without the inhibition caused by Nehru’s towering presence. Th e subject had also been given an urgent, domestic focus with Lop Nur. Punctuated by a series of Chinese nuclear tests, the discussions in the years leading up to the NPT were the most vigorous to date, reaching their zenith in 1965. Such interest would not be replicated until the CTBT negotiations neared comple- tion in the mid-1990s.78 Yet the price that India was paying for Nehru’s preponderance in international aff airs was immediately apparent when Parliament met for the fi rst time to discuss foreign policy after Nehru’s death, in late November.79 Despite the changed circumstances, the debate appeared incapable of moving beyond the parameters established by Nehru for India’s foreign and defence policies. Th e discussion was perhaps best summed up in an exasperated comment by Nath Pai, an Member of Parliament (MP) from the Praja Socialist Party. ‘Instead of making a very dispassionate and calm assessment of the Chinese possession of this dangerous, deadly weapon,’ he declared, ‘we have been indulging once again in sentimental platitudes, confusing the whole issue, and unnecessarily dragging [into the debate] Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, and, for good measure, Lord Buddha and Samrat Ashoka’.80 However, departures from the Nehruvian line were beginning to surface. Shastri may have argued against nuclear weapons largely from a Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

77 Inder Malhotra, Th e Statesman, October 9, 1964, cited in Perkovich, ibid., pp. 65–66. 78 For more on the debate at this time, see Mirchandani, India’s Nuclear Dilemma, chapter 4 and Moshaver, Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, pp. 40ﬀ . 79 For Nehru’s role in quashing Parliamentary expertise in foreign aﬀ airs, see H. Kapur, India’s Foreign Policy, p. 162. 80 Lok Sabha Debates, 3rd Series, vol. 35, no. 6, November 23, 1964. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 55

moral position, reminding Parliament of his recent passionate opposition to nuclear weapons at the Non-Aligned Nations Conference in Cairo on behalf of his country, and later, when challenged by members of his own party, declaring that India could not now abandon its moral stance, dating back to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just because its circumstances had changed.81 Yet his proved a minority view. By and large, cost remained the overriding consideration, followed, in a very distant second place, by strategic imperatives, such as they had been voiced. Part of the problem lay in the uncertainty surrounding the exact costs of a credible nuclear weapons programme (which was not defi ned). Estimates varied from Bhabha’s wildly optimistic fi gures, off ered in a much cited radio broadcast on October 24, 1964, that India could aff ord an arsenal of approximately 50 ‘bombs’, to a much higher estimate cited by Shastri in internal party discussions, subsequently leaked to the press, to fi gures off ered by American and British analysts and academics, most of which were higher than Bhabha’s calculations.82 Th is uncertainty was compounded by the lack of technological expertise in Parliament and outside, excluding the tightly constrained circle of the atomic establishment, which was governed by the Offi cial Secrets Act. Hence when Shastri announced at the end of the fi rst debate on nuclear weapons in Parliament that he had authorised subterranean nuclear explosions, no one within Parliament or those commenting on the speech recognised the signifi cance of what he had just conceded.83 Th e Prime Minister declared on the fl oor of the House that he had accepted Dr Bhabha’s recommendation that ‘we can progress and improve upon nuclear devices’ for, he explained, work such as digging large tunnels, ‘clear[ing] huge areas […] wip[ing] out mountains for development parks, and in this context if it is required to use nuclear devices for the good of the country as well as for the good of the world, so then our Atomic Energy Commission is pursuing these same objectives’.84 As George Perkovich points out, none of the English language dailies that covered this debate recognised the import of the fi rst prime ministerial authorisation of a nuclear explosion, or that there is little diff erence Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

81 Mirchandani, India’s Nuclear Dilemma, pp. 33–35. 82 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 67–68, 74–75; Mirchandani, ibid., pp. 103ﬀ . 83 Lok Sabha Debates, November 27, 1964. 84 Ibid., quoted in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 82. 56 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

beyond intentions and semantics between a nuclear test for a weapons- oriented programme and for peaceful, developmental purposes.85 In Parliament, the animated discussion moved along predictable party lines.86 Members of the Jana Sangh called for an Indian deterrent, as did the Praja Socialist Party; these calls were rejected by the Commu- nist parties, who argued for a global movement to ban nuclear weapons. Th e Swatantra Party focussed on the economic folly of a nuclear riposte to Mao’s bomb and spoke in favour of mutual security guarantees from the United States and the Soviet Union, thereby rejecting India’s policy of non-alignment. Congress members respected party discipline and refrained from criticising the government line until the closed-door Congress Party Executive Committee Meeting, two days after the parliamentary debate concluded. Yet the options presented to the house — an Indian deterrent or a change in Indian foreign policy to accommodate security guarantees — revealed how basic Parliament’s thinking on these matters remained. In terms of an Indian nuclear weapons programme, there was little discussion on the strategic requirements of an Indian deterrent or the eff ect of such a programme on its neighbours. On the nuclear guarantees, Parliament was too busy arguing over its implications for non-alignment to even begin to work out how these might be implemented or how they might provide concrete assurances. Th e pattern was repeated as the debate spilled out of Parliament into seminars and newspaper columns. Support for a ‘nuclear’ reply had also increased with the second war between India and Pakistan in September 1965, when China threatened to step in on Pakistan’s behalf.87 By the fourth Chinese test in May 1966, discussions were widespread, ranging from a fi ve-day seminar organised by the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University titled ‘Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy’, to All India Radio broadcasts, to the usual editorials.88 Th e tests sparked a succession of ‘storms’ in Parliament and the broadsheets, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 85 Perkovich, ibid., pp. 82–83. Even G. G. Mirchandani, in his otherwise insightful and exhaustive commentary on the debate on nuclear weapons after Lop Nur, failed to appreciate the shift encapsulated in Shastri’s authorising the use of nuclear energy for ‘peaceful’ explosions. Mirchandani, op. cit., pp. 34–35. 86 Mirchandani, India’s Nuclear Dilemma, 32ff . For more on individual party positions, see Moshaver, Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, pp. 38–40. 87 Mirchandani, ibid., pp. 38ff . 88 Ibid., pp. 50ff . Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 57

though of decreasing intensity so that each test between the second and the fi fth claimed less column space and air time.89 Participants in this debate appeared intent on demanding some sort of forceful government response to the implied threat of China’s nuclear capability. Th e details of this response, however, were left vague. Th ose demanding a nuclear rejoinder provided little analysis of the strategic implications of going down the nuclear route. Th e size or type of deterrent sought received little attention as well. Similarly, the relationship of nuclear capability to conventional defence did not benefi t from much systematic analysis, or indeed the possibility of a conventional war escalating into a nuclear one. Finally, there was little discussion about whether India’s nuclear infrastructure was actually capable of supporting a credible deterrent.90 In short, the debated riposte to China’s announcement of nuclear capability did not benefi t from such analysis beyond the fact that it needed to be vaguely nuclear. Indeed, the early debates seemed more concerned with the Indian elite’s need to demonstrate nuclear capability to themselves, without any thought to the eff ect this decision might have on China, or indeed Pakistan. Th e debate was also prominent for being a primarily civilian exercise. Th e armed forces were not consulted or invited to participate in parliamentary hearings or most public discussions on the nuclear question. With few notable exceptions, the opinion of the three services was heard only within military circles. What did emerge indicated that the military were wary of the nuclear option, fearing deep cuts in their budgets to fi nance a mode of weaponry over which they might not have control. Th ere were also strategic considerations to which civilian analysts rarely paid adequate attention. Hence Major-General (retd) Som Dutt, writing in London where he was doing a short stint with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, produced a monograph on India’s options that concluded that nuclear weapons would not be useful or advisable for India.91 Som Dutt, the fi rst head of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, was also one of the few participants in this debate who looked at the possible eff ects of an Indian nuclear

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 deterrent on Pakistan. Major-General (retd) Y. S. Paranjpe added

89 For greater detail on the debate sparked by each test, see ibid., chapter 4, quotation, p. 44. 90 Moshaver, Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, pp. 41–44. 91 Major-General D. Som Dutt, India and the Bomb, Adelphi Paper 30 (London: IISS, 1966). 58 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

another note of caution when he argued on All India Radio in 1966 that for India to have a credible deterrent, it would require the ability to impose ‘unacceptable damage’ on the enemy or else face the possibility of inviting a pre-emptive nuclear attack. Instead, he too spoke in favour of improving conventional defence, suggesting that the main threats that India faced from both Pakistan and China remained non-nuclear.92 On the whole, these voices, though important, could not shape the debate signifi cantly as the military, especially serving offi cers, remained hesitant to impose its views on the civilian leadership.93 Defi ning Security Cost was becoming an overriding consideration. Th e tenor of the nuclear debates indicates that the defi nition of security tended to privilege economic certainty. Faced with competing goals for the future of a stable, secure India, ideas about security were moving further up the security–development continuum into the realm of development. Th is project culminated in the public rejection of the nuclear weapons option by Vikram Sarabhai who succeeded Homi Bhabha as Chairman of the AEC in 1966.94 According to one observer, Sarabhai ‘injected’ ‘expertise’ into a debate in which ‘lay public opinion had been tossed about in a sea of lay comment by spokesman of political parties who themselves

92 Cited in Mirchandani, India’s Nuclear Dilemma, pp. 99–100. 93 One exception was a paper produced by the Joint Chiefs of Staﬀ s Committee in late 1964–early 1965, on request from the Defence Minister. Th ough the Minister informed the Lok Sabha of this move, the report’s recommendations were never disclosed beyond a vague statement that the Chiefs of Staff considered the threat from India’s neighbours to be conventional and strongly recommended against any diversion of funds from military modernisation. See Mirchandani, ibid., pp. 54–55. See also A. Kapur, India’s Nuclear Option, p. 149. 94 Bhabha was killed in a plane crash over Mont Blanc in January 1966, barely Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 a fortnight after Shastri died of a heart attack in Tashkent (having signed the Tashkent Agreement ending the 1965 war with Pakistan) and on the day that Indira Gandhi was being sworn in as Prime Minister. In terms of policy, therefore, there was a rapid change in leadership at the AEC and it is probable that Mrs Gandhi had not been briefed fully on the state of India’s nuclear programme by the time she faced her ﬁ rst debate in Parliament on nuclear policy, on May 10, 1965. Th ere is speculation that Mrs Gandhi’s appointment of Sarabhai to the post may have been governed by political considerations. See Kapur, ibid., p. 195. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 59

had little access to expert opinion’.95 Sarabhai is believed to have been opposed to nuclear weapons, at least initially, though in later years he may have come to oppose the NPT.96 Th is resistance appears to have been rooted in both ethical considerations and a pragmatic assessment of what India could aff ord: trained in space research, Sarabhai was well aware of the costs involved in providing credible delivery systems, without which any number of ‘bombs’ would be quite useless. In his fi rst press conference upon assuming charge of the AEC, Sarabhai sought to turn the debate back to security, to unpack the concept in light of rising costs and chronic food shortages.97 ‘Security’, Sarabhai had argued, ‘can be endangered not only from outside but also from within. If you do not maintain the rate of progress of the economic development of the nation, I would suggest that you would face a most serious crisis, something that might disintegrate India as we know it’.98 On its own, he explained, a single atomic explosion would not equate with a defence system and would instead be something of a paper tiger. In addition to the bombs that people were clamouring for, India would require a delivery system of missiles, radars, a highly developed electronics system and an industrial base that would support this defence research and production. In short, a nuclear deterrent called for ‘a total commitment of national resources of a most stupendous magnitude, and so the cost of an atom bomb is not very relevant to this issue of whether you go in for the bomb or not’.99 In conclusion, remarking that he agreed with the Prime Minister that an atomic explosion would solve nothing, he declared that ‘India should view this whole question in relation to the sacrifi ce that it is willing to make, viewing it in its totality’.100

95 Mirchandani, ibid., p. 54. 96 A. Kapur, India’s Nuclear Option, p. 161, and footnote; Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 121. 97 Agricultural production had fallen drastically after the drought of 1965 and the failed monsoon of 1966. By early 1966, the government was under pressure from the US, the IMF and the World Bank to institute economic and agricultural

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 reforms. American aid was made conditional on devaluing the rupee, which Mrs Gandhi ﬁ nally agreed to under immense pressure, in June. Th e result was spiralling inﬂ ation and intense criticism of Indira Gandhi at time when she was still politically quite weak. 98 Vikram Sarabhai, Press Conference, June 1, 1966, in Jain, Nuclear India, vol. 2, p. 179; emphasis added. 99 Ibid., pp. 179–80. 100 Ibid. 60 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Sarabhai appeared to have the backing of the Prime Minister in his statement — at any rate, it gave the newly installed Indira Gandhi some breathing space on the nuclear front while she tackled urgent economic and political problems that could threaten her survival. In this case, the offi cial line of thinking stated that nuclear weapons would ruin India fi nancially and that the country needed to focus instead on building its industrial and economic base. Th is argument would take a firm hold on Indian thought in the decades that followed, especially guiding Indian support for the nuclear ‘option’, which stopped short of weaponising any crude nuclear capability that the country may have developed. Managing Non-alignment Nehru’s successors were also left to grapple with his legacy of non- alignment, a struggle that came to the fore during India’s somewhat confused search for nuclear guarantees after Lop Nur. Once again, the absence of Nehru’s fl exibility and charisma were acutely felt. Non- alignment has been widely misperceived but as conceived of by Nehru, it was a visionary policy. Far from the passive connotations of maintaining equidistance from both superpowers, non-alignment, as Nehru framed it, represented an active policy of maintaining New Delhi’s freedom of choice to judge each foreign and defence policy matter according to India’s interests rather than following the line dictated by the superpower with which the country might otherwise have to be aligned according to the bipolar logic of the coalescing post-war order.101 As a policy, it was a success, providing India with a moral and political stature that compensated for its material weakness. However, as a policy framework it depended heavily on Nehru’s eloquence, as became evident during the country’s pursuit of a nuclear guarantee. India conducted a fi tful and, to all appearances, ill thought-out search for a nuclear guarantee between December 1964, when Shastri visited London, and mid-1967, when the draft non-proliferation treaty began

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 to take concrete shape without any form of automatic multilateral assurances to prevent nuclear aggression by a nuclear power against a non-nuclear weapon state.

101 Muchkund Dubey, ‘India’s Foreign Policy in an Evolving Global Order’, International Studies 30:2 (1993), pp. 117–29. See also, M. S. Rajan, ‘Th e Future of Non-Alignment’, Th e Annals of the American Academy, 362: 1 (November 1965), pp. 121–28. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 61

Shastri’s vague statement that ‘it was for the nuclear powers to discuss some kind of guarantee which was needed not only by India but by all the non-nuclear countries’, set the tone for New Delhi’s incoherent search for nuclear protection.102 It was clear that the government had not thought through the practical implications of seeking a nuclear shield while continuing to reject military alliances.103 Given New Delhi’s insecurities about China, any undertaking through the United Nations (which was vulnerable to a veto) or the blanket American assurance off ered by President Johnson were seen as insuffi cient to quell Indian fears.104 New Delhi wanted a concrete guarantee, but without being able to delineate the practical means of invoking or implementing it. When L. K. Jha, Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was asked in Washington specifi cally about foreign bases to back up the sought guarantee (during a tour which included visits to Moscow, Paris, and London to discuss Indian reservations about the emerging NPT), he reportedly replied that the existing bases would be adequate.105 As one correspondent acidly remarked, India appeared to be seeking a nuclear umbrella without a handle.106 New Delhi found itself increasingly entangled in its own rhetoric. Non-alignment and a credible nuclear guarantee, with its implications of a military alliance, could not co-exist. Apart from the uncertainties of implementing such an undertaking, an alliance or formal understanding with any country or bloc raised the spectre of India being held hostage to their relations with China, thereby removing New Delhi’s freedom of manoeuvre in conducting its China policy.107 Analysts feared this dependence on others would eventually ‘neutralise India as a political factor’.108

102 Shastri quoted in Noorani, ‘India’s Quest for a Nuclear Guarantee’, p. 491; on the practical aspects of implementing the policy, see Mirchandani, India’s Nuclear Dilemma, pp. 161–66. 103 Shastri admitted that the decision to approach Harold Wilson for a nuclear shield in 1964 was essentially his, taken without wider consultation. See Michael Brecher, Nehru’s Mantle: Th e Politics of Succession in India (New York: Praeger, 1968), p. 127.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 104 Lyndon Johnson’s guarantee was oﬀ ered days after Lop Nur, when he assured those countries who did not seek nuclear weapons that they would have US support in the event of a nuclear threat. See Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 66. 105 Mirchandani, India’s Nuclear Dilemma, pp. 138–140. 106 Cited in Noorani, ‘India’s Quest for a Nuclear Guarantee’, p. 500. 107 Mirchandani, India’s Nuclear Dilemma, p. 165. 108 Ibid. 62 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Returning to the Global Arena: The NPT Indira Gandhi was not an obvious choice for Prime Minister when she succeeded Lal Bahadur Shastri in early 1966, after the latter’s sudden death in Tashkent. As Information and Broadcasting Minister in Shastri’s cabinet, she had not shown any aptitude for the bruising battles of political survival, until chosen by the ‘Syndicate’ of powerful Congressmen, who intended her to be their pliable proxy. Her fi rst few years in offi ce were consequently spent in consolidating her political position. With a weak Prime Minister at the helm, the Ministry of External Aff airs, which had been discovering its power during the Shastri era, was able to come into its own during the negotiations for the NPT, which had begun in 1965. With political backing, two of the MEA’s representatives, B. N. Chakravarti and V. C. Trivedi, laid out India’s position on the NPT, emphasising the need for equality, a mutual balance of obligations and the importance attached to matters of principle in negotiating international agreements. Consequently, they, especially Trivedi, succeeded in permanently altering India’s negotiating stance at the Disarmament Commission. Th e NPT negotiations proceeded against a backdrop of increasing evidence that the nuclear powers had no intentions of limiting their nuclear arsenals and were instead relying on the treaty to prevent other countries from joining the atomic club.109 As a result, Indians were sensitive to the distinctions between vertical and horizontal proliferation, insisting that a meaningful treaty would have to address existing nuclear build-up (that is, the continuing arms race that was contributing to vertical proliferation) in addition to trying to prevent any new, or horizontal proliferation. Moreover, this position was proff ered above a staccato of Chinese nuclear tests, though Indian concerns over China’s growing nuclear weapons capability were generally overshadowed by the declamations of principle and equality that marked the country’s stance.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Hence India’s ﬁ rst non-proliferation marker included a ﬁ ve-point proposal to the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Commission (ENDC) in May 1965, which emphasised the need for nuclear guarantees and undertakings to non-nuclear states, along with the necessity for nuclear states to make tangible progress towards disarmament, including the negotiation of a comprehensive test ban treaty. In return for a freeze

109 See ibid., pp. 115–21. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 63

on the production of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, the non- nuclear weapons states would in turn abstain from acquiring or manu- facturing these weapons.110 Had the Indian delegation succeeded in bringing about a nuclear freeze and a moratorium on delivery mechanisms as sought in this proposal, the China threat would have been addressed in some measure. Yet, while the Indian delegation put forward these proposals, public opinion in India remained exercised over the need to provide some sort of response to China’s nuclear tests that evidently did not take into consideration neutralising it through treaty- bound measures. Indian opinion only began to take proper notice of the ENDC when it appeared as though the US and the Soviet Union had succeeded in overcoming the stalemate over their respective positions on the NPT in October 1966. Th ough this development was oﬃ cially welcomed by the Indian government, Indian reservations were perhaps best voiced by a New Delhi newspaper warning South Block that ‘[a]ny horse-trading between Washington and Moscow should not be allowed to determine India’s position on the question of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons’. Th is was not a treaty intent on achieving disarmament, the article continued, but one designed ‘to perpetuate the nuclear status quo’.111 Anticipating oﬃ cial reactions to the treaty that would be voiced in the following months, the paper concluded by stating that this was an ‘unequal treaty, and that it would be a great mistake for India to become a signatory to such a fantastic agreement’.112 Th ese fears increased over time as it became clear that the real negotiations over this treaty had moved out of the UN sponsored ENDC, to Washington and Moscow. As the Indian representative remarked on May 23, 1967, ‘Our idea in sponsoring the resolution was not that the US and the USSR should discuss international problems or solve them’.113 Process was becoming a major stumbling block for Indian opinion; similar reservations would prove fatal for the Indian vote on the draft CTBT that was negotiated almost three decades later. India’s next Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

110 Cited in ibid., p. 121. Th e ENDC was established in 1965 to negotiate a non-proliferation treaty. India was one of the eight non-aligned nations on the committee, along with ﬁ ve states each from the Western and Communist blocs. 111 Cited in ibid., p. 127. 112 Ibid. 113 Quoted in Moshaver, Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, p. 114. 64 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

delegate, V. C. Trivedi, a nuclear energy and disarmament specialist, set the tone for the rhetoric that would mark the Indian approach to disarmament thereafter.114 In a particularly blunt speech in August 1965, itself a departure from the normal Indian approach to international negotiations, he declared that the main problem with disarmament lay not in the intentions of potential proliferators but in the behaviour and approach of the existing nuclear states.115 Security guarantees would not address the insecurities of non-nuclear states, he added; this could only be addressed by credible disarmament on the part of the nuclear weapons states in return for undertakings by the non-nuclear weapons states to refrain from going down the nuclear route.116 Trivedi’s emphasis on the importance of equally balanced, mutual obligations being enshrined in the treaty under negotiation was given considerable importance by Indian analysts.117 Trivedi reserved his most cutting comments, however, for the proposal for international controls on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. In his words, the ‘[i]nstitution of international controls on peaceful reactors and power stations is like an attempt to maintain law and order in a society by placing all its law-abiding citizens in custody while leaving its law-breaking elements free to roam the streets’.118 He would go further, in a speech in 1967 that virtually sealed India’s chances of acquiescing to what was then being portrayed as an unequal treaty. ‘Th e civil nuclear powers’, Trivedi remarked, ‘can tolerate a nuclear weapon apartheid but not an atomic apartheid in their economic and peaceful development’.119 With this, the debate assumed a strongly anti-colonial tone which would eventually generate its own momentum quite apart from the original concerns over safeguarding the option to develop nuclear energy. Discrimination had taken centre stage and though India’s security concerns with regard to China had not diminished, these failed to generate as much emotion as those of principle. Th is emphasis on equality had already been placed at the forefront when Trivedi had declared, early in the negotiations, that a global Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

114 A. Kapur, India’s Nuclear Option, pp. 99, 115. 115 Cited in ibid., p. 136. 116 Ibid. 117 See, for example, Mirchandani, India’s Nuclear Dilemma, p. 129. 118 Cited in A. Kapur, India’s Nuclear Option, p. 136. 119 V. C. Trivedi, speech to the ENDC in 1967 on ‘Peaceful Nuclear Explosives’, reproduced in Jain, Nuclear India, vol. 2, pp. 192–93. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 65

approach to disarmament was vital. In his view, the implications of the confabulations at the ENDC went far beyond nuclear proliferation or even disarmament. ‘Th e attitudes that we take and the approaches that we adopt on this’, he argued, ‘will refl ect our attitudes and approaches on international relations in general’. It was therefore imperative that the negotiations respect ‘the sovereign equality of all nations and the principles of equality and mutual benefi t’.120 Th ree decades later, these phrases too would surface with increasing regularity as India confronted the CTBT. Trivedi eff ectively altered India’s negotiating stance on disarmament. It became much more infl exible, elevating principle over immediate or partial gain, unlike the PTBT negotiations when Nehru had embraced a partial agreement as a fi rst step towards the desired goal. Part of the reason may well have been China, for India rejected the NPT for reasons of discrimination both in terms of dividing the world into nuclear haves and have-nots and in terms of access to the benefi ts of peaceful nuclear energy, and for the lack of credible movement on disarmament.121 Since India had to all intents endorsed the status of the fi rst four nuclear weapons states when it signed the PTBT in 1963, its objections now to the juridical division of the world into two categories would appear to be based on China’s acceptance into the nuclear club. Th is point, however, while referred to in passing by both offi cial and attentive India, was never really made the focus of India’s objection to this treaty. Instead, the China threat was dealt with by repeated hints by various offi cials that India had the capacity to become a nuclear weapons power but had taken a conscious decision to refrain from doing so. Th us, Defence Minister Swaran Singh alluded to India’s ‘restraint’ at the UN General Assembly in October 1967; Foreign Minister Chagla spoke in Parliament in April 1967 of the need for a ‘credible guarantee against the Chinese threat before we give up our right to make the bomb’; and in one of her earliest speeches on nuclear policy, Indira Gandhi stated that the world recognised India’s ability to become a nuclear power, referring to India’s continuing eff orts at ‘increasing our [nuclear] know-how and 122 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 other competence’.

120 Trivedi, speech to the ENDC, February 15, 1965, cited in A. Kapur, India’s Nuclear Option, p. 137. 121 See Moshaver, Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, p. 115. 122 Mirchandani, India’s Nuclear Dilemma, pp. 148–49, 141–46. 66 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

India’s negotiating stance could, however, prove too successful. Indian diplomats at the ENDC had staked out the moral high ground by proclaiming India’s restraint in not developing nuclear weapons when it had both the technical capacity to do so and an obvious threat to spur it on. India aspired to a managing position among the group of great powers based on its moral position. However, when it became clear that the door to the great power club would be closed after China had entered, India found itself in a bind, unable to retract its touted restraint without appearing hypocritical.123 Within the country, the lack of information on the nuclear estate left some analysts and reporters wondering whether the government had a clear nuclear policy. As Th e Statesman warned, any unsupported posturing on India’s part about its nuclear capabilities exposed the country’s peaceful nuclear programme and risked a withdrawal of Canadian support.124 For others, the main point of contention remained India’s right as a sovereign nation to retain the nuclear option; all other considerations, such as nuclear guarantees, were unnecessarily muddying its negotiating waters.125 Yet it is not clear that analysts and editors were instrumental in shaping nuclear opinions within the country. Given the government’s ambivalence on the treaty — apparently the vote on the NPT could have gone either way when Mrs Gandhi’s cabinet sat to discuss the matter in late 1967 — it helped socialise attitudes away from the Nehruvian insistence on disarmament to enable a wider appreciation of the security implications of the NPT.126 Yet in the absence of any real knowledge about the nuclear estate, Indian opinion shapers were handicapped in oﬀ ering any real policy-choices to the government. In the end, the media perhaps acted as a conduit in transmitting shifts in government position to the public, and then disseminating popular reactions to the government’s proposals.127 In the end, Mrs Gandhi chose not to accede to the NPT for considerations of her own political survival. Th e oﬃ cial reasons for the rejection, however, were couched in terms of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 discrimination and security.

123 Abraham, Th e Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb, p. 139. 124 Cited in Mirchandani, India’s Nuclear Dilemma, p. 143. 125 Ibid. 126 A. Kapur, India’s Nuclear Option, p. 196, pp. 175–86. 127 Ibid., p. 186. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 67

The ‘PNE’ of 1974: A ‘Demonstration’ Mrs Gandhi established her presence in Indian nuclear policy-making quite literally with a bang. Th ere had been no lead-up to the dramatic break with India’s declaratory policy of restraint that occurred with its fi rst nuclear test at Pokharan on May 18, 1974, and quite unaccountably, there was little follow-up activity thereafter. Apart from a brief upsurge of jingoistic headlines and national pride, none of which could really qualify as a debate, public discussions on the nuclear question, which had died down after the rejection of the NPT in 1968, settled into a somnolence that remained more or less undisturbed till the 1990s. In the meantime, national attention returned to the pressing concerns of rising prices, economic instability and domestic political upheaval before being eff ectively silenced by the Emergency that Mrs Gandhi declared in June 1975. A Demonstration Mrs Gandhi’s intentions in authorising Pokharan I have been widely discussed. What seems clear is that she was fairly confi dent the test would be well received, given that this was a political decision that she took in consultation with just a handful of advisers. Yet one account of the meeting at which she gave the fi nal authorisation to the scientists appears to indicate that she herself may not have been clear on what she expected to achieve from the test. As Raja Ramanna, then Director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), wrote in his autobiography (interestingly called Years of Pilgrimage), at this meeting in February 1974 Mrs Gandhi’s advisers P. N. Haksar and P. N. Dhar argued against a test, mainly on economic grounds. Th e scientists present — Raja Ramanna, Homi Sethna, then Chairman of the AEC, and B. D. Nag Chaudhury, Scientifi c Adviser to the Defence Minister (who was not included in the group) — contended that given the state of preparations, postponing the test was not practicable. ‘Fortunately for my team’, Ramanna recalled later, ‘Mrs. Gandhi decreed that the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 experiment should be carried out on schedule for the simple reason that India required such a demonstration’.128 What was this a demonstration of? By all accounts, Mrs Gandhi had started thinking of a nuclear test in 1972, well before the domestic

128 Raja Ramanna, Years of Pilgrimage, cited in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 175; emphasis added. 68 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

problems of 1974 began to threaten her political future.129 At that time, she was still reaping the benefi ts of the 1971 war; this decision was therefore not an attempt to strengthen her hold on power.130 Indeed, it may have been taken from a position of strength.131 Th e reasons for testing and her confi dence in its popularity may therefore have had deeper roots. As Mrs Gandhi explained in an interview, which was not published, she was not expecting to reap political dividends from the test.132 Th at, however, did not mean that this would not have been well-received even in the villages where knowledge of the intricacies of nuclear technology could be assumed to be negligible. As she remarked, ‘You would be surprised. Of course they [the villagers] would not understand the PNE as such. But they would understand India’s achievement and that it was done despite the big powers trying to prevent India. It would have been useful for elections. But we did not have any’.133 Th is could eff ectively have been a prediction of popular reactions to India’s next set of nuclear tests 24 years later. Beyond the villages, support for the PNE might have had other origins, though the element of big-power defi ance probably crossed class boundaries. For many in India, the big story of the 1971 war was not the dismemberment of Pakistan but the sailing of the US Seventh Fleet, led by the nuclear capable USS Enterprise.134 Nixon’s motive in deploying this warship has been endlessly debated. Whether this was a crude form of nuclear gunboat diplomacy aimed at subduing India and showing support for Pakistan, or indeed if there had been some deeper logic of signalling ‘constancy’ to China and ‘forcefulness’ to the Soviet Union, the outcome for relations between India and the United

129 Conversation with Ashok Parthasarathy, former Science Adviser to Mrs Gandhi, New Delhi, January 16, 2005; see also Perkovich, ibid., pp. 171–72. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 130 Cf. Sagan, ‘Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?’ 131 Abraham, Th e Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb, p. 17. 132 Indira Gandhi to Rodney Jones, reproduced as an endnote in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 175–76, note 107. 133 Ibid. 134 Indian analysts are remarkably quick to point out the 1971 deployment of the Enterprise; few however, remember that the Enterprise was also ordered out to the Indian Ocean in 1962 as an explicit statement of support for India during the war with China. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 69

States was strongly negative.135 In treating India as a pawn in its larger pursuit of international relations, this American action did more to damage Indian self-esteem than any direct gunboat diplomacy. In the uncertainty of war, the threat was also real.136 Further, the fact that the nuclear blackmail that Indians had been fearing ever since the fi rst Lop Nur explosion came not from China, but from the United States, one of the countries to whom India had turned for a nuclear guarantee against China, rankled deeply. Resentment against American bullying ran high. Th e United States had just given Mrs Gandhi a very good reason to move away from the self-imposed position of nuclear restraint, and given her proclivities at the time, she grasped it with both hands. Yet her reaction to the detonation of a potential nuclear bomb, the semantic callisthenics of dubbing it a peaceful experiment notwithstanding, show that breaking with her father’s legacy was not an easy task (at least in the nuclear fi eld; she appeared much less reticent about subverting his other great achievement, that of democracy). When the then Minister for Information and Broadcasting, I. K. Gujral, wanted to launch a media campaign to celebrate Pokharan I, she rebuff ed the idea, stating fi rmly that there was nothing to celebrate.137 She repeated this in public when she said at a press conference, ‘Th ere is nothing to get excited about. Th is is our normal research and study’. She then felt it necessary to add, ‘we are fi rmly committed to only peaceful uses of atomic energy’.138 In her statement to Parliament on the test, she returned to the theme of discrimination that had begun to mark India’s opposition to the non-proliferation regime. ‘No technology is evil in itself; it is the use that nations make of technology which determines its

135 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 164–66; William J. Barnds, ‘Th e United States and South Asia: Policy and Process’, in Stephen Phillip Cohen, ed., Th e Security of South Asia: American and Asian Perspectives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 155. 136

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Conversation with former Foreign Secretary (1981–84) M. K. Rasgotra, New Delhi, April 7, 2004. Rasgotra was in Washington at the time and recalls that Nixon’s brief to the navy was to ‘do something’, without ever specifying further. 137 Conversation with I. K. Gujral, New Delhi, January 5, 2004. 138 Lewis M. Simons, ‘India Explodes A-Device, Cites “Peaceful Use”’, Washington Post, May 19, 1974, p. A1, cited in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 178. 70 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

character. India does not accept the principle of apartheid in any matter and technology is no exception’.139 Mrs Gandhi was evidently confi dent that she could steer the debate in the direction that she wanted. A little-known story from this time relates to her management of the media before the test.140 Apparently, she had been worried about the test preparations becoming public. Her media adviser and one of the few privy to this secret, H. Y. Sharada Prasad, suggested that she do the unthinkable and tell the media. Over the course of the fortnight leading up to Pokharan I, Prasad proceeded to brief all the leading editors in New Delhi at the time, inviting them over for dinner in batches of fi ve, and swearing them to secrecy in return for this advance warning. Not one of them betrayed this confi dence and on the day following the test, most newspapers were duly able to produce, apparently at short notice, columns of newsprint extolling the benefi ts of peaceful nuclear explosions. Without offi cial backing, talk of the PNE soon died down, overtaken by the more pressing concerns of rising prices, the railways strike, and other disturbances. If there had been any calculus of domestic gains for Indira Gandhi from the test, these were soon belied by developments in late 1974–early 1975. Any shine she might have derived from the test was in any case tarnished by her imposition of the Emergency in June 1975.141 In exposing the fragility of Indian democracy, the Emer- gency injected a cautious new vigour into existing discussions about India’s economic future, the ability of democracy to bring about the redistributive policies necessary to ensure a decent life for most its citizens and to achieve a sense of national cohesion.142 Yet the ease with which Mrs Gandhi subverted the Constitution and disenfranchised the nation — she had muzzled the press, detained thousands without trial and suppressed all opposition — exposed, in the words of

139 Indira Gandhi, ‘Statement re: Underground Nuclear Experiment’, Lok Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Sabha Debates, 5th series, vol. 41, no 1. 140 Conversation with an Indian journalist who is close to Sharada Prasad’s son, UK, May 20, 2007. 141 Mrs Gandhi imposed ‘Emergency’ in a crude attempt to retain political control after the Allahabad High Court ruled against her previous election on grounds of electoral malpractice and debarred her from holding elected oﬃ ce for six years. 142 Shashi Th aroor, India: From Midnight to Millennium (Delhi: Penguin 2000), chapter 8, esp. pp. 201ﬀ . Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 71

Kuldip Nayar, ‘the fallibility of the press, public servants and the judi- ciary […] [along with] the timidity of Indian society’.143 It shocked thinking Indians into realising that intellectual activity, however urgent, would be condemned to remaining completely futile unless there was a means of actually infl uencing policy, in a manner that had not yet been seen.144 Th ough the Emergency lasted only two years, and Mrs Gandhi’s Congress Party was resoundingly defeated in the elections that she called to mark the end of this period, her experiment with dictatorship had long-term pernicious eff ects. Her authoritarian ways and the corruption of politics that they engendered sapped democracy of some of its vitality and self-confi dence, especially at the elite level. Democracy was reduced to the holding of elections, with the effi cacy of debate in shaping policy thrown into increasing doubt.145 Living with the Nuclear ‘Option’ Pohkaran I illustrated the implicit nuclear ‘option’ contained in India’s refusal to sign the NPT. By the time Morarji Desai became Prime Minister, the nuclear question had become something of an albatross for political India, even as it slowly transformed into a touchstone of nationalism for unoffi cial or attentive India. While the political reactions to the PNE were manageable, the regime of technology denial that coalesced in the wake of the test severely hampered India’s space and nuclear programme. Within India, this mesh of embargoes was presented as a crude neo-colonial attempt to restrain India’s technical potential, thereby elevating the nuclear programme into a symbol of Indian resilience, tasked with overcoming technological hurdles indigenously. Th is would continue through Indira Gandhi’s tenure when she returned to power and after her death, during Rajiv Gandhi’s term as Prime Minister. In the meantime, the security dimension of the nuclear question was suppressed. By the early 1980s, Pakistan had become a nuclear threat, and fears of a nuclear exchange between the neighbours were frequently aired outside India, if not within. Yet the question of whether Pakistan had ‘the bomb’ apeared not to disturb too

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 many people, apart from a handful of security analysts who could not gain a large audience for their views.

143 Kuldip Nayar, ‘What If Indira Gandhi Had Not Declared Emergency?’, Outlook, August 23, 2004. 144 Th aroor, India, pp. 218ﬀ . 145 Khilnani, Idea of India, pp. 48, 55. 72 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

The Tarapur Controversy Morarji Desai came to oﬃ ce unilaterally forswearing all nuclear explosions for India, whether for peaceful or military purposes. From his ﬁ rst press conference as Prime Minister, to his speech at the UN Special Session on Disarmament, he rejected the government’s nuclear policy and abjured all nuclear tests.146 He may not have carried his cabinet with him — which included L. K. Advani and Atal Behari Vajpayee of the pro-bomb Jana Sangh — and certainly faced resistance from the opposition in Parliament, but he allowed his strong aversion to nuclear weapons to prevail.147 Yet, he was equally clear that India would not sign the NPT or agree unilaterally to any nuclear-weapon-free-zones (NWFZs) in the absence of global nuclear disarmament, a move which may have tempered the fears of those analysts and policy makers who favoured a more muscular approach. Summing up his attitude, and what percolated into the public sphere, K. Subrahmanyam remarked that the ‘[o]ne thing that Morarji Desai hated more than the nuclear weapons was India being dictated to by the nuclear weapons powers’.148 Desai’s resistance to the NPT was well-received, for by then, any imposition of selective controls on India’s nuclear programme were roundly denounced as heavy-handed neo-colonialism. In the wake of Pokharan I, attempts to gather the country into the non-proliferation fold gathered pace, starting with Canada’s cancellation of all technological assistance to the Indian nuclear programme on the second anniversary of Pokharan I. Th is was followed by the Soviet Union’s insistence on supplying the heavy water denied to India by Canada only on condition that the Indians accept safeguards at the plants which received this assistance. Finally, mainly in response to Pokharan I, the United States changed its domestic laws to pass the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act (NNPA) in 1978, which was to have severe consequences for India’s Tarapur nuclear power plant, built with Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 146 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 200–11. 147 Th ere is an interesting aside to Desai’s unilateral announcement to the General Assembly in June 1978 that India was prepared to give up further tests. He claimed that he read out this portion of his speech to the Cabinet, thereby implying he had their backing. However, it appears that his Cabinet had not paid attention to the speech since it was not on the agenda of the meeting. See K. Subrahmanyam, Shedding Shibboleths: India’s Evolving Strategic Outlook (Delhi: Wordsmiths, 2005), p. 137. 148 Subrahmanyam, ‘Indian Nuclear Policy’, p. 33. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 73

American co-operation in 1963.149 So while the political fall-out from the test had been fairly manageable, the technological repercussions were much worse. Th is test triggered a host of informal technology denial regimes from the Zangger Committee to the London Club and later, the Missile Technology Control Regime, all of which aimed explicitly, as one of their goals, to curb any Indian nuclear weapons programme. For many Indians, however, the NNPA, aﬀ ecting as it did Tarapur, generated the greatest resentment. Indian sensitivities were on display during the visit to India by US President Jimmy Carter in January 1978. Carter arrived before the US Congress had passed the NNPA, but after shipments of fuel for Tarapur (which supplied electricity to large parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat) had been stalled by American non-proliferation regulations. His private remarks to his deputy, on emerging from a meeting with Desai were caught by a reporter’s microphone, thus relaying to India the US president’s decision to write to Desai on his return to the US, to ‘bluntly’ impress upon the latter the need for a stronger commitment to non-proliferation if he was to intercede on India’s behalf to push through the halted fuel shipments.150 Th ough Desai sought to play down the controversy in the interests of better relations with the US, for Indians, this was yet more proof of American bullying. Th ere would be more of this with the NNPA, which was passed by Congress in March of that year. Amongst other things, the NNPA required that all recipients of US nuclear co-operation sign up to full- scope IAEA safeguards on all their nuclear facilities, not just the ones receiving American assistance. Recipients of fuel of US origin were forbidden from reprocessing the spent fuel or conducting any nuclear tests. Finally, and most contentiously, the NNPA was made retroactive, allowing 18 months for the renegotiation of all existing contracts. For Indians, the NNPA smacked of colonialism. Moreover, in requiring the unilateral renegotiation of an existing contract, it was in breach of international law. Had it wanted, New Delhi could have claimed that it abrogated the existing agreement, thereby, in extremis, 151

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 allowing it to reprocess any existing spent fuel. Yet Tarapur exposed Indian dependence on international technological assistance. Perhaps

149 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, 197ﬀ . 150 Ibid., p. 210. 151 See Robert F. Goheen, ‘Problems of Proliferation: US Policy and the Th ird World’, World Politics 35:2 (January 1983), pp. 194–215. 74 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

this vulnerability stoked Indian post-colonial sensitivities, plaguing relations between Washington and New Delhi for several years to come. Further, though attentive India did not appear too exercised about the NNPA at the time it was passed — the instability within the Janata-led coalition government, followed by the elections which returned Mrs Gandhi to power attracted more attention — gradually, the NNPA would be added to the list of technology denial legislation that appeared aimed at keeping India technologically ‘backward’.152 Maintaining a Delicate Balance with the Soviet Union Indian perceptions of American neo-colonialism could have driven New Delhi closer into Moscow’s arms. Indeed, for most of the Cold War period, Mrs Gandhi was famously perceived by the West to ‘tilt’ towards the Soviet Union. For those commentators, India’s non-alignment had a suspiciously pink hue. Yet, India’s relations with the Soviet Union were warm but cautious. Th e country needed the military kit that the Soviet Union was willing to provide on very generous terms, including rupee payment for equipment that would in any case have been more expensive if purchased from western manufacturers, in addition to requiring foreign exchange payments.153 Moreover, the Soviets were also willing in many cases to license production in India, which added to the attractiveness of the deal as Indians were very keen on the transfer of technology along with the equipment. At any rate, it helped add to the belief that India was moving towards self-suﬃ ciency in defence production, however diﬀ erent the actual picture might have been.154 Yet, despite the fact that, by the 1980s, almost 70 per cent of India’s military equipment was of Soviet origin (leading, in fact, to fears in New Delhi of excessive reliance on the USSR and attempts to diversify

152 Th is is discussed further in chapter 3. 153 Chris Smith, India’s Ad hoc Arsenal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 1994), pp. 82–84. 154 Th ere was, however, a twist to this agreement. India could not sell the kit of Soviet origin produced in India abroad, which could have earned India valuable foreign currency. Th e easy terms, which often undercut other producers, also reduced the incentives for India to diversify its procurement or produce the equipment itself. India, by the 1980s, was the world’s largest arms importer, with negligible defence exports despite its large defence R&D establishment. See Stephen P. Cohen, India: Emerging Power (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2001), pp. 142ﬀ . Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 75

its military acquisitions), the political relationship between the two countries proved diffi cult to defi ne precisely. India’s dependence on Soviet kit notwithstanding, Moscow could not wield much infl uence on New Delhi; indeed, India proved itself a prickly friend at the best of times. Certainly, Moscow could not count on New Delhi’s unstinting support for some of its more controversial political and military decisions. Hence, while Mrs Gandhi publicly chose not to draw attention to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, privately, she sent P. V. Narasimha Rao to Moscow, to, in the words of a former Foreign Secretary, ‘scold [Soviet foreign minister, A. A.] Gromyko’.155 Th e Soviet Union, however, chose to staunchly support India at the UN, despite India’s reluctance to come completely within its orbit and there was an infl uential school of thought in India which looked upon the Soviet Union as a ‘true’ friend, as a result.156 Th e Soviet veto on Kashmir — exercised only twice, in 1957 and 1962, but eff ectively threatened thereafter so that Kashmir stayed off the Security Council’s agenda after 1958 (barring a brief attempt in 1962) — provided India with some sense of security that this vulnerable chink would not be probed by the international community.157 Certainly, the absence of this trusted veto was felt keenly when the Cold War ended, and the then Foreign Secretary was informed that, with respect to Kashmir,

155 Conversation with J. N. Dixit, New Delhi, April 5, 2004. Th is unwillingness to lend total support to Moscow had a long history. Apparently Nehru was disturbed by the Soviet invasion of Hungary (though he did not publicly speak out against it, which made him the target of considerable Western criticism). He was very distressed by the subsequent execution of the former Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy in 1968, as he wrote in a letter to the Ambassador to Moscow, K. P. S. Menon (June 28, 1958): ‘Because we restrain ourselves in our utterances, it should not be thought that we do not feel strongly on these subjects. All our moral sense has been deeply shocked.’ From the Subimal Dutt Collection, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Subject File No. 20, June 1958, available at the Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security, at

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=94853&navinfo=96318 (accessed on March 22, 2009). 156 Cohen, India, p. 142. 157 Th e Soviets also exercised their veto in favour of India over Goa in 1961 and three times in December 1971 during the war with Pakistan which resulted in the liberation of Bangladesh. See Global Policy Forum, ‘Subjects of UN Security Council Vetoes’, at http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/membership/veto/ vetosubj.htm (accessed on March 22, 2009). 76 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

India ‘could not expect the same kind of understanding and support as before’.158 What leverage the Soviets exercised in return for this ‘understanding and support’ is diﬃ cult to piece together. For one, India refused to agree to a simple quid pro quo. Once again, New Delhi’s insistence on this independence had long roots, for in 1949 the then Foreign Secretary K. P. S. Menon had remarked at a lecture to the Defence Services Staﬀ College in Wellington (in peninsular India) that India had refused a Soviet request to side with it on Korea in return for support on Kashmir.159 In Menon’s words,

the Soviet Government threw out a hint that if India supported them over Korea, they in return would support us over Kashmir. But we refused to sacriﬁ ce our principles to expediency; and throughout the Kashmir debate in the Security Council, the Soviet Union remained stonily silent.160

Th e stony silence thawed in the following decades but it would appear that the gains for Moscow from this relationship lay mainly in India’s dependence on Soviet armaments. Yet, even in this ﬁ eld there were limits to what India could expect from the Soviet Union, in contrast, perhaps, to the ‘all weather friendship’ between India’s two largest neighbours, Pakistan and China. Not only did India not receive any serious Soviet help on its nuclear programme, the Soviets were careful to insist, after the non-proliferation regime tightened in response to India’s 1974 test, that the nuclear reactors and materials they provided be subject to safeguards.161 Indeed, Moscow was probably as

158 J. N. Dixit, My South Block Years: Memoirs of Foreign Secretary (New Delhi: UBS, 1996), p. 42. 159 At the time, Joseph Stalin was not particularly pro-India, and was in fact quite dismissive of the Indian ambassador to the USSR, Nehru’s sister, Mrs Vijayalakshmi Pandit. Relations improved just before Stalin’s death and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 acquired much warmer tones under Nikita Krushchev. 160 ‘Speech by Indian Foreign Secretary K. P. S. Menon, 1949’, K. P. S. Menon Collection, Speeches and Writings File No 35, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, reproduced in the Parallel History Project, op. cit. 161 Th e USSR provided India with 200 tonnes of heavy water under an agreement signed in 1976, after the Canadians and the Americans withdrew their support to India’s nuclear programme. Th e ﬁ rst 25 per cent was sent immediately, without safeguards. However, the Soviets demanded safeguards on the remaining consignments, sent after a 1977 request from New Delhi. See Perkovich, India’s Nucelar Bomb, p. 201. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 77

unenthusiastic as Washington DC about the prospect of more entrants to the nuclear club; unlike its rival, however, Moscow couched its views on these matters more discreetly.162 In the end, India’s nuclear programme may not have been aff ected signifi cantly by its relationship with the Soviet Union. India was certainly heedful of Soviet and later Russian reservations on this score and, according to one observer, took care to indirectly appraise Moscow of the fact that it was considering a test in 1995 so as to not take Russia by surprise.163 Given the scaling down of relations that occurred in the 1990s, it is entirely possible that India would have been more mindful of Soviet reactions in the 1980s. Yet, this alone probably did not stop India from crossing the nuclear threshold. If anything, the comfort of the Soviet veto may have added to an overall sense of security that should not be discounted when considering India’s motives in welcoming a nuclear test. In the end, the relationship was useful in shielding New Delhi’s vulnerability over Kashmir. Th e dispute over Kashmir enjoys at best a tenuous relationship to India’s motives for going nuclear. But it is an important aspect of the overall sense of security that, in the end, was a not an insignifi cant factor in infl uencing the domestic reception of India’s nuclear tests of 1998. Playing Down the Nuclear Card Mrs Gandhi returned to power in 1980 apparently determined to improve relations with Washington and other western capitals. Th is required overcoming Cold War suspicions, dispelling impressions of proximity to the USSR, generated especially by the 1971 Treaty of Peace,

162 Th ere was, however, some Soviet help in India’s missile programme, including the controversial cryogenic engine deal for India’s rocket launchers (discussed in chapter 3), and help with India’s ‘Advanced Technology Vessel’ (ATV), or nuclear powered guided submarine, the plans of which are apparently based on the Soviet Charlie-II class SSGNs. Incidentally, the Indian missile project had initially received some help from the United States; A. P. J. Abdul Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Kalam (who went on to head the Integrated Guided Missile Development Project) trained at various NASA facilities in 1963–64. See Gary Milhollin, ‘India’s Missiles: With a Little Help From Our Friends’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (November 1989). 163 Conversation with General V. R. Raghavan (retd), New Delhi, September 30, 2008. According to him, the Russians replied with words to the eﬀ ect that such a choice would be India’s sovereign decision but there would be global repercussions and Russia would not defend India in this matter. 78 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Friendship and Cooperation signed between Moscow and New Delhi before the third war with Pakistan, and moving relations beyond the non-proliferation straitjacket that had constrained New Delhi’s dealings with Washington after 1974.164 Accordingly, Mrs Gandhi conceded a signifi cant amount in trying to come to an amicable understanding with the United States on an alternative fuel supplier for Tarapur, which was fi nally achieved after her very successful state visit to Washington in July 1982.165 As a result, while Tarapur remained a diplomatic head- ache for some years, it was not allowed to become a focus for popular anti-American sentiment in public opinion, or indeed divert more attention (not all of it perhaps welcome) to the nuclear programme.166 India’s reliance on an external fuel supplier exposed the hollowness of the claims to self-suffi ciency touted regularly by the atomic estate. Th ough occasional articles in some periodicals would point to the lack of achievement by the DAE, by and large public opinion never became exercised over this matter to the extent where the nuclear establishment could be called to account for its uninspiring performance in producing electricity for the nation’s growing needs.167

164 Rumours persist that Mrs Gandhi considered conducting another nuclear test in 1982–83, but changed her mind after 24 hours. See Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 242ff . Th ese has been denied by her Foreign Secretary at the time, M. K. Rasgotra, who argued that she set too much stock on improving relations with the US to contemplate such a move. Conversation with M. K. Rasgotra, New Delhi, April 7, 2004. Yet Dr V. S. Arunachalam, then Scientifi c Adviser to the Defence Minister, claimed in 1999 that a test had been authorised in 1983 but cancelled when US satellites discovered test preparations. See Kargil Review Committee, From Surprise to Reckoning: Th e Kargil Review Committee Report (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000), p. 203. Whatever the truth, this temporary change of heart by Mrs Gandhi did not make it into the public domain. 165 France was the compromise third party supplier, and India agreed to maintain safeguards on the power plant. A detailed account of the Tarapur Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 dispute is contained in Satu P. Limaye, US-Indian Relations: Th e Pursuit of Accommodation (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993). 166 George Perkovich notes that a public opinion survey conducted soon after the resolution of Tarapur indicated that the majority of people questioned did not know enough about the dispute to off er an opinion on who the resolution favoured. See Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 239. 167 See, for example, Jay Dubashi, ‘A Perennial Problem’, India Today, June 16–30, 1978; Dipa Jaywant, ‘Bleak Prospects’, India Today, August 16–31, 1980; Jay Dubashi, ‘A Blueprint for Frustration’, India Today, August 16–31, 1980. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 79

Instead, the nuclear programme continued to be shielded from public scrutiny in the name of nationalist defi ance. And with the launch of the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) in 1983, Indian opinion received another point of focus for nationalist sentiments, one where the potential military uses were again obfuscated in the shuffl e of projecting the scientifi c achievement of a series of ‘technology demonstrators’.168 For those who were paying attention — mainly defence analysts and the military — of the fi ve missiles under development in this programme — the short range surface-to-surface Prithvi; the medium range Agni ballistic missile; and an anti-tank missile and two surface-to-air missiles — the fi rst two had obvious strategic value as potential nuclear delivery systems. Th e Prithvi would be useful against Pakistan, though probably loaded with a conventional warhead. However, the Agni, which required that the establishment master the technology required for a missile’s re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere, made strategic sense only if it were to carry a nuclear warhead. If successfully developed, it would also fi nally give India a credible deterrent against China. Yet when the Prithvi was fi rst successfully tested in 1988, Prime Min- ister Rajiv Gandhi chose to direct attention elsewhere. As he declared in Parliament, Prithvi’s fl ight took India into ‘the select group of four nations which have developed this class of surface-to-surface missiles. Th is missile is based on the indigenous design and development eff orts of the DRDO [Defence Research and Development Organisation]’.169 Chauvinism was being played up over potential military applications (DRDO and the Army would have diff erences of opinion over the Prithvi when it was fi nally off ered to the latter in 1992).170 In the words of one scientist, the test ‘signalled our coming of age’.171 With this fi rst major, visible achievement the nationalist message was becoming more explicit: India’s missile programme was intimately connected with the nation’s continuing quest for modernity and development.

168

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 For more on the establishment of the missile programme, see Chengappa, Weapons of Peace, esp. chapters 20–22. 169 Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, statement in Parliament, February 25, 1988, quoted in ibid., p. 319. 170 For potential problems with the Prithvi, see W. P. S. Sidhu, ‘Tactical Gap’, India Today, September 15, 1992; Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 295–96. 171 Shekhar Gupta, ‘Shooting Ahead’, India Today, March 31, 1989. 80 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Th is theme would grow in importance in the 1990s as the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), established in 1988, increasingly tried to limit exports to India’s missile programmes to curb the development of missiles with a range in excess of 300 km. Th e MTCR would really begin to upset Indian sensitivities after the Agni was successfully fl ight-tested in 1989.172 After the test, the United States promptly cancelled the export of a previously agreed rocket testing system, the Combined Acceleration Vibration Climatic Test System (CAVCTS). Th e Cray XMP-22 supercomputer, a successor to the previously supplied XMP-14 was delayed by Congress until December 1990, and then released only after additional conditions had been agreed upon.173 In addition to the obvious diplomatic snub inherent in these steps, the denial of the CAVCTS impeded progress on the missile programme, while the deferral of the Cray delayed India’s upgrading of its weather forecasting abilities.174 Th e link between patriotism and the missile programme became even more explicit with the fi rst successful test of the Agni in May 1989. For India Today, the launch ‘propelled India into an exclusive club dominated by the world’s technological and military giants’.175 Signifi - cantly, the Agni was presented as a ‘technology demonstrator’, rather than a prototype deterrent against China, an euphemism that would not be dropped until 1999. Th e defence potential of the project was couched in terms that unambiguously connected security and development. Announcing the launch, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi reminded the nation that ‘technological backwardness also leads to subjugation; never again will we allow our freedom to be so compromised’.176 Th ough India Today recognised that the Agni could potentially provide India with the nuclear deterrent vis-à-vis China, the offi cial line, in Rajiv Gandhi’s words, remained that the missile provided the country with ‘self-reliant’ defence capability that ‘off ers us [India] the option of developing the ability to deliver conventional weapons at high precision at long ranges. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

172 Sidhu, Enhancing Indo-US Strategic Cooperation, pp. 26–28. 173 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 302. 174 Chengappa, Weapons of Peace, p. 350; see also Sidhu, Enhancing Indo-US Strategic Co-operation, pp. 44–50. 175 Dilip Bobb and Amarnath K. Menon, ‘Chariot of Fire’, India Today, June 15, 1989. 176 Rajiv Gandhi, Statement on the Agni launch, May 22, 1989, cited in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 301. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 81

This provides us with viable non-nuclear options of the greatest relevance to contemporary strategic doctrines’.177 Regaining the Moral High Ground Th e insistence on conventional defence was not just a bluff : India in the 1980s appears to have attempted to regain the moral high ground in the fi eld of disarmament. It began with Indira Gandhi’s Six-Nation Five-Continent Appeal, in which Mrs Gandhi joined the leaders of Argentina, Greece, Mexico, Sweden and Tanzania in a radio broadcast on May 22, 1984, calling for a freeze on all testing, production and deployment of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems.178 Her contribution echoed an earlier speech in March 1983 at the Seventh Non-Aligned Summit, held in New Delhi, in which Mrs Gandhi had warned against the increasing ‘lethality’ of nuclear weapons, speaking of her fear that humanity could be destroyed many times over by existing stockpiles.179 Once again, proliferation was being made a global problem, in which the intentions of the existing nuclear powers were as much a part of the problem as those of potential proliferators. Offi cial rhetoric on this matter emphasised the matter of ‘principle’, and the rejection of the ‘legitimisation’ of the possession of nuclear weapons by a select group, as P. V. Narasimha Rao, the then Minister for External Aff airs in Mrs Gandhi’s cabinet, informed the UN General Assembly at the

177 Bobb and Menon, ‘Chariot of Fire’; Rajiv Gandhi quoted in Chengappa, Weapons of Peace, p. 349. 178 Cited in Mani Shankar Aiyar, ‘Towards a Nuclear-Weapons-Free and Non-Violent World Order’, Statement at the Satyagraha Conference on January 29–30, 2007, New Delhi. 179 Ibid. Mrs Gandhi also sent a message to the Second Special Session on Disarmament, in which she outlined a ﬁ ve-point programme calling for UN-led nuclear disarmament to be preceded by a freeze on the production and testing of weapons and ﬁ ssile material, and an agreement on the non-use of nuclear

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 weapons. Th e then External Aﬀ airs Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao repeated this message in a speech to the General Assembly later that year in October 1982. Th ough not much noticed at the time, it would feed into later Indian arguments about the country’s commitment to complete nuclear disarmament, the tests of 1998 and subsequent declaration of India as a nuclear weapons state, notwithstanding. See, for example, N. D. Jayaprakash, ‘Impediments to the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons–II’, People’s Democracy, Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) 29: 35, August 28, 2005. 82 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Second Special Session on Disarmament (SSOD).180 Explaining India’s rejection of NWFZs, he remarked that ‘peace […] is indivisible; so is nuclear disarmament — it cannot be piecemeal in terms of geographical extent’.181 Further, disarmament, as undertaken by nuclear states and their allies, made a mockery of the NPT by focussing selectively on preventing horizontal proliferation while eliding completely the obligation of the nuclear states to reduce their arsenals, under Article VI of this treaty. Rao’s critique of the emphasis on ‘arms control’, which sanctiﬁ ed the division of the world into nuclear haves and nuclear have-nots, and ‘arms limitation’, which implied an understanding amongst nuclear powers to tolerate a certain exclusive level of nuclear armament, illustrated well how the rhetoric of disarmament had become intertwined with other projects of nationalism, nation-building and concepts of security within India. As Rao explained, India’s objection to these two terms ‘is not merely a matter of semantics but quite clearly a matter of substance. One wonders then whether the game of disarmament in the nuclear age is, inter alia, an eﬀ ort by the Great Powers to control smaller countries — shall we say one of the modern versions of colonialism and imperialism?’182

180 P. V. Narasimha Rao, Speech to the General Assembly on the occasion of the 2nd Special Session on Disarmament (SSOD), June 11, 1982, at www. indianembassy.org (accessed on September 1, 2009). Such sessions of the United Nations General Assembly began as a special initiative, mainly at the behest of the developing countries, to focus exclusively on disarmament. Th e aim was to move countries away from a spiralling nuclear and conventional arms race and down a path towards achievable global disarmament. Th e fi rst SSOD-I was held in New York from May to July, 1978, and was the most successful of the sessions, producing a Final Document that comprehensively discussed disarmament issues. Reaffi rming the integral importance of disarmament to international peace and security, this document set out mechanisms for strengthening the disarmament machinery within the UN system. Acting on the recommendations of the SSOD-I, the General Assembly established Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 a revitalised Disarmament Commission, comprising all members of the UN and also strengthened the mandate of the newly reformed Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, a successor to the earlier Conference of the Committee of Disarmament (1969–78). SSOD-II was held in 1982, amidst heightened Cold War tensions and unsurprisingly failed to reach a consensus. Th ough SSOD-III was held in more propitious circumstances in 1988, the members were unable to reach unanimity on the fi nal document. A fourth session has been due to be held since 1997. 181 Ibid. 182 Ibid. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 83

During this decade, the SSODs became an important pulpit for Indian disarmament diplomacy. India’s most high-profi le and most domestically infl uential attempt at reclaiming the moral high ground in the nuclear debate occurred when Rajiv Gandhi presented the General Assembly with an ‘Action Plan for Ushering in a Nuclear Weapon- Free and Non-Violent World Order’.183 Whether Gandhi’s Action Plan was motivated by idealism or by a pragmatic assessment of an unfav- ourable strategic environment in the wake of confi rmed Pakistani weapons capability and a solidifying nuclear regime that left India at a disadvantage militarily, technically and economically, remains de- bateable.184 Even though it failed, in suggesting non-discriminatory safeguards, inspections and monitoring of implementation, it represented a thoughtful and realistic approach to achieving verifi able and complete nuclear disarmament within a defi nite timeframe. For those paying attention, the Action Plan also represented the NPT bargain ‘spelled out’.185 Th e threshold states would undertake not to cross the rubicon as long as the nuclear weapon states took verifi able steps towards achieving complete nuclear disarmament within a specifi ed timeframe. Yet, not many analysts within India spent much energy focussing on the implications of this undertaking. Instead, this plan was held up as proof of India’s unshakeable commitment to nuclear disarmament, despite rumours that scientists in the atomic establishment supported the proposal only because they believed it would buy them time to develop a viable nuclear deterrent, which India

183 ‘Action Plan for Ushering in A Nuclear-Weapon-Free and Non-Violent World Order’, Speech to the Th ird Special Session on Disarmament, United Nations General Assembly, June 9, 1988, CD/859. 184 K. Subrahmanyam suggests that Gandhi was ambivalent towards weaponisation and would have preferred not to impose the economic costs of a weapons programme on the country. See K. Subrahmanyam, ‘Politics of Shakti’, Th e Times of India, May 26, 1998. J. N. Dixit emphasised Gandhi’s ‘two-pronged’

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 approach to managing the nuclear threat by proposing his disarmament plan but backing this up with an energised weaponisation programme in case the disarmament initiative failed. Conversation with J. N. Dixit, New Delhi, April 5, 2004. See also, J. N. Dixit, Makers of India’s Foreign Policy: Raja Ram Mohun Roy to Yashwant Sinha (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2004), pp. 188–205. Most analysts, however, agree that the DRDO was given the green signal in 1989, after it was clear that the Action Plan would be ignored by the N5. 185 Conversation with Arundhati Ghose, former Ambassador to the Con- ference on Disarmament, New Delhi, January 10, 2005. 84 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

in the late 1980s did not possess.186 Whatever Rajiv Gandhi’s motives in producing the Action Plan, his government put a lot of energy into building support for the proposal, including support to a well-publicised conference examining the prospects for nuclear disarmament.187 Refer- ring to the atmosphere then, Muchkund Dubey, the main drafter of this plan recalled that they ‘genuinely believ[ed] that we were pursuing nuclear disarmament at the time’.188 Regardless of the outcome of the proposal though, the Action Plan became important because the Con- gress Party saw it as perhaps India’s last chance at retaining some claim to exceptionalism. It also helped burnish the politically vital Nehruvian legacy. In some ways, this plan gained in prominence after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, held up by his widow as proof of the Nehru– Gandhi dynasty’s, and by extension the Congress Party’s, commitment to a non-violent, nuclear-weapon-free world.189

186 According to a very senior offi cial in the MEA at the time, New Delhi had accepted that Pakistan had achieved weaponisation by the year 1985–86. Against this backdrop of continuing non-proliferation pressure on India amid rumours of advances in the Pakistani programme (detailed in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 265ff .), the Scientifi c Adviser to the Defence Minister put forward a Treaty for the Elimination of Nuclear Arms. Th is was so transparently an attempt to buy time for the atomic estate that the MEA was instructed to step in and produce a more credible plan. Conversation with a former high ranking offi cial in the MEA, New Delhi, January 2005. 187 Conversation with Muchkund Dubey, the then senior policy offi cial in the MEA in charge of disarmament, and later Foreign Secretary, New Delhi, August 24, 2005. Dubey wrote articles on disarmament to bolster the initiative and the proceedings of the conference were published as a book, Towards a Nuclear Weapon-Free World (Delhi: Vikas, 1988). 188 Ibid. 189 The Rajiv Gandhi Foundation organised a conference on nuclear disarmament titled ‘Th e Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Initiative for the Advancement Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 of Human Civilization’ on May 1 and 2, 1993, to which various international luminaries were invited. Th e stated objective of the conference was to ‘strengthen world opinion in favour of the Action Plan’. See, ‘Statements and Declarations’, Th e Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Initiative, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, Delhi, 1993. Th e Action Plan was also referred to in the initial Congress reactions to the 1998 tests until the party was forced to acknowledge that Rajiv Gandhi had had a hand in authorising the weaponisation of India’s nuclear capability. Nevertheless, on November 14, 1998 (the birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru), Sonia Gandhi inaugurated the Rajiv Gandhi Chair for Peace and Disarmament at the School Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 85

Playing Down the Nuclear Threat At this time, offi cial rhetoric remained infl uential, if only to set the parameters of a later debate, which occurred in the following decade. Apart from K. Subrahmanyam, who as head of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses expended much energy advocating a more robust nuclear policy for the country, there were few analysts arguing in favour of Indian nuclear weapons.190 Th e only other prominent exception was Lieutenant General (later General and Chief of Army Staff ) K. Sundarji, who had been advocating nuclear weapons for India from the early 1980s, but within the classifi ed confi nes of army circles as he was still a serving offi cer.191 Th ere is also a case to be made that the two, along with Raja Ramanna from BARC, who had been pushing for a more robust nuclear programme, were later co-opted by the government when they were drafted into a secret committee established by Rajiv Gandhi

of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, invoking the Action Plan and the dynasty’s commitment to disarmament in her speech at the inaugural ceremony. After the Congress Party’s return to power in a coalition government in 2004, the disarmament rhetoric has been stepped up, with working papers and speeches at the UN, NAM summits, etc. Th e peak of these eff orts to date is perhaps the ‘Satyagraha Conference’ organised by the Congress Party in January 2007, to mark the centenary of M. K. Gandhi’s Satyagraha Movement. Mani Shankar Aiyar, a close associate of Rajiv Gandhi’s and a minister in the Manmohan Singh Government, presented a paper on reviving the Action Plan. See Aiyar, ‘Towards a Nuclear-Weapons-Free’. 190 India Today remarked in March 1987 that barring K. Subrahmanyam and K. Sundarji, ‘the Indian Government appears to have no identifi able bomb lobby’. See Dilip Bobb and Raminder Singh, ‘Pakistan’s Nuclear Bombshell’, India Today, March 31, 1987. 191 While Commandant of the Mhow College of Combat, Lt-General Sundarji commissioned a series of papers on nuclear warfare with regard to the Indian army which eff ectively represented the fi rst high-level study specifi c to the Indian army on combat in a nuclear environment. Th e papers had very limited Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 circulation, mainly within army circles, and it is not clear that Sundarji managed to pull many senior army offi cers into a pro-nuclear camp, but the exercise nevertheless updated the army’s thinking on these matters to some extent. See Lt-General K. Sundarji, ed., ‘Eff ects of Nuclear Asymmetry on Conventional Deterrence’, Combat Papers (Mhow), no. 1 (April 1981), and Lt-General K. Sundarji, ed., ‘Nuclear Weapons in Th ird World Context’,Combat Papers (Mhow), no. 2 (August 1981). 86 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

to examine India’s defence needs.192 In these circumstances, they may well have decided to hold their criticism while they had direct access to the Prime Minister.193 For most other Indians, the threat appeared internal and conventional. Calls for autonomy and secessionist demands, often accompanied by killings and abductions in Punjab and the North-East, growing unrest in Kashmir and Naxal violence in the central states, raised questions about the ability of the centre to hold. Mrs Gandhi’s somewhat paranoid propensity to see a ‘foreign hand’ in every street disturbance and riot also added to the sense that the idea of a uniﬁ ed India was under threat.194 Her assassination after the army operation on the Golden Temple led to widespread anti-Sikh riots that left thousands dead.195 Security, in this period, acquired very local and immediate connotations. Under Rajiv Gandhi, the fears that Pakistan was stoking insurgency in Punjab continued to feed these anxieties. Th e solution though appeared not to lie in the possession of nuclear weapons. Th e threat from Pakistan was treated as a conventional challenge, even though there were signs from the early 1980s that considerable progress had been made across the border on their nuclear weapons

192 Subrahmanyam, ‘Politics of Shakti’. It was interesting that the armed forces were well represented in this group, a departure from the traditional Indian approach to defence planning. See also Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 273–75. 193 According to Subrahmanyam, the task force set up by the committee to examine the costs of a nuclear deterrent presented Rajiv Gandhi with a report in late 1985–early 1986 outlining the costs of an aﬀ ordable deterrent. Th e report, however, was evidently set aside for the group never met again. See Subrahmanyam, ibid. 194 See M. J. Akbar, India: Th e Siege Within (New Delhi: Penguin, 1985). 195 Th e Golden Temple in Amritsar is one of the holiest shrines of the Sikhs. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 It had been used as a safe haven in the early 1980s by a militant Sikh group demanding an independent state of Khalistan. Mrs Gandhi ordered the army to go in to ﬂ ush out the militants in June 1984 which resulted in the highly controversial Operation Bluestar. Several innocent devotees were killed during the operation (especially as it was carried out during a festival, which had attracted additional visitors), which also damaged the shrine. In the aftermath, several Sikh regiments reportedly mutinied. Mrs Gandhi’s assassination in October 1984 at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards was allegedly to avenge that operation. Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 87

programme.196 Yet, inﬂ uenced by a history of three wars over Kashmir, India chose to focus on the conventional threat that Pakistan posed in Kashmir and increasingly, Punjab. India also adopted a schizophrenic approach to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme. Indian scientists, for one, refused to accept that Pakistan had the expertise to enrich uranium and develop nuclear devices.197 Th e Indian government too remained cautious when referring to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme in order not to upset relations between the two countries on this matter.198 It is also arguable that acknowledging a Pakistani nuclear threat would be politically inadvisable unless the government were prepared to decisively address it. When the government did focus on it, the Pakistani nuclear programme was made a global problem, as with Rajiv Gandhi’s pronouncements on Pakistan’s nuclear programme in the early days of his premiership.199 Gandhi’s strategy appeared to focus on Pakistan’s clandestine acquisition of nuclear capability, mainly from Western sources, which implied that these countries were not being vigilant enough in adhering to their own rules about technology transfer.200 At the same time, he was careful to reiterate India’s decision not to seek nuclear weapons.201 He would also stress that unlike the Indian nuclear

196 Unlike the Indian programme, the Pakistani nuclear programme was weapons-oriented and threat-specifi c from the start, which allowed them to adopt a more effi cient and cost-eff ective route towards achieving a credible deterrent. See Moshaver, Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, p. 107. 197 Conversation with a high ranking former MEA offi cial, New Delhi, January 2005. 198 Shrikant Paranjpe, Parliament and the Making of Indian Foreign Policy: A Study of Nuclear Policy (New Delhi: Radiant, 1997), p. 59. 199 One commentator would later remark that Gandhi took this practice so far ‘in the early heady days of 1985’ as to issue ‘virtually’ daily statements to the press on ‘Pakistan’s clandestine quest for nuclear capability’. See Inder Malhotra, ‘A Statement A Day […] Like Old Times’, India Abroad, May 11, 1990, p. 2. 200

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 See, for example, William Stewart and Ross H. Munro, ‘An Interview with Rajiv Gandhi’, Time, October 21, 1985; Peter R. Cann, Donald A. Macdonald and Matt Miller, ‘Gandhi of the Computer Age’, Wall Street Journal, September 26, 1985; see also Rajiv Gandhi’s speech to the All India Congress Committee on May 4, 1985, quoted in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 264. 201 Rajiv Gandhi was especially critical of the United States for doing too little to stop the Pakistani nuclear programme in interviews just before his ﬁ rst major visit to the US, in June 1985. See Perkovich, ibid., pp. 267–68. 88 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

complex which was completely under civilian control, the Pakistani nuclear programme was run by the military.202 At the time, rumours of a planned Indian pre-emptive strike on the Pakistani nuclear facilities at Kahuta had also gained in popularity, leading to the Prime Minister having to repeatedly deny any Indian intentions on that ground. As Rajiv Gandhi explained in an interview, such a strike ‘was not our style.[…] We don’t want to get dragged into a confl ict’.203 Rajiv Gandhi’s statement essentially summed up Indian priorities at the time. Th e country was too embroiled in domestic turmoil to risk any confrontation with Pakistan, especially at a time when Cold War calculations had ensured Washington’s unswerving support for Islamabad in return for Pakistani help with the war against the USSR in Afghanistan.204 Yet the rumours of an Israeli-style attack by India persisted. Eventually the two governments began discussions on an agreement not to attack each other’s nuclear facilities after a meeting between Rajiv Gandhi and General Zia ul-Haq in December 1985. Th e agreement was signed by Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto and ratifi ed in 1991.205 In the meantime, the intermittent Pakistani announcements about the country’s nuclear capability increased in frequency from early 1985, off ered most often by the metallurgist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who had been responsible for setting up the uranium enrichment facility at Kahuta.206 Each interview or report usually sparked some calls in India

202 Mushahid Hussain, ‘India Not an Emerging Colossus, Says Gandhi’, IPS–Inter Press Service, April 3, 1989. 203 Cann, et al., ‘Gandhi of the Computer Age’. 204 Th e Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had led to the United States off ering Pakistan a very generous military aid package, updating much of its old equipment in return for Islamabad’s help in fi ghting the Soviets. India soon embarked on an ambitious military modernisation programme of its own, with defence acquisitions peaking in 1987. See, Michael Byrnes, ‘A Silent Superpower Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 on Our “Doorstep”’, Australian Financial Review, December 3, 1987; Ross H. Munro, ‘India: Th e Awakening of an Asian Power’,Time , April 3, 1989. 205 Th is agreement requires the two countries to exchange lists of nuclear facilities annually. Th e fi rst list (though incomplete) was exchanged on January 1, 1992, and the practice continues. Th e exchange always receives mention in the newspapers. See also, Mitchell Reiss, ‘South Asia: Th e Zero-Sum Subcontinent?’, in Reiss, Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain their Nuclear Ambition (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 1995), pp. 197–98. 206 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, 263ff . Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 89

for a nuclear weapons programme, but Rajiv Gandhi was able to override all demands made in Parliament (generally by the then politically weak BJP); journalistic interest in the matter never amounted to anything more than a brief fl icker which was soon replaced by another news item.207 In short, though there was some talk of the Pakistani ‘bomb’, it failed to become a major concern for attentive India, much less for the wider Indian public. Perhaps a measure of Indian attention to nuclear matters may be gained from a small episode in late 1985. Rajiv Gandhi was attending the golden jubilee of the Doon School, which before Independence had taught boys from both sides of the border.208 General Zia ul-Haq had granted offi cial status to the Pakistani delegation attending the festiv- ities.209 When Rajiv Gandhi met a small group of this delegation for the fi rst time, their unoffi cial spokesman, Kamal Faruquee, after concluding the offi cial niceties of greeting the Prime Minister said that to the best of his knowledge, Pakistan did not have the bomb. Th e group of Indians and Pakistanis surrounding the Prime Minister and this delegation laughed, and the matter was dismissed. Th at the question of nuclear weapons in either country should have been brought up at all in these circumstances was surprising enough; that it was disposed of as a good natured joke was perhaps a telling commentary on just how seriously the question was taken by attentive India. Brasstacks: A Nuclear Crisis? Th is is not to say that this period was entirely free of nuclear calculations. By all accounts, the Brasstacks crisis of late 1986–early 1987 contained a potential nuclear dimension, but one that was hidden from the public,

207 Th e BJP tried to increase pressure on the government after Good Morning America reported a successful Pakistani test of the non-nuclear explosive trigger in 1985. Th e press, reporting on their eﬀ orts, called for greater clarity on nuclear policy. However, the government was able to ride the protest by Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 referring to India’s nuclear ‘option’, while not promising any immediate change in policy. Ibid., p. 270. 208 Th is episode is drawn from the oﬃ cial video recording of the Doon School Golden Jubilee Celebrations, distributed by the Doon School in 1985. Rajiv Gandhi had studied at Doon School. 209 Michael Hamlyn, ‘Old School Ties Renewed at India’s Eton’, Th e Times, November 2, 1985. 90 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

and therefore not part of the nuclear debate, such as it was. Th e crisis originated in ambitious Indian plans for the largest military exercise in the subcontinent, about which India did not inform Pakistan, resulting in a defensive reaction from Islamabad.210 Snowballing misperceptions and a lack of communication on both sides almost resulted in a hot war, which however, was averted when the dormant hotline between the two countries was fi nally activated in late January 1987. Th e stand-off was substantially over by early February, followed by troop withdrawals from the border. Th e main nuclear stories from this episode however, emerged later. To begin with, A. Q. Khan gave an interview to an Indian journalist, Kuldip Nayar, on January 28, in which he claimed that Pakistan had the ability to produce nuclear weapons and would ‘use the bomb if our existence is threatened’.211 However, this interview was not published until March 1, in London’s Observer, by which time the crisis was over. If Nayar passed on the gist of the interview to the government in the interim, it was never made public. Yet, Nayar’s intervention may not have been required. According to a recent study, nuclear warnings were apparently issued when the then Ambassador to Islamabad was summoned to the Pakistan Foreign Offi ce in January 1987 and informed that in the event of a threat to Pakistan’s territorial integrity, ‘Pakistan was capable of infl icting unacceptable damage’, which, moreover, could spread to Bombay.212 It was a nuclear ultimatum that the Indian government evidently did not want to acknowledge as this episode was not made public until after both countries went nuclear. For the rest of the decade, Pakistan continued to hint at its nuclear capabilities, which India preferred to ignore at a political and diplomatic level.213 New Delhi by then had confi rmation of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capability, but it seemed as though the

210 For a comprehensive account of the origins and resolution of the crisis, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 see Kanti Bajpai, Pervaiz I. Cheema, S. Ganguly, P. R. Chari and S. P. Cohen, Brasstacks and Beyond: Perception and Management of Crisis in South Asia (New Delhi: Manohar, 1995). 211 Cited in Joeck, Maintaing Nuclear Stability in South Asia, p. 21. Khan later denied the story and claimed that no interview was ever given. 212 Former Indian Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to Islamabad S. K. Singh’s deposition to the Kargil Review Committee, From Surprise to Reckoning, p. 191. 213 Ibid., pp. 190ﬀ . Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 91

government was either unwilling or unable to respond to this threat, either politically or militarily.214 Brasstacks illustrated that by the mid-to late 1980s, the locus of threat had shifted from China to Pakistan. Th e growing pragmatism in Indian approaches to China was cemented by Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to the Middle Kingdom in 1988, the fi rst by an Indian Prime Minister since Jawaharlal Nehru’s tour in 1954.215 Gandhi’s overtures led to the establishment of Joint Working Groups to settle the border dispute, signalling thereby a growing acceptance that the China threat would have to be managed. As he remarked in December 1987, ‘We have lived with the Chinese bomb now for several years without feeling that we must produce our own’.216 And yet it was not as though Indians had no grounds for concern. Tensions between the two countries briefl y fl ared up in late 1986 and early 1987 when the Indian Parliament formally recognised the North East Frontier Agency, claimed by China, as Arunachal Pradesh, an Indian state.217 Th is episode accompanied a brief skirmish in Sumdurong Chu over disputed army movements during this period and a confrontation occasioned by the Indian army’s exercise, Operation Checkerboard, in 1988. Despite these irritants the border talks, which had started in 1981, continued and India was careful to calibrate its responses to Chinese

214 K. Subhrahmanyam suggests that between 1987 and 1990, India was vulnerable to a Pakistani nuclear attack as the Indian deterrent only materialised in the 1990s, following Rajiv Gandhi’s go-ahead to the nuclear establishment in the late 1980s. See Subrahmanyam, ‘Indian Nuclear Policy’, p. 44. J. N. Dixit recalls ‘congratulating’ the Pakistani High Commissioner to Sri Lanka on his country’s attaining nuclear weapons capability in 1987. Conversation with J. N. Dixit, New Delhi, April 5, 2004. 215 Gandhi’s visit was in part prompted by the growing rapprochement between the USSR and China. See Surjit Mansingh, ‘India-China Relations in the Post-Cold War Era’, Asian Survey, 34:3 (March 1994), pp. 286–87. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 216 Rajiv Gandhi interview to Egypt’s Al Jumhuriyah, December 3, 1987, quoted in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 290. 217 See Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu and Jing-dong Yuan, ‘Resolving the Sino- Indian Border Dispute: Building Conﬁ dence through Cooperative Monitoring’, Asian Survey 41:2 (February 2001), pp. 353ﬀ , and Sumit Ganguly, ‘Th e Sino- Indian Border Talks, 1981–1989: Th e view from New Delhi’,Asian Survey 29:12 (December 1989), pp. 1123–135. 92 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

allegations of incursions into its territory and to the Tibet question.218 Yet the apparent willingness of both sides to improve relations notwithstanding, the sixth round of border talks in 1986 ran into diffi culty over Indian allegations of Chinese help to the Pakistani nuclear programme, and the inclusion of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a threat in the Indian Ministry of Defence’s annual threat assessment.219 Chinese assistance to the Pakistani nuclear programme was by then well known in Indian intelligence circles, though the matter was not given much airing in the press.220 On the whole, Indians seemed keen not to provoke tensions along the China border. In sum, despite developments in Pakistan and China, Indian threat perceptions remained mainly internally focussed and centred on national concerns. Mounting domestic political instability also distracted attention away from greater strategic matters. By mid-1987, the Rajiv Gandhi government, having started off with huge promise and an overwhelming parliamentary majority, seemed increasingly beleaguered by scandals of corruption, especially over the very high profi le Bofors arms deal, which threatened to touch even the Prime Minister.221 Bofors occupied pages of column space in newspapers, becoming a major election issue in 1989, just two years after the country almost went to war with

218 Ganguly, ‘Sino-Indian Border Talks’, pp. 1130–31ff . Ganguly mentions that Rajiv Gandhi’s government was sharply criticised by the Indian press for off ering too much on Tibet without demanding corresponding assurances from China viz. Sikkim, Kashmir and Punjab. 219 Ganguly, ‘Sino-Indian Border Talks’, p. 1129. 220 See Subrahmanyam, ‘Politics of Shakti’, and G. Parthasarthy, ‘Pakistan’s Nuclear and Missile Programme: Th e Multiple Dimensions’,Rediff on the Net, August 30, 2000, at http://www.rediff .com/news/2000/aug/30gp.htm (accessed on June 10, 2004). 221 Th e Bofors scandal involved allegations of illegal payments or ‘kickbacks’ amounting to Rs 64 crore — at the time by far the largest corruption scandal Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 in India — on a deal to procure 155 mm howitzer fi eld guns from the Swedish arms agency Bofors AB. Swedish radio fi rst broadcast allegations of bribes in April 1987. Th ese charges came close on the heels of corruption charges on another arms deal involving the German HDW submarine. It was rumoured at the time that the benefi ciaries included people close to the Gandhi family. Rajiv Gandhi was never able to decisively refute the charges which tarnished the remaining years of his premiership and contributed signifi cantly to his electoral defeat in 1989. For the political eff ects of the Bofors scandal, see Vir Sanghvi, ‘Bofors’ Ghost’, Seminar 485 (January 2000). Establishing India’s Nuclear Rhetoric ( 93

Pakistan. For many, Bofors was still a much more evocative issue than the bomb. Conclusion Th e contrast in attitudes of India’s attentive public towards the Bofors scandal and the rumours of India’s nuclear weapons intentions sums up the importance attached to nuclear policy and defence by this collective. Unlike politics, matters of defence failed to gain a foothold in the national debate. It is telling that the only time during this period that nuclear policy received any airing was in the aftermath of China’s fi rst few nuclear tests, only to be followed by relative silence in the wake of India’s one, unexpected test 10 years after the fi rst explosion at Lop Nur.222 Th e discussion sparked by the Chinese declaration of nuclear capability was revealing: in the many calls that ensued for India to respond, hardly any considered the strategic requirements of an Indian nuclear deterrent, the eff ects that such a development might have on India’s neighbours, especially Pakistan and China, and fi nally, whether the Indian state had the infrastructure and industrial capacity to produce the components of a credible deterrent. Th e main requirement of the sought-after riposte to the Chinese tests, it seems, was that it be vaguely ‘nuclear’. In some ways, it would appear that attentive India had managed to extract the political component of the putative threat posed by China’s nuclear capability — its entrance into the nuclear club of hitherto exclusively Western Great Powers, the later apparent legitimisation of its nuclear arsenal through the NPT, and the raw currency of power symbolised by the possession of nuclear weapons — as the greater challenge posed by developments in the Middle Kingdom. Th is may explain why, when attentive India demanded a nuclear response to Lop Nur, it was the nuclear aspect of the answer that was more important to them than the strategic components of the response itself. In short, they wanted a demonstration. Th is attitude might also explain why Pokharan I did not attract more attention than it did. For the discussion to move forward, attentive India

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 would have to develop an appetite for the ﬁ ner points of deterrence and

222 Ashok Kapur points out that until 1964, no Indian journals on international relations or law published articles on nuclear weapons or the strategic implications of an Indian nuclear arsenal. Th e years after 1964 produced some writing on the subject but the quality was somewhat inconsistent. See A. Kapur, India’s Nuclear Option, p. 170. 94 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

for the ability to think in terms of the destructive atom, both of which were missing at the time. Deterrence could not gain a serious foothold in the imagination of attentive India, partly because of the tendency to leave defence to the government and the professionals, or the military, a legacy of Nehru’s premiership. Neither did dwelling on the destructive atom come naturally to this group, owing in part to a very real uneasi- ness with the devastation caused by nuclear weapons and a reinforced image of India as a crusader for sanity through nuclear disarmament. Taking Pokharan I forward would have transformed it into a defence debate. Instead, with the imposition of the Emergency barely a year after the test, Indians were able to grapple with a political question that had a security component much more closely allied to the future of the idea of India that had been cultivated from 1947 onwards. Th e nuclear issue could not and would not become a topic for popular discussion until it became a political question, as it did with the CTBT negotiations two decades later. Other striking aspects of the nuclear debate until the 1990s were the role of the media and the absence of the ‘stakeholders’ in the deliberations. With the exception of Homi Bhabha in the 1960s, the nuclear estate, one of the largest stakeholders, was largely kept out of the public discussion. Similarly, the military was not invited to share their opinion, and whatever they thought of the nuclear option was retained within the military until retirement freed some offi cers from the constraints of uniform. Th e press, on the other hand, have been enthusiastic (if sporadic) participants. Yet, the media’s role in the nuclear debate veered towards acting as a conduit for the government to educate the Indian public on nuclear questions, especially during the NPT when South Block felt that it might need to explain its rejection of this treaty after years of championing nuclear disarmament, rather than as a pressure group to infl uence government thinking.223 At best, the press were able to educate its audience on the issues at stake with the NPT or with adopting a tougher nuclear stance, rather than refl ecting public attitudes towards

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 nuclear weapons in the hope of inﬂ uencing policy. Th is would change to some extent with the debates over the CTBT, though the relationship of the press to the government remained stronger and skewed in favour of the latter’s preferences, as will be seen in the following chapters.

223 See ibid., pp. 175, 186. II

Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s

However, we do not think that the problems of the world or of India can be solved by thinking in terms of aggression or war or violence. […] [T]hat lesson has sunk deep into our souls. […] And, […] I think that if the essentials of that lesson are kept in mind, perhaps our approach to the problems of today will be diﬀ erent: perhaps the conﬂ icts that always hang over us will appear a little less deep than they are and in fact gradually fade away. Jawaharlal Nehru, 19481

Indians, Amartya Sen observed recently, love to talk.2 Th ey will discuss politics, economics, culture, history and their country’s predestined place of prominence in global politics. Perhaps tellingly Sen, an economist, does not dwell long on Indians discussing defence. Th at topic has traditionally been entrusted to a paternalistic government which encouraged the popular belief that this was much too sensitive a topic to leave to popular discussion. Further, as with most clichés about India, the assertion that its vibrant democracy is sustained by a free and critical press is only partly correct. Democratic debate in India over matters of defence has been curiously stiﬂ ed and the freewheeling discussion that enables the democratic experience to thrive has been limited to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 questions of development and, to a smaller extent, foreign policy. As a security issue, therefore, India’s nuclear policy has never been part of the pressing concerns that might engage its attentive public. Disarmament as

1 Nehru, ‘Firm Adherence to Objectives’. 2 Amartya Sen, Th e Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity (London: Allen Lane, 2005). 96 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

a foreign policy question off ered greater attraction: New Delhi’s disarmament diplomacy created and nourished a special role, greatly promoted by Nehru and those intent on burnishing the Nehru–Gandhi clan image within the country, of New Delhi as the defender of the discriminated and a warrior for greater international equality and equity. Th is was a role that India’s attentive public, conditioned by its anti- colonial heritage, could identify with. Yet, given the turmoil within the country at the start of the 1990s, even foreign policy had to compete with a raft of domestic and regional problems that challenged an increasingly insular and insecure polity to defi ne an India for the Golden Jubilee of independence, and beyond. In these circumstances, there were few takers for a discussion on the place of nuclear weapons in the defi ning of India at fi fty. Th ere was of course a small circle of people who advocated that New Delhi become a nuclear weapons power. But this group, most of whom argued amongst themselves, had always promoted this view without attracting too many converts to their ranks. For those on the outside, incoherence over India’s nuclear posture held sway. Th e comforting obfuscations of the ‘option’ allowed attentive India to postpone engaging with the place of a tacitly acknowledged nuclear weapons programme in the ‘idea of India’. Whatever the direction in which nuclear policy may have been moving in the heavily sheltered confi nes of the Prime Minister’s Offi ce and the nuclear estate, within the circle of middle-and-upper middle- class educated elite who regularly discussed topics of perceived national importance, the atomic question might well have continued as an academic abstraction had not international attention on nuclear non-proliferation highlighted New Delhi’s insistence on protecting the ‘option’. Locating the Debating Arena According to Amartya Sen, India’s ‘commitment’ to democracy has been sustained by a dialogic tradition that respects ‘intellectual heterodoxy’.3 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Politics in India have always been subjected to intense public examination; newspapers and other periodicals devote considerable space to scrutinising elected representatives. For the most part though, this interest remains parochial or domestic at best. In large swathes of rural India and the smaller towns, offi cials are elected to the state legislature or the Parliament on a specifi c, often provincial agenda, to which they are held accountable. Debates over the broader, and often more remote

3 Ibid., pp. 12ﬀ . Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 97

questions of foreign, economic, and to a certain extent defence policy, devolve by default to a somewhat self-selecting intellectual elite, India’s attentive public. Civil Society’s Engagement with Domestic, Foreign and Strategic Affairs Attentive India’s engagement with policy makers is deliberate. In understanding this, one returns inevitably to Nehru and to his fi rm belief that Indians needed to have a greater stake in their future after independence. Apart from the Constituent Assembly, tasked with drawing up a constitution that would serve all the people, Nehru encouraged a vigorous debate amongst the Indian leaders of industry such as the informal ‘Bombay Club’, the Congress Party and academics on the economic future of the country.4 Th e Planning Commission became a hive of activity, a virtual third arm of Parliament, where serious development policy was debated and defi ned.5 Nehru, as the leading fi gure, the ‘abiding image’ at a time of social, political and economic upheaval, defi ned the parameters of public debate, drawing civil society into the project that would establish modern, independent India.6 By defi nition it was a small, educated elite that participated in this exercise. If, in 1991, Indian literacy stood at 52.21 per cent, at independence the proportion of literate adults hovered at 12 per cent.7 From the start, therefore,

4 Nehru had consistently advocated drawing large numbers of Indians into discussions about the ways to tackle the development challenge. See Nehru, Discovery of India, ‘Th e National Planning Committee’, esp. pp. 476–77; and Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘Indian Problems’ in Nehru, India and the World (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1946). See also, Sanjaya Baru, ‘Th e Bombay Plea’, Th e Times of India, November 12, 1993. 5 Khushwant Singh light-heartedly refers to the ‘three houses of Parliament: Rajya Sabha, Lok Sabha and Tarlok Sabha’, the last an acknowledgement of the role of Tarlok Singh, who helped establish and then worked with the Planning Commission in its heady fi rst decade and a half of existence. Khushwant Singh, ‘Swaraj is My Birthright’, Outlook, August 18, 1997. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 6 Ibid. 7 Th e rural–urban divide of these 1991 Census of India fi gures further illustrates the actual state of literacy in India. Only 44.69 per cent of rural India is described as literate, as against an urban proportion of 73.08 per cent. As the census fi gures also reveal, there are huge disparities in literacy rates across states, with further implications for any popular participation in a nationwide debate. Figures available at http://www.censusindia.net/literates1.html (accessed on June 22, 2006). 98 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

public debates about the future of India remained the preserve of a small proportion of the populace; for the remainder, the challenges of survival predominated. Some, however, have questioned the infl uence of this debate on policy in general. In Th aroor’s opinion, the ‘prolifi c punditry’ produced by a legion of writers, academics and journalists in the early years of India’s existence remained ‘seemingly unrelated to the empirical realities of Indian policy-making’.8 Yet, perhaps the point here is that so many people wrote and spoke at all on these topics; the educated elite felt that they had a stake in critiquing the government’s policies and performance, especially as it related to development, poverty alle- viation, industry and later, agriculture (but signifi cantly, not defence and certainly not nuclear policy). Had it been a completely worthless exercise, Mrs Gandhi would not have shut down the press before proclaiming the Emergency in 1975. Governance of necessity remains the preserve of a few people, but those governing cared about what the press said about them. At any rate, the Emergency, and the loss of the freedom to criticise government, renewed Indians’ belief in the fourth estate. Th e ease with which this check on government excesses was temporarily denied to the polity acted as a sobering warning to the policy, interest and communications elite and their audience, attentive India; during 1980s and 1990s, journalists and editors increasing demanded accountability from elected representatives going well beyond Mrs Gandhi’s self-serving raison d’ etat.9 Yet too much can be made of the much-vaunted freedom of the Indian press. In theory, the fourth estate in India is free. As one respected journalist declared in Montreal in 1967, journalists ‘did not have to look over [their] shoulders’ when expressing their opinion.10 Yet Khushwant Singh later freely acknowledged that his appointments to the editor- ships of two newspapers, including that of the Hindustan Times, which Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 8 Th aroor, India, p. 218. As one magazine acknowledged, taken to an extreme, Indian garrulousness has led to perceptions outside the country of India ‘as one big debating society’. Raj Chengappa, ‘How the World Sees India’, India Today, October 15, 1991, p. 13. 9 For the diff erent types of elites, see Almond, Th e American People and Foreign Policy, pp. 139–40. 10 Khushwant Singh’s address at the Montreal International Expo in 1967, quoted in Th aroor, India, p. 218. Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 99

as one of the largest circulating English dailies is hugely infl uential in creating, promoting and sustaining these debates, was at the behest of Mrs Gandhi.11 Once installed, he found messages arriving at his desk from the Prime Minister’s Offi ce telling him ‘what [he] should do or not do’.12 Singh argues that it was largely on account of his having ignored these missives at the risk of prime ministerial wrath that the owners of the Hindustan Times declined to renew his contract when his fi rst term ended. He was not revealing any state secrets; government infl uence in all editorial appointments is well known. Th ose periodicals that adopt an inconvenient stance are denied government access, without which journalism in a country whose press is as political as India’s, is severely handicapped.13 Invisible controls on the press are even more eff ective. Th e government has deemed certain topics ‘sensitive’ and editors are required to fall in line and practice self-censorship when these matters are raised. As a result, questions of defence, communal relations and national unity, broadly defi ned, are often repressed.14 Certainly for B. G. Verghese, defence (along with intelligence and internal security) represented ‘the most sacred of sacred cows in government’, and therefore a topic not open to popular discussion until the Kargil Review Committee (charged with investigating the lapses that allowed the Kargil encounter to take place) published its report and recommendations.15 As late as 1997–98, just before broadcast media expanded to off er multiple sources of

11 Sheela Reddy, interview with Khushwant Singh, ‘I Don’t Know One Editor in India Who is Well-Read’ [sic], Outlook, October 18, 2005. Th e full version of the interview is available on the magazine’s website, www.outlookindia.com (accessed on June 22, 2006); an edited version was published in the weekly. 12 Ibid. 13 In extremis, government displeasure can have more serious consequences. Th e newspaper and newsportal Tehelka, who in 2001 exposed those close to the defence minister and others in the ruling coalition accepting defence kickbacks

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 (which are illegal in the Indian system) during a sting operation, was subjected to a series of income tax and other raids soon after the story was published. Th ere was little the Editor, Tarun Tejpal, could do but ride out the harassment. 14 For press self-censorship on matters of internal security, see Harji Malik and Patwant Singh, Punjab: Th e Fatal Miscalculation (New Delhi: Patwant Singh, 1985), pp. 9–32. 15 B. G. Verghese, ‘The Legend that is K. Subrahmanyam’, Rediff.com, October 5, 2004 (accessed on October 18, 2007). 100 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

24 hour news-programming, the only alternative to Doordarshan, an independent television news-channel supplying the evening news programme for Star News, had to clear the scripts for each evening bulletin with a senior Star TV executive before the programme was aired.16 Even more telling was perhaps the Narasimha Rao government’s inability to countenance ‘live news’: the compromise that Prannoy Roy’s NDTV and the Rao government arrived at fi nally in 1995 involved a fi ve minute delay, so that in theory, the government could still censor what was broadcast.17 Matters have changed considerably with 24 hour news-programming, a loosening of controls on foreign broadcast media and fi nally, in 2004, the limited entry of foreign newspapers into India.18 Th e change was dizzying: Indians went from having just one news channel in 1992 to a choice of more than 300 by 2006. Th e fi rst 24-hour news channel came into being in 1998; less than a decade later, 54 channels provided round-the-clock news in 11 languages.19 As Nalin Mehta observes, the government ‘did not give up control over television easily or voluntarily. It simply lost control’.20 Th e country of the early 1990s, however, with its state controlled television and radio was not far removed from the India of 1984 where those who could learned of Mrs Gandhi’s assassination from the BBC world service as Doordarshan, the national radio station, did not announce her death until four hours after the event. More importantly, there was acquiescence on the part of attentive India in this collective censorship. Indians are curiously reticent when it comes to matters of military security and defence, an attitude that

16 Author’s experience working for New Delhi Television (NDTV), 1997–98. At this time, foreign channels in India were still comparatively new and therefore wary of antagonising the government. 17 Nalin Mehta, India on Television: How Satellite News Channels Have Changed the Way We Think and Act (Delhi: HarperCollins 2008); p. 58, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 pp. 76ﬀ . 18 Th e broadcast media were allowed, albeit reluctantly, into India in the early 1990s, a move which changed the face of Indian television within a decade. Th e print media remained much more diﬃ cult to break into; the government only relaxed rules for foreign investment in Indian newspapers in early 2004 when it allowed foreign investors to buy a maximum of a 26 per cent stake in Indian papers. 19 Mehta, India on Television, chapter 2, esp. p. 59. 20 Ibid., p. 60. Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 101

has been encouraged by a paternalistic government.21 One can perhaps return to Nehru and his insistence on cultivating a debate on development while discouraging too great a preoccupation with defence. Since he took it upon himself to educate Parliament and his chief ministers on matters of foreign policy and other subjects he considered important, India’s fi rst Prime Minister enjoyed great freedom in laying out the terms of public debate in the country, the legacy of which is still visible.22 At any rate matters of strategy and security could not command much column-space even as late as the early 1990s, despite the eff orts of strategic analysts such as K. Subrahmanyam to create a wider public debate.23 Writing soon after he retired as Army chief, General Sundarji alluded to the absence of a ‘coherent and holistic’ long-term national vision. In his view, there was an urgent need to shake off public apathy with regard to defence. ‘National security strategy’, he argued, ‘has to be part of and fl ow from overall national strategy’.24 At least defence got mentioned, even if only in passing. Nuclear policy, cloaked in offi cially mandated secrecy, barely surfaced till reinvigorated external, specifi cally Western and Japanese interest in India’s nuclear ‘option’ in the fi rst post-Cold War decade forced a domestic engagement with something few spoke of and fewer still had any accurate information on. Th e state of the nuclear debate refl ected India’s priorities at this time. For the majority of India’s populace for

21 Th e example of the ‘forgotten war’ in Siachen bears eloquent testimony to the government’s ability to control information. It took eight years from the out- break of hostilities between India and Pakistan on the world’s highest battle- ﬁ eld for two journalists to ﬁ nally gain access to the forsaken glacier whose defence costs India between Rs 30–60 million a day. See W. P. S. Sidhu and Pramod Pushkarna, ‘Siachen: Th e Forgotten War’, India Today, May 31, 1992. 22 Nehru’s fortnightly letters to his chief ministers were amongst his better known attempts at creating an appreciation of foreign policy amongst party workers and politicians, most of whom had regarded the subject through the lens of the struggle for independence. See Brown, Nehru. Within Parliament,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Nehru had to overcome his own reputation to inculcate in a timid and over- awed opposition an ability to question the leader of the ruling party. See Sunil Khilnani, ‘India’s Contribution to Liberalism: Nehru’s faith’, the 2004 Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture, New Delhi; and Th aroor, India, pp. 218–19. 23 Mohammad Ayoob, ‘I worked for K. Subrahmanyam’ in C. Uday Bhaskar (comp.), Subbu at 75: A Bouquet of Tributes (New Delhi: Shri Avtar Printing Press, 2004), p. 14. 24 General K. Sundarji, ‘Future Shocks’, India Today, August 31, 1990, p. 6. 102 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

whom security means survival, and for whom the pressing question is not whether the border is impregnable but whether the monsoons will be on time, this indiff erence to larger strategic questions is understand- able.25 It may explain Parliament’s lack of sustained engagement with the fi ner details of defence since these are not matters on which Members of Parliament are elected to represent their constituencies.26 Admiral L. Ramdas (Chief of Naval Staff , 1990–93) has observed that defence spending barely receives any attention in Parliament: he once counted ‘no more than fi fty to sixty members, from a house of more than 520, present during a defence debate’.27 P. N. Haksar, a senior bureaucrat and one of Mrs Gandhi’s trusted advisers, went further when he remarked acidly that Parliament had reduced the annual debate on defence estimates to a ‘mere ritual’ to be dispensed with.28 Parlia- ment, however, only refl ected civilian complacency that the country’s security was being adequately cared for by the army.29 For its part,

25 According to government ﬁ gures from 1998–99, the agricultural sector employs 64 per cent of the Indian work-force, accounting for almost 26 per cent of GDP. Embassy of India, Washington DC, ‘INDIA Information’, at http://www.indianembassy.org/indiainfo/india_2000/chapters/chp15.pdf (accessed on April 23, 2004). 26 Chris Smith, ‘Conventional Forces and Regional Stability’, in Chris Smith, Shekhar Gupta, William J. Durch and Michael Krepon, Defense and Insecurity in Southern Asia: Th e Conventional and Nuclear Dimensions (Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, Occasional Paper no 21, May 1995), p. 17. 27 Admiral L. Ramdas, ‘Nuclear Weapons and National Security’, in M. V. Ramana and Rammanohar Reddy, eds, Prisoner of the Nuclear Dream (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003), p. 59. 28 P. N. Haksar, ‘Foreign Policy: Appearance and Reality’, in P. N. Haksar, India’s Foreign Policy and its Problems (New Delhi: Patriot, 1989), p. 113. Th is essay was ﬁ rst published in Seminar in 1978. 29 Both Haksar and K. Subrahmanyam have made this point through the years. See P. N. Haksar, ‘National Security: Aspects and Dimensions’, in Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Subrata Banerjee, ed., Contemplations on the Human Condition: Selected Writings, Speeches and Letters, Haksar Memorial, vol. 1 (Chandigarh: Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, 2004), p. 279. Coming from Haksar, however, this criticism is somewhat rich. After all, he was a member of Mrs Gandhi’s close coterie of advisers who allowed her to completely bypass Parliament during decision-making. At the height of her power, Mrs Gandhi settled matters of national importance within her kitchen cabinet; the PMO and the PMH[ouse] became the locus of what should have been legislative debates, with Parliament reduced to a mere ratifying body. See Vernon Hewitt, ‘Th e Prime Minister and Parliament’, in Manor, ed., Nehru to the Nineties, pp. 57ff. Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 103

Parliament has made no attempt to engage the public on strategic and defence matters and thereby increase the arena of debate — over half a century after independence, the government has yet to produce a white paper on defence.30 Matters are changing, but slowly. After Kargil, the government acceded to public pressure for an enquiry into the failures that led to the encounter between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. Th ough the Kargil Review Committee Report has been tabled in Parlia- ment and made public, it has yet to be discussed in the House. Engaging with Nuclear Policy However, even taking into account domestic preoccupations and an increasingly introspective intelligentsia, attentive India’s lack of engagement with nuclear policy is baffl ing. Given the proven ability to build nuclear weapons from at least 1974 onwards, the desultory discussions on this topic, generally limited to a small circle of strategic analysts who were unable to engage a larger audience, appears perverse in a country that has refi ned political discussion into a fi ne art. As General Sundarji remarked in exasperation in the early 1990s looking back on the previous two decades, India’s approach to nuclear decision-making ‘appears to have enjoyed something halfway between a drugged sleep and a deep post-prandial siesta’. Commenting on the uncertainty regarding India’s threshold weapons status at the time, he added that this was ‘no big secret’. Instead, the ‘really big secret’ was the lack of any ‘coherent nuclear weapons policy’, which in his opinion, was not helped by the absence of ‘any institutionalised system for analysing and throwing up policy options in this regard’.31 Freed from his service obligations of discretion, Sundarji, a very vocal proponent of declared nuclear weapons for India was calling for the debate that he found missing. Any nuclear debate that existed in India was therefore not a popular one. Even within the small circle of attentive India, the audience remained limited till the mid-1990s. Until then, such discussions as did occur on nuclear policy were largely confi ned to a tiny circle of largely self-selecting strategic analysts drawn from the wider collective 32

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 comprising attentive India. At one level, characterising the ventilation

30 Ramdas, ‘Nuclear Weapons and National Security’, p. 58. 31 General K. Sundarji, Blind Men of Hindoostan: Indo-Pak Nuclear War (New Delhi: UBS, 1993), p. xv. 32 Th is group roughly corresponds with Almond’s interest and communications elite. However, the boundary between this elite and the attentive public remains more ﬂ uid in India. Almond, Th e American People and Foreign Policy, pp. 138ff. 104 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

of views as a debate is misleading for one side of the exchange was largely silent. As an examination of Indian engagement with the country’s nuclear ‘option’ during this period reveals, the discussions about nuclear policy were largely carried out by a tiny group of people arguing in favour of a more robust nuclear posture — against a largely absent body of voices not in favour of altering the existing policy or even advocating unilateral disarmament. Th ose most persuasively counselling restraint put forward not ethical or moral arguments but economic reasons, and even then they did not necessarily advocate renouncing nuclear weapons altogether.33 As one observer (and participant) in this emerging cacophony pointed out, ‘[t]here was no debate — there was opinion building’.34 In a country where the authority to formulate nuclear policy rests with one person — the Prime Minister — this lack of clarity is perhaps not surprising.35 Th is ‘scientifi c and political czarism’, as one commentator has described it, has meant that no individual outside the highest echelons of the atomic estate is privy to the full details of India’s nuclear programme.36 Th e result was and remains confusion, not just over the country’s weapons policy, clarifi ed greatly but not fully in 1998, but also over the true state of its civilian power programme, vestiges of which still persist. Th e direct link with the Prime Minister allows the atomic estate to bypass all other legislative controls and oversight procedures. When India’s Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was reconstituted in 1958, it was given full executive and fi nancial power, thereby removing normal administrative and planning control built into other government

33 As a former high-ranking offi cial in the Finance Ministry who was part of the target audience of the hawks explained, those advising the government never advocated against testing nuclear weapons in order to declare India’s nuclear status. Instead, they laid out the economic consequences of the opportunity costs of such an action in order to allow the government to take an informed Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 decision. Some of this advice eventually seeped into the public domain through leaks and briefi ngs. Off -the-record interview, New Delhi, August 22, 2005. 34 Conversation with Shekhar Gupta, now Editor, Th e Indian Express, and for many years the senior foreign aff airs correspondent for India Today, New Delhi, January 22, 2005. 35 Th e Prime Minister retains the Atomic Energy portfolio. Th ere are no provisions for institutionalised cabinet discussions on nuclear policy, either civilian or military. 36 Kapur, India’s Nuclear Option, p. 207. Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 105

departments, especially through the parliamentary procedures established for budgetary oversight. The nuclear programme does not publish any budgets; funding is drawn from a federal reserve fund.37 AEC membership was also reduced in 1958 from seven to three, and now includes only the Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), the Director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and a part-time Government Secretary (with fi nancial oversight). Th is extremely powerful troika formulates the DAE’s policies (relating to planning, regulation and safety of the nuclear power projects), with the head of the DAE reporting to the Prime Minister as Minister for Atomic Energy. Th e third member of the Commission represents BARC, the body established by the DAE to conduct nuclear research and development. Finally, this secrecy also accounts for some of the incoherence in India’s nuclear pronouncements. Nuclear diplomacy, as it relates to arms control, remains the preserve of the Ministry of External Aff airs (MEA), with virtually no input from the nuclear establishment.38 Nuclear policy, on the other hand, is run out of the Prime Minister’s Offi ce. Hence, in governments where the Prime Minister did not retain the external aff airs portfolio, India’s External Aff airs Minister could honestly assert that India did not possess a nuclear weapon because he frankly did not know.39 Creating the Space for Debate Any nuclear debate was therefore rather limited. Th e small circle of strategic analysts who discussed this topic rehearsed their opinions in closed seminars and occasionally, in newspapers and magazines. Th e strategic community, such as it is, resides mainly in New Delhi but even then physical proximity to government has not encouraged

37 Brahma Chellaney, ‘India’, in Mitchell Reiss and Robert S Litwak, eds, Nuclear Proliferation After the Cold War (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 International Center for Scholars, 1994), p. 168. 38 C. Raja Mohan, ‘India’s Security Challenges’, in Nancy Jetly, ed., India’s Foreign Policy: Challenges and Prospects (New Delhi: Vikas, 1999), p. 63. 39 Defence planning suﬀ ered as well, especially after 1974, as there was no institutional mechanism for the Defence Minister to be made privy to the state of the country’s nuclear programme, unless the Prime Minister happened to retain the defence portfolio. Subrahmanyam, ‘Indian Nuclear Policy’, p. 49. 106 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

any meaningful exchange of views on defence and strategy with South Block. Th e lack of productive engagement with security is refl ected at the institutional and academic level. Th ere is a serious dearth of independently funded think tanks in India which can be relied on to provide an ‘outside’ view to balance government thinking; most of the non-offi cial centres and institutes that focus on strategic aff airs depend to some extent on state funding and tend, however reluctantly, to get co-opted into the system.40 Th e Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) is fairly typical in this regard. India’s most prominent think tank is funded by the Ministry of Defence. Th e Defence Minister is the Chairman of this institute and the Director is a government appointee, usually a civil servant. IDSA rose to prominence under the stewardship of K. Subrahmanyam, who as Director (1968–72 and 1980–87) greatly expanded its reach and reputation. Yet Subrahmanyam, on secondment from the Ministry of Defence, had to be cautious in adopting positions that might be inconvenient to South Block. Th is was especially true of his views on nuclear policy, in which regard he advocated a much more robust policy than India’s offi cial line of maintaining a nuclear option while continuing to press for global nuclear disarmament. Th ough he claims he was given considerable latitude by Mrs Gandhi to be critical of government policy, he does acknowledge having observed tacit limits. As he explains, he never came under any great pressure to restrain his views as long as he did not make a ‘crusade of it [nuclear policy]’.41 However, any synergy that might develop between the government and bureaucracy who shape and implement policy, and academia and the attentive public who critique these issues, is completely undermined by the culture of secrecy that dominates South Block’s nuclear thinking. Most Indian universities are government funded. Grants, especially for science departments, can dry up if the faculty adopts too critical a line. Dhirendra Sharma, an academic who had criticised the nuclear establishment in the early 1980s, recalls being called a CIA Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 agent and having his Centre for Science Policy Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University closed down.42 Further, to the best of his knowledge,

40 P. R. Kumaraswamy, ‘National Security: A Critique’, in P. R. Kumaraswamy, ed., Security Beyond Survival: Essays for K. Subrahmanyam (New Delhi: Sage 2004). 41 Conversation with K. Subrahmanyam, New Delhi, January 21, 2005. 42 Sagarika Ghose, ‘Muted Voices’, Outlook, May 25, 1998. Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 107

none of the government funded institutions and libraries stock his research.43 Most scientifi c study, especially in physics, is governed by the Offi cial Secrets Act (1923), which makes peer review and informed discussion of India’s nuclear programme (civilian and as well as the till 1998 unacknowledged weapons programme) virtually impossible. Th e resulting academic eff orts remain sadly ‘uninspired’ at best. As one observer remarks, ‘[d]espite the prolonged nuclear debate, proliferation of scholars and unending stream of writings, two of the classic works on India’s nuclear policy have been written by Western scholars’ [George Perkovich and Ashley Tellis].44 Faced with offi cial apathy, debate on strategic, especially nuclear aff airs, degenerated by the early 1990s into water-cooler discussions: urgent, animated but ultimately ephemeral. Institutionally, lively discussions were held at IDSA, the United Ser- vice Institution of India (USI, for military offi cers — serving and retired) and the India International Centre (IIC), which was a magnet for retired bureaucrats, academics, editors and journalists.45 Yet for the most part these were either closed-door discussions, or, if open to the media, failed to attract much attention from a larger public, even within the intelligentsia. When such meetings were reported, it was usually as a small column in the inside pages of newspapers. Nuclear policy in the early 1990s certainly did not occupy much editorial column space, except when the government was called on by other countries, especially the US, to clarify its intentions, at which point it assumed importance as a foreign policy question. Th is would change signifi cantly as the debates over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) unfolded through newspapers and television in 1995/96. Broadcast Media and the Nuclear Debate Th e CTBT debates were both shaped by, and helped infl uence, changes that were occurring independently in India’s broadcast media over the course of the 1990s. India’s economic liberalisation programme, embarked on after the fi nancial crisis of 1991, also opened the doors to an

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 unprecedented wave of foreign television channels. After years of being fed the government-mandated line bordering on propaganda, television

43 Ibid. 44 Kumaraswamy, ‘National Security’, p. 28. 45 Others such as the IPCS, the Delhi Policy Group and the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) are newer and smaller. 108 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

viewers in the 1990s were now off ered an alternative to Doordarshan, the state-controlled television network, with CNN, BBC, STAR TV and others off ering an unexpurgated view of India in ‘real time’.46 While the government had some control over domestic independent channels (at least until the sheer volume of 24 hour news programming inundated such eff orts), it could not rein in BBC and CNN. Unpalatable images of Punjab, Kashmir, Bihar, caste and communal rivalries and other negative news stories could no longer be swept under an oblig- ing state-controlled media carpet.47 Th is was most evident during the Ayodhya crisis of December 1992, when people increasingly turned to BBC to counter Doordarshan’s sanitised version of events.48 Th e images of India lurching from crisis to crisis that dominated the scant foreign reportage of the country prompted further introspection about the future of the country.49 Until foreign news channels entered Indian homes, independent video newsmagazines (which appeared in the late 1980s) off ered the only alternative to the ‘bowdlerized offi cial electronic media’, and even they had to clear government censorship before distribution.50 Th e medium, however, restricted the amount of material covered and the frequency of reports. Th e advent of real-time news freed reportage from these constraints, allowing journalists to use the extra air time to present more analysis and in-depth reports that could, moreover, reach a

46 Th ese airwaves also off ered unfl attering contrasts of life in India set against the comparative affl uence of middle-class life in the West. Th ere was some apprehension that these comparisons could cause further unrest in India. See Shekhar Gupta, India Redefi nes its Role, Adelphi Paper 293 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the IISS, 1995), p. 9. 47 Madhu Jain and W. P. S. Sidhu, ‘Battle for the Box’, India Today, March 31, 1992, pp. 96–97. Interestingly, both the former US ambassadors to India and Pakistan, William Clark and Robert Oakley, have blamed the media for playing Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 up purported tensions between India and Pakistan during the 1990 crisis, with leaders on both sides also exploiting the medium by playing to the gallery in making strong, jingoistic statements. See Michael Krepon and Mishi Faruqee, eds, ‘Confl ict Prevention and Confi dence Building Measures in South Asia: Th e 1990 Crisis’, Henry L. Stimson Center, Occasional Paper no. 17, April 1994. 48 India Today, ‘Extra-terrestrial Invasion’, January 15, 1993, p. 67. 49 Saibal Chatterjee, ‘Dateline India’, Outlook, December 20, 1995. 50 M. Rahman, ‘Th e New TV Superbazar: Now at Your Fingertips’,India Today, November 15, 1992, p. 33. Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 109

much wider audience.51 Suddenly presentation became important; the medium demanded a clear, consistent and confi dent articulation of policy. Th e incoherence in India’s nuclear policy-making, with nuclear policy-making proceeding from the Prime Minister and disarmament diplomacy emerging from the MEA (with, if consulted, some inputs from the Ministry of Defence) began to show. As the government fumbled to defend an imperfectly defi ned nuclear ‘option’ against the onslaught of non-proliferation pressure, and as it scrambled to react to the en- croachment on this option of a non-proliferation regime it had professed to support, the weaknesses in the government’s position became much easier to portray than any putative strengths.52 Tracking an Incipient Debate Before examining the various positions adopted in any discussions on nuclear policy, it is important to highlight that the nuclear debate often elided the civilian nuclear and the unacknowledged weapons programmes. In eff ect, there were several nuclear narratives co-existing in India, often in contradiction, until Pokharan II promoted an idea of security above other explanations. Of these, two predominated. Th e fi rst version focussed on the civilian nuclear power project which symbolised India’s quest for modernity and development, elevating the civilian atomic complex, despite its failure to deliver cheap electricity as a showpiece of Indian technological achievement and self-suffi ciency. Th is version stressed the peaceful, development oriented nature of the country’s technological aspirations. Th e second narrative was, until 1998, murkier. It invoked India’s need to ensure its security, not through the logic of nuclear war-fi ghting that had dominated Cold War calculations in the West, but by reserving the option to turn to the ultimate weapon. Th e ‘option’, moreover, signifi ed India’s right as a sovereign nation to address its security as it saw best. Interwoven into these two main themes were refrains of anti-colonialism, self-reliance, equality, national pride and self-esteem. Th e co-existence of these often contradictory narratives resulted Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 from the secrecy and ambiguity sheltering New Delhi’s weapons policy. Equally, however, it has resulted from an assiduous project of nationalism that has cloaked the nuclear programme (undiff erentiated,

51 Amit Agarwal, ‘Opening up at Last’, India Today, April 15, 1994, pp. 50–61. 52 Mohan, ‘India’s Security Challenges’, p. 63. 110 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

but offi cially always presented as a civilian power project) in which narrative India’s nuclear (and by association, the space and other potential dual-use technology applications) have been unfairly subjected to sanctions after the 1974 test. Th ese sanctions, however, have not succeeded in hindering the nuclear programme. Th is, the narrative continues, is entirely due to the untiring eff orts of Indian scientists who have showcased indigenous brilliance in overcoming all the technological hurdles that have been put in place by the West, especially the Western nuclear powers who, a more leftist version goes, use technology controls as a form of neo-colonialism to deny India the chance to develop technologically. Cloaked in the national tricolour, the nuclear programme had by the 1990s already assumed near-mythic proportions in the Indian imagination as the totem of all the promises of modernity and self-suffi ciency that had rung out so eloquently in the Central Hall of Parliament at midnight on August 15, 1947. Over the years, the nuclear ‘option’ came to symbolise Indian defi ance of external pressure to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and India’s rejection of the unequal world of a nuclear apartheid (both civilian and military) created by this treaty. As a result, the nuclear programme acquired shades of meaning far in excess of that warranted by a simple nuclear power, or a more controversial nuclear weapons, programme. In light of this, those arguing in favour of a more transparent policy in order to free India from the sanctions imposed after the 1974 test, or those opposing the nuclear programme, may not necessarily have been concentrating solely on weapons policy. Th is confusion is especially marked in ethical and moral arguments against nuclear weapons which often took the form of opposition to all aspects of the nuclear programme. Th at said, the most consistent commentary on nuclear policy usually emanated from those looking at India’s nuclear weapons policy. Any debate on India’s nuclear weapons policy in the early 1990s remained a contained aff air. Th e small coterie of strategic analysts drawn to this exercise comprised mainly retired military offi cers and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 bureaucrats, along with a handful of academics and journalists. Almost all favoured a harder stance on nuclear policy. Th ose who opposed this view either supported the offi cial policy of ambiguity, contained within the Government of India’s decision to retain the nuclear ‘option’ and not sign the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state (in other words, no nuclear weapons for India now), or with decreasing conviction as the decade wore on, of reviving Indian attempts to precipitate global nuclear disarmament (the most recent one being the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 111

of 1988). Mostly, however, discussion pitted voices arguing for a more robust nuclear policy against an offi cial wall of silence. Further, these voices did not mirror larger Indian concerns, or even the concerns of elite India, as one poll conducted at the end of 1994 confi rmed.53 According to this poll, the fi ndings of which were circulated in order to ‘democratize the nuclear debate in India’, a signifi cant majority of those polled, 57 per cent, were in favour of offi cial government policy.54 Only 33 per cent advocated nuclear weapons for India, while 8 per cent of those polled declared themselves in favour of India renouncing nuclear weapons. For a country that had only six years earlier presented the Special Session on Disarmament of the United Nations General Assembly with a comprehensive Action Plan for complete and verifi able disarmament, the latter two fi gures were equally revealing. Coupled with the fact that nuclear policy ranked seventh in a list of concerns (with communalism, poverty and economic stability occupying the top three slots), the poll indicated that for most of elite India, nuclear policy was not a major concern in the early 1990s. Since those articulating an ‘idea of India’ were drawn from this group, it is unsurprising that nuclear policy barely fi gured in the writings and debates that defi ned India politically and economically in the early 1990s.55 Th e small group of strategic analysts who cared about the topic generated a ‘steady stream of articles’ that in the face of this indiff erence, failed to resonate with a wider audience.56 As one of the contributors to the study that circulated these poll results recalled, when the book India and the Bomb was published in 1996, it ‘sank without a trace’.57

53 A survey of ‘elite opinion’ in India’s seven largest cities by a leading marketing group was carried out for the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies (University of Notre Dame) between September and November 1994. Th e results were published in India in February 1995, and later analysed in Cortright and Mattoo, eds, India and the Bomb. 54 David Cortright and Amitabh Mattoo, ‘Indian Public Opinion and Nuclear Weapons Policy’, in Cortright and Mattoo, eds, India and the Bomb, p. 5. Th e

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 ﬁ gures are from Appendix B of the book. 55 It is also interesting that the prominent commissioned books on India ‘at Fifty’ — including Khilnani’s Idea of India and Th aroor’s India — failed to mention nuclear policy in any signiﬁ cant way, just a year before India declared itself a nuclear weapons power. 56 Cortright and Mattoo, ‘Indian Public Opinion’, p. 6. 57 Conversation with Varun Sahni, New Delhi, September 7, 2005. Sahni was referring to Cortright and Mattoo, India and the Bomb. 112 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Referring to the strategic analysts who were in favour of a more robust nuclear policy as members of a collective, however, implies a coherence of objectives and understanding that was not there. Th ose arguing for nuclear weapons were not necessarily doing so for the same reasons and the wider support generated for India’s ‘nuclear programme’ as the decade wore on bears testimony to the diﬀ ering motives. Th ose debating India’s nuclear policy in the early years of the decade can be divided into the very broad categories of hawks, owls and doves.58 Th ese are of necessity very broad-brush divisions; the people categorised in each group may not necessarily or certainly self- consciously identify with each other as members of a collective. Never- theless, the categories are useful as a means of making sense of the voices emerging in the nuclear debate and in tracing how this debate grew from a small, contained set of conversations to a discussion of national proportions by mid-1996. Th e hawks argued in favour of a more robust nuclear policy and were divided amongst themselves on what exactly this entailed, how the change in policy should be eﬀ ected and what purpose would be served by a declared nuclear weapons status for India. Th e owls, while not in favour of ‘going nuclear’ at the moment, were not necessarily in favour of India unilaterally renouncing nuclear weapons either. Th ey were more comfortable with the government’s holding policy of an option and probably viewed the weapons option as a regrettable necessity, an insurance policy in an anarchic international environment. Th e doves opposed nuclear weapons for India. While most would agree on global nuclear disarmament as a universal good, they were content with an Indian unilateral renunciation of the weapons option, not just on moral or ethical grounds, but also on the basis of economic or strategic calculations.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 58 Th e word ‘owls’ in this case comes from Amitabh Mattoo in Ghose, ‘Muted Voices’. However, this ornithological metaphor has a longer history with owls referring originally to those who worry about non-rational factors and the loss of control escalating into a nuclear war. See Graham T. Allison, et al., eds, Hawks, Doves, and Owls: An Agenda for Avoiding Nuclear War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985). Mattoo was not referring to any self-identifying group of analysts who agree with his views; nevertheless, the term covers a group whose thinking roughly hews to his, even if they may not see it as such. Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 113

The Hawks Build their Case At the outset, those arguing in favour of a more robust nuclear policy diff ered amongst themselves on whether a second test was necessary, or if a declaration of India’s nuclear weapons status based on the ability demonstrated through Pokharan I and a visible accumulation of delivery mechanisms to lend credence to a declared strategy of nuclear deterrence would suffi ce. Th is approach provided the added advantage of not antagonising the international community with a nuclear test at a time of growing non-proliferation eff orts. Testing would certainly invite sanctions on India; a declaration without testing would not necessarily avoid this contingency but it might lessen the almost certain international displeasure that would be visited on New Delhi. Th ose arguing in favour of a test required the certainty of the explosive demonstration along with a visible symbol of India’s determination to play by the rules of the nuclear ‘haves’. Writing after the tests, Kanti Bajpai has elucidated the diff erences between the hawks, dividing them into three categories of ‘maximalists’, ‘pragmatists’ and ‘rejectionists’.59 Th ough their infl uence was only fully recognised after Pokharan II, their attempts at shaping government policy can be traced throughout the decade. Most importantly, whatever the value of the ‘inputs’ that they provided to the government before May 1998, they certainly played an important role in communicating changes in offi cial thinking to the public as India approached the CTBT and weathered the storm.60 Th e ‘Tamil Trinity’ of Raja Ramanna (the nuclear scientist who played a pivotal role in Pokharan I had served as Scientifi c Adviser to the De- fence Minister in the late 1980s and had been appointed a Minister of State for Defence in the V. P. Singh government during 1990–91, when Singh retained the defence portfolio), former chief of Army Staff General K. Sundarji, and K. Subrahmanyam were happy to rely on Pokharan I as a demonstration of India’s ability to respond to a nuclear fi rst strike with a suffi ciently devastating counter-strike. Th ey wanted to provide India with the capacity to fend off nuclear blackmail, especially from Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 nuclear-armed China, and the unconfi rmed, but widely accepted nuclear

59 Kanti Bajpai, ‘India’s Nuclear Posture After Pokhran II’, International Studies, 37:4 (October–December 2000). 60 Ibid. 114 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

weapons of Pakistan.61 Th ey were, in Kanti Bajpai’s scheme of those taking part in the ‘great nuclear debate’, part of the group of pragmatists who based their strategic calculations on a ‘relaxed’ deterrence posture based on uncertainty: that is, that a nuclear ﬁ rst strike on India can be deterred if the potential adversary cannot be assured that India will not be able to absorb a ﬁ rst strike and retaliate with its own nuclear strike.62 For some, such as Jasjit Singh, a form of deterrence was already in operation between India and Pakistan and so both countries would only gain by acknowledging this strategic reality.63 In this view, since its nuclear arsenal is purely defensive, India does not need a large number of nuclear weapons. Moreover, these weapons do not need to be assembled but can remain with the warhead kept separate from the delivery mechanism. Singh would promote this line of thinking as late as October 1996, after India had rejected the CTBT. In his opinion, articulating a posture that envisages India’s nuclear programme working ‘for purposes of peace’ (as opposed to the earlier declared policy of ‘peaceful purposes’) and putting together ‘all the elements of nuclear capability’ would bypass the need for ‘overt weaponisation’.64 He believed that nuclear disarmament remained both technically feasible and desirable, even after the CTBT had been pushed through, and was therefore a goal still worth working for. Th ose promoting a relaxed deterrence posture were also careful to pre-empt any criticism that going down the nuclear weapons route

61 General Sundarji wrote extensively on the stabilising eﬀ ect that declared nuclear weapons status would have on relations between India and Pakistan. See Blind Men of Hindoostan; General K. Sundarji, ‘Th e Nuclear Th reat’, India Today, November 30, 1990, p. 94; General K. Sundarji, ‘Declare Nuclear Status’, India Today, December 31, 1990, p. 73. He also believed that nuclear weapons were desirable for India to credibly deal with its main threat — that posed by Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 China. See, Michael O’Rourke, Interview with General K. Sundarji, ‘Nuclear Standoﬀ ’, Far Eastern Economic Review, September 13, 1990, p. 24. 62 Kanti Bajpai, ‘Th e Great Indian Nuclear Debate’,Th e Hindu, November 12, 1999. 63 Jasjit Singh has termed the state of calculations in the early 1990s ‘recessed deterrence’. See Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, ‘India’s Nuclear and Strategic Policies’, in Jetly, ed., India’s Foreign Policy. 64 Jasjit Singh, ‘Nuclear Asymmetry: What India’s response should be’, Frontline, October 4, 1996, p. 23. Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 115

would spell economic disaster for India. Th eir reliance on a defensive nuclear posture would negate the need for an elaborate and expensive command and control system, build stability into India’s deterrence posture vis-à-vis its nuclear neighbours and lend credibility to India’s no-fi rst-use pledge, which itself springs from the conviction that a resort to a nuclear exchange would be detrimental to everyone’s interests and so must not be contemplated lightly. Th ere are shades of traditional Indian antipathy to nuclear weapons in this approach.65 While not winning too many converts to their position, those arguing for nuclear weapons from this platform were able to engage with their audience unlike those who promoted the more maximalist view outlined below. While many of these analysts hardened their positions as non-proliferation pressure increased with the NPT and CTBT negotiations (1994 to 1996), many still continued to promote global nuclear disarmament as the best possible outcome. After Pokharan II some, such as Subrahmanyam, briefl y suggested that India with nuclear weapons stands a greater chance of working for complete nuclear disarmament, from a position of strength, as it were.66 A second strand of thinking saw nuclear weapons not as a regrettable necessity, as some of the pragmatists did, but as an indispensable part of India’s strategic and security calculations. Bharat Karnad, for example, argued in favour of a nuclear weapons policy that aimed to achieve strategic parity with the ‘second-tier’ nuclear weapons states — that is, France, Britain and China.67 Th is view rejected a relaxed deterrence posture, basing deterrence instead on the certainty of a devastating response and the willingness and ability to engage in nuclear war- fi ghting. Th ough Karnad has espoused perhaps the most extreme view, others such as Vijay Nair who argued for a deterrent posture based on a triad of air-, land- and sea-based assets were similarly more comfortable with the concepts of nuclear deterrence and war-fi ghting that had

65 See K. Subrahmanyam’s argument in favour of a policy of no-ﬁ rst-use

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 in K. Subrahmanyam, ‘A Nuclear Strategy for India’, Th e Economic Times, May 28, 1998. 66 Ibid. 67 Th ough Bharat Karnad’s essay ‘A Th ermonuclear Deterrent’, in Mattoo, ed., India’s Nuclear Deterrent detailing numbers and the need for a thermonuclear deterrent to safeguard India’s sovereignty from the neo-colonial designs of an interfering United States was published after Pokharan II, he had been fairly consistent in his advocacy through the years. 116 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

informed Cold War strategic calculations.68 By defi nition, this group had no time for disarmament, which, in their view remained a hopeless cause. Th eir position was to only harden; after Pokharan II, they were to argue against disarmament on both strategic and technological grounds. Asserting that it was diffi cult to put the genie back into the bottle, they promoted a world-view that embraced nuclear weapons as an opportunity to increase India’s global standing. Quite understand- ably, theirs has remained a minority view in India where vestiges of Nehruvian disarmament thinking still informs rhetoric, if not policy. Th ere was another group who dipped in and out of this debate in the early 1990s whose arguments were much less defi nable, and who supported Indian nuclear weapons as a repudiation of Western (and Japanese) non-proliferation pressure.69 Most of these were scientists in the atomic estate who skirted dangerously close to violating the Offi cial Secrets Act that governed all their public utterances. Senior fi gures in the atomic estate — both serving and retired — became increasingly vocal as funding pressures arising from India’s economic crisis and growing international scrutiny on its nuclear intentions put the less- than-exemplary nuclear power programme in the spotlight. In response, they put pressure on the government with barely veiled references to the dual nature of the nuclear programme, the full implication of which was partly mitigated by projecting this programme as an act of defi ance and a symbol of Indian resilience in the face of crippling sanctions and technology denial. Hence P. K. Iyengar referred to the 1974 nuclear test in his retirement speech from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in 1993, at a time when the country’s fi nancial diffi culties were imposing budgetary strictures on the nuclear estate. For Iyengar, his role in the Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE) ‘was the most exhilarating experience of [his] career’.70 R. Chidambaram, also a member of the 1974 team, gave a series of interviews in the early 1990s while he was still head of BARC, articulating the scientifi c community’s frustration with the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

68 Brigadier Vijai K. Nair, Nuclear India (New Delhi: Lancer, 1992). 69 Unlike the fi rst two groups who diff er amongst themselves on strategy, this faction remained distinctive not on account of strategy (which was largely undefi ned), but on motivation. 70 P. K. Iyengar, ‘Forty Years with Atomic Energy’, Farewell Address, February 4, 1993, cited in M. V. Ramana, ‘La Trahison des Clercs: Scientists and India’s Nuclear Bomb’, in M. V. Ramana and Rammanohar Reddy, eds, Prisoner of the Nuclear Dream (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003), p. 234. Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 117

growing calls for India to submit to international inspections, preferably under the NPT regime. Tellingly, he refused to deny speculation about India’s ability to build nuclear weapons, marking a departure from established practice.71 He and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, another member of the Pokharan I team and the man built up by adulatory media reports as India’s ‘missile man’, were evidently educating the Indian public on the true state of the weapons programme in part to defl ect attention from the civilian programme, and also to generate support for the undiff erentiated nuclear programme as a nationalist project.72 Unlike the other two arguments in favour of nuclear weapons, this group relied less on strategic reasons as on nationalist sentiments to promote their view. The Owls: Accepting Offi cial Policy While the owls were not in favour of nuclear weapons for India in the immediate future (for a variety of reasons that included strategic and economic calculations), they remained fi rmly opposed to a unilateral renunciation of its nuclear weapons option in the absence of verifi - able global disarmament. For them, the ‘option’ proved a good holding policy though they diff ered amongst themselves on when or whether India should cross the rubicon. Th eir arguments, when articulated, resonated most closely with wider elite attitudes towards India’s nuclear policy at the time.73 Th is group proved the most responsive to external and internal nuclear developments through the decade. By the end of the 1990s, most emerged in favour of the BJP-authorised nuclear tests which led to the declaration of India as a nuclear weapons power. In Kanti Bajpai’s scheme, most of these eventually became nuclear rejectionists, accepting nuclear weapons as a ‘regrettably necessary’ but still holding on to the belief that global nuclear disarmament remained a cause worth working for.74 In the meantime, however, India’s arsenal

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Steve Coll, ‘India Faces Nuclear Watershed’, Washington Post, March 17, 1992, A15. See also Raj Chengappa, ‘Interview with R. Chidambaram’, India Today, April 30, 1994. 72 See Raj Chengappa, ‘Interview with A. P. J. Abdul Kalam’, India Today, April 15, 1994. 73 See, for example, the Kroc Survey data, in Cortright and Mattoo, eds, India and the Bomb. 74 Bajpai, ‘India’s Nuclear Posture After Pokharan II’, p. 10. 118 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

would provide a hedge in an unequal world where diﬀ erent rules evidently applied to the nuclear haves and the have-nots. Th us Muchkund Dubey, a former Foreign Secretary, and the man widely known to have drafted the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan, observed in 1993 that the end of the Cold War had not succeeded in devaluing nuclear weapons.75 As he would remark in the lead-up to the CTBT negotiations, this made India’s attempts to push through a treaty that would bring the world closer to nuclear disarmament vital, if only by restricting the qualitative improvement of nuclear weapons that a comprehensive test ban could achieve.76 In his opinion, ‘India should not go back on its commitment to a CTBT. Doing so will amount to repudiating a main plank of its disarmament policy and one of Jawaharlal Nehru’s most important legacies’.77 Yet he argued vociferously against any external pressure that might curtail New Delhi’s nuclear options. As the negotiations in Geneva began to reveal a treaty that would limit India’s ability to become a nuclear power while not taking the N-5 any closer towards disarmament, he started advocating that India ‘exercise its nuclear option’ but ‘without an outright test’.78 Lt-General V. R. Raghavan, while arguing that India needed a nuclear option to respond adequately to nuclear developments across the border in Pakistan, did not think overt weaponisation was necessary. He cautioned against ‘a militarised and tested nuclear weapon capability’ as a development that might curtail India’s strategic options, ensnare it in a nuclear arms race, make the country a legitimate target of the nuclear arsenals of the N-5, and ‘establish avoidable linkages between nuclear and conventional military force levels’.79 He wanted India to establish a ‘viable nuclear space’ that conformed neither to the nuclear haves nor to the have-nots.80 Raghavan’s views on nuclear policy changed after the

75 Dubey, ‘India’s Foreign Policy in an Evolving Global Order’, p. 121. Dubey

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 was one of the few people still insisting that non-alignment remained the ‘sheet-anchor’ of India’s foreign policy and that the Non-Aligned Movement could be resuscitated to assume a new role in the post-Cold War world. 76 Muchkund Dubey, ‘Th e Choice Cannot Wait’, Frontline, 2 January 26, 1996, p. 5. 77 Ibid. 78 John Cherian, ‘Treaty Trouble’, Frontline, July 26, 1996, p. 49. 79 Lt-General V. R. Raghavan, India’s Need For Strategic Balance: Security in the Post-Cold War World (New Delhi: Delhi Policy Group, ca 1996), p. 26. 80 Ibid. Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 119

1998 tests when he realised that the feared sanctions and international opprobrium were not as terrible as he had predicted.81 In his opinion, India now ‘has no choice but to go the whole nuclear route’, though he still maintains that India’s arsenal serves purely strategic goals in which nuclear war-fi ghting cannot fi gure as a viable option.82 For many of the owls, the CTBT negotiations demonstrated that Nehru’s idea of India ‘plough[ing] a lonely furrow in the United Nations and at international conferences’ in the hope that it would ‘ultimately gain in national and international prestige’ did not seem viable any longer.83 Overt international pressure, more than any pressing nuclear threat, made the choice of exercising the option more palatable. For Dubey, the Entry-into-Force clause of the CTBT with its implied threat of punitive action constituted a ‘serious infringement of the country’s sovereignty’.84 In his eyes, that vindicated India’s turning its back on a treaty it had long promoted. The Doves: Arguing against All Things Nuclear Th at the land of Gandhi and Nehru did not produce a credible and infl uential anti-nuclear group at fi rst seems remarkable. Opposition to India’s nuclear policy only emerged in a coherent and signifi cant form after the nuclear tests of May 1998, which precipitated an articulate if small anti-nuclear association.85 Th e lack of any serious opposition to nuclear weapons might bring into question attentive India’s commitment to the Gandhian and Nehruvian legacies to which its offi cial rhetoric still pays homage. However, there is an argument to be made that Gandhian ideals of non-violence have never fi gured in Indian

81 Conversation with Lt-General V. R. Raghavan (retd), New Delhi, August 30, 2005. 82 Ibid. 83 See Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘India’s emergence in world aﬀ airs’, Speech to the CAI (Legislative), New Delhi, December 4, 1947, reprinted in Sanjaya Baru,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Strategic Consequences of India’s Economic Performance (New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2006), p. 458. 84 Dubey, ‘India Stands its Ground’, Frontline, October 28, 1996, p. 87. 85 Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND) is the best known anti-nuclear group to have emerged after Pokharan II. Th ere were others, such as Journalists against Nuclear Weapons and Lawyers Against Nuclear Weapons but these turned out to be ephemeral associations that did not long survive the ﬁ rst shocks of the tests. 120 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

defence planning, and even Nehru’s attempts to defl ect attention away from large-scale military planning immediately after independence had more to do with his calculations on the best use of India’s limited resources at the time, as discussed in Chapter 1. At an institutional level, however, the answer lies in the confusion clouding the incipient anti-nuclear faction’s goals before 1998 and in the government’s offi cial policy of opposition to nuclear weapons, which eff ectively pre-empted any independent oppositional movement. Th ose opposing nuclear weapons for India before 1998 argued their case on economic, strategic or ethical and environmental grounds. Th e three divisions were not clear-cut, of course. However, it is worthwhile tracing them because those arguing against nuclear policy on ethical and environmental grounds were strengthened to some extent, or- ganisationally at least, after the tests, even though they still promoted what was defi nitely a minority and often ignored view. On the other hand, those who had off ered economic and strategic arguments found themselves brought into mainstream strategic debates. Ironically, the doves, especially those arguing against nuclear weapons on ethical grounds were undermined by India’s offi cial pro-disarmament rhetoric.86 An anti-nuclear lobby can only meaningfully critique offi cial policy if it exists in opposition to government policy. Some did indeed try to charge the government with hypocrisy, pointing to the excessive sheltering of the nuclear estate.87 Surendra Gadekar, writing the fi rst editorial of India’s only anti-nuclear magazine Anumukti, called for a proper debate facilitated by the ‘free availability of information. Th ese issues which have hidden behind the cloak of being highly technical and of being accessible only to experts need to become the province of every citizen wishing to be informed about them’.88 However, with the government declaring offi cial policy to be global disarmament and restraint for India until the 1998 tests, ambiguity left little oppositional space for the doves to launch their own platform. Th e anti-nuclear lobby could not campaign against a policy that did not formally exist, and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

86 I owe this insight to Professor Varun Sahni. Th e following paragraph draws heavily on a discussion in Delhi on September 7, 2005. 87 See Dhirendra Sharma, ‘India’s Lopsided Science’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 1991. 88 Surendra Gadekar, Editorial, Anumukti inaugural issue, August 1987, at http://members.tripod.com/~no_nukes_sa/firstedit.html (accessed on June 25, 2005). Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 121

until May 1998, offi cial India remained opposed to nuclear weapons for the country as well as for the rest of the world. Th e government’s oc- cupation of the space for opposition went further: the Indian Pugwash Society, for example, is largely funded by the DAE. Its membership speaks volumes: a group that includes Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, K. Subrahmanyam, C. Raja Mohan, Varun Sahni and Sanjaya Baru amongst others can hardly be expected to vigorously campaign against nuclear weapons for India. Hence the All India Peace and Solidarity Organisation, an offi cial peace movement whose existence predates the nuclear debate, failed to mobilise in any signifi cant way to counter the growing calls for a more robust nuclear policy in the early 1990s. Perhaps they had been lulled by the decades of seeming inaction that succeeded Pokharan I. Further, the group’s ideology of nationalism contained overtones of left-leaning anti-imperialism which allowed them to ‘[go] along with the anti- imperial bomb’ when non-proliferation eff orts focussed on the country’s threshold status. India’s nuclear option could then be equated with the need to defend its sovereignty against Western, specifi cally American pressure.89 Th e approach was only to change after Pokharan II, and even then the Left’s response to the nuclear tests was confused at best. Until the tests, however, there was no signifi cant nuclear opposition group to the point that anti-nuclear activism in the country, especially in terms of the ethical arguments against nuclear weapons, is mainly associated with just two people, Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik.90 For their part, the doves claim that they were deliberately ignored by the mainstream press, or, worse, branded as anti-nationals in the early 1990s.91 (Others, such as Kanti Bajpai, dispute this contention; he has acknowledged that his opinion had been solicited by the MEA, though whether this fed into government policy remains a moot point.92) P. R. Chari recalled how easy it was for those arguing with the bomb lobby to be labelled a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Telephonic interview with Dr Anuradha M. Chenoy, September 4, 2005. 90 See, for example, Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik, ‘After the CTBT … India’s Intentions’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 53:2 (March/April 1997); Praful Bidwai, Achin Vanaik, ‘Th e Treaty Can’t Be Held Hostage’,Outlook , July 17, 1996. 91 Anuradha Chenoy claims that newspapers repeatedly rejected submis- sions by the anti-nuclear lobby. Telephonic interview, September 4, 2005. 92 Kanti Bajpai, quoted in Ghose, ‘Mute Voices’. 122 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agent.93 Certainly, there were some ugly discussions about the provenance of the funding of some of the groups that questioned the nuclear weapons programme.94 Th e problem with nuclear opposition in India, however, goes beyond Indian fears of ‘the foreign hand’. Part of the lack of mobilisation probably results from the confl ation of the civilian and military aspects of the nuclear programme. Th is confusion may have lost the anti-nuclear movement some potential support as the civilian nuclear programme had been woven into the nationalist project of economic development from the time of Nehru’s fi rst temples of modernity, fed since by a rich and steady diet of accusations of western-led attempts at neo-colonialism and subjugation through a regime of technology denials and sanctions. Th e Sampoorna Kranti Vidyalaya (SKV, Institute for Total Revolu- tion), a grass-roots Gandhian organisation which is self-professedly anti-nuclear is typical in this regard. It took on board anti-nuclearism as part of a raft of eff orts aimed at bringing about non-violent social change. Its main focus, however, has remained opposition to nuclear power plants, with its primary theatre of dissent being Gujarat and Rajasthan. SKV launched an anti-nuclear magazine, Anumukti (Liberation from the Atom) in 1987, but its circulation remains limited.95 Th ough it has worked to publicise the nuclear establishment’s dismal safety record, it has failed to garner focussed, nationwide awareness of its work, gaining attention briefl y when there was an ‘incident’ at a power plant but never managing to sustain it.96 If there were few arguing against India crossing the nuclear threshold on ethical grounds, those engaging the hawks on strategic and economic grounds were even fewer. Th ough Kanti Bajpai represents an important

93 Conversation with P. R. Chari, a former Ministry of Defence bureaucrat and former director of IDSA, New Delhi, August 23, 2005. Chari has been critical of the nuclear tests and over the years has voiced scepticism over the security Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 arguments put forward in favour of nuclear weapons. 94 Conversations, oﬀ -the-record, with two participants in this debate. Th e conversations were independent of each other and conducted in New Delhi. 95 Anumukti website, http://members.tripod.com/~no_nukes_sa/anumukti. html (accessed on June 25, 2005). 96 ‘Country Report: India’, A Report to the No Nukes Asia Forum 1997, held in the Philippines, and available at the Anumukti website, http://members.tripod. com/~no_nukes_sa/overview.html (accessed on June 25, 2005). Raj Chengappa, ‘Ominous Incidents’, India Today, June 30, 1994, pp. 54–60. Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 123

exception in this respect, putting forward persuasive arguments as to why China as the satisfi ed power after 1962 does not represent a military threat to India or why it would be to India’s disadvantage to fritter away its conventional superiority vis-à-vis Pakistan — for Pakistan would almost certainly go nuclear if India did — on the whole there were few who challenged the arguments of those in favour of weaponisation on anything other than economic grounds.97 Yet, given the underdeveloped state of the exchange, which at a very basic level amounted to heated statements for and against the bomb without any real engagement with the details of targeting, numbers, command and control and the rest of the paraphernalia of deterrence, arriving at an exact fi gure of just what this nuclear deterrent would cost India was diffi cult, as will be seen in the arguments fl eshed out in the succeeding chapters. As a result, the bogey of ‘unacceptable cost’ was never pinned down to an exact fi gure.98 Sanctions imposed after the 1974 test had already aff ected India’s nuclear programme; it was feared that additional sanctions would aff ect the disbursement of World Bank, IMF and other multilateral and bilateral aid (Japan at this time was India’s largest donor), which would destroy any progress in economic reforms achieved since the crisis of 1991.99 Th ese conversations that formed this debate on India’s nuclear option formed part of the ‘background noise’ in a larger, more urgent set of discussions about the future of the country as it moved towards completing fi ve decades of independent existence. Th ere were sporadic

97 For Bajpai’s arguments, see Kanti Bajpai, ‘Secure Without the Bomb’, Seminar, 444, August 1996. 98 Well-informed sources spoke of a secret Ministry of Finance study (conducted sometime between 1993 and 1995) which claimed that a nuclear test would set back the economy by 10 years. Yet, in a land where economic considerations are considered public property, few had seen the report, fewer yet possessed a copy, and the exact ﬁ gures were never conﬁ rmed, let alone agreed upon. 99

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Th e focus of most of these fears remained the United States. At one stage, the US Congress tried to push through an India-speciﬁ c version of the Pressler Amendment, thereby tying aid to a certiﬁ cation that India did not possess nuclear weapons. While this bill did not get through the Senate, the resulting furore in India revealed Indian sensitivity to this sort of pressure. Raj Chengappa, ‘A Sudden Cooling’, India Today, July 15, 1991. Th e fears persisted through the decade, especially as American investment and bilateral trade picked up; Raj Chengappa, ‘Nuclear Dilemma’, India Today, April 30, 1994. 124 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

attempts by those participating in these discussions to engage a larger audience from attentive India, but those promoting the nuclear question could not compete with the more pressing concerns that dominated popular consciousness in the early 1990s, as will be discussed in the next chapter. As a result, the nuclear debate might well have continued in the desultory fashion of the previous decades had not external developments in the nuclear and non-proliferation fi elds focussed attention on India’s intentions and capabilities. Ironically, as the development of the nuclear debate in India demonstrates, international eff orts to strengthen the non-proliferation regime often had exactly the opposite eff ect on the one prominent outlier that the international community sought to bring into the tent. Defi ning a Nuclear India In many ways then, this was not a debate that could prepare India for the tests of 1998, or for the reality of being a declared nuclear weapon state. Indians might well have continued to coast with the obfuscations of the ‘option’ had not developments beyond the country’s borders forced a change in internal attitudes towards the nuclear question. Yet, external events in the 1990s, such as the indefi nite extension of the NPT in 1995, added a certain urgency to the debate, but not necessarily depth, according to some observers.100 Th e strategic community’s response to the pressure put on India’s ‘option’ was to step up discussions on whether to declare the country a nuclear weapons state: the result had ‘stultifi ed […] Indian nuclear thought, in the stark terms of overt or covert nuclear capability’.101 Few were willing to go beyond the simple dichotomy of testing or not to study the strategic consequences of either step for India. In other words, this was not so much a debate about the place of nuclear weapons in India as it was about whether or not India should test a nuclear device. In these circumstances it is not surprising that those who picked up on this debate outside the strategic

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 community were not encouraged to think about the wider ramiﬁ cations of a declared nuclear weapons status. As P. R. Chari remarked acidly in the mid-1990s, those arguing in favour of weaponisation displayed ‘little interest’ in discussing the ﬁ ner points of how nuclear deterrence, let alone nuclear war, would actually be managed. Instead, ‘they simply

100 Raghavan, India’s Need for Strategic Balance, p. 24. 101 Ibid. Creating a Nuclear Debate in the 1990s ( 125

seem to accept the basic and mutual deterrent eff ects of one country’s capability to drop a nuclear weapon on another’.102 Th e consequences of this indiff erence would be starkly visible during the Kargil crisis of 1999 when the armies of the two newly declared nuclear weapons powers engaged in combat in Kashmir. Th at said, the nuclear debates that emerged over the course of the 1990s succeeded in defi ning India, but in a perverse way. Its ‘nuclear option’ (a convenient shorthand that obviated the need to actually defi ne what this was an option to do) came under sustained international, specifi cally western and Japanese, attention at a time when New Delhi needed the support of Washington DC, Tokyo, London and Brussels to sustain its economic liberalisation programme, carve out a new role for itself in a post-Cold War world where the Non-Aligned Movement looked increasingly ineff ective and reinvigorate a national narrative that had suff ered repeated, quite major, domestic shocks. In these circumstances, nuclear policy became a prism through which attentive India could examine the country and the legacy of the fi rst 50 years. Th e fact that New Delhi might have to cave in to non-proliferation pressure precipitated a round of introspection on India’s international infl uence. In a strange way, its unwillingness to decide on its nuclear programme was exposing South Block’s apparent vulnerability. It was a far cry from the lofty role of global infl uence that Nehru had assumed was India’s rightful due. As a result of largely external developments, the nuclear programme came to symbolise a host of other attributes of independent India, most importantly the country’s sovereign right to decide for itself what its strategic interests should be. As N. Ram editorialised, India had to reject the CTBT even though the ban had been one of the country’s most consistently sought-after goals because in the fi nal analysis, the rejection of a fl awed treaty that others tried to impose on India was an affi rmation of its sovereignty.103 In the end, perhaps it was really about how attentive India viewed itself in the harsh glare of the international non-proliferation spotlight. Th e question of deciding on India’s nuclear option was of course

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 to a large extent settled by the BJP’s decision to test and declare India

102 Chari, Indo-Pak Nuclear Standoﬀ , p. 191. Writing soon after the tests, Perkovich echoes this assessment, remarking on the lack of ‘detailed assessment’ of the eﬀ ects of overt weaponisation on India’s regional and global security calculations. Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 316. 103 N. Ram, ‘Nuclear Policy: What India Must Do’, Frontline, January 26, 1996. 126 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

a nuclear weapons power in May 1998, but by then the country’s nuclear capability had acquired attributes that went beyond their military potential. Arundhati Ghose had argued after India’s rejection of the CTBT that its negative vote was driven by security calculations.104 Yet the understanding of security that resonated most with attentive India in the 1990s was the sense that India mattered in the community of nations, that it could not be dismissed lightly, and that the promises of 1947 were still alive.

M Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

104 Interview with Arundhati Ghose, ‘We Should Have Some Self-Esteem’, Outlook, August 28, 1996. III

Deﬁ ning and Defending India, 1990–1996

Th e choice before us involves not only the question of making a few atom bombs, but of engaging in an arms race with sophisticated nuclear warheads and an eﬀ ective missile delivery system. Such a course, I do not think would strengthen national security. On the other hand, it may well endanger our internal security by imposing a very heavy economic burden which would be in addition to the present expenditure on defence. Indira Gandhi, 19681

At the start of the 1990s, the popular mood in India seemed introspective and insecure. Domestic and external events had conspired to produce an attentive public and a policy-making elite who found themselves reacting to events that appeared to chip away at the foundations upon which the idea of India had been built for its fi rst 50 years. As attentive India grappled with a fi nancial crisis, domestic political turmoil, the ending of the foreign policy certainties of Cold War politics and the demise of the Soviet Union, nuclear policy did not emerge as an inherently important element of eff orts to interpret the country’s present or future. In the face of disorienting changes, where the defi ning images for many were domestic, and violent — ranging from the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, to the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the Bombay bomb blasts of 1993 — a nuclear device did not necessarily Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 provide the key to a new role for the country. If anything, New Delhi’s opaque nuclear policy seemed a liability, another area of vulnerability at a time of transition. Attentive India did not want ‘the West’ (and Japan)

1 Indira Gandhi, Statement in Parliament, Lok Sabha Debates, April 24, 1968, reproduced in Jain, Nuclear India, vol. 2, pp. 201–202. 128 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

whose dollars (and yen) it needed to overcome its economic problems, hinting to India that the path to a new global role ran through inclusion in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the resolution of its dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir. In an atmosphere where the military atom could not, for many people, off er a solution to the problems faced by New Delhi, the 1990 crisis with Pakistan was popularly perceived as another in a long line of conventional engagements over Kashmir. Whatever New Delhi’s policymakers might have known and kept classifi ed about the potential for nuclear confl ict, public perceptions of the encounter with Pakistan remained non-nuclear until reports emerging from the United States indicated that at least in Washington, some might have believed otherwise. Th ese accounts sparked a complex debate which perhaps captures the spirit of attentive India’s engagement with nuclear policy at the time. On the one hand, the strategic community’s audience enlarged slightly, for a brief moment, as analysts seized on these reports to push for a greater engagement with defi ning the nuclear ‘option’. On the other, Indian sensitivities, rubbed raw by fairly steady non-proliferation pressure in the fi rst half of the decade, the perceived conditionality of International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans and other bilateral aid, technology controls and the increasingly restrictive embrace of the coalescing Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), reacted to this as yet another attempt at curtailing New Delhi’s sovereign right to set its own strategic goals. Sovereignty in the 1990s appeared visibly under siege in attentive India’s perceptions. In the run-up to 1997 — an anniversary that would look back as well as forward — this elusive concept would have to be defended, and visibly so. As this chapter argues, the cascading domestic and international pressures of the fi rst half of the 1990s privileged non-military interpretations of security for attentive India; negotiations of the idea of India tended to add more weight to economic considerations along the development–security continuum. On the other hand, the violence in Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 political life and communal relations, along with perceptions of India’s weakness internationally, led to a questioning of ideas of Indian exceptionalism. Notions of the country were, as a result, being forced down the identity continuum towards the pole of realpolitik, engendering an acceptance that India should and did behave just like any other state. Much of this reappraisal came about as a result of New Delhi’s interactions with other capitals. Nuclear policy became integral to this negotiation of images of India only to the extent that it impinged Defi ning and Defending India ( 129

on New Delhi’s ability to engage with the international community on terms it was comfortable with. Reassessing India Globally ‘Th e end of the Cold War’, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee declared to Parliament in his explanatory statement on the tests of May 1998, ‘marks a watershed in the history of the 20th century. While it has transformed the political landscape of Europe, it has done little to address India’s security concerns’.2 Th e statement echoed a familiar Indian apprehension, voiced with increasing frequency as the decade wore on, that the collapse of the bipolar international structure and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union had made India’s strategic and political environment considerably more uncertain. Indeed, the ‘peace dividend’ that Europe and North America celebrated with the fi rst phase of disarmament which marked the end of the Cold War seemed, to many in India, still beyond the reach of a subcontinent mired in regional rivalries.3 Re-evaluating Indian Exceptionalism Th e end of the Cold War and with it the most persuasive reason for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) put immense pressure on those articulating New Delhi’s external policies. For years declaratory Indian foreign policy had rested on the moral high ground aff orded by NAM and by the international platform it off ered. Since the idea of India, and especially independent India, was premised on a global role for the country, the decline of NAM and with it the political space for Indian leadership, was particularly diffi cult to accept. As a former Foreign Secretary lamented in 1993, ‘our leverage in the global political power play is limited and our options are getting increasingly narrower’.4

2 Government of India, ‘Th e Evolution of India’s Nuclear Policy’, Paper laid at the Table of the Lok Sabha on May 27, 1998, at http://www.indianembassy.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 org/pic/nuclearpolicy.htm (accessed on November 18, 2004). Th is had become a refrain in Indian policy documents from at least the mid 1990s; see the Ministry of Defence Annual Report 1996–97 (New Delhi: Government of India, 1997), p. 2, cited in Sidhu, Enhancing Indo-US Strategic Cooperation, p. 16. 3 Dubey, ‘India’s Foreign Policy in an Evolving Global Order’, pp. 124ﬀ .; also, M.S. Rajan, ‘Th e Continuing Relevance of Nonalignment’,International Studies 30:2 (February 1993), p. 143. 4 Dubey, ‘India’s Foreign Policy in an Evolving Global Order’, p. 129. 130 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Now, however, even those unwilling to let go of NAM or its guiding principle of non-alignment spoke of the need to ‘cast aside the blinkers of the Cold War’ and re-evaluate its relations with the ‘major Powers’ on the basis of current ‘national interest’ rather than the ‘image it had of them during […] the Cold war’.5 Th e United States, in other words would have to be courted, as the Prime Minister made quite clear.6 Th e fears that this friendship would neither be easy nor without cost seemed vindicated when Indians were forced to acknowledge that it was only ‘a trinity of negative concerns’ — non-proliferation, human rights and terrorism, and intellectual property rights — that prevented India from ‘disappear[ing] from the edges of the [Washington’s] radar screen’.7 For many commentators, the fact that India was barely mentioned in the US National Security Strategy at the start of the decade indicated where New Delhi stood with Washington; the non- involvement of India in addressing the attempted putsch in Moscow (indeed, Narasimha Rao was seen to be completely out of touch with events, seizing on the attempted coup to deliver a caution to those who promoted radical reform), conﬁ rmed that this view was mirrored in Moscow.8 It was a bitter pill to swallow. Perhaps it was therefore unsurprising that India sought a new role for itself in the United Nations, aspiring to a place among the super- equals in the Security Council as a Permanent Member.9 Th ere were strategic reasons for staking a claim to permanent membership in an expanded council now that New Delhi could no longer rely on bloc

5 Ibid., p. 124. 6 Shekhar Gupta and W. P. S. Sidhu, ‘Cautious Manoeuvres’, India Today, June 30, 1992, p. 34. 7 Shekhar Gupta, ‘Bill’s Busy Right Now’, India Today, July 31, 1993, p. 38. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 8 Gautam Adkhikari, ‘Rethinking Foreign Policy: Change needed for India’s Sake’, The Times of India, September 2, 1991; Adhikari was referring to ‘A National Security Strategy for the United States’, August 1991. 9 India’s indirect lobbying for a permanent seat started with Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao’s speech to the summit meeting of the Security Council on January 31, 1992, but India did not formally stake a claim until September 15, 1992, when the then Minister of State for External Aﬀ airs Eduardo Faleiro addressed the General Assembly. BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, September 28, 1992, FE/1497/i. Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 131

rivalry to deliver Moscow’s veto on Kashmir, human rights and other potentially contentious matters. Th ese, however, were rarely aired.10 Instead, offi cially, Indians argued that an expanded Security Council would more accurately refl ect the membership of the global body, which had changed considerably after the waves of decolonisation of the 1950s and 1960s, while also compensating for the over-representation of Europe. Indian reasoning largely focussed on the country’s population, its historic support of the United Nations and more recently, its peacekeeping operations; some obliquely alluded to the fact that accepting India into the Security Council would democratise a hitherto cosy club of nuclear weapons states.11 Despite the rhetoric, however, there was an unmistakable impression that India also aspired to promote itself from the ‘managed’ to the ‘management’ group within the United Nations for reason of self-image. Th at New Delhi’s attempts to ‘democratise the Security Council’ were repeatedly thwarted served only to reinforce attentive India’s fears that the country had slipped in the global roster of nations.12 Indian anxieties over links between non-proliferation, Kashmir and a permanent seat seemed confi rmed when those involved in negotiations later reported that the United States, Britain and Japan dropped informal hints during the early 1990s that India’s chances of acquiring a permanent seat would increase dramatically were it to sign the NPT, acquiesce in various missile technology control regimes and prove

10 Former Foreign Secretary J. N. Dixit stands out as a refreshing exception to this trend in his candid assessment of India’s weakness in the face of a more interventionist UN. See J. N. Dixit, My South Block Years: Memoirs of a Foreign Secretary (New Delhi: UBS, 1996), chapter 19, 340ff. 11 Satish Kumar, ‘Towards a Stronger and More Democratic United Nations: India’s Role’, International Studies 30:2 (February 1993), 184ff. is fairly representative. K. Subrahmanyam also wrote a series of articles at the time, some of which are reproduced in K. Subrahmanyam, Shedding Shibboleths,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 chapter 39. See also, K. Subrahmanyam, ‘An Equal-Opportunity NPT’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 49:5 (June 1993), pp. 37–39. 12 Former Foreign Secretary M. K. Rasgotra is perhaps in a small minority in considering Indian lobbying for permanent membership ‘demeaning’; in his view, there was ‘no worthwhile gain in India’s permanent absorption in … [the] handmaiden of nuclear weapon monopolists’. Rasgotra was and remains a vocal proponent of India’s nuclear weaponisation. See M. K. Rasgotra, ‘India’s Foreign Policy: Some Perspectives’, in Jetly, ed., India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 31, 28. 132 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

more pliable on Kashmir.13 Th ese suggestions and the overt pressure on India’s missile programme may, however, have backﬁ red: those promoting a more muscular nuclear policy seized on these exchanges to argue their case as necessary to shield New Delhi from unwelcome foreign duress.14 Received wisdom had it that P. V. Narasimha Rao’s minority government would never survive the allegations of caving into ‘American dictates’ if it did sign the NPT, even if the reward were a seat at the Security Council.15 A More Activist International Agenda Th e conﬁ dence with which the United States had been able to pro- claim a New World Order, presumably as a prelude to imposing a ‘Pax Americana’, caused considerable unease in India.16 A member of the US Congress was quoted in the Indian press asking for India to be ‘restrained’ for excesses committed behind the ‘steel curtain’ in Punjab and Kashmir.17 Th e implications for India of the US ‘dominating’ the proceedings of the UN Security Council to promote an agenda ‘determined by Western democracies, led by the United States’, were, for some, a clear cause for concern.18 High on this list of priorities were the dispute over Kashmir and nuclear non-proliferation. Th oughtful Indians feared that a more interventionist UN, inspired by the apparent wave of democracy sweeping through Central Europe, might turn its attention to Kashmir, under the newly re-energised rubric of self-determination.19 As the rhetoric of self-determination, human rights and good governance appeared to legitimise intervention in sovereign states on humanitarian grounds, a former Foreign Secretary was constrained to observe that ‘[s]overeignty, of late, has never been absolute; but now

13 Dixit, My South Block Years, pp. 346–47; Subrahmanyam, Shedding Shibboleths, p. 392, note 5. 14 See, for example, J. N. Dixit’s assessment of the four steps by which India should put forward its candidature for a permanent seat at the Security Council Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 in Dixit, ibid., p. 347. 15 Shahnaz Anklesaria Aiyar, ‘Th e Nuclear Tangle’, India Today, March 31, 1992, p. 34. 16 Ramesh Th akur, ‘India After Nonalignment’,Foreign Aﬀ airs 71:2 (Spring 1992), p. 178. 17 Dan Burton, quoted in Gupta, ‘Bill’s Busy Right Now’, p. 39. Burton also added that events in Bosnia paled in comparison. 18 Dixit, My South Block Years, p. 340. 19 Dubey, ‘India’s Foreign Policy in an Evolving Global Order’, p. 123. Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 133

it is being subjected to further curtailment and abridgement’.20 UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s 1992 Agenda for Peace, with its espousal of ‘pre-emptive diplomacy’, ‘preventive action’ and ‘peace-making’ was seen by some as going ‘against the original terms of reference of the UN Charter and, in many respects, contradict[ing] the respect for member states’ sovereignty and equality among them’.21 New Delhi spent a great deal of energy in defl ecting criticism of its Kashmir policy, and more specifi cally, of alleged human rights abuses in the state.22 Security took on a qualitatively diff erent meaning for those who concerned themselves with Indian foreign policy when Pakistan stepped up its eff orts in 1993 and 1994 to bring Kashmir on to the United Nations’ agenda with a resolution on human rights abuses in the state.23 While the Pakistani attempt to raise Kashmir at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva plunged bilateral relations to a new low, it also dramatically escalated Indian insecurities over its Achilles heel. India had to turn to Iran and China to dissuade Pakistan from tabling its motion. Th e ‘back room deals’ were successful, but the Indian relief was tempered by the sober acknowledgement voiced by the BJP’s Atal Behari Vajpayee (a member of the bipartisan Indian delegation to Geneva) that ‘there was a certain humiliation involved in having to go around begging for votes on a human rights issue’. Vajpayee urged his countrymen to ‘use this reprieve to clean up our act in Kashmir or there will be a Geneva every few months’.24 Equally disturbing was the acknowledgement that Pakistan had succeeded in ‘internationalising’ the matter with the almost immediate consequence of the government being forced to overcome its inhibitions about allowing foreign diplomats access to the region.25 Th at US President

20 Ibid., p. 123. 21 Dixit, My South Block Years, pp. 343ff. 22 Former Indian Ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva Satish Chandra recalled that during his posting to Geneva (1992–1995), he spent

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 75 per cent of his time parrying any pressure that Pakistan might have tried to engineer on human rights and Kashmir. Presumably, the CTBT had to compete with other concerns for the remaining 25 per cent of his time. Conversation with Satish Chandra, New Delhi, September 5, 2005. 23 See Dixit, My South Block Years, pp. 333ff. 24 Shekhar Gupta, ‘A Triumph of Diplomacy’, India Today, March 31, 1994, p. 26. 25 Gupta, India Redeﬁ nes its Role, p. 54. 134 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Bill Clinton had also referred to Kashmir as a nuclear fl ashpoint which should be monitored internationally in the same breath as he spoke of Bosnia and Somalia did little to either assuage Indian concerns or soothe ruffl ed feathers.26 Th is was a far cry from lofty images of a global role for the country. Defl ecting Non-proliferation Pressure Th e most worrying implication, though, rested on the fact that for many in Western capitals, Kashmir was now fi rmly linked to the ‘problem’ of nuclear proliferation. Despite the heated Indian reaction to Robin Raphel, Assistant Secretary of State in the newly created Bureau for South Asian Aff airs, apparently questioning the Instrument of Acces- sion in October 1993, attentive India was forced to acknowledge that the US attention to Kashmir was kept sharply focussed by fears that bilateral tensions on the subcontinent between the two unacknowledged nuclear powers could escalate into a nuclear confrontation.27 Raphel made it clear that the reason the United States pushed non-proliferation eff orts, specifi cally, its policy of ‘cap, roll back and eliminate’ in the region, sprung from an assessment in Washington that South Asia ranked amongst those regions that it viewed as ‘potentially the most dangerous’.28 Her remark confi rmed Indian fears that Washington would adopt a more ‘activist’ policy towards India because it had fi rmly linked Kashmir with nuclear proliferation in the subcontinent.29 Despite attentive India’s predisposition to subject nuclear policy to benign neglect, attention was kept focussed on the topic by the Clinton administration’s promotion of nuclear non-proliferation as an important foreign policy goal. Indian reactions to the United States’ proposals to ‘cap, roll back and eliminate’ its (and Pakistan’s) nuclear assets were predictably strongly negative. Indian analysts were clear that there could be no negotiation on India’s nuclear programme in the absence of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

26 Dixit, My South Block Years, p. 334; Dilip Bobb, ‘Turning the Screws’, India Today, November 30, 1993, pp. 47ff.; Shekhar Gupta, ‘Keeping Bill at Bay’, India Today, December 15, 1993, pp. 46–47. 27 Bobb, ‘Turning the Screws’, pp. 47–48. J. N. Dixit dwells at some length on the repercussions of Raphel’s appointment and her subsequent outspokenness in My South Block Years, chapter 9, pp. 191ff. 28 Dilip Bobb and Harinder Baweja, ‘Interview with Robin Raphel’, India Today, April 15, 1994, p. 34. 29 Shekhar Gupta, ‘A Worrying Activism’, India Today, March 15, 1994. Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 135

any movement towards global disarmament.30 Th ough those arguing these matters might have diff ered amongst themselves on whether the motive for their opposition rested on security concerns (the nuclear assets of China and Pakistan, trained on India) or their rejection of a discriminatory and hypocritical nuclear order in which only some countries were considered responsible enough to rely on nuclear deterrence for their security, their opposition remained focussed and relentless. Matters were not greatly helped by the confi dence of the US interlocutor on non-proliferation negotiations, Strobe Talbott, who was quoted in India as being ‘optimistic’ about American eff orts at achieving the ‘objective of fi rst capping, then reducing and eventually eliminating weapons of mass destruction from South Asia’.31 Unsurprisingly, Prime Minister Rao adopted a hard line at an army commander’s conference in New Delhi a few days later when he declared that any attempted restrictions on India’s nuclear programme remained ‘unacceptable and unrealistic’ in the absence of global disarmament.32 As one scholar of Indian nuclear policy has observed, the nuclear question only assumes signifi cance at times of perceived external pressure on New Delhi’s nuclear policy, and then attitudes, especially the government’s policy and ‘posturing’, tend to harden.33 Reports surfaced just prior to Prime Minister Rao’s scheduled state visit to the United States of a meeting in London between Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for non-proliferation, Bureau of Political–Military Aff airs, Robert Einhorn, and N. Krishnan, a retired civil servant. In India’s lively political system, this allowed the nuclear question to be politicised; members of the opposition seized on this in Parliament as proof of the government’s caving in to US pressure to compromise on the nuclear programme or sign the NPT. Prime Minister Rao was forced to clarify his government’s stand in a speech to the Rajya Sabha, when he categorically rejected reports that he planned to sign the NPT or agree to a regional non- proliferation agreement.34

30 See, for example, K. Subrahmanyam, ‘Capping, Managing or Eliminating

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Nuclear Weapons?’, in Kanti P. Bajpai and Stephen P. Cohen, eds, South Asia After the Cold War: International Perspectives (Boulder CO: Westview, 1993), pp. 175–92. 31 Raj Chengapppa, ‘Nuclear Dilemma’, India Today, April 30, 1994, p. 49. 32 Ibid. 33 Amitabh Mattoo, ‘India’s Nuclear Status Quo’, Survival 38:3 (Autumn 1996), p. 46. 34 All India Radio, ‘Prime Minister Rao Sets Out Defence, Nuclear Policy in Rajya Sabha Debate’, May 3, 1994, reproduced in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Part 3, Asia/Paciﬁ c; South Asia; India, FE/1986 A/5 (10). 136 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Th e debate spilled outside Parliament and into the media. Amidst the now standard allegations of the US trying to protect its ‘dominance’ in world aff airs by preventing rising states from acquiring the currency of power, former Foreign Secretary Muchkund Dubey weighed in on the debate, arguing against any institutionalised forum in which India’s nuclear programme would be on the discussion table. In his view, ‘their [the United States] only objective is to dismantle our missile and nuclear capability’.35 Dubey, who was Rao’s fi rst choice to lead the Indian delegation to the talks with the US (his trenchant public criticism of the government’s acquiescence to the talks eventually disqualifi ed him), was quoted in the same story as declaring that ‘[t]he bomb option is the currency of power and critical to our power and critical to our survival as a strong nation’.36 Coming from the widely acknowledged architect of the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan, it demonstrated the extent to which elite opinion was shifting in the face of perceived external pressure. Eventually, this would trickle down to a wider attentive public. Acknowledging Indian Weakness Attentive India’s insecurities about New Delhi’s international clout came into sharp focus over the cryogenic engine deal with Russia, which Moscow had to renege on after coming under sustained US pressure. Th e United States insisted that the deal would violate the provisions of the MTCR which neither the Soviet Union (and its successor, the Russian Federation) nor India had signed at the time the controversy began. Indian and Russian protestations that the engines were intended for a well-advertised civilian programme and hence did not contravene the MTCR were ignored.37 Th is deal, originally signed with the USSR in 1991, was to have provided the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) with the engines required for its space launch vehicles, along with the technology to build more engines.38 Russia agreed to uphold the

35 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Chengappa, ‘Nuclear Dilemma’, p. 51. 36 Ibid., p. 54. 37 Sanjoy Hazarika, ‘US Warns India Over Missile Deal’, New York Times, May 3, 1992, pp. 1, 14. 38 A detailed study of this episode can be found in Alexander A. Pikayev, Leonard S. Spector, Elina V. Khichenko and Ryan Gibron, Russia, the US and the Missile Technology Control Regime, Adelphi Paper 317 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the IISS, 1998). Th e original deal called for the transfer of two complete engines, two testing engines and the equipment and technology and training for ISRO to subsequently produce its own engines. Ibid., p. 22. Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 137

Soviet agreement in a series of exchanges in 1992 and early 1993, most notably when Russian President Boris Yeltsin visited India in January 1993. Yeltsin declared at a press conference at the end of his visit that ‘Russia will not backtrack from its commitment’.39 US pressure, however, proved overwhelming: Washington imposed sanctions on both ISRO and Glavkosmos, though it was clear that the comprehensive sanctions imposed on ISRO had more serious implications than restrictions on Glavkosmos, which was the marketing arm representing the Russian space industry.40 Th is overt US pressure on India resulted, quite predictably, in bolstering support for the missile and space programmes which had long been built up as showcases of Indian technology.41 For many Indians, the space programme shone out as the one area of achievement in an otherwise desultory scientiﬁ c report card.42 Th e head of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (which produced India’s missiles) A. P. J. Abdul Kalam summed up the attitude in an observation he frequently made: ‘Strength respects strength. When a country is technologically strong other countries will respect it’.43 Leftist parliamentarians in particular, picked up on this theme when they blamed the government for being too submissive in the face of ‘American bullying’, even though it was Glavkosmos that had called oﬀ the deal.44 All this fulminating, however, could not paper over the fact that the country was vulnerable to informal technology denial regimes, which, in Indian eyes did not enjoy the backing of international law.45 Th ough the head of ISRO had referred to the threat of the US ban on technology transfer as having only nuisance value, pushing the Indian programme to develop the engines indigenously, the fact remained that the collapse

39 Nilova Roy, ‘Yeltsin’s Visit to India Re-establishes Close Alliance After 3-Year “Pause”’, Th e Daily Yoimuri, February 1, 1993; see also, J. N. Dixit, My South Block Years, pp. 218ff. 40 Foran, ‘Th e Case for Indo-US High Technology Cooperation’, p. 76. 41 Th e almost breathless reportage of the test launch of ISRO’s Polar Satellite Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in 1993, which also refers to the US embargo on rocket technology as ‘a nuisance’, is fairly typical. See Raj Chengappa, ‘Joining the Big Boys’, India Today, April 15, 1993, pp. 56–58. 42 Sidhu, Enhancing Indo-US Strategic Cooperation, p. 27. 43 Ibid., p. 27. 44 Sanjoy Hazarika, ‘India Asserts It Will Develop Rocket Engines’, New York Times, July 18, 1993, pp. 1, 17. 45 Ibid. 138 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

of the technology transfer part of the deal would delay the programme by about 8 years.46 Nevertheless, perceptions of American coercion in this matter succeeded in bolstering support for the missile programme. When India successfully tested its Agni medium range ballistic missile in 1994, the head of the missile programme A. P. J. Abdul Kalam crowed, ‘Agni is our Brahmastra [the ultimate weapon of Lord Brahma, the creator in the Hindu Trinity] against the MTCR imposed on us’.47 Washington’s role in the controversy and the subsequent disintegration of the deal with Russia also had the eff ect of bolstering Indian suspicions about neo-colonial attempts to keep India technologically and economically backward. Reports in mid-1992 that the US fi rm General Dynamics (and France’s Arianespace) had also bid for the contract but lost to the more competitive Soviet off er also fuelled suspicions that Washington might not have acted purely out of non- proliferation concerns.48 Th ese reports presumably originated from offi cial sources; the government was striking back in the only way it could, by questioning the motives of alleged non-proliferation measures undertaken by the West. Matters were not helped by the simmering dispute over intellectual property rights between the United States and India which led Washington to impose trade sanctions on New Delhi under the US 1988 Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act less than a fortnight before it applied sanctions on ISRO in mid-1992.49 Th is unilateral action was widely seen as a protectionist measure, bolstering connections between Washington’s regime of technology denial and its attempts to protect its own industry. Th ough the offi cial Indian reaction to the sanctions on ISRO was mild — the Ministry of External Aff airs spokesman called it ‘an avoidable irritant’ — discussion in Parliament

46 Raj Chengappa, ‘A Nuisance’, India Today, April 15, 1993, p. 58. 47 Raj Chengappa, ‘Now Nobody Can Th rottle Us’, India Today, 15 April 1994, 42. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 48 Chengappa, ‘Joining the Big Boys’; Embassy of India, ‘India Update’, May 2, 1992, cited in Pikayev et al., Russia, the US and the Missile Technology Control Regime, pp. 22–23; Raj Chengappa, ‘Misguided Muscle’, India Today, August 15, 1993, pp. 46–47. 49 Agence France Presse, ‘India Flays US for Ban on Space Agency’, May 12, 1992. For more on the trade dispute, see Sumit Ganguly, ‘South Asia After the Cold War’, Washington Quarterly 15:4 (Autumn 1992), pp. 180ff.; Bob Currie, ‘Governance, Democracy and Economic Adjustment in India: conceptual and empirical problems’, Th ird World Quarterly 17:4 (1996), pp. 787–807. Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 139

was heated.50 As one parliamentarian, Communist Party of India (M) member Gurudas Das Gupta, put it somewhat colourfully, the ban represented ‘an act of state terrorism to impose the American unipolar domination in the world’. Th e BJP’s Yashwant Sinha more moderately remarked that the ban attempted to keep India technologically backward; signiﬁ cantly, he added that India was being made the object of a domestic agenda in Washington.51 Sinha’s observation brought to the surface the insecurities about India’s global weight. As the Indian Express newspaper editorialised after Washington succeeded in blocking the deal, ‘[t]he problem lies in the fact that while India wishes to be treated as an equal, the U.S. likes to dictate terms and conditions of the relationship. For any self- respecting nation, that is clearly an unacceptable situation’.52 Th e fact that the US could selectively impose what some Indians saw as ‘ad hoc discriminatory regimes’ to curb the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in regions of its choosing added insult to the injury of technology denial. In Dubey’s opinion,

Th e list of dual-purpose technologies, substances and equipment which cannot be exported to the countries of the third world under these regimes is so extensive as to have the eﬀ ects of freezing the technological and industrial development of the developing countries in those vital areas. It is also very diﬃ cult to judge whether the restrictions applied in any particular case are motivated by the commercial consideration of preventing the country concerned from developing competitive capacity or by the consideration of ensuring non-proliferation.53

50 Agence France Presse, ‘India Flays US for Ban on Space Agency’; Gupta and Sidhu, ‘Cautious Manoeuvres’, p. 35. Th e muted response may also have been due to the fact that the technology transfer went ahead anyway. Russia later sent engineers to India to work in the ISRO laboratories. Conversation with J. N. Dixit, New Delhi, April 5, 2004; Conversation with former scientiﬁ c advisor to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Ashok Parthasarathi, New Delhi, January 16,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 2005. Interestingly, the UK was aware of this exchange but chose not to publicise it. Conversation with Baroness Daphne Park, Oxford, November 19, 2004. During her time in the civil service, Baroness Park had dealt extensively with the USSR/Russia and WMD. 51 ‘India Flays US for Ban on Space Agency’. 52 Cited in United Press International, ‘Indian Lawmakers Accuse US of Acting Like a “big bully”’, August 13, 1993. 53 Dubey, ‘India’s Foreign Policy in an Evolving Global Order’, p. 122. 140 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

On the whole, the collapse of the cryogenic engine deal highlighted several anxieties. To begin with, it made very clear to Indians that Russia would not or could not assume the USSR’s role of trusted ally and reliable supplier of military and other technology.54 It also underscored the fact that for the United States, India was an object in the promotion of its domestic political goals, be it the Clinton Administration’s desire to leave as his legacy a reinvigorated non-proliferation regime or the need to protect the US economy as it struggled out of recession.55 Th is did not sit well with Indian self-images. As Dixit remarked dryly of Washington’s proclivity to associate the country with ‘irresponsible states’ that should be subject to rigorous technology denials, ‘India cannot quite reconcile itself to the idea of being categorised with Libya or Iraq’.56 Courting the United States Yet however much Indians fretted over Washington behaving like ‘an arrogant world policeman’, the United States would have to be engaged.57 Th ough India’s plebiscitary politics could shield the government from international pressure — Rao speciﬁ cally stated after the cryogenic engine deal fell through that he would not acquiesce in any arrangements that could compromise India’s national interest or of which the Indian Parliament would not approve — he had to tread a ﬁ ne line in invoking India’s raucous parliamentary politics in tying his government’s hands.58 After the Cold War, the government needed to engage the remaining superpower for economic, military and foreign

54 Anita Inder Singh, ‘India’s Relations with Russia and Central Asia’, International Aff airs 71:1 (1995), pp. 69–77; Dixit, My South Block Years, chapter 10. 55 Gupta and Sidhu, ‘Cautious Manoeuvres’, p. 34. 56 Dixit, My South Block Years, p. 409. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 57 United Press International, ‘Indian Lawmakers Accuse US of Acting Like a “big bully”’. 58 P. R. Chari comments on Rao’s use of Parliament to signal to both the international community and his domestic constituency that he could be circumscribed by the same domestic political infl uences that Washington invoked when it promoted a foreign policy agenda such as non-proliferation or human rights citing domestic pressures. See P. R. Chari, Indo-Pak Nuclear Standoff : Th e Role of the United States (New Delhi: Manohar for the Centre for Policy Research, 1995), p. 71. Defi ning and Defending India ( 141

policy reasons. Th us defence co-operation, which included joint naval exercises — the fi rst signifi cant interaction since 1964 — came under severe pressure once the cryogenic engine deal attracted US sanctions.59 Th e Defence Minister had to fend off calls from both sides of the aisle to cancel the exercises scheduled for June 1992.60 As one report observed, the most signifi cant aspect of the joint exercise with two warships from the US’ Seventh Fleet (the same fl eet that had been at the centre of the controversy over the perceived American nuclear threat in 1971) was that it was held at all, overcoming the irritants of sanctions against ISRO, Super 301 and the Indian test-fi ring of the Agni missile.61 Part of the problem, observers acknowledged, lay in ‘excessive expectations’, in attentive India’s hopes that the end of the Cold War would automatically bury old antagonisms and allow the United States to seize on the promise of the markets provided by the much-touted Indian middle-class to increase economic ties.62 Dixit was not alone in criticising the press for throwing ‘tantrums’ when the United States followed policies that jarred on Indian sensibilities.63 South Block offi cials too spoke of the media creating an impression of tense relations when both sides were trying to overcome a legacy of decades of refl exive mistrust.64 Th e United States, however, proved equally inept at handling Indian sensitivities. A 1992 Defense Department document that spoke of the need to ‘discourage India’s hegemonistic [sic] aspirations over other states in South Asia and on the Indian Ocean’ raised Indian hackles.65 Th ere were other irritants. In 1993, the United States put pressure on France to discontinue its supply of fuel to the Tarapur nuclear power

59 Defence co-operation was instituted under the aegis of the ‘Kickleighter Proposals’, ﬁ rst proposed by Lt-General Claude Kickleighter in 1991 with the aim of deepening co-operation between the militaries of the two countries. See, B. K. Shrivastava, ‘Indo-American Relations: Search for a New Equation’, International Studies, 30:2 (February 1993), pp. 220ff. 60 ‘India Flays US for Ban on Space Agency’; Shrivastava, ibid. 61 W. P. S. Sidhu, ‘A Sea Change’, India Today, June 30, 1992, p. 34. Th e second

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 test ﬁ ring of the Agni was carried out on schedule, on the day of the exercises, despite American unhappiness with India’s plans. 62 Dixit, My South Block Years, p. 204. 63 Ibid. 64 Gupta and Sidhu, ‘Cautious Manoeuvres’, p. 35. 65 US Defense Planning Guide for the Post-Cold War Era, cited in Dixit, pp. 176ff.; see also Th omas P. Th ornton, ‘India Adrift’, Asian Survey 32:12 (December 1992), p. 1076. 142 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

plant once the original contract (signed between the US and India in 1963, but assumed by France after the agreement ran foul of the United States’ 1978 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act) expired that year. Given the importance of Tarapur’s electricity to parts of western India, the consequences could have been serious.66 Th e matter was ﬁ nally resolved when China agreed to supply the fuel, subject to the safeguard provisions of the original contract.67 Yet, the episode added to Indian perceptions of US heavy-handedness at a time when Prime Minister Rao was preparing for an already controversial visit to Washington DC.68 Th ese tensions were to mount as Rao’s visit to the United States, which was aimed primarily at boosting US investment in the Indian economy, drew near.69 Indian attitudes towards the US had plum- meted in the early months of 1994, with headlines in Indian newspapers routinely attacking the Clinton administration — and Clinton in particular — for deliberately slighting India over human rights, the failure to appoint an ambassador to New Delhi (for almost a year) and continuing to press South Block on non-proliferation.70 Th e perceived American pressure also provided the BJP with a platform to assert its views on nuclear and missile policy.71 Matters were not helped by the government postponing a scheduled test launch of the Prithvi missile weeks before Rao’s departure.72 Since analysts had already begun to question the future of the Agni programme amidst fears that the government was ‘quietly meeting US objections’ to its development, the

66 Ibid., p. 198. 67 Ibid., pp. 197–98. 68 As it became clear that the US would try to stop France from supplying fuel to Tarapur, observers predicted that there would be repercussions on Rao’s plans to visit the United States. Shekhar Gupta, ‘Tolerating Reality’, India Today, July 31, 1993, p. 40. 69 Th e Washington DC portion of Rao’s tour was in fact called a ‘working Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 visit’ rather than a state visit. Dilip Bobb, ‘A Slippery Summit’, India Today, May 31, 1994, p. 38. 70 Molly Moore, John Ward Anderson, ‘Rhetoric Fuels India-US Rift: Perceptions of Washington Vendetta Th reatens Improved Business, Military Ties’, Washington Post, February 24, 1994, A 17. 71 ‘Vajpayee Wants No Compromise on Security’, Th e Hindu, May 9, 1994, p. 13; ‘BJP Against Curbs on N-programme’, Hindu, May 11, 1994, p. 13. 72 ‘Rao Must Clarify on Missile Programme’, Th e Hindu, May 10, 1994, p. 1; ‘Govt. Statement on Prithvi Today’, Hindu, May 12, 1994, p. 1. Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 143

missile programme transformed into a bellwether of South Block’s ability to withstand external non-proliferation pressure.73 K. Subrahmanyam recalled drafting a resolution for the BJP to table in Parliament on protecting India’s nuclear option and not signing the NPT. However, Rao apparently reassured Vajpayee on this score and persuaded him not to raise the matter formally in the House.74 In this case, back-channel discussions across the political divide helped the government defl ect domestic pressure on its nuclear policy at a time when international obligations required room for manoeuvre. Th e fears, however, remained. Indian defensiveness over Rao’s perceived vulnerability led India Today to editorialise on ‘the kind of jingoistic prickliness that often seizes us […] [which] made Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s US visit controversial much before he’d even got off the ground’.75 Much to the relief of those following news of it in India, the visit qualifi ed as ‘a quiet triumph’.76 Domestic fears that Rao would cave in to inexorable American pressure on the NPT were temporarily quieted, though not completely alleviated. At the press conference that followed the Clinton–Rao summit, Rao spoke of focussing on ‘areas of converging interest’. Yet, the very fi rst question he was asked by an Indian reporter put the spotlight back on Indian insecurities. Citing Indian fears of American arm-twisting, the journalist enquired after the state of the Prime Minister’s arm. Rao’s response that his ‘arm [was] absolutely intact[; t]he President didn’t even touch it’ might have provoked laughter in the audience but it would take more than witty repartee from the Prime Minister to dispel domestic anxieties about continuing US pressure.77 More thoughtful Indian analysts recognised that the joint statement issued at the end of the meeting acknowledged both sides’ concerns. So while there was mention of the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons in a nod to Indian sensibilities, the statement also declared both leaders’ intention to work for the ‘non-proliferation of weapons Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 73 Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, quoted in Chengappa, ‘Missile Man’, p. 45. 74 K. Subrahmanyam, ‘Narasimha Rao and the Bomb’, Strategic Analysis, 28:4 (2004), p. 594. 75 Comment, ‘Make the Most of it’, India Today, May 31, 1994, p. 3. 76 Dilip Bobb, ‘A Quiet Triumph’, India Today, June 15, 1994, pp. 26–32. 77 CNN, ‘Text of Clinton and Indian Prime Minister Press Brief’, May 19, 1994, Transcript # 705–1. 144 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

of mass destruction’, as desired by the United States.78 In other words, the pressure could continue. Redifi ning India Domestically Th e 1990s opened with domestic turbulence. Th e Indian economy struggled to stay afl oat, political India cast about for a viable and charismatic alternative to the Gandhi–Nehru dynasty, separatist threats jeopardised the unity of the country and communal ones the secular fabric that had held together the diff erent strands of the idea of India. In the midst of these cascading problems, Indians were forced to acknowledge that from the outside, theirs seemed ‘a nation in permanent crisis’.79 More worryingly, Indians increasingly questioned the future of their nation with domestic fi ssures over caste, class and religion, which found expression in violence, threatening the never-defi ned, but often-invoked ‘Nehruvian consensus’.80 As one editor observed, ‘never before have we infl icted such savagery on our fellow citizens and never before have we been less sure about the way we want to govern ourselves’.81 Confronting Economic Turmoil On June 12, 1991, India’s foreign exchange reserves dipped to $875 million, the equivalent of less than a fortnight’s worth of imports.82 A short- term loan from the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan, off ered against a shipment of gold as collateral, helped the country avoid de- faulting on its international debts.83 Th e Narasimha Rao government took immediate steps to counter the balance of payments crisis and

78 C. Raja Mohan, ‘US Decides Not to Push for NPT’, Th e Hindu, May 21, 1994. 79 Chengappa, ‘How the World Sees India’, p. 11. 80 Vinod Mehta, ‘Is India Falling Apart’, (ca end 1990), reproduced in Vinod Mehta, Mr Editor, How Close are You to the PM?: 25 Years of Selected Writings (New Delhi: Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Konark, 1999), p. 9. In Mehta’s view, the Nehruvian consensus roughly hews to ‘a humane and tolerant society in which the state nurtures, even celebrates, religious, ethnic, cultural and linguistic diff erences’. 81 Ibid. 82 ‘India: External Sector: Emerging Challenges’, The Financial Times, November 1, 2001. 83 Earlier in the year, the Chandra Shekhar government had sold 20 tonnes of gold confi scated by the government to a Zurich bank with a repurchase option to raise another $200 million. Government of India, Economic Survey, 1990–91. Defi ning and Defending India ( 145

initiated a long-term programme of economic reform aimed at liber- alising the economy. New Delhi turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for emergency fi nance, a move which raised the spectre of far-reaching conditionality imposed by the Fund (widely acknowledged to be under Washington’s infl uence) for the largest loan it had ever extended to India. Th is was expected to include steps to reduce the defi cit, open markets to foreign competition, drastically reduce licens- ing requirements, cut government subsidies, and fi nally, liberalise investment.84 Predictably, the Left reacted strongly. Indrajit Gupta of the Communist Party of India declared that ‘[t]he controversy we face is not so much over the loan, but the conditions. […] Is the IMF imposing its economic sovereignty over India, that’s what we want to know’.85 However, the Finance Minister Dr Manmohan Singh (a career bureaucrat, rather than a politician) declared that India had to face the ‘harsh realities’ of a changed world and accept painful economic measures.86 Arguing against protection and in favour of integration with the world economy he declared: ‘We do not want to go the Burma way’.87 Turning away from decades of autarky to integrate with the global economy, however, came at the price of linking foreign policy to economic necessity. Th e aid and investment desperately needed to put the economy back on a stronger footing arrived with conditions attached, most notably, with the requirement that India cut back drastically on its defence spending, which had ballooned under Rajiv Gandhi.88 As economic policy increasingly became ‘the fulcrum of Indian foreign policy’, the Ministry of External Aff airs acknowledged that centrality of economic matters in its dealings.89 In this ‘new world order’, one offi cial noted, ‘without economic strength, stability and fl exibility, you will always be a minor player’.90 Preoccupied with economic fi re-fi ghting, the Prime Minister had to all appearances demoted his attention to

84 Bernard Weinraub, ‘Economic Crisis Forcing Once Self-Reliant India to Seek Aid’, Th e New York Times, June 29, 1991, A1, p. 5. 85 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Shahnaz Anklesaria Aiyar, ‘Interview with Manmohan Singh’, India Today, July 31, 1991. 88 Ganguly, ‘South Asia after the Cold War’, p. 176. 89 Dilip Bobb, ‘Groundbreaking Shift’, India Today, February 29, 1991, p. 21. 90 Ibid. Th e oﬃ cial was not identiﬁ ed. 146 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

nuclear policy even as some governments made this subject a central point in their dealings with New Delhi. To the observers within the country, such nuclear policy as emanated from South Block appeared to be reactive and defensive.91 As a result, the old shibboleths of global disarmament invoked in response to global non-proliferation pressure were beginning to wear thin even within India.92 Th e focus on the economy also turned attention to the state of India’s infrastructure and power generation. Th e nuclear estate’s failure to deliver aﬀ ordable and plentiful electricity, the ostensible reason for supporting a large and rather wasteful establishment, led some to question the real purpose of its existence. Apart from the articles written by a few anti-nuclear activists drawing attention to the ineﬃ ciency and poor safety records of the nuclear power plants, the budgetary squeeze and international attention on India’s nuclear posture prompted closer scrutiny of the nuclear establishment by the press as well.93 By the mid- 1990s, the nine nuclear power plants could only produce 2.5 per cent of the country’s electricity; their capacity of 1,740 MW annually was a far cry from the ambitious target (already scaled down once) of ‘10,000 [megawatts] by 2000 [AD]’.94 Th ough Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) chairman R. Chidambaram tried to blame a shortfall in funding for this failure, a number of accidents in power plants had lead to increasing questions about the safety and viability of the nuclear power programme.95 A 1994 American news channel report (CBS) on the

91 See, for example, Shekhar Gupta and Shahnaz Ankelsaria Aiyar, ‘Blundering Along’, India Today, December 15, 1991, which talked of India’s ‘gaﬀ es’ in countering Soviet support at the UN for Pakistan’s proposal of a NWFZ in South Asia; Shahnaz Ankelsaria Aiyar, ‘Nuclear Tangle’, India Today, March 31, 1992. 92 Gupta and Aiyar, ‘Blundering Along’, pp. 14–15. 93 Amulya Kumar N. Reddy, ‘Nuclear Power: Is it Necessary or Econom- ical?’, Seminar 370, (June 1990); Amulya K. N. Reddy, Gladys D. Sumithra, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 P. Balachandra and Antonette D’Sa, ‘Comparative Costs of Electricity Conservation, Centralised and Decentralised Generation’, Economic and Political Weekly 25:22 (June 2, 1990), cited in Amulya K. Reddy, ‘Designing Nuclear Weapons: Th e Moral Question’, in M. V. Ramana and Amulya K. Reddy, Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003), pp. 204ff. 94 Raj Chengappa, ‘Nuclear Dilemma’, India Today, April 30, 1994, p. 53. 95 ‘Interview with Chidambaram’, India Today, April 30, 1994; Raj Chengappa, ‘Ominous Incidents’, India Today, June 30, 1994, pp. 54–60 and Vijay Menon, ‘Moving at a Snail’s Pace’, India Today, November 30, 1994, pp. 66–67. Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 147

Tarapur Atomic Power Plant in which it was described as ‘the world’s leakiest’ was also picked up by the Indian press.96 Th e acknowledgement of the multiple failures of the nuclear power programmes, however, forced a tacit acceptance that these large-budget, apparently ineffi cient projects were being tolerated by the government at a time of otherwise general belt-tightening precisely because the programme allowed a weapons-oriented programme to exist.97 Nuclear power was only a ‘byproduct’, a ‘fi gleaf for a bigger agenda, the bomb’.98 Responding to Defence Cutbacks Th e fi nancial belt-tightening that India undertook in the early 1990s aff ected the armed forces particularly sharply, especially after the ‘shopping spree’ of the 1980s.99 As a result, the more hawkish amongst

Chengappa’s report (op. cit.) on a series of accidents, including a serious fi re at the Narora power plant and the collapse of the containment dome of a plant under construction in Kaiga, also referred to the study carried out by Sampoorna Kranti Vidyalaya on the unacceptably high levels of radiation near the Rawatbhata power plant, which was suspected to be responsible for the unusually high rate of congenital deformities, infant deaths and general poor health of a village near the plant (see chapter 2). Th is however seems to be the only reference to the study in the various reports on the nuclear programme carried in India Today. See also interview with Y. S. R. Prasad, Chairman, Nuclear Power Corporation, in ‘Th e State of India’s Nuclear Power Plants’, Outlook, December 20, 1995. 96 ‘Th e State of India’s Nuclear Power Plants’. Reports had surfaced in April 1995 that radioactive water had leaked from Tarapur’s waste immobilisation wing, contaminating the soil around the plant. Th ough the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board was forced to call a press conference in July to deny this, the undertaking was greeted with considerable scepticism. All India Radio, New Delhi, July 6, 1995, ‘Offi cial gives assurance on Tarapur radiation leak’, reported in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Part 3 Asia-Pacifi c; South Asia; India; FE/2350/A; and Mahesh Uniyal, ‘Atomic Energy Program Under A Cloud’, July 6, 1995, IPS-Inter Press Service. 97

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Chengappa, ‘Nuclear Dilemma’. 98 Krishna Prasad, ‘Nuclear Slowdown’, Outlook, December 20, 1995, at www. outlookindia.com (accessed on April 25, 2007). 99 At the end of the 1980s, India was the world’s largest arms importer, with defence spending for the decade crossing $20 billion. During Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Minister (1984–1989), defence spending as a percentage of GDP rose from 2.9 to 4.2. See Gupta, India Redeﬁ nes Its Role, p. 36 and Byrnes, ‘Silent Superpower on our “Doorstep”’. 148 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

India’s strategic analysts found themselves responding to dual fears of the repercussions of contracting defence budgets and the growing non-proliferation pressure on the Rao government.100 Budget reductions after the peak of 1987 compounded by the high infl ation of the fi rst half of the 1990s produced a decline in defence spending in real terms by 40 per cent between 1986–87 and 1993–94.101 Th is reduction did not take into account the 30 per cent devaluation of the rupee in 1992, nor indeed the wage bill, which continued to rise, putting further pressures on real spending. After 1989, India had not signed a major arms deal worth more than $25 million.102 By the mid-1990s, approximately 45 per cent of the defence budget was allocated to supporting 1.2 million men in uniform, leaving little for spares, maintenance, war wastage reserves, research and development and modernisation.103 At the same time, the army was deployed in internal peacekeeping duties in Punjab, Kashmir and the Northeast.104 Apart from the implications for India’s economic health, the increasing frequency with which the army was being called upon to uphold internal law and order in the late 1980s and early 1990s had begun to generate unease, both within the military and the bureaucracy who feared a politicisation of the army. Concerns were also expressed that frequent deployment in civilian duties could compromise the army’s effi ciency in carrying out its real task of external defence.105 By the early 1990s, the armed forces were beginning to feel the pinch; real fears about the eff ectiveness of the Indian military began to surface, contributing to larger discussions about Indian security. Chief of Army Staff , General B. C. Joshi pointed out in mid-1993 that the resource

100 Nair, Nuclear India, chapter 11. 101 Gupta, India Redefi nes its Role, pp. 38–39. Th e defence budget fell from 4.04 per cent of GDP in 1986–87 to 2.44 per cent in 1993–94; the average rate of infl ation hovered at 10.6 per cent from 1991–92 to 1995–96. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 102 Ibid. Th is restraint held through the 1990s. 103 Chellaney, ‘India’, p. 173. An IDSA study put the fi gure at 65 per cent of the budget with the wage bill increasing by 7.5 per cent each year. Cited in Ajith Pillai, ‘Inertia in the Ranks’, Outlook, November 8, 1995. 104 Army troops in Kashmir alone accounted for 15 per cent of the defence budget in 1993; overall, roughly 40 per cent of the army was undertaking internal security duties. Shekhar Gupta, W. P. S. Sidhu and Kanwar Sandhu ‘A Middle-Aged Military Machine’, India Today, April 30, 1993. 105 Dixit, My South Block Years, p. 415; Gupta, India Redefi nes its Role, p. 36. Defi ning and Defending India ( 149

crunch had necessitated a ‘choice about the manner in which it [the country] wishes to seek its security and the kind of defence it can aﬀ ord’.106 As one set of journalists not normally given to sensational- ism remarked,

India’s strategic planners and defence forces’ top brass are fi nally waking up to a stark, bitter and scary reality: starving under the impact of 5 years of resource cuts, reeling from the utter disruption of supplies from the Soviet Union and haemorrhaging from the relentless involvement in domestic fi re-fi ghting, the Indian military machine is losing its decisive edge against Pakistan.107

More than the Pakistan threat, however, was the growing realisation that India’s power-projection of the 1980s might well be a thing of the past, unless New Delhi were prepared to reassess its defence budgetary strictures. Serving army offi cers were now beginning to voice their concerns, though off -the-record. One general observed that if budgetary outlays were not revised, the Indian armed forces would soon be reduced to defending just India’s borders and not its interests. In his opinion, India needed a strong military to ‘continue with internationally inconvenient postures’, such as its stand on the NPT, Kashmir or ‘foreign-engineered insurgency’.108 Inevitably, the reductions in defence budgets allowed nuclear proponents to argue for nuclear weapons on the grounds that they provided more ‘bang for the buck’. General Sundarji drew a direct connection between troop reductions and a nuclear arsenal when he pointed out that a ‘nuclear backdrop’ would allow both India and Pakistan to reduce conventional forces in response to their current economic constraints.109 In a study that attracted considerable attention in defence circles, Air Commodore Jasjit Singh (retd), then Director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), argued that the minimum level of defence spending India could aff ord to drop to was 3 per cent of GDP; below that, New Delhi had no option but to deploy nuclear weapons if it wanted Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

106 Kanwar Sandhu, ‘Interview with Chief of Army Staﬀ , General B. C. Joshi’, India Today, July 15, 1993, pp. 50–51. 107 Gupta, et al., ‘A Middle-Aged Military Machine’, p. 22. 108 Ibid., p. 23. 109 Saritha Rai, ‘Interview with General K. Sundarji (retd)’, India Today, April 30, 1994, p. 27. 150 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

to maintain a credible defence force. A deployed arsenal would allow India to maintain defence spending at 2.5 per cent.110 As he pointed out later in the decade, the continued resource shortfalls in the defence budget had raised questions about India’s ability to ‘deter military aggression of the type we experienced in 1962 and 1965’. With conventional capability continuously eroded, ‘[t]he issue, therefore, really resolves around maximising the capability at minimum costs’.111 In another study, Brigadier Vijai Nair (retd) claimed that nuclear weapons were not only necessary but also eminently aff ordable. He put the cost of a nuclear weapons arsenal (which took into account production and testing costs, a command and control infrastructure and delivery systems) at Rs 600 crore a year for the decade of the 1990s. Th is fi gure, he argued, amounted to 3.4 per cent of the defence expenditure for 1991–92.112 Nair’s calculations were based on the assumption that India already had much of the nuclear infrastructure in place, which made the additional costs of weaponisation of an existing capability aff ordable.113 Th e hawks were turning the economists’ arguments in favour of restrained defence budgets to their advantage. Few analysts, however, pointed out as did Lt-General V. R. Raghavan (retd) that a nuclear arsenal could not replace India’s conventional military requirements, especially given the armed forces’ internal security commitments.114 Commenting on Jasjit Singh’s analysis that a deployed arsenal would allow India to cap the defence budget at 2.5 per cent of GDP, Raghavan observed that the calculations failed to take into account the political and international ‘opportunity costs’ that fi elding a nuclear and conventional force would entail. In his view, the accumulated reductions in

110 Jasjit Singh, ‘Trend in Defence Expenditure’, Asian Strategic Review (1992–93) (New Delhi: Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, 1994), p. 33. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 111 Jasjit Singh, ‘India’s Nuclear and Security Policies’, in Nancy Jetly, ed., India’s Foreign Policy, p. 72. 112 Nair, Nuclear India, chapter 11. Nair’s ﬁ gures were quoted in an India Today article which pointed out that the annual outlay amounted to the cost of a Mirage-2000 squadron and would allow the defence budget to remain below 4 per cent of GDP. Shekahr Gupta and W. P. S. Sidhu, “Th e End Game Option”, India Today, April 30, 1993, p. 28. 113 Nair, Nuclear India, pp. 249–50. 114 Raghavan, India’s Need For Strategic Balance, pp. 26–27. Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 151

defence expenditure since the late 1980s had already led to a backlog of Rs 210 million for just the army to regain adequate equipment, infrastructure and ammunition, which ﬁ gure did not take into account the bill for attaining the 1986–87 levels of preparedness and training. A deployed arsenal would not cover these shortfalls.115 Th ough the voices were still few, discussion nevertheless was spilling out of the sequestered halls of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Service headquarters.116 As the debate leached out of an increasingly vocal strategic community, Indian academia and think tanks — both traditionally ignored by the government as an input into policy — looked to bypass South Block in gaining an audience for themselves.117 Even though the government may not have encouraged the strategic community to examine India’s nuclear options in light of the developments of the early 1990s, those interested in the issue, led notably by K. Subrahmanyam, General Sundarji and others, organised themselves to educate a broader audience on this question.118 The Primacy of Domestic Politics India’s economic insecurities might still have been weathered had they not mirrored a debilitating uncertainty engulﬁ ng the country’s national politics. Th e transition from the 1980s to the 1990s saw the installation, in rapid succession, of three minority governments with few prospects for a return to stable, single-party rule. In the face of this turmoil, the then President R. Venkataraman wearily advised his countrymen to ‘get used’ to coalition politics.119 Th e 1989 general elections marked a turning point in that the Congress Party was sent to the opposition for only

115 Ibid., p. 37. 116 As M. K. Narayanan, former chief of the Intelligence Bureau, and National Security Adviser in the Congress-led UPA government (2005–2009) remarked, there may have been lively discussions about nuclear policy, but these had historically remained conﬁ ned to South Block. Conversation with M. K.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Narayanan, New Delhi, January 19, 2007. 117 K. Subrahmanyam has written bemoaning government apathy, bordering on active discouragement, in the establishment of think tanks in India. K. Subrahmanyam, Shedding Shibboleths, pp. 10ff. 118 Inder Malhotra, ‘Introduction’, in Subrahmanyam, Shedding Shibboleths, xixff. 119 Quoted in James C. Clad, ‘India: Crisis and Transition’, Washington Quarterly 15:1 (Winter 1992), pp. 93–94. 152 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

the second time in India’s 40-year history.120 Th e National Front, a minority alliance of the Janata Dal in a tenuous coalition arrangement with two other parties, staked a claim to form the government, supported from ‘the outside’ by an unholy association of the pro-Hindu BJP and the two largest communist parties. Th e V. P. Singh-led government soon fell, only to be succeeded for an even shorter period by a yet more precariously balanced alliance led by Chandra Shekhar. Indians began to resign themselves to a new volatility in domestic politics. Yet nothing could have prepared the country for the 1991 elections. Th e assassination of Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991, not only removed the charismatic successor to the Nehru–Gandhi mantle, it also forced the country to confront the brutality that had permeated the fabric of daily existence. Th e bloodshed did not end with elections, though they were the most violent India had ever experienced.121 Th e communalisation of politics exacerbated by both Rajiv Gandhi as he courted electoral advantage by appeasing both Muslims and Hindus, and more famously, by the BJP, who rose to prominence on the back of their calls for a Hindu Rashtra (or homeland), led to relations between Hindus and Muslims touching abysmal lows in the early 1990s.122 Th e destruction of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 unleashed a wave of riots across India that left thousands dead in their wake, marking the nadir of these developments.123 It was followed by serial bomb blasts

120 Francine R. Frankel, ‘India’s Democracy in Transition’, World Policy Journal VII:3 (Summer 1990), pp. 529–30. Th e history of the rstfi unsuccessful attempt to bring in an alternative to the Congress in 1977 did not hold out much hope for India either. 121 By some estimates, over 200 people were killed in the six weeks of election campaigning, with nearly 200 in the fi rst day of voting. ‘Death Among the Blossoms’, Th e Economist, May 25, 1991. 122 Frankel, ‘India’s Democracy in Transition’, pp. 521–55. In the year leading up to the 1991 elections, communal violence — mainly Hindu–Muslim Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 riots — had claimed 2,000 lives, according to one count. Th e Economist, ‘Death Among the Blossoms’. 123 Th e Babri Masjid was a relatively obscure sixteenth century mosque in Ayodhya which shot to prominence after Hindu groups claimed that it stood at the site of an ancient temple that marked the birthplace of Rama, an ancient king venerated by Hindus as a reincarnation of the god Vishnu. Hindus and Muslims had traditionally used the site for worship until a dispute in 1949 led to the mosque being locked up. Th ere matters rested until Rajiv Gandhi, guided by electoral compulsions, ordered that the doors be unlocked in 1986. Defi ning and Defending India ( 153

in Bombay in which 13 bombs rocked the commercial capital of the country within the span of a few hours on March 12, 1993. Th e blasts themselves killed over 250 people; the wave of violence unleashed in their wake killed several hundred more in the months to come.124 As Indians struggled to come to terms with a more volatile domestic order, old paranoias that fed a siege mentality began to suspect a ‘foreign hand’ in all India’s internal problems.125 From the Bombay bomb blasts to the simmering violence in Punjab and the Northeast to the recrudescence of insurgency in Kashmir, Indians began to fear that the enemy within was being nurtured by interests across the borders. Th ough India’s relations with its neighbours may have oﬀ ered considerable scope for improvement in the early 1990s, the real threat to the territorial integrity and viability of the state appeared to arise from within its boundaries. Just over 40 years after independence, large tracts of its land border areas, especially to the northwest and the northeast, were marked by instability, if not outright separatism. Th e number of deaths in Jammu and Kashmir and in Punjab rose steadily in the early 1990s, providing a commentary on not just the violence that had overtaken life in these two states, but also the manner in which Indian opinion had become inured to incredibly high casualty rates.126 To many, India was being battered by the million mutinies of dis- aﬀ ection, insurgency and mismanaged domestic politics. As the Centre

Th is unleashed the militant Hindu group, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, or World Hindu Council) to step up their campaign to rebuild a temple at the site. Th e agitation culminated in the December 1992 destruction of the mosque by Hindu fundamentalists, led by leaders of the BJP. 124 Th e South Asia Intelligence Review, at www.satp.org (accessed on April 29, 2006), puts the number at 257. 125 Gupta, India Redeﬁ nes its Role¸ p. 5; Raju G. C. Th omas, South Asian Security in the 1990s, Adelphi Paper 27 (London: Brassey’s for IISS, 1993), 19ff. 126 In Kashmir, insurgency deaths climbed steadily from 1989 (when it tripled from the previous year to reach 92 from 31) to counts of approximately

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 1,200, 1,400, 1,900, 2,560, with the graph climbing further through the decade. Figures can be found at Th e South Asia Intelligence Review, http://www.satp. org (accessed on April 29, 2006). Disaff ection in Punjab produced fatalities far in excess of what was recorded in Kashmir in the early 1990s. Figures for 1988 through to 1992 are as follows: 2,432, of which 1,949 were civilians; 2,072 of which the corresponding civilian fi gure was 1,168; 4,263 and 2,467; 5,265 and 2,591; and fi nally 3,883 and 1,518. Th e violence would continue, though at much lower levels for another 5 years (see Th e South Asia Intelligence Review). 154 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

struggled to maintain control, for many Indians the traditional concept of state security seemed to be turned on its head. Returning to the survey of elite opinion cited earlier, the top concerns of India’s opinion makers and opinion shapers were, in descending order, communalism, poverty, economic stability, terrorism, Kashmir, GATT and fi nally, nuclear policy.127 Nuclear weapons were clearly not the perceived solution to most of India’s problems in the early 1990s. The Dog that Would Not Bark: Nuclear Silence Against the backdrop of growing international scrutiny directed at India’s nuclear programme, regional developments served to punctuate the growing conspicuousness of the nuclear question. Yet the remarkable fact is not that India’s attentive public began to take more notice of nuclear policy, but that regional developments did not cause the nuclear debate to become more charged. Th e 1990 crisis with Pakistan, for example, continues to generate confl icting accounts of whether it contained a nuclear edge. In addition, it was becoming increasingly clear that China was helping Pakistan with its nuclear and missile programme at the same time that it continued refi ning and modernising its conventional and nuclear military capabilities. Yet, discussions about India’s need to respond to regional nuclear threats failed to resonate deeply; the discussions in the wider public arena tended to subside after an initial spate of worried editorials and renewed calls from the hawks. The 1990 Crisis Th e 1990 crisis remains the subject of much debate since there is a school of thought — mainly Western — that believes the escalating tensions carried nuclear overtones. Some have even gone so far as to argue that an atomic catastrophe involving the two neighbours was only prevented by the timely despatch to the region of a US delegation led by the then Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gates.128 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

127 Cortright and Mattoo, India and the Bomb, Appendix B. 128 Th is version gained currency with Seymour M. Hersh’s alarmist account, ‘On the Nuclear Edge’, New Yorker, March 29, 1993, which has been repeated in William E. Burrows and Robert Windrem, Critical Mass: Th e Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmented World (London: Simon and Schuster, 1994) and echoed (with caveats) in Scott D. Sagan, ‘Th e Perils of Proliferation: Organization Th eory, Deterrence eoryTh and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons’, International Security, 18:4 (Spring 1994). Devin Hagerty also cites a number Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 155

Th is version has few takers, especially in India and amongst American offi cials posted to the subcontinent at the time, as those involved in the events and the Gates Mission insist that Robert Gates did not discuss Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities during his meetings with Indian politicians, bureaucrats and military personnel.129 Briefl y, tensions between India and Pakistan escalated in early 1990 owing to the compounding of several domestic developments in both countries, which were exacerbated by weak governments in New Delhi and Islamabad resorting to jingoistic war cries to fend off domestic pressures.130 Th e crisis centred on Kashmir where, by the late 1980s, New Delhi’s chronic mismanagement of the state had resulted in rising separatist violence. In the meantime, military developments — not all of which were related to the rising tensions caused by chauvinistic drumbeating in Islamabad and New Delhi — had acquired a momentum of their own.131 Th ough there were no overt preparations for war, to

of newspapers and periodicals such as the Sunday Times (UK) and Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong) which carried stories in the early 1990s about Pakistan making credible nuclear threats during this crisis. See Devin Hagerty, Th e Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation: Lessons from South Asia (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press from the Belfer Center for Science and International Aﬀ airs, 1998). 129 See a former cabinet secretary’s assertion to the point in B. G. Deshmukh, ‘Th e Inside Story’, India Today, February 29, 1994. K. Subrahmanyam too has written extensively on this. His writings from that period are culled together in a chapter titled ‘Th e Non-crisis of 1990’, in Subrahmanyam,Shedding Shibboleths. However, over a decade later, Shekhar Gupta, a respected commentator on nuclear matters, cast some doubt on the basis for Indian complacency, stating that Burrows and Windrem may have had grounds for their alarmist assertions. Shekhar Gupta, ‘Turning Nukes on their Head’, Indian Express, June 8, 2002. Indian complacency notwithstanding, in Pakistan the belief that India was deterred from adopting an aggressive posture in 1990 has become part of the country’s ‘nuclear lore’. One Pakistani analyst observed, ‘Robert Gates told the Indians that we were mad enough to use the bomb and they believed him.’ See

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Charles Smith, ‘Atomic Absurdity’, Far Eastern Economic Review, April 30, 1992, cited in Hagerty, ibid., p. 162. 130 Hagerty has provided a detailed account of the development and subsiding of the crisis in Devin T. Hagerty, ‘Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia: Th e 1990 Indo-Pakistani Crisis’, International Security 20:3 (Winter 1995/96). 131 Th e Indian army had moved four brigades to Kashmir and Punjab (two from the border with China in the Northeast), mainly to counter the growing insurgency in those two states. According to General V. N. Sharma, Chief of 156 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

outside observers the build-up appeared uncomfortably similar to the circumstances that led to the Brasstacks crisis of 1987.132 Th e rhetoric appears to have outlived the military alert (the last of the troops deployed near the border at Mahajan and on the Pakistani side were moved back to regular positions by early May) and the Gates Mission may have allowed politicians on both sides to use the intervention to back down from their confrontationist postures.133 Both army chiefs also maintain that the crisis remained nuclear-free. General V. N. Sharma, then Chief of Army Staﬀ , insists that there was ‘no question of considering nuclear war’, and went on record three years after the event to say as much.134 Yet, the military confusion that led to the rising tensions has now seeped into Indian and Pakistani nuclear lore.135 Further, public perceptions of the 1990 events were inﬂ uenced by the war of words between New Delhi and Islamabad. Tensions rose when Benazir Bhutto promised a ‘thousand year war’ in support of the

Army Staff at the time, these were not aggressive deployments as the divisions lacked artillery. Conversation with General V. N. Sharma (retd), New Delhi, April 8, 2004. Across the border in Pakistan, the conclusion of a late 1989 military exercise Zarb-e-Momin had not resulted in all troops being redeployed to their peacetime positions as expected by Indian observers. 132 Michael Krepon and Mishi Faruqee, eds, Conflict Prevention and Confi dence Building Measures in South Asia: Th e 1990 Crisis (Washington DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, Occasional Paper no. 17, April 1994). On the Brasstacks crisis, see Kanti P. Bajpai, et al., Brasstacks and Beyond. 133 Based on the diff ering perceptions of political and military offi cials at both US embassies in the subcontinent as related during the Stimson Center session in Krepon and Faruqee, eds, Confl ict Prevention. 134 Conversation with General V. N. Sharma (retd), April 8, 2004; General Sharma made the same point in an interview to K. Subrahmanyam three years after the crisis in ‘It’s All Bluff and Bluster’, Th e Economic Times, May 18, 1993. Th e then chief of the Pakistan Army General Mirza Aslam Beg has echoed the assertion. In his view, Pakistan at the time did not possess ‘a useable nuclear Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 weapon’, and further, that the circumstances were not critical or desperate enough to warrant the contemplation of a nuclear response. Interview with Gen- eral Mirza Aslam Beg in Th e News, December 3, 1992, cited in Pervez Hoodbhoy, ‘Nuclear Myths and Realities’, in Michael Krepon and Amit Sevak, eds, Crisis Prevention, Confi dence Building and Reconciliation in South Asia (Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995). 135 For the Pakistani viewpoint, see Pervez Hoodbhoy, Nuclear Issues Between India and Pakistan: Myths and Realities (Washington DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, Occasional Paper no 18, July 1994). Defi ning and Defending India ( 157

Kashmiri separatist cause.136 Prime Minister V. P. Singh responded to this sloganeering the following month during a defence debate in Parliament by calling on Indians to be ‘psychologically prepared’ for war. He declared that ‘those who talk about a thousand years of war should examine whether they will last a thousand hours of war. […]’137 Prime Minister Singh then raised the nuclear bogey. Arguably, the politically weak prime minister was responding to domestic political pressure. Two days earlier, Rajiv Gandhi had called for ‘some very strong steps on Kashmir’, adding, ‘I know what steps are possible. I also know what is in the pipeline and what the capabilities are. Th e question is, does this government have the guts to take strong steps?’138 Th e reference to nuclear capabilities in the ‘pipeline’ was not lost on India’s strategic community. Th is was followed in Parliament by the BJP’s Jaswant Singh calling on the government to address the ‘major change’ in ‘the Indo-Pak nuclear debate’.139 S. Krishna Kumar of the Congress remarked that ‘[w]e have always been chanting mantras about the nuclear capability of Pakistan, saying, if they have a nuclear device we shall not hesitate to acquire such a capability and use it. But it is clear that Pakistan has the nuclear capability’. V. P. Singh then rose to reply, addressing ﬁ rst Bhutto’s provocations. He then answered his domestic critics. Remarking on the pointlessness of having to waste precious resources on preparing for nuclear conﬂ ict at a time ‘when the world is trying to dismantle the nuclear arsenals’, [sic] he concluded by stating that ‘if we are confronted with a nuclear threat, I think we will have to take a second look at our policy that we have today. I think we will have no option but to match it and our scientists have the capability to match it’.140 Th e hints were repeated in the Rajya Sabha. Singh’s Minister of State for Defence Raja Ramanna — one of the scientists involved in Pokharan I — informed the Upper House on May 17 that India took

136 March 13, 1990 speech cited in Hagerty, ‘Nuclear Deterrence in South

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Asia’, p. 98; this was followed by a speech in Larkana on April 4, quoted in Lt-General Matthew Thomas (retd), ‘Comment’, in Lt-General Matthew Th omas, ed., Indian Defence Review 1990 (New Delhi: Lancer, July 1990), p. 5. 137 Lok Sabha Debates, Ninth Series, vol. III, second session, April 10, 1990. 138 David Housego, ‘India Urged to Attack Camps in Pakistan Over Strife in Kashmir’, Th e Financial Times, April 9, 1990. 139 Lok Sabha Debates, Ninth Series, vol. III, second session, April 10, 1990. 140 Ibid. 158 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

very seriously the consequences of nuclear fallout and therefore hoped that ‘good sense would prevail’ in Pakistan. However, he continued, if the counselling of restraint went unheeded, ‘I will repeat only what the prime minister has so often said, “We would rise to the occasion.”’141 Th e temperature of the nuclear debate had risen during the crisis. What, however, is evident from the exchanges in Parliament is the rudimentary level at which the discussion on nuclear threats and deterrence occurred. Quite apart from not addressing the question of what using ‘a nuclear capability’ would entail, there was no meaningful engagement with the possibility that Pakistan might contemplate a nuclear attack or even resort to nuclear blackmail.142 But if Parliament was perhaps representative of the wider public response to the events at the border, its sanguine reaction did not resonate with the strategic community. Th ey seized on the episode to draw their own conclusions: according to Subrahmanyam, Ramanna’s declaration amounted to the fi rst articulation of India’s ‘no fi rst use policy’.143 Yet, without Parliamentary interest, a wider audience for their conclusions would not materialise. For India’s strategic analysts, the 1990 crisis confi rmed suspicions that Islamabad was resorting to low-intensity confl ict to destabilise India. Th ose in favour of a more robust nuclear policy tried to draw connections between the insurgency raging in Punjab and Kashmir with their argument that Pakistan was using its nuclear capability as insurance against any vigorous Indian response to Islamabad’s support of separatism in these states.144 Yet, for the most part, the crisis was allowed to subside with the hawks not able to attract a wider audience for their nuclear advocacy. Even if analysts abroad were painting the 1990 crisis with nuclear overtones, Indian opinion was happy to accept the version put forward by a former Cabinet Secretary

141 Quoted in Subrahmanyam, ‘Capping, Managing or Eliminating’, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 pp. 182–83. 142 Th ere are indications that V. P. Singh might have considered the possibility of a Pakistani nuclear strike in private. However, there is no evidence that he discussed this with any of his cabinet colleagues or with anyone else apart from the Chief of Air Staﬀ at the time, Air Chief Marshall S. K. Mehra. See Kargil Review Committee, From Surprise to Reckoning, p. 240. 143 Subrahmanyam, ‘Capping, Managing or Eliminating?’, p. 190. 144 Air Commodore Jasjit Singh (retd), ‘Th e Wars that Never Were’,India Today, February 28, 1994, p. 39. Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 159

and private secretary to Prime Minister V. P. Singh: ‘We did not have nuclear weapons of any kind then [during Brasstacks]. We do not now [in 1994].’145 Ironically, Seymour Hersh, writing an investigative piece for Th e New Yorker in March 1993 did more than any Indian to raise the profi le of the nuclear question in India.146 As reports of the story fi ltered back to India, what had till then been seen as a closed chapter by the larger public reappeared in the press.147 Offi cially, India still denied any nuclear angle to the encounter.148 Unoffi cially, some in South Block and senior army offi cers speaking off -the-record were willing to admit that the possibility of Pakistan possessing nuclear weapons did inform their planning for any military operation against the country.149 Yet, once again, other events overshadowed this discussion till the nuclear phoenix re-emerged with another American publication, this time a somewhat alarmist book by William E. Burrows and Robert Windrem.150 However, with both the Hersh and the Burrows and Windrem report, the strategic community was caught in a bind. On the one hand, their accounts succeeded in bringing the nuclear question into the public domain, however ephemerally. On the other, Indian analysts found much to criticise in the tenor of their reports, which appeared to hint at the possibility that those on the subcontinent might not — for reasons of knowledge, geography, temperament or history — be able to prevent the region from sliding towards atomic annihilation. K. Subrahmanyam tore apart the Hersh story, both for its tone and for inaccuracies in the reporting.151 Jasjit Singh declared that the Gates Mission and all subsequent reportage that claimed for it a role in defusing a nuclear crisis was just a clumsy US attempt to put pressure on India to roll back

145 Deshmukh, ‘Th e Inside Story’, p. 36. 146 Hersh, ‘On the Nuclear Edge’. 147

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Shekhar Gupta and W. P. S. Sidhu, ‘Th e End-Game Option’, India Today, April 30, 1993, p. 28. Th is story also cites a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which alludes to the danger that a conventional war between the neighbours ‘could escalate to the nuclear level’. 148 See also ‘It’s all Bluﬀ and Bluster’. 149 Gupta and Sidhu, ‘Th e End-Game Option’, p. 28. 150 Burrows and Windrem, Critical Mass. 151 Subrahmanyam, ‘Th e Non-Story of 1990’. 160 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

its nuclear capability.152 Yet, as one Indian editor observed, 20 years after Pokharan I it was time for a proper debate on the topic of India’s nuclear intentions, however unwelcome the international attention in this respect. Explaining his magazine’s decision to publish excerpts from Burrows and Windrem’s Critical Mass in order to generate a debate on this long-suppressed topic, Arun Poorie remarked that he anticipated that ‘experts’ might disagree with the opinions presented in the excerpts. ‘But’, he continued, ‘to interpret the book as a racist attack by the authors, who are said to be suggesting that third world countries are congenitally less capable of handling their arsenals than the West, is to miss the message. Such an attitude smacks of the xenophobia that seems to seize us each time a non-Indian says anything that seems inconvenient to us’.153 Engaging with a Nuclear Neighbourhood Th ere were other unwelcome references to nuclear matters in the neighbourhood. With the end of the Cold War, President George H. W. Bush found that he was no longer able to certify that Pakistan did not possess nuclear weapons and, under the provisions of the Pressler Amendment, the US Congress imposed sanctions on Islamabad.154 Th e implications of this development for New Delhi were serious. Hereafter, the government could no longer deny Pakistan’s nuclear capacity. Until then, as some commentators recognised, South Block had adopted a somewhat schizophrenic approach to Pakistan’s nuclear capability, advertising the nuclear threat when its own nuclear programme was questioned, and yet stopping short of any formal recognition of Pakistani nuclear weapons.155 Th e enforcement of this amendment had essentially kept the Indian hawks at bay; once the United States announced what Indian strategic analysts (barring the scientiﬁ c enclave) had accepted for at least three years, the debate on the pros and cons of nuclear deterrence vis-à-vis 156

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Pakistan should have gathered momentum. Yet, apart from the

152 Singh, ‘Th e Wars that Never Were’. 153 Arun Poorie, ‘Letter from the Editor’, India Today, February 28, 1994. 154 Several analysts drew connections between the Gates Mission and the subsequent invoking of the Pressler Amendment. See, for example, Singh, ‘Th e Wars that Never Were’. 155 Paranjpe, Parliament and the Making of Indian Foreign Policy, p. 59. 156 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 312. Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 161

‘well-recognised fringe elements’ present in the discussions about Indian foreign and defence policies, there was no ‘intolerable pressure’ on the government to ‘exercise the option’.157 Further, in the opening years of the 1990s, what appeared to consign them to the ‘fringe’ was not so much the belief that overt weaponisation would be destabilising but that it would be astronomically expensive.158 Th ere is also the possibility that the Janata Dal government co-opted the hawks when V. P. Singh established a commission to look into nuclear threats and responses in the wake of the 1990 crisis. Th e group included some of the most vocal advocates for an overt nuclear weapons posture such as K. Subrahmanyam, General Sundarji, Dr V. S. Arunachalam and Dr R. Chidambaram.159 Th e respite was brief, for the group never met again after governments changed. By then, however, the ﬁ nancial crisis had overtaken all other concerns, and India’s desperate need to placate foreign donors ensured that the hawks could not win over more converts to their cause.160 Adding to strategic analysts’ anxieties was the growing evidence of active nuclear cooperation between India’s two adversaries, Pakistan and China. By the early 1990s, reports began to surface in the Western press that the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) possessed evidence of active cooperation between the two countries which far surpassed nuclear co-operation between any two other countries since 1945.161 Interestingly, the intelligence cited was always American rather than Indian, even though Indian intelligence presumably did

157 Chari, Indo-Pak Nuclear Stand-oﬀ , p. 210. 158 T. T. Poulose, ‘India’s Nuclear Option and National Security’, in P. R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema and Iftekharuzzaman eds, Nuclear Non-Proliferation in India and Pakistan (New Delhi: Manohar for RCSS, Colombo, 1996), p. 44. 159 Perkovich describes the group and its work in India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 313–14. 160 Subrahmanyam may have become more vocal during the tenure of the Rao government partly because he was excluded from policy-making. Reading Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 between the lines, his relationship with Prime Minister Rao, while cordial, was not close, and he may have been unsure of the direction of nuclear policy, prompting him to draw attention to his pet cause. See, Subrahmanyam, ‘Narasimha Rao and the Bomb’. 161 Amitabh Mattoo, ‘Imagining China’, in Kanti P. Bajpai and Amitabh Mattoo, Th e Peacock and the Dragon: India-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Delhi: Har Anand, 2000), p. 23. 162 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

keep up with strategic developments in India’s most visible adversary.162 Yet South Block chose not to focus attention on this information, possibly because it would have left the government vulnerable to charges of neglecting national security at a time when it needed to keep defence expenditure low. Th is silence also signalled to those following these developments in India an acceptance that the United States was choosing to ignore China’s proliferation, just as it had ignored progress made on Pakistan’s nuclear programme until after the Afghanistan campaign ended.163 New Delhi at this time was also keen on improving relations with China, and though offi cials apparently brought up the question of proliferation to Pakistan in private with Chinese offi cials, in public India remained circumspect until after its 1998 tests.164 Besides, building up domestic public opinion against China by publicising these reports would probably hamper New Delhi’s eff orts to ‘buy peace’ with China.165 Yet China and Pakistan’s nuclear co-operation could not be ignored either. By 1991, reports of Chinese sales of its M11 ballistic missiles to Pakistan started appearing in the United States. Th ese were soon reproduced in the Indian press.166 In 1993, the head of the CIA testifi ed that Beijing had probably provided Pakistan with nuclear materials before joining the NPT in 1992; it was entirely possible that assistance to Islamabad’s ballistic missile programme had continued even after China’s accession to the NPT made such collaboration illegal.167

162 Indian reticence in citing the country’s own intelligence services perhaps traces back, in the opinion of M. K. Narayanan, current National Security Adviser and former head of the Intelligence Bureau, to British attitudes to intelligence. Th is required not revealing too much, for he who has knowledge has power. Conversation with M. K. Narayanan, New Delhi, January 19, 2007. 163 K. Subrahmanyam, ‘Export Controls and the North-South Controversy’, Washington Quarterly 16:2 (Spring 1993). 164 J. N. Dixit recalled mentioning the matter to his counterpart Tang Ze Zhuan during negotiations in 1993. Th e reply he received was that India was Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 capable of producing its own equipment, but if Indians wanted, all New Delhi had to do was ‘give [them] the list’. Conversation with J. N. Dixit, New Delhi, April 5, 2004. 165 Chellaney, ‘India’, p. 171. 166 For example, reports in Th e Times of India of June 18, 1991, cited in S. D. Muni, ‘India and the Post-Cold War World: Opportunities and Chal- lenges’, Asian Survey 31: 9 (September 1991), p. 864. See also, Chengappa, ‘Nuclear Dilemma’, p. 54. 167 Sidhu, Enhancing Indo-US Strategic Cooperation, p. 18. Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 163

A 1995 Congressional briefi ng stated that China had passed on a nuclear weapon design to Pakistan in the early 1980s; in the same year, American intelligence reported on Chinese transfers of ring magnets to Pakistan days after Clinton re-established strategic relations with Islamabad under the Brown Amendment.168 Th e brief mention made of the China– Pakistan nuclear co-operation in Indian reports was almost always presented in terms of Pakistan’s acquisition of missile and nuclear technology rather than China’s contravention of the provisions of the MTCR and the NPT.169 Yet not much was made of the fact that Pakistan might actually possess a tested nuclear weapon (as opposed to India’s untested device dating back to 1974). In one commentator’s opinion, the ‘signifi cance’ of the technology transfer to Pakistan lay in Islamabad’s resulting ‘confi dence’ in the ‘effi cacy of its nuclear device’, something that India was denied unless it conducted further tests on its devices.170 China of course remained a nuclear threat on its own in the 1990s. Indian analysts had not failed to take note of the fact that the Chinese conducted a megaton nuclear explosive test during the visit of the then Indian President R. Venkataraman to China in May 1992, the fi rst visit by an Indian president to the Middle Kingdom.171 Beijing subsequently went to great lengths to impress on New Delhi during a visit of the Defence Minister Sharad Pawar in August of the same year that the timing had been purely coincidental; Indian commentators, however, were not impressed.172 Th ough in the overall scheme of things, these were small irritants in a larger picture of improving relations between the two countries, the idea that China could not be treated with complacency remained well entrenched in strategic thought.173

168 Robert Shuey and Shirley A. Kan, ‘Chinese Missile and Nuclear Proliferation’, CRS Issue Brief, September 29, 1995, cited in Anil Joseph Chandy, ‘India, China and Pakistan’, in Bajpai and Mattoo, eds, Th e Peacock and the Dragon, pp. 317–19. 169 One analyst has attempted to explain Indian reticence with regard to China’s proliferation as a necessary step to avoid drawing attention (especially

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 American) to India’s own missile programme. Th e explanation, however, seems a little forced. See, Chandy, ibid., p. 323. 170 Chari, Indo-Pak Nuclear Standoﬀ , p. 27. 171 Subrahmanyam, ‘Capping, Managing or Eliminating Nuclear Weapons?’, p. 176. 172 Alka Acharya, ‘India-China Relations: An Overview’, in Bajpai and Mattoo, eds, Th e Peacock and the Dragon, p. 186. 173 For a history of improving relations, see ibid. 164 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Th en again, Indian silence over China may refl ect the state of confusion with regard to the debate on nuclear policy in India. For the average editorial audience, Pakistan is the more visible and vocal threat; Kashmir remains the more immediate concern for the Delhi-centric elite than the Northeast. As Kanti Bajpai observed, the ‘rhetoric’ emanating from South Block and average perceptions appear to privilege the Pakistan threat to the point that ‘strategic commentators are forced, with some exasperation, to remind Indian audiences that it is China and not Pakistan which is the real worry’.174 Th e fi nancial crisis of the early 1990s and the subsequent defence cutbacks, however, meant that New Delhi had to reassess its policies about maintaining a two-front army.175 Yet the shadows of 1962 continued to colour perceptions. Despite Narasimha Rao’s very successful visit to Beijing in 1993 which resulted in a Sino-Indian accord signalling the end of military tensions, offi cial pronouncements on China remained cautious.176 Further, in spite of being welcomed by the military — former Army Chief General Sundarji unequivocally termed the agreement a ‘rational’ step which had been long overdue — the armed forces were given no formal directive from New Delhi indicating a drawing-down of border tensions, which has led the army to publicly maintain the need for forces in the Northeast to counter any Chinese adventurism.177 Th at said, as far as nuclear capability was concerned, New Delhi had lived with China’s nuclear weapons for almost three decades without apparently needing to change its nuclear weapons posture, and it appeared as though India was content to continue to accept the reality of nuclear asymmetry vis-à-vis China. Returning to the Pakistani Nuclear Threat On balance, popular perception focussed on Pakistan, but more as a conventional threat through its involvement in the insurgency in Kashmir. Yet Pakistan’s nuclear programme could not be ignored. By

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 the mid-1990s, India’s nuclear and disarmament diplomacy was being tested by Pakistan’s nuclear disclosures, on the one hand, and, on the

174 Bajpai, ‘Th e Fallacy of the Indian Deterrent’, p. 151. 175 Gupta, et al., ‘A Middle-Aged Military Machine’, p. 30. 176 Shekhar Gupta and Sudeep Chakravarti, ‘Vital Breakthrough’, India Today, September 30, 1993, pp. 22–26. 177 Ibid; Raghavan, India’s Need for Strategic Balance, p. 53. Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 165

other, its constantly stated willingness to consider signing the NPT if India did so or to negotiate a regional nuclear-free-zone. South Block was forced to react negatively to Pakistan’s apparent willingness to take the initiative and play the responsible regional state making New Delhi appear obstructionist and throwing into question India’s refrain about the desirability of disarmament.178 Even if India’s attentive public acknowledged a degree of opportunism in Pakistan’s call in July 1991 for a ﬁ ve-nation summit (the two south Asian neighbours, along with the United States, the Soviet Union and China) to discuss non-proliferation in the region (the Pressler Amendment blocking military and economic aid to Pakistan had been invoked in October 1990), the immediate and summary Indian rejection of the proposal as a ‘propaganda exercise’ by the Ministry of External Aﬀ airs (MEA) did little to promote India’s image as a non-proliferation pioneer.179 Th ough India tried to invoke the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan to shield its nuclear intentions from scrutiny, there was a growing recognition of the ‘hypocrisy’ of refusing to consider disarmament on anything less than a global scale.180 Th e frustration at losing credibility in the face of the ‘farce’ of nuclear-capable Pakistan proposing regional nuclear abstinence became palpable.181 Apart from doubting Pakistan’s sincerity, there were other valid reasons for rejecting the call: the exclusion of China from Pakistan’s proposed zone made it a questionable proposition, as did the presence of nuclear-armed submarines in the Indian Ocean.182 Yet seizing the disarmament initiative back from Pakistan required the active involvement of the prime minister in a way that would echo

178 Indian diplomacy in late 1991 over the Pakistani sponsored nuclear- free-zone at the UN, the somewhat uneasy visit of US Undersecretary of State Reginald Bartholomew and India’s negotiations with Iran to supply to it a 10 MW research reactor resulted in India ‘projecting herself as an unreason- able and nuclear-ambitious country’. See Gupta and Aiyar, ‘Blundering Along’,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 pp. 17–18. Incidentally, India later backed down from this deal under US pressure. 179 Raj Chengappa, ‘A Sudden Cooling’, India Today, July 15, 1991. Th is pattern emerged repeatedly over the next few years. 180 Aiyar, ‘Th e Nuclear Tangle’, India Today, March 31, 1992, p. 35. 181 BJP member and former Indian envoy to the UN, Brajesh Mishra, quoted in Gupta and Aiyar, ‘Blundering Along’, p. 18. 182 Ibid. 166 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

past Indian proposals which had fl owed from Nehru and the Gandhis. P. V. Narasimha Rao, however, was preoccupied with trying to hold together a collapsing economy and according to reports was not responding to MEA proposals for bilateral nuclear initiatives.183 On balance, New Delhi had to tread a fi ne line in responding adequately to the frequent disclosures of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capability. Th e predictable pattern — some high ranking offi cial or scientist claiming that Pakistan had either assembled a nuclear device or was ‘a turn of a screwdriver away’ from doing so, followed by an offi cial denial, which somehow failed to completely dispel the impression created by the disclosure — was observed too frequently for India to be able to dismiss the matter as the spilling over into the international domain of a raucous, internal discussion.184 Yet for New Delhi to forego a considered reaction by dismissing the rhetoric from across the border as mere bluster was politically fraught. Th ere was signifi cant progress in India’s public reactions to Pakistani nuclear sabre-rattling in the fi rst half of the decade as seen in the responses to the two main semi-offi cial declarations that Pakistan had weaponised its nuclear capability. When Shaharyar Khan declared in Washington in 1992 that Pakistan had assembled a nuclear device, New Delhi scrambled to react appropriately. Th e BJP — in opposition, and gaining prominence nationally largely on account of its muscular nationalism — stated that ‘India must waste no time to go nuclear’.185 It added that it would ‘not allow’ New Delhi to

183 Ibid., p. 14. 184 Hagerty discusses the value of this signalling in building layers of credibility for a secret programme. Hagerty, Th e Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation, 82ff. Th ere were several Pakistani announcements, starting with A. Q. Khan’s interview to Kuldip Nayar during the Brasstacks crisis, Benazir Bhutto’s interview to NBC Television in which she claimed the military excluded her from any decision-making in the weapons programme, to then Foreign Secretary Shaharyar Khan’s statement to the Washington Post in February Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 1992 that Pakistan had produced a nuclear device in 1990 (cited in Shekhar Gupta, ‘Raising the Stakes’, India Today, February 29, 1992, p. 14), General Mirza Aslam Beg’s series of statements in signed articles and at seminars about Pakistan having reached weapons capability before 1989 when the programme was frozen, and ﬁ nally, Nawaz Sharif’s ‘bombshell’ at Neela Butt in Pakistan administered Kashmir, in August 1994. See ‘A History of Claims’, India Today, November 15, 1994, p. 29. 185 Steve Coll, ‘India Pressured on the Bomb’, Washington Post, February 9, 1992, pp. A23. Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 167

continue with ‘an ostrich like posture’. Offi cial India, however, chose to be much more circumspect. Minister for External Aff airs Madhavsinh Solanki remarked cryptically in response to a question that a ‘bomb is part of defence preparedness. We have our defence preparedness’. MEA offi cials spent much of the rest of the day clarifying that Solanki’s statement did not imply that India’s preparedness included nuclear weapons.186 By the time Sharif dropped his ‘bombshell’ by declaring in Pakistan- administered Kashmir that Pakistan ‘possess[ed] an atomic bomb’, considerable rhetoric had fl owed between the two capitals.187 Coming as it did in the wake of the several alarmist Western reports of the 1990 crisis which portrayed India as having backed off in the face of a nuclear threat from Islamabad, New Delhi had to react.188 Th ough South Block tried to dismiss Sharif’s statement as an attempt to score domestic political points against his rival, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, parliamentarians, particularly members of the BJP, demanded a discussion of the implications of this semi-offi cial disclosure.189 Rao’s only reaction remained confi ned to the Congress Party Parliamentary Committee where he remarked, ‘You should not worry […] we are capable of defending ourselves’.190 Th e pressure on the minority government in Parliament, however, needed to be addressed. Minister of State for External Aff airs Salman Khursheed fi nally stated in the Rajya Sabha that ‘[i]f the safety and security of the nation require deployment

186 Ibid. 187 Shekhar Gupta, ‘Nawaz Sharif’s Bombshell’, India Today, November 15, 1994, p. 26. 188 It is perhaps indicative of the fog obscuring any clear discussion of either Pakistan’s or India’s nuclear policy that in the period between the Gates Mission and the 1993 discussion sparked largely by Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker story, journalists could write without much ado of Robert Gates’ ‘chilling message’ from the then Pakistani president Ghulam Ishaq Khan that Pakistan would use ‘the bomb […] fairly early in case of a conﬂ ict’. Shekhar Gupta, ‘Raising

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 the Stakes’, India Today, February 29, 1992. Oﬃ cial denials only emerged in the wake of the Hersh and Windrem and Burrows report. See, for example, Deshmukh, ‘Th e Inside Story’. 189 ‘Pakistan’s Bomb Scare Justiﬁ es Delhi’s Stand’, India Abroad, September 2, 1994, p. 18. Th e BJP’s Atal Behari Vajpayee, as leader of the Opposition, wanted the current session of the Lok Sabha to be extended if necessary to discuss this matter of ‘grave concern […] [to] national security’. 190 Gupta, ‘Nawaz Sharif’s Bombshell’, p. 28. 168 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

of conventional and non-conventional weapons on the border, the Government will not hesitate to do so’.191 Khursheed evidently also felt obliged to clarify, however, that ‘the strengths of India lies on morality and not on weapons’ [sic]. Th e rhetoric, however, had inched forward.192 Th ose in favour of a more muscular policy would have to be satisfi ed with this veiled admission of India’s nuclear weapons programme. It bolstered the hopes of analysts that India had not indeed been suff ering from ‘nuclear paralysis’ in the twenty years since it had exploded its fi rst nuclear device.193 Rhetoric aside, however, visible policy was inching India and Pakistan along towards a tacit acceptance of each other’s nuclear status. Th ere was a growing concurrence amongst those who followed strategic developments that India and Pakistan were now in the ‘post-proliferation’ stage. However much the two capitals might deny their nuclear weapons, it was therefore safer to proceed on the assumption that the next set of escalating tensions could well involve nuclear threats.194 As General Sundarji explained in an interview in 1990, ‘[f]or all practical purposes, one must plan today on the fact that [Pakistan has] a limited nuclear- weapon capability. And that India has similar capability’.195 In one of his regular columns, Sundarji argued that a failure to consider each other ‘“de facto” nuclear powers’ could lead to ‘miscalculations’.196 In his view, deterrence was in operation on the subcontinent and it had prevented hostilities from escalating in 1990.197 K. Subrahmanyam echoed this assessment repeatedly in the early 1990s, supporting his argument with the observation that unlike in 1965 India did not respond to Pakistani infi ltration in 1990 by sending troops across the Line of Control in ‘hot pursuit’.198 Several strategic analysts on both sides of the border began to call for an acknowledgement of the reality of crude

191 Ibid. 192 Quoted in Chari, Indo-Pak Nuclear Standoff , p. 90. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 193 Poulose, ‘India’s Nuclear Option and National Security’, p. 44. 194 Chellaney, ‘India’, p. 183. 195 Michael O’Rourke, ‘Interview with General K. Sundarji (retd)’, Far Eastern Economic Review, September 13, 1990, p. 24. 196 Sundarji, ‘Declare Nuclear Status’. 197 Sundarji’s intervention in Krepon and Faruqee, Confl ict Prevention and Confi dence Building Measures in South Asia, p. 39. 198 Subrahmanyam, ‘Capping, Managing or Eliminating Nuclear Weapons?’, p. 184. Defi ning and Defending India ( 169

nuclear-weapons capability existing on the subcontinent as a means of promoting greater stability.199 By the mid-1990s, this belief was moving beyond the contained circle of strategic analysts into the media, thereby educating a wider audience about the strategic realities on the subcontinent. As one Indian army general explained, ‘What the nuclear capability does is make sure the old scenarios of Indian armour crossing the Sukkur barrage over the Indus and slicing Pakistan into two are a thing of the past’.200 Indian reports also responded to the change in attitude in Washington where, according to one American analyst, ‘the US and the world have begun to think of the South Asian zone as a nuclearised zone’.201 The ‘Test’ of 1995 Yet, none of this gradual acceptance within an expanding circle of the attentive public of the presence of nuclear deterrence capability in the subcontinent translated into new calls for testing nuclear devices or adopting an overt nuclear posture. As an India Today poll conducted in early December 1995 showed, crime and lawlessness, inﬂ ation, and recession and unemployment took the top three slots in the list of urban India’s major concerns.202 An accompanying story that probed nuclear attitudes, however, added a gloss to this apparent disinterest with all matters nuclear.203 Of the roughly 2,000 adults of varying income backgrounds interviewed in the nine major Indian cities, 62 per cent said they would approve of a nuclear test as a precursor to developing nuclear weapons capability. Yet, 68 per cent felt that India should relinquish the option to ‘mak[e] atom bombs’ if the other nuclear powers did so. At the same time, the majority of respondents (44 per cent) ranked ‘bomb-making capability’ as ‘important’ with 38 per cent rating it a ‘very

199 Chari cites articles by Major Maroof Raza, Mushahid Hussain and General Sundarji, in Chari, Indo-Pak Nuclear Standoﬀ , p. 210. 200 Gupta and Sidhu, ‘Th e End Game Option’, p. 28. The oﬃ cer was not

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 identiﬁ ed. 201 Leonard Specter, quoted in Shekhar Gupta, ‘Tolerating Reality’, India Today, July 31, 1993, p. 40. 202 Sunil Jain, ‘What Indians Th ink’, India Today, December 31, 1995, p. 33. Th e story listed the top eight concerns; nuclear matters were not mentioned at all in a list that included education, corruption, AIDS, pollution and terrorism. 203 Raj Chengappa, ‘Testing Times’, India Today, December 31, 1995, pp. 46–51. Th e ﬁ gures presented in this section are from this report. 170 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

important’ subject and 18 per cent slotted at the opposite side of the spectrum in fi nding it ‘not important’. Th is contrasts rather tellingly with the 77 per cent who thought unemployment was a ‘very important’ issue, along with the 73 per cent and 72 per cent who responded similarly to threats to the unity of the country and the problem of a population explosion, respectively. And fi nally, for those seeking political mileage out of it, the nuclear question was not a political issue: while 43 per cent of the respondents stated that they would be more inclined to vote for a party that promised to ‘ensure that India would have nuclear weapons’ — the question, however, did not mention a nuclear test — 36 per cent declared themselves inclined to be infl uenced negatively while 31 per cent did not think it would make a diff erence. On the whole, therefore, it appeared that people were rallying around India’s right to retain its nuclear capability while not actually asking for overt weaponisation. In other words, these polls of the wider public, including some members of the attentive public, show no great pressure on the government to shift its stance on the country’s declared nuclear policy. Perhaps nothing illustrates this as well as the ‘non-story’ of P. V. Narasimha Rao’s attempted nuclear test in late 1995.204 Th e actual events and timing are unclear as Rao refused to confi rm or deny speculation that he had considered a test in 1995.205 However, on December 15, 1995, Th e New York Times reported increased activity at the Pokharan test site that had apparently led Washington to fear preparations for a nuclear test.206 As the story fi ltered back to India, along with reports that Frank Wisner, the then US Ambassador to New Delhi, had returned from a visit to the United States with satellite photographs of the test site and dire warnings of the consequences that a test might have for India– US relations, domestic reactions were predictably sharp.207 Offi cially, the MEA termed the report ‘highly speculative’ and left it at that.208

204 For more on the ‘attempted test’, see Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 367ff.; Subrahmanyam, ‘Naramsimha Rao and the Bomb’; Chengappa, Weapons of Peace, chapter 27. 205 Shekhar Gupta, interview with P. V. Narasimha Rao for NDTV’s Walk the Talk, aired on May 8, 2004. 206 Tim Weiner, ‘India Suspected of Preparing for A-Bomb Test’, New York Times, December 15, 1995, p. A6. 207 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 368ff. 208 Agence France Presse, ‘India Planning Missile Test, Not Nuclear Blast: Report’, December 19, 1995. Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 171

Unoffi cially, parliamentarians, strategic analysts and commentators were much less circumspect. Th e BJP’s Jaswant Singh called on the government to ‘strengthen India’s nuclear policy’.209 Signifi cantly, Singh then went on to link the test with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the negotiations for which were then gathering pace in Geneva, declaring: ‘India cannot be coerced into supporting a CTB through such methods’.210 Senior government offi cials appeared equally willing to infer off -the-record that the leak had been planted in a clumsy attempt to push India to ‘endorse the U.S. strategy on the CTB’.211 Th ough the story of the attempted test, to all appearances, then died down with the general election that followed being fought primarily on matters of domestic policy, the episode was not without repercussions. It provided those arguing for a more robust nuclear policy with a clear and concrete example of how vulnerable India could be to international pressure in the absence of nuclear weapons. Th ey used this example of alleged American pressure on the Rao government to force it to reconsider its decision to test to argue that the CTBT, in preventing India and other non-nuclear states from testing nuclear devices, was just another non-proliferation measure. Brahma Chellaney, one of the analysts closely involved in the debate at the time and believed to be close to the strategic–scientifi c enclave, later explained how he used this incident in the seminar circuit in New Delhi in early 1996 to question the wisdom of the government’s then apparently total commitment to the CTBT. 212 For those arguing to retain the option to test as a necessary step in creating confi dence in India’s nuclear deterrent, as and when an overt deterrent was required, the American ability to stop the alleged test ‘brought home to India very tellingly that the CTBT was not an abstract subject — it had very real implications for India’s strategic future’.213 Th e attempted test therefore gained signifi cance in a negative sense: even though it was soon overtaken by the corruption scandal of the Jain dairies ‘hawala’ dealings which became an election issue, for those Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 209 Agence France Presse, January 17, 1995, cited in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 369. 210 Brahma Chellaney, ‘Arms Sales Aggravate U.S.-India Ties’, Th e Washington Times, December 23, 1995, pp. A9. 211 Ibid. 212 Conversation with Brahma Chellaney, New Delhi, January 15, 2007. 213 Ibid. 172 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

analysts who were critical of the government’s nuclear policy, it provided an example of the costs of keeping the option open. By refusing to decide either way, India was bearing certain costs in the form of it foreign policy becoming hostage to international non-proliferation pressure and its scientifi c establishment enduring a regime of technology denial, without reaping any of the benefi ts of retaining the option to induct nuclear weapons if necessary. Analysts could also see that the pressure would only mount as the negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament picked up pace. Yet perhaps the brief popular outrage at the reports of American coercion provided a ray of hope to those arguing for a more muscular nuclear policy that public opinion could be channelled towards steering India away from the CTBT.214 As Muchkund Dubey observed, not much had changed materially since India co-sponsored the CTBT in 1993; yet, those arguing that India exercise the nuclear option ‘have become inordinately active’ in ‘asserting’ that no Govern- ment that signs the CTBT could ‘survive’.215 Conclusion Th e CTBT or attempted nuclear test were barely mentioned in the campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections held in May 1996. Th e hung Parliament that it produced shone a spotlight squarely on domestic politics: on the volatility that ruled the fortunes of Indian political parties, on the decline of the Congress Party and on the economy’s continuing struggle to establish itself globally. Meanwhile, offi cial India argued about the CTBT amongst themselves and within the confi nes of strategic circles, as will be discussed in the following chapter. Outside these circles though, the uncertainties of weak governments, continuing communal tensions and insurgency and a lacklustre economy coloured domestic perceptions of India. Th e fears were exaggerated. India remained resilient. Despite the stresses and strains of innumerable fi s- sures threatening to pull it apart since 1947, India had not only survived,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 but had survived as a thriving democracy. And despite frequent gloomy prognostications that India was a country in terminal decline, it had succeeded in defying the doomsayers: India had not fallen apart. Yet as India struggled to establish a new role for itself, the frustrations of being shackled to nuclear ambiguity soon began to surface.

214 Ibid. 215 Muchkund Dubey, ‘Nuclear Options’, Frontline, 13, 1 (January 26, 1996). Deﬁ ning and Defending India ( 173

New Delhi’s vigorous attempts to engage with the West (and especially the United States) to establish the foundations for a strong relationship based on economics, greater technical and military cooperation, and a shared commitment to democracy, repeatedly appeared to come up against a wall of non-proliferation pressures. Th ese eﬀ orts could not progress out of the shadow of nuclear proliferation and human rights concerns however much India tried to change the equation. Further, whatever the problems and uncertainties bedevilling New Delhi’s bids to create a global and regional place for itself, it was not clear that overt nuclear capability would make this task any easier. Yet giving up the option would demonstrate all too starkly how vulnerable New Delhi had become to international pressure. As the country approached the Golden Jubilee of independence, attentive India’s struggle to make its ‘option’ a positive aspect of the negotiation of the idea of India would continue.

M Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 IV Confronting the Nuclear Option: The CTBT and Sovereignty

‘I was opposed to the bomb from Day One till the nineteenth of July, 1996’, [George] Fernandes said. On that day, the Lok Sabha was debating the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty banning further tests. ‘In these discussions there was one point of unanimity: that we should not sign this treaty. I went through deep anguish — an atom bomb was morally unacceptable. But why should the ﬁ ve nations that have nuclear weapons tell us how to behave and what weapons we should have?’ George Fernandes to Amitav Ghosh1

India’s rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) proved to be a decisive point in attentive India’s engagement with nuclear policy. Interest in the nuclear question, which had ebbed and fl owed as a matter of desultory debate amongst the Indian intelligentsia from the 1960s, surged in a qualitatively diff erent form during the fi nal negotiations on the CTBT in Geneva. By the time the Indian ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament (CD) explained to the UN General Assembly why New Delhi had voted the way it had after having championed a nuclear test ban for over 40 years, the nuclear question had moved into the leader columns of newspapers and magazines as the touchstone of India’s sovereignty. Th e multiple, somewhat amorphous insecurities that tinted attentive India’s view of their country and its Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 global weight found a focus in the issue of sovereignty, as defi ned through the lens of the nuclear question. Baldly, it boiled down to New Delhi’s ability to maintain its freedom of manoeuvre on nuclear policy regardless of international pressure or opinion on this matter. As India approached the Golden Jubilee of independence, these were not insignifi cant considerations. After the CTBT was adopted at the

1 Ghosh, ‘Countdown’, p. 190. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 175

UN, the implications of New Delhi’s defi ance ensured that the nuclear question could not sink into the backwaters of security discourse again. Th ough it would still require the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government to decisively defi ne India’s fi ercely defended ‘option’, the debates over the CTBT prepared the ground for a public (mainly elite and middle class) negotiation of the idea of a nuclear India. As discussed in the previous chapters, nuclear policy had remained an arcane topic largely confi ned to a small circle of defence analysts until the mid-1990s. Th e CTBT negotiations which followed the indefi nite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in May 1995 succeeded in democratising this debate, opening it up to a much wider public. Yet, it did so by transforming the debate over a test ban (with implications for India’s largely untested nuclear capability) from a security issue into a foreign policy one. As had occurred with the NPT in the late 1960s, discussions on the CTBT posited India’s nuclear policy as moving beyond military security to encompass political defi nitions of ‘India’. Th e battle for nuclear policy in the minds of attentive India had now moved from the security–development dyad that had dominated engagement with nuclear weapons policy for most of the previous four decades to the identity dyad. Th e defence of the nuclear option along this axis of negotiation required that the ‘idea of India’ be gradually pulled away from beliefs in Indian exceptionalism, towards the pole of realpolitik. Further, though ‘offi cial India’ rejected the CTBT both on grounds of substance and of process — security concerns about the scope of this treaty, along with a rejection of the attempt to force India into acceding to a treaty that New Delhi had indicated was inimical to its interests — for attentive India the heart of the problem with the CTBT was the perception of intolerable international pressure exerted on New Delhi through the Entry-into-Force (EIF) clause contained in Article XIV of the treaty, which required India, along with 43 other countries, to accede to the treaty before it could come into force. For those who followed international aff airs, this involuntary accession to the treaty, more than the implications of the accession, was unacceptable: India was not heading towards 50 years of independence only to be browbeaten into Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 signing a treaty against its wishes. Th e fact that offi cial India (in concert with the more hawkish security analysts who existed at the margins of this group) had rejected the treaty citing national security concerns was of secondary importance to this particular strand of thinking. Atten- tive India supported New Delhi’s rejection of the CTBT not because it wanted nuclear weapons, but because it wanted to resoundingly defeat any hint of coercion in international negotiations. 176 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Reviving the Nuclear Debate With nuclear policy never ranking very highly in Indian public consciousness, the fact that India co-sponsored the CTBT with the United States in November 1993 unsurprisingly did not attract much attention within the country. India’s support for a test ban lies anchored in Nehru’s call for a ‘Standstill Agreement’ in 1954 and his subsequent eff orts to halt nuclear explosions, which eventually led to the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963. Th e CTBT was thus successor to a long line of Indian initiatives which were presented to the country’s public in the familiar, eloquent rhetoric of India’s traditional disarmament diplomacy. Unless the government made a special eff ort to generate support for this proposal, India’s co-sponsorship of the CTBT would not be able to compete with the more pressing domestic concerns that dominated popular and elite attention in the early 1990s. On the contrary, the government may have played down this undertaking with the Americans; leader columns and opinion pieces decrying perceived American non-proliferation pressure to get India to sign the NPT or agree to an initiative that would ‘cap, roll-back and eventually eliminate’ nuclear weapons from the Indian subcontinent were becoming increasingly common in the major dailies and popular magazines.2 In these circumstances, with attention focussed on ‘resisting’ international arm-twisting to compromise on India’s nuclear and missile programmes, the government might have wished to avoid laying itself open to charges of submitting to Washington on this matter, however diff erently offi cials later tried to present the country’s co-sponsorship of the CTBT.3 Ironically, several of India’s more hawkish security analysts who were following the country’s nuclear policy had

2 Conversation with Satish Chandra, New Delhi’s ambassador to the United Nations Offi ces in Geneva till late 1995, on September 5, 2005, New Delhi. Chandra initiated New Delhi’s negotiations on the CTBT. 3 Kanti Bajpai mentions ‘a senior Indian diplomat’ explaining at a conference Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 in New Delhi in 1994 that India co-sponsored both the CTBT and Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty in 1993 on the cynical assumption that both initiatives would founder along the way. See Kanti Bajpai, ‘India in a Diplomatic Soup’, Outlook, September 4, 1996. Th e offi cial in question is most probably J. N. Dixit, who claimed that as Foreign Secretary he ‘bought time’ for India’s nuclear programme by engaging the United States. Th is is gleaned from discussions with security analysts and a conversation with Dixit (New Delhi, April 5, 2004) where, though he did not specifi cally mention the CTBT, he referred to the need to ‘spin out’ talks with the United States. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 177

initially welcomed a comprehensive test ban as a step that would lead India and the world down the route of nuclear disarmament.4 Yet by late 1995, sentiment amongst India’s attentive public was building up against the CTBT. For those security analysts who had argued for a more muscular nuclear policy, this change of heart stemmed from the indefi nite and unconditional extension of the NPT in May 1995. Th e extension fi nally put to rest any hopes for disarmament through the anaemic provisions contained in Article VI of the treaty.5 Th e permanent extension had legitimised the division of the world into nuclear ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, as the BJP’s Atal Behari Vajpayee explained to the UN General Assembly in October 1995.6 As one member of the editorial board of the Times of India recalled later, the fact that the NPT extension ‘arrogated to [the N5] the monopoly right to possess nuclear weapons in perpetuity’ helped generate agreement amongst the editorial staff that India should not sign a discriminatory CTBT, though there was less harmony on the question of a nuclear test.7 Th e Clinton administration’s passing of the Brown Amendment in late 1995, lifting restrictions on arms sales to Pakistan, also provided a fi llip to the hawks’ arguments, enabling them to call for a renewed commitment to India’s missile programmes and an increase in defence spending.8 Yet, even here the greater grievance appeared not to be

4 C. Uday Bhaskar writes of a Track II meeting between former oﬃ cials from the United States and India (including K. Subrahmanyam, Raja Ramanna, and others) in Bangalore, which, in its recommendations, welcomed the CTBT as part of a package in which India would not oppose the NPT extension as long as it included a deﬁ nite commitment to disarmament. Th e CTBT would also need to be negotiated along the lines of the Chemical Weapons Convention (1992), which India maintains is truly non-discriminatory. See C. Uday Bhaskar, ‘Encouraging Signs in Nuclear Talks’, India Abroad, February 25, 1994, p. 2. 5 News-India Times, ‘Experts Call for Clear-cut Nuclear Policy’, June 9, 1995, p. 26. 6 Vajpayee was part of the Indian delegation to the 50th UN General Assembly on October 26, 1996; cited in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 366. Th is

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 division is also a favourite refrain of K. Subrahmanyam, who popularised this concept through his extensive writings on the subject, and especially in his capacity as consulting editor to the Times of India. For his pains, he was aﬀ ectionately referred to as the ‘Bomb Mama’, or Uncle Bomb. See Jug Suraiya, ‘Bomb Mama’, and Siddharth Varadarajan, ‘Tribute to Bomb Mama’, both in Bhaskar (comp.) Subbu at 75. 7 Varadarajan, ibid., p. 63. 8 John Cherian, ‘Paying for Complacency’, Frontline, October 20, 1995. 178 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Pakistan’s improved military capabilities, but US hypocrisy, as the Janata Dal’s I. K. Gujral (then in the opposition) pointed out. In his opinion, the US’s lifting of the ban on arms sales despite its knowledge of advances in Pakistan’s nuclear programme and the co-operation between China and Pakistan on missiles, showed that ‘Washington has implicitly condoned and recognised Pakistan as a nuclear state.’9 Once again, it was Washington’s perceived double standards that rankled the most.10 Indian opinion was further ruffl ed when New Delhi’s protestations that the American military package might trigger an arms race in the region were met with the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations, led by the US, calling on India to accede to the NPT and refrain from pursuing any further developments in its nuclear and missile programmes. To attentive India, this smacked of duplicity.11 The Government Enters the Debate Th e discussions on the Brown Amendment and even on the Pakistan- China missile collaboration may yet have died down without sparking any further engagement with the nuclear question.12 Th e decisive factor may well have been the entry into the debate of the one group that had remained conspicuously silent until then: the Government of India. Former Foreign Secretary Muchkund Dubey remarked on the ‘belligerent turn’ taken by discussion on the CTBT in early 1996. In his opinion, the government had ‘suddenly raised the level of rhetoric’ by making statements explicitly linking the treaty to disarmament.13 P. R. Chari believes that there was ‘offi cial sponsorship of opposition to the CTBT’, citing a conference organised by the Centre for Policy Re- search in New Delhi in late 1995 at which the Foreign Secretary Salman Haidar speaking in his offi cial capacity laid out the arguments against the CTBT.14 Judging from offi cial rhetoric, it would appear that the Government of India was by then trying to dissociate itself from the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 9 Ibid. 10 Sunil Narula, Ludwina A. Joseph, ‘Browning off Indo-US Ties’, Outlook, October 25, 1995. 11 Ibid. 12 Ludwina A. Joseph, ‘White House Lies’, Outlook, March 20, 1996; Ludwina A. Joseph, ‘With a Wink And a Nod’, Outlook, February 28, 1996. 13 Muchkund Dubey, ‘Nuclear Options: Th e Choice Cannot Wait’, Frontline, January 26, 1996, p. 4. 14 Conversation with P. R. Chari, New Delhi, August 23, 2005. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 179

CTBT and condition public opinion to refl ect this shift.15 A paternalistic approach to nuclear policy, marked by decades of refusing to encourage any meaningful debate on the question, was laid to rest as serving government offi cials began to engage publicly with the topic.16 In a seminar titled, rather signifi cantly, ‘External Pressures on India’s Nuclear Options’ organised in September 1995, serving bureaucrats joined strategic experts in recommending a hardening of India’s nuclear posture. Th eir conclusions included opposing the CTBT and Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) as ‘untenable’ in the wake of the permanent extension of the NPT unless they included an explicit, time- bound framework for comprehensive disarmament, something that India had not insisted on until then.17 Th e seminar also recognised that ‘the present policy position of “keeping the nuclear option open” has become meaningless. Th ere is [a] need now to examine how best to translate this into eff ective deterrence.[…]’18 By early 1996, government offi cials, speaking off the record, explicitly acknowledged that in hindsight India’s co-sponsoring the CTBT was a ‘mistake’, amounting in eff ect to a ‘self-goal’.19 Th ere were three other ‘markers’, though these primarily sought to warn the international community of India’s change of heart.20 First, Dr R. Chidambaram, Chairman

15 Until then, as Satish Chandra recalled, India had played a very constructive role at the CD, working in apparent good faith towards an early conclusion of a test ban treaty. Conversation with Chandra, September 5, 2005. 16 Sunil Narula, ‘India Spells Out Its Terms’, Outlook, February 21, 1996. Even if most spoke off -the-record, it was still signifi cant that they were willing to voice their doubts at all. 17 Th e seminar, jointly organised by the Centre for Policy Research and the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, is cited in Amitabh Mattoo, ‘India’s Nuclear Status Quo’, Survival, 38:3 (Autumn 1996), p. 47. Muchkund Dubey had criticised the Indian government for co-sponsoring the CTBT without insisting on the inclusion of explicit provisions for disarmament in the resolution. Dubey, ‘Nuclear Options’, p. 10. 18 Cited in Mattoo, ibid., 47 19 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 T. S. Subramanian, ‘A Guessing Game’, Frontline, January 26, 1996, p. 15. 20 Both Arundhati Ghose and Raja Mohan point to these three speeches as important turning points in India’s offi cial policy; conversations with Ghose and Mohan, January 10, 2005 and January 18, 2005. Also see, Arundhati Ghose, ‘Negotiating the CTBT: India’s Security Concerns and Nuclear Disarmament’, Journal of International Affairs, 51:1 (Summer 1997), at http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/CTBT/ctbtghose.htm (accessed on September 1, 2009). 180 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

of India’s Atomic Energy Commission warned the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in September 1995 that continued testing by nuclear weapon states after signing the NPT (as had been undertaken by France and China) would ‘have repercussions on the CTBT’.21 India’s Minister for External Aff airs Pranab Mukherjee renewed the emphasis on needing to link the CTBT to defi nite movement towards nuclear disarmament in his speech to the UN General Assembly later in 1995, a theme that was fi nally reiterated in Prime Minister Rao’s address to the Non-Aligned Summit at Cartagena, Colombia in October 1995. Th ough the government had begun to signal its displeasure with the CTBT that was emerging from Geneva, these speeches, focussing on a discriminatory and unequal global order that was inimical to India’s security calculations failed to generate any serious concern within the country. Th is was the usual rhetoric of the Ministry of External Aff airs; a quarter of a century after India rejected the NPT as discriminatory and unequal, these sentiments could not provoke the heated debate that had powered discussions about the NPT two decades earlier. Writing in January 1996, Muchkund Dubey remarked that it was ‘misleading to suggest that no Government of India will survive if it signs the CTBT’, since nothing had changed ‘so dramatically in the last three or four months’ that would warrant a complete reversal of India’s earlier policy of support for the treaty, anchored in its traditional approach to disarmament diplomacy.22 But a reasoned discussion that might have supported this view remained elusive. Indeed, as Kanti Bajpai observed, the constant ‘repetition’ of the old shibboleths of needing to keep the nuclear option open, or the more extreme version of needing to build and deploy nuclear weapons, by the ‘policy community’ of offi cials, bureaucrats, politicians, analysts and commentators as the only viable options open to India in a world where nuclear weapons existed, had succeed in suppressing any meaningful engagement with where India’s interests lay with respect to the CTBT.23 Yet there were signs that the government’s ambiguity on nuclear Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 policy was starting to wear a little thin. Strategic analysts such as Raja Mohan and Brahma Chellaney repeatedly bemoaned the apparent lack of clarity governing South Block’s nuclear diplomacy, using the

21 Sunil Narula, ‘Pressure Tactics’, Outlook, January 3, 1996. 22 Dubey, ‘Nuclear Options’, p. 9. 23 Bajpai, ‘Secure Without the Bomb’. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 181

opportunity to demand that the government exercise its much vaunted ‘option’ before the CTBT permanently closed the door on testing and refi ning of any nuclear capability.24 Th e unwillingness to decide either way about its nuclear intentions had led to the country paying a heavy price for its ambiguity, bearing the cost of sanctions that had retarded its nuclear power programme without the benefi t of being able to rely on a nuclear weapons programme.25 Even non-experts began to question the vicissitudes in the offi cial approach, requiring of South Block a clear explanation of what exactly had changed since the government co-sponsored the CTBT in 1993 and 1994. Th e charge of the NPT’s indefi nite extension could only off er limited support; after all, ‘[t]he hypocrisy of the nuclear powers has been known for a long time’, as one magazine observed. ‘It is time Indian policymakers took the Indian public into confi dence’, it said.26 As one analyst explained, the lack of clarity on India’s objectives in pursuing the CTBT had put New Delhi in the uncomfortable position of apparently going against an emerging consensus at the CD by early 1996, invoking the displeasure of the US and other countries.27 It was fi nally these perceptions of external pressure that pushed the CTBT debate out into the open. Th e report in theNew York Times in December 1995 about a possible Indian nuclear test whipped up a frenzied response from the Left and their fellow-travellers that saw the report as a ham-handed attempt by the Clinton administration to compel India on the CTBT.28 Th e indignant response of one ‘high placed source’ was fairly typical: ‘Th e Americans have no right to snoop on us and demand an explanation from us. We are a sovereign country. Th ey cannot pressure the Government of India through newspaper reports’.29 Any attempt to probe the accuracy of the report was lost in the bluster of defending India’s ‘sovereignty’. For the Left, opposition to the CTBT thereafter became a ‘fashionable cause’.30

24 Both quoted in Narula, ‘Pressure Tactics’. 25 Brahma Chellaney makes this point in Sunil Narula, ‘In Isolation Ward

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Again’, Outlook, July 17, 1996. 26 Narula, ‘Pressure Tactics’. 27 Raja Mohan, quoted in Sunil Narula, ‘Pushed into a Corner’, Outlook, August 14, 1996. 28 Subramanian, ‘A Guessing Game’. 29 Ibid., p. 15. 30 Conversation with a high-ranking MEA oﬃ cial, New Delhi, August 31, 2005. 182 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Building a National Consensus In this, the Left was helped by the governing coalition headed by Deve Gowda. In an extraordinary opening up of the debate, offi cial India began to use the structures of democracy to turn public opinion against the emerging treaty. Minister for External Aff airs I. K. Gujral made fi ve speeches in Parliament in July and August 1996 on the CTBT. Th e contrast with the NPT is striking: Indira Gandhi explained her reasons for rejecting that treaty in a single speech to both Houses of Parliament after India cast its vote. Why the government chose to create a public discussion on the CTBT at this late stage is debatable: it had, after all, proceeded on the CTBT for two years before that without inviting any wider participation and could well have decided on this treaty in the manner it had come to its conclusions to sign the Chemical Weapons Treaty, or its decision to not participate as an observer in the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference. It could have been, as Arundhati Ghose explained, that the government realised in early 1996 that its ‘option’ was closing; as she recommended to the then Foreign Secretary Salman Haidar, the matter needed to be brought up in Parliament to ‘open up the debate’ and generate a consensus on the position India should adopt.31 Equally, a weak government may have wanted to make sure that it was carrying the political spectrum with it. Even so, the government did not require fi ve speeches by the Minister for External Aff airs to lay out its reservations on the draft treaty emerging at the CD — one would have suffi ced. Gujral’s speeches are an interesting indication of the issues that the government thought were most likely to create the ‘national consensus’ that Gujral was at pains to emphasise in every speech supported New Delhi’s policy towards the CTBT. In his statement, the fi rst government speech in Parliament on the treaty, Gujral initially raised the traditional point about global nuclear disarmament within a fi xed timeframe, before going on to state: Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

[o]ur nuclear policy, as expressed in the CTBT negotiations, is intimately linked with our national security concerns. We have never accepted the notion that it can be considered legitimate for some countries to rely

31 Conversation with Arundhati Ghose, January 10, 2005. Ghose was the Indian Ambassador to the UN Oﬃ ces in Geneva, including the Conference on Disarmament, in 1996. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 183

on nuclear weapons for their security while denying this right to others. Th is has been a consistent policy, also reﬂ ected in our rejection of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.32

By also tarring the CTBT with the same brush that had doomed the NPT, the government had drastically reduced its room for manoeuvre. As Salman Haidar later explained, the CTBT was perceived by those following foreign policy and politics as pushing India into ‘the NPT through the back-door’.33 Internationally, New Delhi had fi rst cited ‘national security concerns’ in Ambassador Arundhati Ghose’s June 20, 1996 speech at the CD.34 Th is was the fi rst time that national security was explicitly linked to retaining the nuclear option since Indira Gandhi explained India’s rejection of the NPT in 1968. Until then, India had always couched its opposition to the NPT regime in largely normative terms.35 In that speech, Ghose stated that the nuclear weapon states’ reluctance to place the treaty within a disarmament context and the continued nuclear testing by France and China during the negotiations citing national security imperatives indicated that the ‘treaty is not conceived as a measure towards universal nuclear disarmament and is not in India’s national security interest’.36 Gujral refracted India’s anxieties over the treaty through the prism of China’s nuclear programme in his second speech of July 31, made two days after Beijing conducted a nuclear test. He also fl agged the possibility of some CD participants trying to push India into the treaty through an ‘Entry into Force’ (EIF) provision, but remained optimistic that the

32 Minister for External Aﬀ airs I. K. Gujral, Statement to Parliament, July 15, 1996. Th is and the other four statements made by Gujral can be found at http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/CTBT/ctbt_index.htm (accessed on September 1, 2009). 33 Conversation with Salman Haidar, Foreign Secretary 1995–1997, New Delhi, September 13, 2005. 34

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Arundhati Ghose pointed out in a conversation (New Delhi, January 10, 2005) that until then India had based its rejection on discrimination. 35 Narula, ‘In Isolation Ward Again’. 36 Arundhati Ghose, ‘Statement in the Plenary Meeting of the Conference on Disarmament’, Geneva, June 20, 1996, CD/PV.740. All Ghose’s statements to the CD and UN General Assembly cited in this chapter are available at http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/Disarmament/disarmament_list.htm (accessed on September 1, 2009). 184 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

country could resist all eff orts to ‘impose an obligation on India’. After this, however, national security was not raised again in Gujral’s speeches. Th e third speech dwelled on the hypocrisy of the countries that had argued the ‘Ramaker text’ (named after the current chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee discussing the test ban) could not be amended, for when he addressed Parliament on August 2, indications were that China’s concerns about the mechanism for triggering on-site inspections were being taken on board, while India’s reservations about scope and EIF were being ignored.37 Gujral did not need to dwell on discrimination as the N5, in accommodating each other’s concerns while ignoring India’s, were eff ectively undermining any notions of a level playing fi eld at the CD. As one Indian commentator noted later, the weak reaction of the United States and others to China’s 45th nuclear test ‘demonstrate[d] that only nuclear weapon states were fully sovereign whereas the sovereignty of other states was limited. Th e CTBT leant legitimacy to a new hierarchical world order’.38 Hereafter, discrimination and perceived coercion took centre stage as Gujral’s fourth and fi fth speeches focussed on the EIF provision of Article XIV. In eff ect, the Deve Gowda government through these speeches rallied attentive India against the treaty; by the time New Delhi offi cially rejected the CTBT on August 20, 1996 in Geneva, every party across the political spectrum supported India’s rejection, though perhaps for diff erent reasons. As Muchkund Dubey later explained, though the government rejected the CTBT because of security concerns — in order to maintain the option to test nuclear weapons in response to regional nuclear developments — it ‘resorted to the linkage with disarmament because [it] thought that it would be the most plausible and least objectionable reason to oppose the treaty’.39 K. Subrahmanyam sought to draw attention to this distinction when he pointed out that ‘[s]taying out of the treaty on security grounds is a far more powerful act of resistance than protesting against on grounds of absence of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

37 Th e ‘rolling text’ of the draft treaty, containing those clauses in brackets which had not been agreed upon, was commonly referred to by the name of the then Chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on a Nuclear Test Ban at the CD (in this case Jaap Ramaker), to distinguish it from earlier and subsequent texts. 38 B. K. Shrivastava, ‘Th e United States and South Asia’, South Asian Survey 4:1 (1997), p. 76. 39 Muchkund Dubey, ‘Congress and India’s N-Policy–II, Th e Hindu, June 20, 2000. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 185

disarmament linkage’.40 Th e popular perception remained, however, that India rejected the treaty on principle, repudiating discrimination and asserting its sovereignty. As Arundhati Ghose declared to the UN General Assembly on September 10, 1996, in explanation of India’s negative vote, ‘India will never sign this unequal treaty; not now, nor later’. Demonising the CTBT Writing after the nuclear tests of 1998, Raja Mohan observed that Indian attitudes towards the CTBT had dramatically reversed from four decades of ‘unfl inching support’ for a test ban to ‘an unprecedented demonisation and rejection in 1996’, marking a complete repudiation of a ‘part and parcel of India’s foreign policy baggage’.41 Opinion amongst the larger middle-class was veering towards a more robust nuclear posture: a 1996 opinion poll found support for India conducting another test was over 60 per cent — a signifi cant increase from the 33 per cent that had supported a similar move in 1994.42 As I. K. Gujral was to explain later, India’s rejection of the CTBT was ‘not an incident but an approach’.43 Th e shift in attitude, while it forced refl ective Indians to fi nally confront India’s nuclear posture, also resulted in a fairly fundamental acknowledgement that Indian exceptionalism had had its day. As one security analyst explained, ‘Gandhian peace has become obsolete in this aggressive world’.44 Another observer noted that the ‘vigorous debate’ generated at the time of India’s rejection of the CTBT in the fi rst half of 1996 had imbued the exercise with greater signifi - cance than just a simple negation of the treaty in pushing India to clarify its nuclear policy.45 Th e fi ercely defended ‘option’ now had to

40 Mayank Chhaya, ‘Experts Suggest Nation Walk Out of Geneva Test Ban Talks’, India Abroad, June 21, 1996. 41 C. Raja Mohan, ‘CTBT and the Options Before India’, Independent (London), December 10, 1999. 42 Sonali Verma, ‘Move Driven by Widespread Domestic Support’, Ethnic NewsWatch, August 23, 1996. Verma was citing ﬁ gures provided by Amitabh

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Mattoo, who also referred to the earlier Kroc study of 1994 which probed elite opinion on the nuclear question. 43 Editorial, ‘Gujral Doctrine “Continues to be Relevant”’, Th e Hindu, April 27, 1998. 44 Maj-General D. Banerjee, quoted in ‘Experts Call for Clear-Cut Nuclear Policy’, Press Trust of India, cited in News-India Times, June 9, 1996, p. 26. 45 Anirudha Gupta, ‘Issues in South Asia: Geopolitics or Geoeconomics’, International Studies 34:1 (1997), p. 22. 186 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

be confronted. However, it is not clear that greater clarity had indeed been achieved on India’s nuclear posture, for the reasons that attentive India rejected the CTBT were not necessarily the same ones that governed offi cial India’s change of heart. The Offi cial Rejection of the CTBT Whatever the reasons for reconsidering its position, New Delhi’s attitude towards the CTBT appeared to change towards the end of 1995 after the indefi nite and unconditional extension of the NPT.46 Th e public perception of American pressure on New Delhi to sign the treaty — whether correct or not — also pushed the government to harden its rhetoric in an election year.47 Rumours of an attempted nuclear test by India in mid-December being cancelled after American offi cials threatened the government with dire consequences, especially sanctions, took the CTBT out of the realm of arms control and disarmament and made it a foreign policy issue.48 At this time it also became clear that for some US disarmament offi cials, the CTBT was being pursued as a means of ‘lock[ing] all nations into place on the nuclear learning curve’.49 All parties across the political spectrum soon began to voice their opposition to it. Th e Deve Gowda government that took offi ce after the 1996 General Elections was pressed upon to clarify its stance on the treaty during the two-day debate preceding the vote of confi dence on the new government. Th ough most of the pressure came from the BJP, Prime Minister Deve Gowda still felt constrained to promise to consult all political parties before formulating his government’s stance on the matter.50

46 Th e NPT extension has been repeatedly cited as the single most important factor governing India’s shift in attitude towards the CTBT. 47 For the eﬀ ect that perceptions of international pressure had on reducing Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 the government’s room for manoeuvre in negotiating the CTBT and its need to play to the domestic gallery, see Dinshaw Mistry, ‘Domestic-International Linkages: India and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty’, Nonproliferation Review 6:1 (Fall 1998). 48 Muchkund Dubey wrote of ‘an oﬃ cially inspired news story in American newspapers’ on the purported second test. Dubey, ‘Nuclear Options’, p. 4. 49 US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency chief, John Holum, quoted in Narula, ‘Pressure Tactics’. 50 Chhaya, ‘Experts Suggest Nation Walk Out of Geneva Test Ban Talks’. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 187

However, until the EIF clause introduced in May 1996 virtually made it impossible for the Government not to reject the treaty, it is not clear how public opinion came to be so negatively disposed towards it.51 Observers noted at the time that the Indian press appeared to have united in its opposition to the treaty by mid-1996.52 Editorials counselling the government to withstand ‘Western blackmail’ began to appear in the lead-up to the fi nal vote in Geneva.53 Certainly, the government’s vocal unhappiness in early 1996 with the draft not containing any guarantees for verifi able nuclear disarmament infl uenced opinion within attentive India to some extent that the emerging treaty was more a non-proliferation measure (aimed largely at India) than an instrument for disarmament.54 Yet this did not amount to a complete rejection of the treaty. Sanjaya Baru, then ‘views’ editor of the Times of India, remarked after the tests that the newspaper was instrumental in ‘moulding public opinion against the CTBT’.55 For an Indian public still trying to come to terms with the changing political and economic realities of the 1990s — in an election year the Congress appeared to be crumbling under corruption charges, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) had replaced the General Agreement on Tariff s and Trade (GATT) without the government having engaged the public on the benefi ts of the new trading regime, charges of Pakistan-sponsored insurgency in Kashmir and the Northeast were commonplace, and the United States-led group of developed countries made no secret of their desire to secure India fi rmly in a non-proliferation regime — the CTBT as a symbol of all the nebulous external pressures on India became the focus of elite insecurities.56 Even if the Times of India may have framed the arguments

51 Th e diﬀ erent party campaigns for the general elections held earlier in the year had been virtually silent on the nuclear question, with the exception of the BJP’s promise to re-evaluate nuclear policy. Nuclear policy was not seen as a mobilising issue. 52 Shiraz Sidhva, ‘India Unites Over Nuclear Arms Stance’, Financial Times,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 August 22, 1996. 53 Tarun Basu cites an editorial by C. Raja Mohan in Th e Hindu, in Basu, ‘India Toughens Stand on Test Ban Treaty’, India Abroad, July 26, 1996. 54 Subramanian, ‘A Guessing Game’. 55 Sanjaya Baru, ‘Beyond Nuclear Policy’, Th e Times of India, December 16, 1999. 56 Th e concerns of rural, lower and lower middle-class India remained more parochial and focussed on the conditions of daily existence. 188 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

against the CTBT both on the grounds of inequality — ‘opposition to a “nuclear apartheid”’ — as well as ‘security’ prompted by ‘the ongoing nuclearisation of our neighbourhood’, it was the populist sentiments of inequality and fears of coercion that sustained the heated discussions.57 Years of Cold War conditioning and vestiges of anti-Americanism surfaced to make the United States the focus of anti-CTBT sentiment as fears — unfounded, for the most part — of American bullying imbued the CTBT negotiations with all the signifi cance of the defence of sovereignty.58 Until June 1996, however, it did not appear as though the government was actively seeking to build opinion in favour of rejecting the treaty outright, much less wanting to block it. At most, New Delhi may have been trying to create the space for it to walk away from the treaty. All offi cial speeches spoke of India’s trying to work from within the treaty to ‘securely anchor[…] [it] in the global disarmament context’; even after India had announced its inability to sign the fi rst ‘clean’ text that Chairman Ramaker presented to the CD on June 20, 1996, External Aff airs Minister I. K. Gujral declared that New Delhi had not ‘slammed the door’ on the CTBT and planned to remain involved in the negotiations.59 On another occasion, Gujral stated, apropos the CTBT, that India was ‘not in the business of blocking’ a treaty — the accusations in the foreign media that India was deliberately playing the spoiler had clearly rankled.60 Even as India’s representative to the CD Arundhati Ghose was spelling out New Delhi’s reservations on the treaty, emphasising the country’s desire to see it linked to time-bound nuclear disarmament, opinion in the country was veering towards New Delhi quietly opting out of the treaty, in the same manner that it had declined to join the NPT regime.61

57 Baru, ‘Beyond Nuclear Policy’. 58 N. Ram, Editorial, ‘Nuclear Policy: What India Must Do’, Frontline, January 26, 1996, pp. 17–18. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 59 John Cherian, Interview with External Aff airs Minister I. K. Gujral, ‘In Our National Interests’, Frontline, July 12, 1996, p. 40. 60 John Cherian, ‘Now the Endgame’, Frontline, September 6, 1996, p. 126. Several Indian newspapers and magazines carried reports of unfl attering editorials in American newspapers such as the Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune; Narula, ‘In Isolation Ward Again’, talks of ‘Western media having a fi eld day’, with editorials such as ‘India, the Spoiler’, International Herald Tribune, July 1, 1996. 61 Narula, ‘India Spells Out its Terms’; Chhaya, ‘Experts Suggest Nation Walk Out of Geneva Test Ban Talks’. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 189

It was also not entirely clear that offi cial India was speaking in one voice. Just three months before India’s ambassador to the CD stated New Delhi’s inability arising from ‘national security considerations’ to sign the CTBT in its present form, India’s Foreign Secretary Salman Haidar informed the Conference that India did ‘not believe the acquisition of nuclear weapons is essential for national security’.62 Ghose explained in June that the Working Paper circulated by Chairman Ramaker with its ‘inadequate preambular references to nuclear disarmament’ allowed some countries to continue to rely on nuclear weapons, constraining India to reject any ‘restraints on its capability’. Of course it could be argued that the sharp response of the BJP in Parliament to Haidar’s speech — they apparently drafted an intervention questioning the government’s nuclear policy, putting the Congress government under Narasimha Rao on the defensive — reduced New Delhi’s room for manoeuvre.63 Certainly, by the run-up to the General Elections the following month, all political parties had united in their opposition to the CTBT.64 Th ough the reasons for repudiating the treaty varied with party ideology, so that the Left parties rejected it citing discrimination, the Congress because of its ‘strong, principled position’ on complete nuclear disarmament and the BJP on the grounds of security, the ‘remarkable development’, as one observer pointed out, was the ‘emergence of a national consensus on a test ban treaty’.65 Th at said, nuclear policy did not fi gure prominently in India’s 11th General Elections which were contested mainly on domestic issues such as corruption, the economy and communal relations. Yet even after the elections, offi cial India remained engaged with the CTBT, though the grounds for signalling India’s dissatisfaction with

62 Ghose, Statement on June 20, 1996; Haidar’s speech of March 21, 1996, was reported in Narula, ‘In Isolation Ward Again’. 63 Conversation with C. Raja Mohan, New Delhi, August 3, 2005, who was consulted by the BJP on this occasion. 64 Brahma Chellaney, ‘India May Balk at Ban on Nuclear Tests; Opposition

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Bipartisan on Election Eve’, Washington Times, April 26, 1996. Th is development notwithstanding, the CTBT was not an election issue. 65 Ibid. Interestingly, the BJP’s 80-page manifesto did not clarify whether its promise to ‘exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons’ would entail a series of nuclear tests, or whether it would just declare India a nuclear weapons power without testing, in which case the country could still theoretically be a signatory to the CTBT. All India Radio, ‘Bharatiya Janata Party Releases Election Manifesto’, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, part 3 Asia-Paciﬁ c; South Asia; India; EE/D2581/A, 8 April 1996. 190 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

the treaty had shifted signifi cantly.66 Few in India, however, probed the implications of the move from the traditional discourse of discrimination and inequality to security. Whether this debate would have surfaced remains moot; within months the rhetoric had shifted back to principle, with the EIF provision of Article XIV requiring India’s signature before the treaty could be implemented. Once EIF was included despite Ghose having warned delegates in her June 20, 1996, speech that New Delhi would never accept any language in the treaty that would impose obligations on India when it had already declared its inability to accept the treaty that was emerging, the government’s rhetorical position was clear: the Treaty had to be rejected in defence of sovereignty. In this principled position, security considerations were secondary. Sustaining Anti-CTBT Polemics Th e heated discussions on the CTBT marked an extraordinary coalescing of public opinion on what should have been a security issue, on political grounds. Th e distance travelled on the CTBT from the non- story of India’s co-sponsorship of the treaty in 1993 to its vociferous domestic rejection less than three years later provides a telling commentary on the salience of security matters in the public domain. Once the CTBT was presented in political terms in which security was linked to the country’s sovereignty, the topic became a valid subject for debate amongst attentive India. Public deliberations over the CTBT, as refl ected in newspaper headlines, ‘CTBT: Can India Resist the Blackmail?’, ‘Standing up to Pressure’, ‘In Isolation Ward Again’, and ‘Sovereignty Assailed: Th e Moment of Truth for Independent India’, framed the discussion in the language of discrimination and coercion, not military security.67 A senior Ministry of External Aff airs (MEA) offi cial observed that the CTBT discussions were really ‘polemics’: there was no room for a reasoned debate.68 Yet the sense of insecurity Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

66 Th is was a period of considerable political uncertainty, with the 13-day BJP-led government failing to win a vote of conﬁ dence in the Lok Sabha. It was succeeded on June 1 by the ‘United Front’ coalition government, led by Deve Gowda, a self-proclaimed ‘humble farmer’ from Karnataka with very little demonstrated foreign and defence policy expertise. 67 Th ese articles appeared as follows: Th e Hindu, July 23, 1996; Frontline, September 20, 1996; Outlook, July 17, 1996; Th e Times of India, August 12, 1996. 68 Conversation with a senior MEA oﬃ cial, New Delhi, August 31, 2005. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 191

was palpable as the fi nal vote in Geneva drew near and attentive India wondered if New Delhi would be able to withstand international pressure to accede to the treaty. Security had moved from the realm of nuclear weapons defending India’s territorial integrity to New Delhi’s ability to make its own decisions regarding how it would defend its independence. Former Ambassador to the CD Satish Chandra believes that the CTBT was ‘hijacked’ by the strategic community and that the MEA’s disarmament division did not have enough people to defend the government’s policy. In his view, K. Subrahmanyam was instrumental, having gone into ‘overdrive’ in writing and speaking against the treaty after mid-1995.69 Subrahmanyam, arguing from both principle and security, was best placed to attract a wider audience who might otherwise not have been drawn to a purely military argument. Some scholars have, however, suggested that the government may not have been averse to having its hands tied; certainly, the informal but close links between the bureaucracy and some defence analysts support a view that the fourth estate might have carried the hawkish opinions of the scientifi c– strategic enclave at the instigation of a bureaucracy not unwilling to be compelled by public opinion into adopting an unaccommodating stance.70 Subrahmanyam’s views are generally considered well informed; some analysts have even suggested he has been used by the government for ‘kite-fl ying’.71 Subrahmanyam and others certainly built a persuasive case against the CTBT, weaving security arguments (which had little resonance with the greater public) with political reasons. Subrahmanyam’s rejection of the CTBT was signifi cant for in the early 1990s, while he had consistently pushed for greater clarity on India’s nuclear posture, he had never been of the opinion that India needed to test its nuclear capability; in his view, deterrence was already in operation in the subcontinent.72 He and General K. Sundarji had in fact, in a joint article with two American scholars, observed that Indian and American attitudes towards non-proliferation may be converging over the CTBT Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

69 Conversation with Satish Chandra, New Delhi, September 5, 2005. 70 See Mistry, ‘Domestic-International Linkages’ on this point, pp. 31–32. 71 Karnad, ‘Mr K. Subrahmanyam: An Appreciation’, in Bhaskar (comp.), Subbu at 75, p. 27. 72 See, Subrahmanyam, ‘Capping, Managing or Eliminating Nuclear Weapons?’, 182ﬀ . 192 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

and FMCT.73 In theory, New Delhi could therefore have signed the CTBT without aff ecting the operation of this recessed deterrence. But for Subrahmanyam, discrimination was anathema. As one of India’s more infl uential security analysts, he virtually buried the CTBT in characterising it as ‘perpetuating a nuclear apartheid’. In his view, the EIF clause ‘reminds Indians that the age of imperialism is not over’.74 In the lead up to India’s fi ftieth anniversary of independence, these sentiments would resonate powerfully. Until the EIF clause requiring India’s signature was added on after New Delhi had indicated its inability to sign the CTBT, not all of the country’s policy community opposed the treaty.75 Since they too contributed to and shaped the debate, they could have created a more favourable atmosphere for the CTBT, especially given India’s self- image as a disarmament pioneer. Th ough commentators and analysts such as former Foreign Secretary Muchkund Dubey believed India required its own deterrent capabilities in a world where some states relied on nuclear weapons for their security, he did not believe that India had to test to demonstrate its nuclear capability. As Dubey, the principal architect of the 1988 Action Plan argued then and later, the Action Plan was India’s ‘last bid to ensure its security through […] disarmament’, thereby avoiding the ‘morass of a nuclear arms race. Th us, it was implicit in the very purpose of submitting the Action Plan that if it failed, India would have no alternative but to stumble upon its own nuclear deterrent’.76 In Dubey’s opinion, this reliance on nuclear weapons could be achieved either by the government declaring India a nuclear weapon state while ‘tak[ing] measures other than testing to lend credibility to the declaration’ or to test and declare India’s nuclear weapon status.77 Writing in January 1996, he was of the opinion that India could not aff ord to invite the opprobrium and sanctions of the developed countries

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 73 M. Granger Morgan, K. Subrahymanyam, K. Sundarji and Robert M. White, ‘India and the United States’, Th e Washington Quarterly, 18:2 (Spring 1995), p. 167. 74 Rathnam Indurthy, ‘Who is Hypocritical on the CTBT; India or the Nuclear Powers?’, Ethnic NewsWatch, News-India Times, 26:46, 36. 75 Analysts like Bharat Karnad, on the other hand, had always been consistently opposed to any curbs on India’s nuclear capability. 76 Dubey, ‘Congress and India’s N-Policy–II’. 77 Dubey, ‘Nuclear Options’, p. 5. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 193

in a more economically interconnected world; besides, the country had a moral obligation to retain its 40-year commitment to nuclear disarmament. India had declared its preference for a nuclear-weapon-free world; yet, if that was not forthcoming, the international community had been put on notice through the Action Plan that it could consider the ‘or else’ option. In early 1996, he was of the opinion that India should go along with the CTBT if it was ‘comprehensive’, ‘non-discriminatory’, included language ‘rejecting nuclear weapons as the basis of security’ and containing a promise to seek the elimination of nuclear weapons within a defi nite timeframe.78 If these conditions were not met, he argued, India was free to reject the treaty. In that case, he recommended a proper debate on the options available to India, and the course that the government should adopt.79 Writing after New Delhi’s rejection of the treaty at the UN General Assembly, he praised the Deve Gowda government for ‘not yield[ing] to pressure’ and repudiating the implied diff erential respect for sovereignty based on the possession of nuclear weapons that the CD’s negotiating procedure refl ected.80 Referring to the accommodation of China’s objections over the mechanism for triggering on-site inspections on the grounds that China was a nuclear weapon state, at the same time that India was told the draft could not be amended to take in its reservations about scope and EIF Dubey remarked, ‘[t]his clearly shows that in the eyes of the new alliance, nuclear weapon states are more sovereign than those that do not possess such weapons’. For him, the implications were clear: ‘Th ey have indicated that they will respect India and will not infringe on its sovereignty only if India demonstrates by concrete action that it is also sovereign in the sense that they understand it’.81 Not Now, Nor Later For Dubey and many political commentators who deplored the negotiating tactics adopted at the CD, India had conducted itself admirably; the chicanery exhibited by the nuclear weapon states in trying to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 strongarm India into acceding to a treaty against its wishes imbued

78 Ibid., p. 9. 79 Ibid., pp. 10–11. 80 Muchkund Dubey, ‘India Stands its Ground’, Frontline, October 18, 1996, pp. 88, 87. 81 Ibid., p. 87. 194 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

New Delhi’s defi ance with the sense of a ‘crusade’.82 Even if the fi nal result at the General Assembly appeared to indicate that India had been isolated in its stance — the CTBT was accepted by the General assembly with 158 votes in favour, fi ve abstentions and only three against: India, Libya and Bhutan — the fact that New Delhi kept rather dubious company in its dissent did not bother the majority of those who had followed the negotiations. Finally, India had demonstrated that it had ‘spine’.83 And in Arundhati Ghose, Indians had found the perfect, charismatic leader for their lonely crusade. At a time when domestic politics off ered a clutch of rather uninspiring men — from former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, famous for his inaction, to the current Prime Minister Deve Gowda, equally famous for falling asleep at meetings — Arundhati Ghose, with her robust, direct approach harked back to the reassuring self-confi dence of Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Th ough her plain speaking may have ruffl ed diplomatic feathers in the United States at one point, even the fact that the US complained about her negotiating style only served to rally further support for her.84 As a news story, especially on television which was expanding in India at the time, it certainly helped to have a strong, articulate woman at the fore, one who spoke unapologetically (she accused the CD of ‘verbal prestidigation’ in avoiding its disarmament obligations at one point), broke several Indian taboos by smoking in public and standing up to men in a male-dominated society, and in her stating that her gender was inconsequential in putting forward India’s viewpoint at Geneva.85 For many Indians, her emphatic rejection of the CTBT at the UN General Assembly — ‘India will never sign this unequal Treaty, not now, nor later’ — proved that India was capable of ‘show[ing] a rare diplomatic self-assurance’.86 Not only could she present and defend

82 M. A. Vellodi, ‘From Geneva to New York’, Frontline, November 15, 1996, p. 87. Vellodi is a former diplomat and retired as Secretary, MEA, where he handled nuclear policy and disarmament. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 83 C. Uday Bhaskar, quoted in Narula, ‘Pushed Into a Corner’. 84 Conversation with Ghose, January 10, 2005; Narula, ‘India Spells Out Its Terms’. 85 Ghose, Statement on January 25, 1996; Sunil Narula, interview with Arundhati Ghose, ‘West Too Must Make a Commitment’, Outlook, July 17, 1996. 86 Arundhati Ghose, ‘Statement in Explanation of Vote’ on Item 65: CTBT, New York, United Nations General Assembly, September 10, 1996, A/50/PV.125; C. Raja Mohan, quoted in Sidhwa, ‘India unites over nuclear arms stance’. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 195

India’s case with aplomb, she could also carry attentive India with her in this matter. Her response to fears of India’s isolation over its stance at the CD after India had prevented the Conference from presenting a consensus document to the General Assembly was an impatient, ‘Do we have so little self-confi dence? It’s our security’.87 As Raja Mohan explained, ‘[f]or far too long in the recent past, the very murmur of disapproval from the great powers on a particular issue often stopped Indian policy in its tracks. In the last few years, India was ready to catch a cold even before Washington sneezed’.88 Understanding Rejection Th ough India had managed to give the United States a diplomatic fl u and apparently survive, the consequences of its actions in Geneva and New York still had to be addressed. As Raja Mohan pointed out at a seminar soon after the rejection, India’s ‘defi ance of the CTBT loses some of its shine’ in the face of continued confusion over its nuclear posture and the apparent lack of clarity guiding policy decisions in this respect.89 Having defi ed the will of the international community and reversed New Delhi’s long stated commitment to a test ban in defence of a nebulous ‘option’, attentive India was now being asked to face the implications of the actions it had endorsed. While pressing the government to open up the debate on nuclear policy so that the country as a whole could achieve greater clarity on its nuclear posture, most commentators and defence analysts were also pushing attentive India to engage with the ‘option’ in whose preservation they had rallied so enthusiastically.90 In the words of one observer, ‘merely’ defi ning it as ‘the option of any country […] to go in for nuclear weapons is not very meaningful’.91 As several analysts recognised, the government would now face increasing calls from the more hawkish elements of India’s strategic–scientifi c enclave to move towards weaponising the country’s nuclear assets.92 Otherwise defi ance would not be worth the diplomatic

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Sunil Narula, Interview with Arundhati Ghose, ‘We Should Have Some Self-Esteem’, Outlook, August 28, 1996. 88 Sidhwa, op. cit. 89 C. Raja Mohan, ‘India’s Security Challenges’, p. 61. 90 In addition to the writings of Mohan and Dubey cited here, see Jasjit Singh, ‘Nuclear Asymmetry’, Frontline, October 4, 1996; Narula, ‘In Isolation Ward’. 91 Vellodi, ‘From Geneva to New York’, p. 87. 92 Jasjit Singh, ‘Nuclear Asymmetry’, p. 23. 196 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

(and presumed economic) costs that India would have to pay for playing the ‘spoiler’ at the negotiations. Th e domestic pressure produced partial results: I. K. Gujral was forced to clarify soon after India’s rejection of the treaty that the negative vote did not mean that India was ‘going in for any new weapons, particularly nuclear weapons’.93 However, it was not entirely clear that the great national euphoria over the Indian David standing up to the nuclear club’s Goliath had left the same wider public whom South Block was citing as the source of support for its rejection of the CTBT any more inclined to engage with a nuclear weapons policy. Th ough Ghose had voted against the treaty citing national security concerns, within India the treaty was deemed unacceptable because it was seen as discriminatory. In Salman Haidar’s view, ‘We came out of the CTBT not because we wanted nuclear weapons but because we wanted equality’.94 Gujral’s statement on India’s unchanged nuclear policy was, to all appearances, quietly accepted by attentive India. Th rough those months when this group was uniting in its indignation over the negotiations in Geneva, Parliament, the press and the Ministry of External Aff airs debated the treaty in the discourse of discrimination. India was being called upon to ‘resist nuclear apartheid’ all over again.95 Yet, in Geneva the narrative had changed signifi cantly after Arundhati Ghose invoked national security in her June 20 speech. Even though the theme of national security was echoed in Foreign Minister Gujral’s fi rst two speeches to Parliament on the CTBT negotiations, these were not picked up and debated. No one pressed the government on the implications of its argument that it could ‘not accept any restraints on its capability’ in light of the overt and clandestine nuclear weaponisation of India’s neighbourhood, which the CTBT did nothing to address.96

93 John Cherian, ‘Standing up to Pressure’, Frontline, September 20, 1996, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 p. 53. 94 Conversation with Haidar, September 3, 2005. 95 K. R. Malkani of the BJP, in an intervention in the Rajya Sabha. Quoted in ‘US Test Ban Pressure Angers India’, UPI, August 2, 1996; Brajesh Mishra of the BJP, Doordarshan (television), August 14, 1996, ‘Foreign Secretary Says India to Veto Test Ban Treaty in Present Form’, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Part 3, Asia Paciﬁ c; South Asia, India, Foreign Relations, FEID 2692/A, August 16, 1996. 96 Ghose, statement of June 20, 1996. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 197

Offi cial India fi nally rejected the CTBT on three counts: two substantive, and one procedural.97 Th e two substantive points had been raised by India from late 1995 and focussed on the scope of the treaty. First, in India’s view, the treaty as envisaged did not contain a genuine commitment to nuclear disarmament within a defi nite timeframe, which in eff ect sanctioned the ‘diff erential notion of sovereignty’ inherent in allowing certain countries to rely on nuclear weapons for their security.98 Second, the treaty was not comprehensive: in permitting subcritical and laboratory testing, it allowed nuclear weapon states to continue to refi ne their arsenals. In eff ect, this turned the treaty into another horizontal non-proliferation measure as opposed to a genuine step towards nuclear disarmament. Th at said, offi cial India’s most bitter criticism of the treaty was reserved for the procedural question of EIF, and the manner in which Article XIV requiring India’s signature along with 43 other ‘nuclear capable states’ as defi ned in an annexe to the treaty had been included after Ghose had made known India’s unwillingness to sign the treaty as presented to the CD on June 20.99 Once again, the discriminatory targeting of India rankled. As she explained on the fl oor of the General Assembly, Article XIV ‘is contrary to the fundamental norms of international law’ in imposing obligations on India without its consent. Until the provision had been included in the draft, New Delhi had been prepared to disassociate itself from the treaty and not block its transmission to the General Assembly. India was willing to allow ‘those

97 I. K. Gujral spelled these out in his final speech on the CTBT on September 11, 1996. 98 Ghose, speech August 20 and September 10, 1996, with the quotation from the August 20 speech. Th is paragraph draws from these two speeches. 99 Th e entry-into-force (EIF) provisions were contained in Article XIV of the draft treaty and were ﬁ nalised after Ghose’s June 20 speech in which she had warned the CD against requiring New Delhi’s subscription to the treaty, as India had decided against signing it in the form acquired by the Ramaker

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 draft. Article XIV stipulated that the treaty would enter into force only after 44 countries, all of which possessed nuclear power or research reactors, had signed and ratiﬁ ed the treaty. Th e 44 states were given three years in which to accede to the treaty, after which the ratifying countries could ask the UN Secretary General to convene a conference to decide which measures consistent with international law could be taken to accelerate the ratiﬁ cation process. Indians interpreted these measures as sanctions which would be allowed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. 198 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

countries which wanted the Treaty, fl awed though it was, to achieve it, if that indeed was their intent, though it would have been without India’s signature’.100 However, the attempt to push the country into the treaty had forced India to block consensus at the CD and vote against it in the General Assembly. Th ose unhappy with EIF echoed K. Subrahmanyam’s assertion that it was only in times of war that a defeated nation was forced to accept treaties with which they do not agree.101 Another analyst remarked that while blocking the treaty had regrettably weakened the CD which works through consensus, India had had no other ‘option’. In her opinion, rejecting the fl awed treaty represented a defence of India’s ‘sovereignty’.102 Th e defi nition of security had thus shifted from the threat to India by the possession of nuclear weapons by a few states while denying it the same form of defence, to the threat to India’s sovereign right to make its own strategic decisions. When Gujral explained the reasons for India’s rejection of the CTBT to Parliament in his fi nal speech on the matter, he repeated India’s unhappiness with the scope and procedure of the treaty. However, he did not raise the question of India’s security reservations with respect to the treaty. India had returned to the discourse of discrimination. As a political issue, the CTBT had become totemic of elite insecurities about the wider global, regional and domestic images and ideas of India. Given attentive India’s traditional vigorous engagement with political and development matters alongside its curious reluctance to confront questions of security, this was perhaps inevitable. Gujral was representing a weak government that could not lay itself open to charges of compromising the country’s interests through international isolation or a repudiation of its historic commitment to disarmament. Deve Gowda’s government need not have worried. As soon as the debate was framed in terms of a rejection of nuclear apartheid, India’s role was clear. Th e intelligentsia’s engagement with Indian identity was slowly moving down the dyad between exceptionalism and realpolitik, away from the discourse of morality. As long as principle had appeared Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 to provide India with a special place in the international system giving it a leadership role despite its material weaknesses, Indians had been willing to let New Delhi play the moral crusader. Once that special

100 Arundhati Ghose, statement of September 10, 1996. 101 Sunil Narula, Ramananda Sengupta, ‘Next Stop: United Nations?’, Outlook, August 28, 1996. 102 Savita Pande, quoted in ibid. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 199

position began to erode, refl ective Indians started to accept that India would have to behave like any other state. As Chandan Mitra, the editor of India’s oldest newspaper, Th e Pioneer, was to explain later, ‘Mahatma Gandhi’s endeavor all during the freedom movement was to rebuild our sense of self-esteem. Even if you don’t have guns, he said, you still have moral force. Now, fi fty years on, we know that moral force isn’t enough to survive’.103 Confronting Anti-CTBT Rhetoric Th e demonisation of the CTBT and the extraordinary polemics that had occluded any reasoned debate on what the ‘nuclear option’ allowed India to do might have left the nuclear debate in the same state of incoherence lapsing into apathy had it not been for the perceptions of inexorable international pressure that would be brought to bear on New Delhi under Article XIV.104 However, the same Article XIV that had helped frame India’s rejection in terms of a principled repudiation of coercion also contained the potential for sanctions in addition to the threat of international isolation.105 Th e US State Department spokesman’s speech the day after the passage of the treaty at the UN, cautioning any country contemplating nuclear weapons tests against defying ‘the will of the international community and the great powers of the world’ was widely repeated in India, not so much because India was actually considering nuclear tests but because of the power diff erential implicit in the statement.106 In many ways, these perceptions of international pressure served to further cloud popular engagement with nuclear policy. Because the debate over the CTBT had been equated for many with the need to resist external pressure, the room for reasoned debate had been crowded out by heated criticism, especially in the fi rst half of 1996. Th e ‘nuclear option’ with which the popular press engaged was reduced to a simple equation that linked support for India’s independent nuclear

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 103 Ghosh, ‘Countdown’, p. 189. 104 The US Secretary of State Warren Christopher had earlier warned India that it could face isolation if it tried to block the treaty. Aziz Haniﬀ a, ‘Christopher: India May Be Isolated on CTBT’, India Abroad, August 9, 1996, p. 4; also cited in Narula, ‘Pushed into a Corner’. 105 Dubey, ‘India Stands its Ground’, p. 88. 106 Nicholas Burns, quoted in Sunil Narula, Ludwina A. Joseph, ‘Th e Battle Begins’, Outlook, September 25, 1996. 200 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

policy (which remained undefi ned) with nationalism. Th is simplistic engagement with nuclear policy, along with fears of intense international pressure to limit this option by signing the CTBT, eventually translated into a perception amongst middle class and elite India that there was ‘only the nuclear option standing between us [India] and disaster’.107 As a result, though the strategic community tried to push attentive India into engaging with the ‘option’ that it had so passionately defended, and consider what New Delhi should do in the three-year window that Article XIV appeared to off er before those states ratifying the treaty were free to implement measures to bring those holding out within its fold, this group chose instead to fulminate against perceived American coercion. Th ough offi cial India later acknowledged that the United States should not have earned the opprobrium — the UK, Russia and China (with Pakistan and Egypt) had played a more decisive role in pushing through the EIF clause which the United States had been willing to modify along the lines suggested by India — the battle over the treaty was popularly perceived as pitting India against the United States.108 Th e Left-combine added to this impression with their unfailing ability to spot an American conspiracy in most global events.109 However, the government also contributed to this belief: on one occasion External Aff airs Minister Gujral declared in the Lok Sabha that India would not succumb to US pressure to sign the treaty as it imposed unprecedented obligations on the country.110 As a result, when India fi nally conducted its nuclear tests in 1998, part of the enthusiasm with which the tests were greeted had its roots in the notion that the country had fi nally and convincingly repudiated American pressure.111 Till then, however, the sense that India was under siege over the nuclear option continued.

107 Conversation with a senior MEA offi cial, New Delhi, August 31, 2005. 108 Arundhati Ghose clearly identifi es the ‘intransigence’ of the UK, Russia and China at the CD which led to 44-state ratifi cation clause for entry-into-force being adopted. Ghose, ‘Negotiating the CTBT’. EIF had in fact been drafted by Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 the UK’s Counter-Proliferation Department, FCO. 109 Th e Left also could rely on the left-leaning Frontline to spread their point of view. In addition, most major dailies and periodicals such as Outlook and Seminar will provide the Left with a platform. 110 ‘Foreign Secretary Says India to Veto Test Ban in its Present Form’. 111 As Lt-General V. R. Raghavan (retd) explains, regardless of its validity, the CTBT contributed signifi cantly to the impression that, especially in nuclear matters, the United States and India were pitted in an adversarial relationship. Conversation with Raghavan, August 30, 2005. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 201

An Emotional Engagement In 1996, the extraordinary sentiment built up against the CTBT allowed the government to state that it had acted on the basis of a national consensus; it had no choice but to reject the treaty that was presented to it.112 Th is anti-CTBT emotion later came home to roost when the Vajpayee government tried to generate support for signing the treaty after India conducted its nuclear tests. Th ough several of the same commentators who had argued against signing the CTBT before the tests on the grounds that India, in 1996, would be closing the door on a tested nuclear deterrent if it did so, now tried to reason in favour of signing the treaty as the circumstances had changed, they could not move public opinion.113 Even if analysts pointed out that a ban on further testing, which would place constraints on India’s reﬁ ning its nuclear arsenal, provided the surest way for the Left to limit India’s weaponisation (which they opposed), the CTBT had, through the debates of 1995–96, acquired so much symbolism as the last bastion in the struggle against ‘imperialist’ hegemony, that there was no political space for a consideration of accommodation.114 In the ﬁ nal analysis then, while the CTBT debates did not succeed in generating any reasoned and dispassionate popular engagement with the pros and cons of nuclear policy, it brought the subject to the forefront for attentive India. Helped no doubt by the fact that the BJP came to power less than two years after this debate peaked, the topic did not recede completely in the manner that had occurred earlier with the debates over China’s nuclear weapons tests of 1964 and after, the NPT negotiations in 1968 and the 1974 nuclear test. In some measure, however slight, these discussions succeeded in putting the government under pressure to bring about greater transparency with regard to India’s nuclear posture with several analysts calling for a public debate on India’s security policy.115 A greater engagement with security may

112 Gujral’s speeches to Parliament reiterated the ‘national consensus’ that

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 supported the United Front Government’s policy. 113 See various editorials by C. Raja Mohan in 1998, 1999 and 2000 in Th e Hindu; Muchkund Dubey, ‘Congress and India’s Nuclear Policy’, parts I and II, Th e Hindu, June 19 and 20, 2000; Baru, ‘Beyond Nuclear Policy’. 114 C. Raja Mohan, editorial, ‘Towards a CTBT Consensus’, Th e Hindu, December 9, 1999. 115 Singh, ‘Nuclear Asymmetry’; Dubey, ‘India Stands its Ground’; C. Raja Mohan, ‘Working With Nuclear Reality’, Th e Hindu, July 10, 1997. 202 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

not have resulted, but voices questioning the foreign policy implications of the CTBT exercise began to increase. Th ough India had emerged from the negotiations in a blaze of nationalistic defi ance, some observers asked diffi cult questions about how the government found itself painted into a corner over a treaty it had co-sponsored in 1993. Th ough a minority voice, Kanti Bajpai’s commentary on the ‘wretched’ diplomacy that had led to India’s diplomatic isolation and the reversal of its long-standing support for disarmament could not be lightly dismissed.116 Other analysts pointed to the FMCT that was due to be negotiated, and which India had also enthusiastically co-sponsored in 1993, to ensure that the same mistakes were not repeated.117 So while the intelligentsia may not have yet clarifi ed its stand on the strategic implications of ‘nuclear India’, the impassioned debate had moved nuclear policy from the realm of security into the arena of politics. Clarifying Nuclear Engagement If nothing else, the extraordinary engagement with the treaty negotiations marked a journey during which India’s intelligentsia gradually let go of some of the shibboleths that had propped up Indian self-image. India’s support for disarmament came under extraordinary pressure during the mid-1990s, forcing attentive India to confront its stated support for nuclear disarmament and decide if it went beyond the Nehruvian language that had sustained the country’s disarmament diplomacy for four decades. Hence the popular Indian response to the French decision to end France’s moratorium and resume nuclear testing in mid-1995 proved an extraordinary exercise in an assertion of moral superiority: students at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University prevented the French ambassador from speaking at the campus later that year and India’s representative to the CD berated the French on behalf of the Group of 21 for turning their back on disarmament.118

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Less than a year later, India’s traditional position was once again on display at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which had been

116 Bajpai, ‘India in a Diplomatic Soup’. 117 Amitabh Mattoo, ‘Ambiguity Characterizes Policy on Fissile Material’, India Abroad, July 11, 1997, p. 2. 118 Conversation with Varun Sahni, on JNU; ‘Geneva Disarmament Conference Criticises French’, Agence France Presse, June 29, 1995. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 203

requested by the UN General Assembly to provide a ruling on whether the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons could be permitted under international law. India’s position at the ICJ refl ected 40 years of eloquent opposition to nuclear weapons.119 Th e Indian delegation, working off a brief provided by the Government of India, had argued that not only was the use of nuclear weapons unlawful in self-defence, or even in retaliation for a nuclear fi rst strike, even deterrence was problematic as the stockpiling of nuclear weapons could ‘constitute a threat of their eventual use’.120 And yet at the same time that India presented this point of view, Arundhati Ghose argued at the CD that India could not accept any restraints on its nuclear capability in light of the continued existence of nuclear weapons; by implication, the country therefore reserved the right to continue with its reliance on nuclear deterrence. Apart from the cognitive disconnect exhibited by these two positions emerging from the same bureaucracy (the ICJ deposition was put together by the Legal and Treaties Division of the MEA), which in turn reported to the same government, India’s stance at the ICJ failed to generate any sustained interest within India. Where India’s position at the CD occupied column-space on the front pages of newspapers, the ICJ proceedings were relegated to the inside pages. Salman Haidar explains this indiff erence as born of familiarity: New Delhi’s position at the ICJ constituted the ‘usual, practised eloquence of India’s conventional position’.121 Th e ICJ allowed India to reiterate its principled position without testing it. However, the CD challenged India’s stance by threatening to take New Delhi’s commitment to a test ban at its word. In the end, there was nothing inevitable in India’s rejection of the CTBT. Even if the treaty presented to India was an unequal one — and some will argue that it was not — the country had acquiesced in unequal

119 Tellingly, the Indian position at the ICJ has not received much academic Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 attention in India. A good exception is a commentary by M. Siddhartha, ‘Legality of Nuclear Weapons’, in Mattoo, ed., India’s Nuclear Deterrent. See also his later book; Siddharth Mallavarapu, Banning the Bomb: Th e Politics of Norm Creation (New Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2007). Th e Court delivered its ruling on July 8, 1996. 120 Ibid. 121 Conversation with Haidar, September 3, 2005. 204 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

treaties before.122 Quite apart from signing the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which in banning atmospheric tests made it much more diffi cult for any new aspirant to the nuclear club to cross the threshold, India was an enthusiastic supporter of the United Nations, with its very visible division of members into those who sat at the top table, and those who could only aspire to doing so. In the end, therefore, it distilled into whose arguments were being listened to and who was being ignored. Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik, India’s two-man anti-nuclear brigade, put up a spirited defence of the treaty. Th ey pleaded that a fl awed treaty would still serve to promote nuclear disarmament, however imperfectly, by making further improvements and refi nements in nuclear arsenals more diffi cult and by preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons.123 As Kanti Bajpai tried to reason, using security arguments, even if the fl awed CTBT did not work towards complete nuclear disarmament by prohibiting testing, it would halt the Chinese drive to modernise and improve its nuclear arsenal. Since India considered China a strategic threat, he concluded, a test ban was presumably an objective worth pursuing.124 Yet these themes could not gain ground in the Indian imagination. For every plea that Bidwai and Vanaik offered for the principled rejection of nuclear weapons and the ethical need to subscribe to the CTBT, the Left (the only other constituency that might have supported a test ban) invoked the ‘core issues […] [of] national sovereignty and a principled commitment to disarmament and peace’.125 Once the argument was framed in terms of the defence of sovereignty, all else became secondary. Conclusion For all the passion with which India’s option to develop nuclear weapons had been defended, it was not clear that attentive India was inching towards wanting nuclear tests or a declaration of nuclear weapons Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 122 According to Satish Chandra, the perceptions of inequality were a media myth — in his view, the treaty imposed the obligation equally on all countries not to conduct tests. Conversation with Chandra, September 5, 2005. For most others, however, the loophole for conducting subcritical and laboratory tests constituted a technological divide providing for two classes of states, hence making the treaty discriminatory. 123 Bidwai, Vanaik, ‘Th e Treaty Can’t Be Held Hostage’,Outlook , July 17, 1996. 124 Bajpai, ‘India in a Diplomatic Soup’. 125 N. Ram, ‘Nuclear Policy’. Confronting the Nuclear Option ( 205

status. Th ough the debates over the Geneva conference acquired considerable resonance over a short period of time, but the greatest heat and emotion was reserved for matters of process at the CD and not on the substance of the treaty being negotiated. Attentive India had rejected the CTBT not because it wanted nuclear weapons but because it needed to repudiate any hint of coercion that might suggest its sovereignty was somehow subject to compromise or negotiation. In the run up to the fi ftieth anniversary of independence, this defence of sovereignty acquired a signifi cance that went far beyond security implications. In the process, India’s nuclear option, not really thought about after the rejection of the NPT until some months after that treaty was indefi nitely extended, became a talisman of its sovereignty. Of course, the process of equating the nuclear option with nationalism had continued in a desultory fashion over the years, picking up pace once international pressure came to bear on India’s nuclear policy in the early 1990s. Yet, it was not until the ‘option’ was credibly threatened in 1996 that attentive India rallied to defend it. Th ey did so, not in the name of military security, but in the name of sovereignty. In eff ect, an acceptance of ‘nuclear India’, however imperfectly defi ned, was being woven into the fabric of the greater idea of India. Th is subtle shift away from non-nuclear India that had become inevitable with the impassioned defence of the nuclear ‘option’ indicated a fundamental move towards realpolitik along the identity dyad on which attentive India’s engagement with nuclear policy was largely conducted. If the defence of sovereignty required India to play by the rules of the game laid down by the powerful states in the international system, Indians were willing to push Gandhian and Nehruvian principles further into the background. Yet, for all the heat generated by the CTBT negotiations, attentive India was no closer to wanting nuclear weapons. India’s eleventh General Elections were conducted almost at the height of the CTBT debate, in May 1996. Th ough all parties reiterated their commitment to ‘preserving India’s option’ and not caving in to international Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 pressure, none of them declared themselves in favour of testing nuclear weapons.126 Th e BJP spoke of retaining the option to ‘induct’ nuclear weapons but without specifying whether this would entail a series of nuclear tests. Even so, the party concentrated more on the state of the economy and the negative eff ects of the Congress government’s

126 Baru, ‘Beyond Nuclear Policy’. 206 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

liberalisation programme than on its nuclear intentions.127 Nevertheless, the fact that all political parties in India had clarifi ed their stance on India’s nuclear option for the fi rst time ever was signifi cant.128 Th at none of them spoke of India unilaterally giving up its nuclear weapons as a testament to its commitment to nuclear disarmament is perhaps even more telling. For the most part, however, this election was not about India’s nuclear policy. For many, the more substantive issues at stake were corruption, growing communal tensions, the unity of the country in the face of insurgency and separatism, and the economy.129 One commentary went so far as to remark that the election was marked by an absence of any ‘nation-wide’ issue, and that the outcome of the polls would probably be dictated by regional mobilisation tactics.130 In the fi nal analysis, the greatest contribution of the CTBT negotiations was not so much in pushing India towards an acceptance of nuclear weapons. In all the thunder and fury with which the CTBT was engaged publicly, there was very little reasoned discussion of the implications of retaining a nuclear ‘option’, especially in defi ance of the will of the international community. Further, though middle-class and elite sentiment was strongly opposed to signing the treaty, very few people subsequently argued in favour of testing nuclear weapons. It is debatable that the BJP’s gain in the vote-share had less to do with its stance on nuclear weapons than on its successful mobilisation of politics along communal lines. However, the debates over the CTBT politicised the nuclear option, imbuing it with a defence of sovereignty. Nuclear policy moved as a result from the realm of security into the realm of politics. Th e implications of this shift were on display in May 1998 when the India of Gandhi, Buddha and Nehru greeted the BJP’s nuclear tests with overwhelming support and enthusiasm.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 127 Madhu Nainan, ‘India’s Main Opposition Party Vows to Build Nuclear Arsenal if Elected’, Agence France Presse, November 11, 1995. Incidentally, the eye-catching headline to a story that focussed primarily on domestic issues and the economy provides an interesting commentary on the international media’s role in privileging the nuclear question in its reportage of India, some of which undoubtedly played back to India in international responses to the story. 128 Chellaney, ‘India May Balk at Ban on Nuclear Testing’. 129 N. Ram, ‘Issues Th at Matter’, Frontline, May 17, 1996, pp. 20–24. 130 Padmanand Jha, ‘Election Without an Issue’, Outlook, May 1, 1996. V Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT

It seems absurd and presumptuous to talk of an impulse, or an idea of life, underlying the growth of Indian civilization. … Th ere are a myriad of ideas that ﬂ oat like ﬂ otsam and jetsam on the surface of India, and many of them are mutually antagonistic. It is easy to pick out any group of them to justify a particular thesis; equally easy to choose another group to demolish it. Th is is, to some extent, possible everywhere; in an old and big country like India, with so much of the dead clinging on to the living, it is peculiarly easy. Jawahralal Nehru, 19461

The Golden Jubilee of Indian and Pakistani independence evoked considerable enthusiasm in Britain, the United States and most other Western nations. Within India, however, a certain degree of disenchant- ment overshadowed the ﬁ ftieth anniversary commemorations. As an attentive public engaged with the ‘idea of India’ that had been half a century in the making, against a backdrop of domestic political instability, continuing economic fragility, regional resentment if not animosity and perceptions of declining global relevance, there appeared little to celebrate. Perhaps most damagingly for an intelligentsia grappling with Nehru’s ‘tryst with destiny’, promised in that stirring midnight address of August 1947, India’s primary global relevance hinged on the nuisance value it had acquired in delaying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) from coming into force. In these circumstances, the ‘nuclear Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 option’s’ association with sovereignty made it an important political icon in the context of the Golden Jubilee celebrations. Attitudes towards nuclear policy had hardened over the course of the CTBT negotiations, eﬀ ectively dismissing from the list of choices the option to renounce

1 Nehru, Discovery of India, p. 156. 208 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

weaponisation that could be made with regard to nuclear policy. As India moved towards completing 50 years of independence, the middle- ground for nuclear attitudes had settled right of centre. For the most part the debate had moved from ‘whether’ India should adopt nuclear weapons to ‘when’. Th ese developments did not make it inevitable that New Delhi would test a nuclear device and declare India a nuclear weapons power. Strategic and political arguments against overt weaponisation, though in favour of retaining the option to weaponise, surfaced at regular intervals after the CTBT brought the nuclear debate into mainstream news. Once again, however, these discussions remained confi ned to a small group of people. Th e diff erence now was that the doves, never terribly active in the debate, had been marginalised by the linking of the nuclear option with sovereignty. Further, though the number of players had not increased vastly, they now reached a larger audience, as discussed in the previous chapter. A real debate might yet have been precipitated by the introspection of 1997 and the fear of a looming entry-into-force deadline of September 1999. Th e accession of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the head of an apparently viable coalition diverted attention to nuclear policy, if only as part of a larger picture of the BJP’s ideologically driven vision of a more muscular, Hindu India. Given the party’s historic commitment to nuclear weaponisation, the possibility had to be confronted. Th e BJP, however, pre-empted any meaningful discussion when they decided for India what the strongly defended and little defi ned ‘option’ of 24 years stood for; two months after forming a coalition government at the Cen- tre, it presented the country and the world with a fait accompli. Whatever the BJP’s reasons for conducting the nuclear tests, a large majority of Indians celebrated the decision. For those who had argued for a more robust nuclear posture, the step vindicated years of advocacy in the face of popular apathy and offi cial cautiousness. For the larger Indian public, however, the celebrations captured a mixture of relief, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 defi ance and pride, refl ected in editorials and commentary produced at the time. Th ere was relief at liberating Indian nuclear policy from the limbo in which it had languished since rejecting the CTBT. Th ere was also a signifi cant sense of defi ance and pride at having fi nally ‘stood up’ to the ‘West’ (and especially the United States) and visibly defended India’s sovereignty, as symbolised by an independent nuclear policy. At the point when the ‘option’ was made obsolete by decisively turning down one of the three paths created by it, it became apparent that the Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 209

nuclear option had come to symbolise New Delhi’s right to decide for itself what its foreign and defence policies should be. After the tests, however, the violent rupture with a tradition of offi - cially sponsored disarmament advocacy and Indian restraint, regardless of the direction in which policy was headed, jolted the intelligentsia out of their complacency. Now attentive India had to come to terms with the contradictions of celebrating the legacy of Gandhi and Nehru in the same year that it feted the bomb, ironically, on Buddha Jayanti (the birth anniversary of the apostle of peace); of discussing the feasibility of deterrence based on a triad of nuclear assets while reviewing India’s uninspiring economic performance of 50 years; of assessing India’s leadership of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the Th ird World, while defending itself from charges of being a global spoiler. Th e end of ambiguity opened up the space for a meaningful debate in which the anti-nuclear camp gained a platform for opposition to offi cial, declared policy. Th e development of the discussions on ‘nuclear India’, the continuing hostility to the CTBT and the marginalisation of the anti-nuclear arguments, however, provided a telling commentary on the relevance of the old icons in the continuing evolution of the idea of India. India at Fifty Th e Golden Jubilee of Indian independence was marked in India, as Salman Rushdie observed, by ‘a certain […] lack of celebratory spirit’; ‘August 1997,’ he noted, ‘is suff used with a sense of an ending’, a requiem of the hopes of independence.2 For Amartya Sen, India had ‘fared only moderately well’ in the past half-century, with the lack of progress in eradicating social inequality and uneven economic progress providing stark reminders of all the unfulfi lled promises of August 1947.3 What one editor characterised as a time of ‘collective breastbeating’ was demonstrated in another editorial that lamented ‘[t]he degradation of democratic institutions and frustrations over the failure to solve the problems of mass poverty, socio-economic deprivation on a gigantic Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

2 Salman Rushdie, ‘India at Mid-life: Tell Me, What is Th ere to Celebrate?’, Th e Observer (London), August 10, 1997. 3 V. K. Ramachandran (transcriber), Amartya Sen, ‘How India Has Fared’, Frontline, August 9, 1997, special issue on Indian independence (hereafter, Anniversary issue). 210 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

scale, various forms of entrenched backwardness, notably illiteracy, communalism, pervasive corruption and criminalisation of politics’.4 Th e disillusionment was certainly exaggerated: the nurturing of a stable and vibrant democracy, the overall accommodation of diff erence (though the consensus for this was fraying at the edges of communal politics), the very considerable developmental and economic advances that had lifted millions out of absolute poverty (though millions more remained mired in a life of hopeless subsistence) and the very fact that India, famously dismissed by Churchill as an ‘abstraction’, had come together within a new set of borders under a unifi ed political rule and stayed that way (despite the threats of separatism fuelling the current anxiety), were all achievements that were not to be dismissed lightly.5 Yet, as another commentator remarked some years later, India is ‘prone to extreme views about itself’; the pessimism while somewhat justifi ed was, on balance, exaggerated.6 Celebrating India? Th e uncertainty that had overtaken Indian politics was, however, beginning to take its toll, as was a stagnant economy, simmering communal tensions and the continuing separatist threats in Kashmir and the Northeast. Between the rejection of the CTBT and the May 1998 tests, India had three prime ministers and one mid-term general election.7 Th ough the United Front coalition struggled through two changes of

4 Vinod Mehta, ‘Shedding Old Baggage’, Outlook, October 6, 1997; N. Ram, ‘Political India over ﬁ fty years’, Frontline, Anniverary issue. 5 As Vijay Joshi pointed out in 1998, per capita income after independence had increased by 2 per cent a year, having been stagnant for the half-century preceding the handover of power and the proportion of people below a standard ‘poverty line’ had dropped from 55 to 35 per cent. After the hiccup of the 1991 crisis, the growth rate had averaged 6 per cent. See Vijay Joshi, ‘India’s Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Economic Reforms; Progress, Problems, Prospects’, Oxford Development Studies 26:3 (1998). 6 Simon Long, ‘India’s Shining Hopes’, Th e Economist, February 21, 2004, p. 2. 7 Th e United Front produced two Janata Dal-led governments, the ﬁ rst under H. D. Deve Gowda and the second under I. K. Gujral between May 1996 and December 1997. Both were supported ‘from the outside’ by the Congress Party. When the Congress Party withdrew support in December 1997, Gujral called for General Elections, which brought a BJP-led coalition to power in March 1998. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 211

government to stay in power, its precarious existence did not engender optimism in coalition politics. Yet a stable, single-party government remained elusive. By August 1997, the Congress Party, the only political group to provide India with a successful form of single-party governance, appeared in terminal decline.8 When the General Election that brought the BJP to power was fi nally declared, nobody, including the BJP, wanted to go to the voters less than two years after the previous electoral exercise. Quite apart from members of Parliament remarking that it would be ‘near-criminal’ to spend another Rs 500 crore so soon after the last set of elections, what fuelled most of the anxiety was the knowledge that no political group seemed strong enough to off er India a full term of stable government.9 A poll conducted during the election campaign in January 1998 revealed that for the majority, stability ranked above corruption, law and order, and the dispute over the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.10 Stability, however, appeared to evade politics, and most observers expected the resulting BJP-led coalition of over 20 disparate parties, most with parochial agendas, to prove incapable of holding together much longer than its predecessor, the United Front. Th is political malaise had infected the economy as well. Despite relatively healthy markers of infl ation, currency reserves and a run of good monsoons, the economy stagnated in this pool of political uncertainty.11 As one commentator asked in exasperation, ‘[w]hen was the last piece of good news you heard about India?’12 Th e economy needed a strong government to continue with economic liberalisation, ironically, one of the most visible symbols of the repudiation of the

8 Ram, ‘Political India Over Fifty Years’. M. S. Rajan traces a continuity in policies relating to India’s border settlements, attitudes towards Pakistan, non- alignment, relations with the Super Powers, the United Nations and nuclear non-proliferation, through the various changes in government from Nehru’s tenure to 1997; M. S. Rajan, ‘Th e Goals of India’s Foreign Policy’,International

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Studies 35:1 (1998). 9 Ishan Joshi, ‘To Th e Hustings, Very Reluctantly’, and Yubraj Ghimire, ‘Th e Dice Favour None’, both in Outlook, December 8, 1997. 10 Swapan Dasgupta, ‘BJP’s Early Surge’, India Today, January 25, 1998, pp. 10–16. 11 Sandipan Deb, ‘A Nation Called Mary Celeste’, Outlook, December 8, 1997. 12 Ibid. 212 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

then current interpretation of the Nehruvian legacy.13 Th e anniversary of independence had in any case pushed India’s intelligentsia into re- evaluating the political, economic and ideological assumptions it had inherited from Nehru.14 Examining India’s Global Role Regardless of the many assessments of the Nehruvian legacy that August 1997 inspired, the one Nehruvian ideal that had had greatest resonance within the country was the one that appeared most battered in 1997: that of India’s predestined global role. As the dust of the CTBT rejection began to settle, attentive India was forced to come to terms with the repercussions of its deﬁ ant ‘not now, nor later’ declaration on the ﬂ oor of the UN General Assembly.15 By attempting to block the CTBT — the treaty that Nehru had passionately campaigned for — in Geneva, New Delhi had projected itself as a spoiler intent on undermining a consolidating global norm against nuclear testing. India’s volte-face after having co-sponsored the treaty in 1993 also resulted in a loss of credibility, especially within the developing world and among international NGOs who had campaigned alongside India for worldwide disarmament.16 Th e consequences followed swiftly as India lost by a humiliating margin of 142 to 40 to Japan in the vote for the Asian non-permanent seat at the Security Council in October 1996. Th ough the defeat may have been caused by a number of factors, including Japan’s unmatch- able economic clout, several commentators inferred a link between the outcome of the vote and India’s stance on the CTBT.17 Th e government

13 While it was unfair to lay the blame for India’s autarkic policies at Nehru’s door since the maze of protectionist policies and controls had crept in gradually over the years, the association persisted. 14 Sunil Khilnani’s Idea of India is perhaps the most well-known of these engagements with the Nehruvian legacy. Shashi Th aroor also touches on these Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 themes in India: From Midnight to Millennium. However, almost all the articles that evaluated India’s foreign, defence and economic policies over the past 50 years, which were written on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of India’s independence, necessarily became evaluations of the Nehruvian legacy since they had to use Nehru’s policies as a starting point. 15 Ghose, ‘Statement in Explanation of Vote’. 16 Mohan, ‘India’s Security Challenges’, pp. 60ﬀ . 17 Padma Rao-Sunderji and Sunil Narula, ‘At Th e UN, Money Talks’, Outlook, November 6, 1996. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 213

tried to explain it as the ‘price’ for the country’s stance on the CTBT. Yet, External Aff airs Minister I. K. Gujral’s defi ance rang hollow.18 ‘If we are to become a satellite nation, subservient to the wishes of the big powers’, Gujral had remarked, ‘even a permanent seat on the Security Council can be ours’.19 For him, the CTBT tested India’s ability to ‘assert’ its ‘independence’.20 Others were less optimistic; in their opinion, the ‘sky had fallen on [India’s] head’ after the CTBT rejection.21 With the loss of its traditional support base amongst the developing countries, New Delhi’s isolation seemed near complete. It was a far cry from Nehru’s all-embracing globalism. Moralpolitik versus Realpolitik In short, the idea of India was under siege. Th e negotiation of the ideological underpinnings of New Delhi’s foreign and defence policies was slowly moving from idealism symbolised by Nehru and Gandhi to a much more pragmatic realpolitik stance. Th ough his grandson (writing as much as a civil servant as his descendant) spoke of the urgent need to rehabilitate the legacy of Gandhi from the stultifying polemics of re-enacted Dandi Marches (which usually degenerated into ‘picnics’) and the ‘obligatory […] Gandhi lithograph in every “court scene”’ of Indian fi lms, the Mahatma’s legacy had in fact been reduced to rhetoric well before the CTBT vote.22 In the opinion of one former foreign secretary, the Gandhian legacy had ‘gone out of the window’ by the late 1960s, which in turn made possible India’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).23 Th e process was complete by the 1974 ‘Peaceful Nuclear Explosion’. By 1997 it was actually possible to openly question hagiographic accounts of Gandhi, not so much via the safety of gently satirical commentary as Salman Rushdie did, but through vigorously researched history, reproduced as a cover story

18 Sunil Narula, ‘Interview with I. K. Gujral’, Outlook, March 12, 1997. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 19 ‘India Cannot Give up Nuclear Option: Foreign Minister’, Agence France Presse, November 16, 1996. 20 Interview with External Aﬀ airs Minister, I. K. Gujral, Frontline, March 11, 1997, reprinted in ‘Aspects of Foreign Policy’, Frontline, Anniversary issue. 21 Conversation with Salman Haidar, New Delhi, September 3, 2005. 22 Gopalkrishna Gandhi, ‘Gandhi’s Legacy’, Frontline, Anniversary issue. 23 Conversation with Haidar, September 3, 2005. 214 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

in one of India’s national magazines.24 If Gandhi’s legacy seemed increasingly irrelevant and Nehruvian policies blamed for everything from Kashmir to the economy, the militantly Hindu ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) appeared to be gaining a greater hold on the Indian polity through the rise of the BJP.25 In an interview in 1997, L. K. Advani, BJP President, acknowledged a ‘kind of moral authority’ that the RSS had over the BJP.26 Th e gradual movement away from the rhetoric of global idealism espoused by Nehru to the more pragmatic stance of ‘national interest’ which the BJP reﬂ ected in their vision of a resurgent, more muscular (and Hindu) India came through in the articulation of India’s disarmament diplomacy before the BJP came to power at the Centre. So while India agreed that the use of landmines was reprehensible in that it failed to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, when the ‘Convention on the Prohibition of the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines and on their destruction’ opened for signature in Ottawa on December 3, 1997, New Delhi cited security and strategic reasons for not signing.27 Th e negotiation of Indian identity appeared to be sliding towards the pole of realpolitik. By the time the BJP government was sworn in, the Defence Minister, a committed socialist and historically a paciﬁ st could say that ‘India had isolated itself on security issues’.28 In accepting this isolation, he acknowledged

24 Th e August 6, 1997, issue of Outlook ran a cover story — ‘Two Men From Gujarat’ — on Patrick French’s Liberty or Death, with an interview in which he explained his contention that ‘Gandhi was a wily politician, Jinnah remained a secularist till his death’. Salman Rushdie’s ‘Attenborough’s Gandhi’ attempts to cut through the deiﬁ cation, but by questioning popular portrayals of Gandhi, rather than the man himself. Rushdie, ‘Attenborough’s Gandhi’, in Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991 (London: Granta, 1992), pp. 102–106. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 25 Th ough the RSS has always denied it, it is widely held responsible for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi at the hands of Nathuram Godse, believed to be a member of the organisation. 26 Ishan Joshi, Interview with L. K. Advani, ‘RSS has a Kind of Moral Authority Over the BJP’, Outlook, August 6, 1997. 27 Ramananda Sengupta, ‘Diplomatic Mineﬁ elds’, Outlook, December 8, 1997. 28 John Cherian, interview with George Fernandes, ‘Action Will Follow Review’, Frontline, April 24, 1998. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 215

that the Th ird World might have grounds for feeling let down, but he remained unapologetic.29 Balancing Security and Development On the other side of the equation, the negotiation of security between the poles of development and military security too witnessed some movement. Th ough the economy had recovered from the temporary trauma of 1991, it was not entirely on an even keel. In addition to the debilitating consequences of political uncertainty for the economy, the implementation of the Fifth Pay Commission, announced in September 1997, halted growth and checked the momentum of economic reforms.30 Yet, by 1998, defence analysts and the armed forces were beginning to hit back at the budgetary strictures on defence spending. Th ough there had been occasional bursts of disquiet from the early 1990s on defence cutbacks, these had been ignored in the overwhelming need to get the economy back on track. By early 1997, however, the army chief was apparently driven to publicly question the wisdom of this balance. Voicing his concerns at a seminar, he regretted that political and bureaucratic indiﬀ erence and complacency had pushed defence priorities into the background, with serious consequences for defence modernisation and procurement and morale. Th is intervention signalled a public re-engagement with defence, but this time against a background of India having rejected the CTBT on security grounds. 31 A ‘closed-door’ seminar on national security (the conclusions of which were promptly shared with the press), attended by several prominent retired military personnel, a former defence minister, and signiﬁ cantly, Raja Ramanna, one of the central scientists of the 1974 Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE) concluded that defence modernisation was imperative and that defence planning, implementation, and government-service co- ordination needed drastic attention. Th e participants also judged that ‘covertly or overtly, the country must develop nuclear capability’.32 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

29 Ibid. 30 Shankar Acharya, ‘India’s Macroeconomic Management in the 1990s’, Paper presented at ‘Ten Years of Economic Reform’, ICRIER (New Delhi), October 2001. 31 Ajith Pillai, ‘It’s Time to Start Worrying’, Outlook, January 29, 1997. 32 Ajith Pillai, ‘Wake Up Now’ Outlook, January 29, 1997. 216 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Th is seminar, however, was still offi cially out of the public domain.33 By April 1998, the army chief, in a break with tradition, publicly called for the acquisition of a ‘strategic deterrence’ capability to respond to ‘nuclear and missile challenges’ to India’s security.34 Th ough prompted by the Pakistani testing of the nuclear-capable intermediate range Ghauri missile on April 6, this statement at the biennial Army Commander’s Conference raised the pitch of offi cial nuclear rhetoric. It followed a statement by the Defence Minister that the BJP-led government would conduct ‘a strategic review’ with a view to taking ‘a decision […] on the option to acquire nuclear weapons’.35 Th e negotiation of the idea of India had travelled a considerable distance since 1947, with a signifi cant part of that journey completed in the 1990s. Th e rise of non-Congress-led governments at the Centre had done away with the need to burnish images of the Gandhi–Nehru clan. In terms of nuclear policy, this meant that Nehru’s publicly proclaimed commitment to nuclear disarmament did not have to take precedence over all other policy decisions in the nuclear arena. Th ough some members of the Congress Party still called for a revival of the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan in response to nuclear threats in the neighbourhood, without offi cial backing, these remained just voices in the crowd.36 Th e politicisation of the debate with the CTBT negotiations had democratised nuclear policy: unlike earlier discussions of China’s nuclear weaponisation and the NPT, the deliberations over the CTBT included a much larger and more diverse audience. Even nuclear energy came under the spotlight — unfavourably, in most cases, which raised questions about why such an underperforming industry was being shielded from public scrutiny.37 Th e CTBT had brought to light all the

33 Th ere were other sessions involving select audiences where the nuclear question was discussed. A French Ministry of Defence oﬃ cial recalls speaking at a seminar in New Delhi where he was closely questioned about the costs of France’s nuclear weapons programme. Th is interest left him with no doubt Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 that weaponisation was being seriously considered in Delhi. Oﬀ the record conversation in the UK, February 10, 2006. 34 ‘Army Chief Calls for Steps to Counter N-Th reats’, Th e Hindu, April 20, 1998. 35 Ibid. 36 Mani Shankar Aiyar, ‘1192 and All Th at’, India Today, April 27, 1998, p. 57. 37 Shiv Visvanathan, ‘Nuclear Energy is “Good and Clean”! A Plain and Simple Speech’, Economic and Political Weekly 35: 17 (April 25, 1998), pp. 951; A. S. Panneerselvan, ‘Way Above the Danger Mark?’, Outlook, October 27, 1997. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 217

confusion and obfuscation muddying India’s nuclear and disarmament diplomacy. As one former diplomat acerbically remarked, ‘We didn’t con the US into believing we would sign the CTBT. We actually conned ourselves’.38 Debating Nuclear Policy Unlike earlier nuclear deliberations, on this occasion, public engagement with nuclear policy did not wither away after the negative vote was cast. Once again, there were two strands of thought evident in discussions that followed the rejection of the CTBT — one that focussed on the strategic and technological implications of the negative vote and the other that contemplated the diplomatic consequences. For the strategic analysts, India’s rejection of the treaty precipitated another set of negotiations and manoeuvres in the countdown to the treaty’s entry- into-force, which would allow the signatories to take punitive actions against holdouts such as India. As Raja Mohan explained, the threat of sanctions was very real; a raft of US embargoes on some Indian companies and research organisations soon after the CTBT rejection provided a reminder that Indian defi ance would come at a price.39 Elsewhere Mohan remarked that the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) negotiations, which began in 1997, might result in additional pressure on India, especially since it had also co-sponsored a resolution calling for the negotiation of an FMCT (in addition to the CTBT).40 He recommended New Delhi reject the FMCT but pointed out that this would result in obstructing two major global arms control treaties. ‘Th at India had championed these two treaties since the mid-1950s could add to India’s diplomatic discomfi ture’, he added.41 A decision on New Delhi’s nuclear posture was therefore imperative; India was already paying the diplomatic and technological price for its defi ance of the NPT and CTBT (while observing the spirit of both these treaties by refusing to test a nuclear device) through a sustained technology denial regime that was hurting the country’s nuclear power projects Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

38 Sunil Narula, Ludwina A. Joseph, ‘Th e Battle Begins’,Outlook , September 25, 1995. 39 C. Raja Mohan, ‘Working with Nuclear Reality’, Th e Hindu, July 10, 1997. 40 Mohan, ‘India’s Security Challenges’, p. 60. 41 Ibid. 218 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

and its space programmes.42 Th e recent US opposition to a civilian nuclear power reactor deal with Russia provided a stark preview of what lay ahead.43 Th ose assessing the diplomatic fallout of India’s vote at the UN Gen- eral Assembly on September 10, 1996, focussed on the need to overcome the country’s political isolation. It continued attentive India’s negotiation of the country’s global position in circumstances where the outcome of realpolitik rubbed uncomfortably with the nation’s self-image. I. K. Gujral, as External Aff airs Minister, strived to counter claims that India’s rejection of the CTBT had left it friendless, dismissing these as a ‘media myth’.44 ‘India is a big country of over 980 million people’, he stated in exasperation. ‘We cannot be isolated. We do not wish to be isolated’.45 Th e fears nevertheless persisted. Th is was the beginning of a real debate, for, after a gap of almost 30 years, the discussion actually produced two credible and distinctly articulated sides. On the one hand, the hawks argued in favour of a ‘clear declaration of India being a nuclear weapon power’ to prevent the ‘Great Powers […] [from] pressuring India to agree to a nuclear free zone in South Asia and to abandon the nuclear option’.46 On the other, the doves, pointing to the inevitability of falling into a nuclear arms race with Pakistan should New Delhi proceed down the atomic route, argued for progress on nuclear Confi dence Building Measure (CBMs) with Pakistan and for the revival of the 1988 Action Plan.47 As Aiyar explained, the refusal to accede to the NPT, CTBT and a future fi ssile material cut-off regime was unsustainable as India needed access to the dual-use technology that had been denied to it since the 1974 test, and which New Delhi’s negative vote on the CTBT had made even more inaccessible.48 How this debate might have played out remains a moot

42 Ibid., p. 61; see also Prem Shankar Jha, ‘Handshake with Globocop’, Outlook, October 20, 1997. 43 Ibid.; Sergei Strokan, Sunil Narula, ‘A Determined Salesman’, Outlook, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 February 26, 1997. 44 K. Gujral, ‘India’s Foreign Policy Today’, in Nancy Jetly, ed., India’s Foreign Policy: Challenges and Prospects (New Delhi: Vikas, 1999), p. 3. 45 Ibid., pp. 8–9. 46 M. K. Rasgotra, ‘India’s Foreign Policy: Some Perspectives’, in Nancy Jetly, ed., India’s Foreign Policy: Challenges and Prospects (New Delhi: Vikas, 1999), p. 28. 47 Aiyar, ‘1192 and All Th at’. 48 Ibid. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 219

point; just as a real discussion was germinating, the BJP fi nessed the issue by deciding for India what the option had been preserved for. The ‘Hindu Bomb’? Th e negotiation of India’s nuclear identity might well have continued in a desultory fashion but for the accession of the BJP to power at the Centre, which injected a certain urgency in the engagement with New Delhi’s nuclear posture. Th e BJP had historically been in favour of nuclear weapons, which made their leadership of the ruling coalition a cause for some anxiety within the Left and more liberal sections of India’s attentive public. Th e editor ofFrontline recalled the BJP’s commitment to nuclear weapons from its 1991 manifesto which spoke of ‘giv[ing] our Defence Forces Nuclear Teeth’ to the 1996 undertaking to ‘re-evaluate the country’s nuclear policy and exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons’ to fi nally, in 1998, promising to ‘expedite the country’s nuclear policy and exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons’.49 Th e pledge was carried over into the coalition government’s National Agenda for Governance, adopted in March 1998, which committed the government to ‘re-evaluat[ing] the nuclear policy and exercise[ing] the option to induct nuclear weapons’ after India’s Na- tional Security Council (which had remained defunct since it was set up by the V. P. Singh Government in 1990) had conducted India’s ‘fi rst ever Strategic Defence Review’.50 The BJP and the Bomb For the BJP, nuclear weapons ‘were an article of faith’, part of their vision of a resurgent, militant India, as one observer explained.51 Recalling the tests, Brajesh Mishra, Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Vajpayee and later National Security Adviser in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) remarked, ‘we decided it had to be done, whatever the cost’.52 Th is had been their objective during the election campaign, and even the Pakistani test of the Ghauri, which several members of the NDA cited in justifi cation of the decision, was just an ‘excuse’. For

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 the BJP, the ‘sooner [they tested], the better’.53 Some of the BJP cadre

49 N. Ram, ‘Th e Risks of Nuclear Hawkishness’,Frontline , April 24, 1998. 50 Ibid. 51 Conversation with Shekhar Gupta, New Delhi, 22 January 2005. 52 Conversation with Brajesh Mishra, New Delhi, 5 February 2005. 53 Ibid. 220 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

openly equated nuclear weapons with the Brahmastra, the ultimate weapon of the creator in the Hindu trinity, Brahma. Ironically, Robert Oppenheimer may have played a part in privileging nuclear weapons for right-wing Hindu nationalists. His quotation from the Bhagavad Gita on recalling the ﬁ rst nuclear test has been quoted by scores of BJP supporters.54 Yet, despite the inclusion of the nuclear promise in their manifesto, it is not clear that the BJP were indeed elected to ‘exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons’.55 For one, the main issues on the table were stability, corruption and the economy. Although the party had promised to ‘[r]e-evaluate the country’s nuclear policy’, they were careful not to commit to a nuclear test, thereby injecting considerable ambiguity into their manifesto pledge. Even Brajesh Mishra, convenor of the party’s foreign policy cell during the elections, took care to qualify his party’s nuclear commitment. According to Mishra, while the BJP remained ‘convinced’ about making India ‘a nuclear weapon power’, and would do ‘whatever is necessary to fulﬁ l that vision’, he added that the BJP ‘ha[d] not determined in advance that a nuclear test should be carried out by India. Th is will depend on the situation as we perceive it when we come to power’.56 Further, having included the nuclear question in their manifesto, the BJP itself chose not to focus on this issue. Neither did observers, most of whom concentrated on where the party stood on the more contentious and potentially socially explosive questions of Ayodhya, abrogating Article 370 of the Constitution, a Uniform Civil Code, its attitude towards minorities, and, as an indicator of their commitment to Hindutva, their promise to ban cow slaughter.57 Indeed

54 Oppenheimer had repeated the line ‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds’. Hari Kunzru makes this point in ‘I am Become Death’, ﬁ rst published in Mute in 2003 and available at http://www.harikunzru.com/hari/death.htm (accessed on August 20, 2006). 55 BJP Election Manifesto, 1998. Certainly, for Praful Bidwai, a long-time critic Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 of the BJP, the 25 per cent vote-share that the BJP garnered in the 1998 elections did not give them ‘a mandate for major policy changes.’ Praful Bidwai, ‘BJP’s Nuclear Stance Seen as Undermining Security’, India Abroad, April 10, 1998, p. 2. 56 Sunil Narula, Ludwina A. Joseph and Mariana Baabar, ‘We’ll Go Nuclear’, Outlook, February 9, 1998. 57 Ishan Joshi, ‘A Deliberate Duality’, Outlook, February 9, 1998; Yubaraj Ghimire, ‘Rumblings at the Top’, and Ishan Joshi, ‘Beating Vajpayee to a Pulp’, both in Outlook, February 16, 1998. Th ese issues too were raised in the party’s manifesto. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 221

Vajpayee, the party’s projected prime ministerial candidate and the BJP’s face of moderation, remained largely silent on the nuclear question, concentrating instead on stability and corruption.58 Who’s Afraid of the BJP? Even the parties the BJP campaigned against failed to off er more than a desultory questioning of its stated commitment to weaponisation, with the Congress Party’s Jairam Ramesh dismissing it as ‘intellectual machismo’.59 At that time, the Congress was still fending off charges over kickbacks in the 1987 howitzer deal: during the campaign, Bofors merited more rhetoric than the bomb.60 Th e Left focussed on the BJP’s economic policies and the party’s commitment to Hindutva.61 Even though strategic analysts may have been busy deliberating the implications of the CTBT vote, for attentive India it was enough that the ‘option’ had been preserved so far and that all parties implicitly or explicitly continued to honour that commitment. Clearly, apart from the BJP, not many other parties thought there was much political mileage to be gained from publicly exploring the implications of this ‘option’. In short, this was not an election fought on the plank of the nuclear weaponisation of India, though most commentators and analysts agreed with former foreign secretary J. N. Dixit when he remarked that ‘the time for remaining ambiguous [about India’s nuclear posture] had passed’.62 Whatever the political parties’ views on pulling nuclear policy out of obfuscation and secrecy, most strategic analysts sympathised with Raja Mohan’s view that he would ‘prefer any decision on the nuclear issue than no decision which has been the main line of our policy’. In his view, 40 years of indecisiveness had taken its toll; ‘it’s time we clinch it and get on with other things’. 63 Th e debate could, however, have continued indefi nitely: the 1999 entry-into-force of the CTBT failed to inject any appreciable urgency into the discussions that did occur. Even those who did not question the BJP’s commitment to nuclear weapons felt that the compulsions of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 58 Ishan Joshi, ‘Th e BJP’s Best Man’,Outlook , February 2, 1998. 59 Narula, ‘We’ll Go Nuclear’. 60 Ranjit Bhushan, ‘All Roads Lead to Rajiv’, Outlook¸ February 2, 1998. 61 Sukumar Muralidharan, ‘Promises and Policies’, Frontline, March 6, 1998. 62 Narula, ‘We’ll Go Nuclear’. 63 Ibid. 222 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

exercising power at the centre responsibly and managing an unwieldy coalition would exert a moderating infl uence on the party, leading them to act, as Jasjit Singh predicted, ‘with maturity and restraint’.64 Th e coalition government itself added to the confusion, with the Defence Minister George Fernandes (of the Samata Party) stating categorically in an interview soon after assuming offi ce that any decision on weaponisation would follow the Strategic Defence Review mentioned in the National Agenda.65 Since this review could only occur once the National Security Council was formed, which in itself required a cabinet decision, the Defence Minister’s audience was justifi ed in assuming, as many did, that any nuclear decisions would not be taken in the very near future.66 Further, President K. R. Narayanan, in his fi rst address to the joint session of the new Parliament on March 25, remained silent on the subject, adding another layer of opacity to the government’s intentions. Acknowledging the Nuclear Elephant However, the verbal nuclear posturing had stirred the beginnings of a debate. Th is was further fed by rhetoric from Pakistan, where Nawaz Sharif linked the April 6 test of the Ghauri IRBM to the Indian government’s declared ‘objective of developing a nuclear weapon capability’.67 Th e Congress Party was suffi ciently worried by the inclusion of the nuclear promise in the National Agenda for former External Aff airs Minister Pranab Mukherjee to sharply criticise the BJP in the Rajya Sabha. He argued that the National Democratic Alliance was going against the national consensus with its unilateral declaration of nuclear policy, which had every chance of ‘triggering an arms race in the

64 Joshi, ‘Deadly Option’, India Today, March 4, 1998, p. 52. 65 John Cherian, interview with George Fernandes, ‘Action will Follow a Review’, Frontline, April 24, 1998. Fernandes may not have been disingenuous Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 in his statements. K. Subrahmanyam has suggested that only two other members of the government, apart from Vajpayee, knew of the tests: Brajesh Mishra and Jaswant Singh. Conversation with K. Subrahmanyam, January 21, 2005. Mishra neither conﬁ rmed nor denied this, but remarked that the Prime Minister ‘inform[ed] his cabinet colleagues’ the day before the tests, after he had spoken to President K. R. Narayanan. Conversation with Mishra, February 5, 2005. 66 Joshi, ‘Deadly Option’, p. 52. 67 Harinder Baweja and Zahin Hussain, ‘Fire in the Sky’, India Today, April 20, 1998. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 223

subcontinent’ and wondered whether the government was aware of ‘the serious implications of such rhetoric’.68 Th e CPI(M)’s Prakash Karat, dis- tinguishing between retaining the nuclear ‘option’ and weaponisation, echoed the Congress’ fears of an arms race should the BJP go ahead with its nuclear plans.69 Most of the other political parties — except for those in the ruling coalition including prominently, the Samata Party — indicated their opposition to weaponisation at that juncture, though most expressed support for retaining the ‘option’ and none spoke in favour of nuclear renunciation.70 Th ough clarity on India’s desired nuclear stance remained elusive, the national consensus appeared to have shifted considerably to the right. Th e nuclear elephant, wilfully ignored since 1974, was beginning to be noticed. As Dixit explained, ‘the only point of debate is whether we should operationalise this option by inducting nuclear weapons into our defence system’.71 Dixit was exaggerating, but only mildly. In the period between the elections and the nuclear tests, analysts with views similar to Kanti Bajpai and Major General Dipankar Bannerjee, who argued against nuclear weapons on strategic grounds, were at a premium. Bajpai contended that while there were sound ‘economic, diplomatic, political and moral reasons’ for not resorting to nuclear weapons for India’s defence, the most compelling justifi cation for restraint was strategic.72 In his view, India’s weaponisation would only precipitate a similar move by Islamabad. India had also learned to live with the Chinese nuclear threat without any apparent negative repercussions; China having emerged the satisfi ed party from 1962, the chances of a future armed confrontation were also remote. Moreover, economic strength, not the possession of nuclear weapons would mark out India as a major power.73 While not discounting the possibility of armed confl ict with China, Bannerjee pointed out the essential irrelevance of nuclear weapons to any confl ict

68 News Section, Hindu, April 1, 1998 (accessed via Lexis Nexis). 69 John Cherian, ‘Th e BJP and the Bomb’,Frontline , April 24, 1998. 70 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Ramananda Sengupta, Janaki Bahadur Kremmer, M. S. Shanker, ‘What the Political Parties Say’, Outlook, March 30, 1998. Th e Samata Party was led by George Fernandes, famous as a peace activist who had protested against the 1974 PNE. 71 Ramananda Sengupta, Janaki Bahadur Kremmer, M. S. Shanker, ‘Will the BJP Drop the Bomb?’ Outlook, March 30, 1998. 72 Kanti Bajpai, ‘Cut Out the Bombast’, Outlook, March 30, 1998. 73 Ibid. 224 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

in South Asia, especially with regard to the Middle Kingdom. Added to this was the danger of spiralling costs of nuclear weaponisation.74 Interestingly, the ethical argument against nuclear weapons was easier to ﬁ nd outside the country than within.75 Pointing to the retention of the nuclear pledge by the BJP in the National Agenda, while leaving aside other controversial topics such as the proposed temple at Ayodhya, the repeal of Article 370 and so on, Bidwai cautioned that the BJP was ‘dead serious’ about moving ahead with its nuclear policy. Turning to the ambiguity in the government’s promise to ‘induct’ nuclear weapons, he went beyond the question of a ‘declaration’ (with or without a test) to examine what would follow if the BJP were to go ahead. Did India already possess nuclear weapons which would now be included in military strategic plans and further, did inducting nuclear weapons involve deployment?76 By and large, however, these were not questions that resonated greatly with attentive India. Of those in favour of nuclear weapons, not all supported testing. Th e ‘trinity of Tamil Brahmins’ who towered over much of the nuclear debate in India — K. Subrahmanyam, Raja Ramanna and General K. Sundarji — believed that the 1974 test had provided India with a reliable enough design and that New Delhi need not court sanctions and almost certain Western displeasure by testing more devices.77 Th e United States had made it very clear that sanctions would automatically follow any nuclear explosion.78 Others such as Lt-General V. R. Raghavan, while in favour of room for manoeuvre on the CTBT and FMCT in order to retain the option to weaponise in the future if

74 Cherian, ‘Th e BJP and the Bomb’. 75 Praful Bidwai, ‘BJP’s Nuclear Stance Seen as Undermining Security’, India Abroad, April 10, 1998, p. 2. Bidwai may well have been pushed to publishing abroad by the lack of takers within the country, as Dr Anuradha Chenoy (of JNU) claimed had happened repeatedly to pieces by Bidwai Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 and Achin Vanaik. Telephone conversation with Anuradha M. Chenoy, September 4, 2005. 76 Ibid. 77 Joshi, ‘Deadly Option’, p. 53; Manoj Joshi, ‘Nuclear Weapons: In the Shadow of Fear’, India Today, July 21, 1997. 78 Ludwina A. Joseph, interview with Karl Inderfurth, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Aﬀ airs, ‘Nuclear Testing Will Have Serious Consequences’, Outlook, February 9, 1998; J. N. Dixit, ‘Hush … Th e Bomb Squad’, Outlook, March 23, 1998. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 225

necessary, argued against inducting nuclear weapons at that juncture. In his view, such a step would ‘complicate the management of confl ict […] and […] create a completely new strategic environment’.79 Air Com- modore Jasjit Singh also argued in favour of a declaration of nuclear capability without testing, and a subsequent nuclear posture based on ‘recessed deterrence’, whereby the warheads were kept separated from the delivery systems.80 In his view, a credible deterrent posture could be created by resuming work on the Agni missile.81 Th is would allow India to maintain its policy of ‘restraint’ and avoid provoking Western displeasure. For the BJP and its followers, however, along with some analysts such as Bharat Karnad, a declaration of nuclear capability without a test was meaningless. For George Fernandes, the pacifi st-turned-nuclear- advocate, India’s nuclear weapons were a repudiation of external pressure on its security policy. In this view, decisively rejecting that pressure, symbolised most vividly by the CTBT negotiations, required something as dramatic as a nuclear explosion. As Fernandes explained, his government would stand fi rm on its commitment to a more robust nuclear posture in order ‘to restore the national pride’.82 As for the ruling party in the coalition, they had imbued a nuclear test with much more meaning than the simple testing of a device for verifi cation. As one high-ranking government offi cial explained dryly, for the BJP, the test was one ‘big rally’.83 Yet, whatever the positions staked out, the debate was still in its infancy. Had the issue been brought up in Parliament, as Salman Haidar explained, greater clarity might have emerged in the arguments for and against weaponisation.84 As it happened, when the BJP decided the issue for the country, the intelligentsia was still not quite prepared for the strategic and political implications of actually ‘exercising the option’ to induct nuclear weapons.

79 Cherian, ‘Th e BJP and the Bomb’. 80 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Jasjit Singh, ‘Th e Challenges of Strategic Defence’, Frontline, April 24, 1998. 81 Joshi, ‘In the Shadow of Fear’. 82 Cherian, ‘Action will Follow a Review’. 83 Conversation with a high ranking oﬃ cial in the MEA, New Delhi, August 31, 2005. Incidentally, this oﬃ cial is a strong supporter of India’s current nuclear policy. 84 Conversation with Haidar, September 3, 2005. 226 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Debating the Reality of ‘Nuclear India’ Th e overwhelming enthusiasm with which the mass public reacted to the announcement of the BJP’s tests, which was echoed with only a marginal degree of greater nuance by the intelligentsia, might well have justifi ed conclusions that Indians were deeply hawkish and that all of New Delhi’s disarmament rhetoric had been sheer hypocrisy. Th e picture that emerged once the dust at Pokharan settled was, however, more shaded. At the mass public level the BJP may certainly have achieved their ‘big rally’, their unequivocal demonstration of the sovereignty of India. But, at the popular level, as analysts point out, the fi ner distinctions and requirements of nuclear deterrence, let alone its ethical aspects which might temper attitudes towards nuclear weapons, do not gain traction.85 As I. K. Gujral explains, ‘the man on the street has little idea that weapons and security do not coincide’.86 For the farmers and small entrepreneurs threatened by a looming, amorphous ‘WTO’ regime, the implications of which no one had actually bothered to explain to them; for a general public long fed a generous dose of anti-Pakistan rhetoric in which everything that went wrong was blamed on a mysterious ‘foreign hand’; for a regional, semi-urban audience whose local papers carried reports of ‘American’ pressure on New Delhi to not acquire weapons that it itself possessed; for them and others this defi ance in the teeth of Western opposition symbolised their government’s commitment to protecting their interests. An inchoate perception of insecurity over the past two and half decades, precipitated by the insurgency in Punjab and fed by subsequent regional tensions and domestic instability, had imbued ‘national security arguments’ with ‘greater resonance’.87 As an editorial signifi cantly titled ‘Road to Resurgence’ put it, ‘the tests […] [were] a great morale-booster for the nation whose spirits have only gone downhill, dipping with every little calamity or embarrassment since Operation Bluestar in 1984’.88 At a popular level, these tests signalled that someone might fi nally be taking charge.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 What did the tests signify, and why did people celebrate? Th ese questions precipitated what was perhaps the ﬁ rst meaningful debate within

85 Conversation with Manoj Joshi, New Delhi, January 11, 2005. 86 Conversation with I. K. Gujral, New Delhi, January 5, 2004. 87 Conversation with MEA oﬃ cial, August 31, 2005. 88 Shekhar Gupta, ‘Road To Resurgence’, Th e Indian Express, New Delhi, May 12, 1998. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 227

the country on nuclear weaponisation since the mid-1960s. Th is had not occurred after the 1974 test because the obfuscation of calling Pokharan I a ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’ forestalled any opposition on strategic or economic grounds. After the opinion-building of the CTBT debate, Pokharan II fi nally ‘depolemicised’ the subject by removing a great deal of ambiguity on the nuclear question.89 To begin with, the tests created a space for legitimate opposition to the induction of nuclear weapons, now stated government policy. Till then, any dissent had eff ectively been neutralised by offi cial rhetoric which rejected nuclear weapons for India’s security, only slightly marred by Arundhati Ghose’s August 1996 speech at the Conference on Disarmament.90 As one observer explained, ‘[i]ssues and demands which in many other parts of the world would have been a radical, even subversive content formed part of the offi cial discourse here, and hence were bereft of oppositional attraction, respectable, taken for granted, almost dull’.91 Th e public could not oppose a policy which the government did not acknowledge. Until the May 1998 tests and the subsequent declaration that India was a nuclear weapons power, rejection of nuclear weapons was associated with the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and therefore ‘marked […] as a variety of idealistic talk […] having little relevance to the realities of national defence policy’.92 Th e end of ambiguity provided valid oppositional space for the doves as well as a defi nite starting point for the hawks. And yet, government silence on the topic alone cannot account for the lack of public opposition to any possible intentions to weaponise India’s proven nuclear capability. Th ere had been nagging suspicions that a large, ineffi cient civilian nuclear power programme was propped up with generous public grants because it hid a darker programme, as discussed in previous chapters. Further, nuclear provocations emanating from Pakistan and China could and were cited by the government as

89 Conversation with MEA oﬃ cial, August 31, 2005. 90 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Th ough Ghose had cited security reasons on August 20, 1996, it was her arguments about sovereignty that had commanded the greatest column space. 91 Sumit Sarkar, ‘Th e BJP Bomb and Aspects of Nationalism’,Economic and Political Weekly 33:27 (July 4, 1998), p. 1727. 92 Partha Chatterjee, ‘How We Loved the Bomb and Later Rued It’, Economic and Political Weekly 33:24 (June 13, 1998, special section on ‘Testing Times’), p. 1437. 228 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

justifi cation for maintaining the option to induct nuclear weapons, in addition to the larger point of principle about India being as entitled as the N5 to depend on nuclear deterrence. Yet, few charged South Block with hypocrisy. Whether this indiff erence was born of complacency — most people were happy to coast with the offi cial policy of postponing a decision on what to do with India’s nuclear capability — is a moot point. But it is true that charges of deception only really surfaced after the BJP decided for India what its nuclear policy should be. Only then could a proper negotiation begin on what ‘nuclear India’ stood for. Rejecting the ‘Hindu Bomb’ Th e timing of the tests — less than two months after the new government took offi ce — prompted one group of critics to accuse the BJP of com- mandeering national security for their agenda of saff ronising India. Achin Vanaik, speaking of the ‘battle for the soul of Indian nationalism’ regarded the enthusiasm which greeted Pokharan II as progress towards the BJP’s goal of achieving a ‘total transformation of Indian society […] [into] a Hindu rashtra’.93 Th is led some to accuse the BJP of staging a ‘spectacle’ that would confl ate anti-imperial defi ance, a ‘basic ingredient in Indian nationalism’, with its vision of nuclear India.94 For others, the battle involved the defi nition of patriotism. In their opinion, the BJP had managed to confl ate nationalism with support for their vision of India, turning ‘[t]he debate on the bomb […] into a debate on secularism’. Th ose who disagreed were labelled ‘pseudo-secularists’, a favourite term of dismissal by the BJP.95 Th e centrality of nuclear weapons in the BJP’s vision of India may explain the popularity of the tests amongst the supporters of the party, but they only garnered 25 per cent of the popular vote. Incidentally, these supporters probably formed the bulk of those publicly celebrating the tests, images of which were subsequently fl ashed across millions Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 93 Achin Vanaik, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, Economic and Political Weekly 33:24 (June 13, 1998), p. 1434. 94 Aijaz Ahmad, ‘Th e Hindutva Weapon’,Frontline , June 5, 1998. Th is case was made by Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik in ‘A Very Political Bomb’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 54:4 (July/August 1998). On the response of the diff erent political parties, see ‘President congratulates scientists’, Th e Hindu, May 11, 1998. 95 Historian Shahid Amin, quoted in Sagarika Ghose, ‘Guns ‘N’ Butter’, Outlook, June 1, 1998. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 229

of television screens worldwide. Yet, support for the tests, though more diffi dently expressed, cut across party lines; even the Left, always quick to criticise the BJP, hesitated to voice any opposition to the demonstration of India’s nuclear status, although they and the Congress Party questioned the timing.96 Polls conducted immediately after the tests may have shown that 44 per cent of those questioned were more inclined to vote for the BJP after the tests, but equally, 38 per cent reported no change and 8 per cent were negatively infl uenced. Any political gains that the BJP may have accrued from the tests proved ephemeral in any case. Th e party lost three state legislature elections in November, mainly on account of spiralling prices brought about by the economic and diplomatic uncertainty after the tests.97 At any rate, the leadership was careful not to celebrate Pokharan II — dubbed ‘Shakti’ (which roughly translates into strength and cosmic power) by the government — as a ‘Hindu’ bomb, even though some party cadre suggested building a temple at the test site to commemorate the achievement.98 At a political level, the tests did little to build unity within the coalition government, thereby refuting another theory that the BJP had hoped the tests would hold together a fractious coalition of over 20 political parties with little in common.99 Certainly, the press was not going to allow BJP supporters to use the tests to defl ect attention from very real problems ‘plaguing a tottering government torn apart by pressures from allies’.100 Neither were strategic analysts going to let the party claim the ‘bomb’. As Inder Malhotra observed, the BJP had only completed a ‘superstructure’ whose ‘foundations [had been] laid by Jawaharlal Nehru’.101 K. Subrahmanyam joined in this debate to

96 Sarkar, ‘Th e Bomb and Aspects of Nationalism’, p. 1725; Mattoo, ‘India’s Nuclear Policy in an Anarchic World’, pp. 11–12. 97 Th e government itself fell in early 1999 as the contradictions in the coalition ﬁ nally prevailed. In the general elections that followed, the BJP were unable to translate the enthusiastic response to Pokharan II into too many extra votes; arguably, the outcome of the Kargil encounter did more to boost the NDA’s

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 popularity. 98 ‘VHP Firm On Pokhran Temple, BJP Silent’, Th e Indian Express, May 21, 1998. 99 Vinod Mehta, ‘How a ‘Tired’ PM Became a ‘Bold’ PM’, Outlook, May 25, 1998. 100 Th e Asian Age quoted in ‘Indian Media Raps Hindu Nationalists’ Motives for N-tests’, Agence France Presse, May 16, 1998. 101 Inder Malhotra, ‘Niagara of Words on N-Issue’, Th e Hindu, May 27, 1998. 230 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

catalogue the developments through which every political party that had been in power since independence had had a fi nger in the nuclear pie.102 By and large, attentive India rejected attempts to interpret Pokharan II as the BJP’s bomb or, more radically, the Hindu bomb. Celebrating Modernity and Scientifi c Achievement Th e debates over the technological signifi cance of the nuclear tests proved more complex, if only because they inevitably strayed into the realm of nationalism, steered by statements such as the Prime Minister’s reference to the nuclear scientists’ and engineers’ ‘professional excel- lence, discipline and patriotism’.103 In the immediate aftermath of the tests, the only point the diff erent political parties could agree on as they scrambled to respond adequately to the BJP’s fait accompli, was that the tests needed to be celebrated as an achievement of Indian science.104 And in Kalam, the man presented as the ‘face of India’s nuclear weapons eff ort’, political India had a perfect icon: a Muslim who was fi ercely patriotic, a bachelor, wedded to his work.105 Indeed, voices questioning the assumption that the tests represented a great scientifi c accomplishment were few: the majority of India’s intelligentsia had acquiesced in the draping of the country’s nuclear programme with the national fl ag. In this view, the programme had overcome the hurdles of technology denial and sanctions to emerge as a symbol of Indian innovation and scientifi c prowess.106 Th is was an indigenous bomb, a wholly in-house eff ort, unlike the Pakistani bomb which had been begged, borrowed and stolen.107 Even India’s hawks felt obliged to

102 K. Subrahmanyam, ‘Politics of Shakti’. 103 Prabhu Chawla, interview with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, ‘India is now a Weapons State’, India Today, May 15, 1998. 104 President congratulates scientists; Ajith Pillai, ‘Silence of the Lambs’, Outlook, May 25, 1998. 105 Eric Arnett, ‘And the Loser is… the Indian Armed Forces’, Economic Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 and Political Weekly, 33: 36–37 (September 5, 1998), p. 2239. Kalam had been awarded India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, by the Gujral government in 1997. 106 Raj Chengappa’s Weapons of Peace dwells at length on these themes. 107 Members of the strategic community had repeatedly pointed to Chinese help in the Pakistani nuclear programme since the time the CIA made public their ﬁ ndings of Chinese ring magnets (retquired for enriching uranium) making their way to Pakistan. See Harinder Baweja and Zahin Hussain, ‘Fire in the Sky’, India Today, April 20, 1998; N. Ram and Sukumar Muralidharan, interview with Arundhati Ghose, ‘India Must Say “No” to CTBT, FMCT’, Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 231

acknowledge this ‘great achievement’, leaving aside for the moment their strategic reasons for nuclear weapons.108 Yet a debate of sorts had begun. A few voices questioned the wisdom of congratulating Indian scientists for demonstrating 50-year-old technology.109 Th ough sceptical scientifi c voices within India remained a minority, some queries were beginning to surface about the wisdom of allowing ‘science’ to become ‘a tool in […] the hands of ultra-nationalistic jingoism’.110 In T. Jayaraman’s view, India had moved a great distance from Nehru’s vision of ‘science and technology projects [as] “the modern temples of independent India”, to an insecure nationalism’, who saw in nuclear explosions the potential to secure the ‘respect’ of ‘the comity of nations’.111 Elsewhere, citing former Prime Minster H. D. Deve Gowda’s letter to Vajpayee, in which he claimed ‘scientists had approached two former governments’ to conduct tests, Jayaraman warned of the dangers of allowing the nuclear establishment to ‘extend the scientifi c part of the mandate’ to ‘overturn established nuclear policy’.112 Some others disparaged the less than remarkable track record of Indian science since independence; specifically, this line of thought interpreted the ‘shrill rhetoric […] about self-suffi ciency and indigenous design’ as a smokescreen to hide the ‘larger failure on the part of the DAE to either produce world class science or provide cheap and reliable electricity’.113 Perhaps it is a testimony to the success with which the nuclear programme had been tethered to nationalism that even though some voices inside and outside India questioned the scientists’ claims, especially as regards the ‘hydrogen bomb’ (or thermonuclear device), these failed to generate any substantive calls for a critical evaluation of the advertised yield.114

Frontline, July 3, 1998. Prime Minister Vajpayee’s letter to President Clinton, leaked to the New York Times and subsequently republished in several Indian newspapers on or soon after May 14, fuelled this rhetoric for, without naming either of them, he accused China of having ‘materially helped another neighbour of ours’ become a ‘covert nuclear weapons state’. 108 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Jasjit Singh, ‘Th e New Challenges’,Frontline , June 5, 1998. 109 Chatterjee, ‘How We Loved the Bomb …’, 1437. 110 T. Jayaraman, ‘Beyond the Euphoria’, Frontline, June 5, 1998. 111 Ibid. 112 T. Jayaraman, ‘Of Scientists and Nukes’, Frontline, June 19, 1998. 113 M. V. Ramana, ‘La Trahison des Clercs: Scientists and India’s Nuclear Bomb’, pp. 213–14. 114 Buddhi Kota Subba Rao, ‘Th e H-Bomb Issue is Crucial’,Frontline , June 19, 1998. 232 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

By and large, the pro-nuclear strategic analysts managed to turn the focus back to security, helped greatly in this endeavour by Pakistan’s nuclear weapons tests and its subsequent declaration of nuclear weapons power status roughly a fortnight after India’s tests. Given the traditional Indian preoccupation with Pakistan, the changed strategic environment imbued security arguments with a degree of urgency. Except for a fringe discussion that would only sporadically gain prominence when topics such as technology denial regimes and nuclear energy co-operation arose, the discussions about nuclear India returned once again to the realm of security versus development.115 Confronting Security Several analysts promoting the security rationale for India’s weaponisation either argued that India did not need nuclear weapons for status, or welcomed the tests as bringing an end to the ambiguity which had only hurt the country’s technological and strategic interests.116 Th ese were not new: they had been articulated throughout the 1990s and singled out nuclear threats from China and Pakistan, in addition to the instability arising from the lack of movement on global disarmament.117 Th e conﬁ rmation of Pakistan’s nuclear status, and ironically, the deterioration of relations between New Delhi and Beijing after Prime Minister Vajpayee’s somewhat ill-advised letter to President Clinton identifying China as a nuclear threat was leaked to the press, put national

115 Th e discussions raging in the media after the July 2005 agreement on civilian nuclear energy co-operation and trade have once again put the role of the nuclear scientists in the spotlight, in a discussion that fl its from questions of sovereignty involved in accepting international safeguards, to the poor performance of the civilian nuclear power sector. An article by a former director of BARC, defending the nuclear scientists’ aversion to safeguards echoes several of the themes raised in the debate over the role of the scientifi c-strategic enclave in promoting their nuclear agenda; see A. N. Prasad, ‘Down to the Last Atom’, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Outlook, February 27, 2006. 116 Jasjit Singh, ‘Why Nuclear Weapons?’, in Singh, ed., Nuclear India, pp. 9–10; C. Raja Mohan, ‘Playing Football with Nuclear Weapons’, Th e Hindu, May 25, 1998. 117 Th e articles written immediately after the tests by several analysts refl ect many of the pre-nuclear test themes and justifi cations that had been on off er since the early 1990s. For example, see the articles by Vijai Nair and Bharat Karnad in Mattoo, ed., India’s Nuclear Deterrent and by Jasjit Singh and K. Subrahmanyam in Jasjit Singh, ed., Nuclear India. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 233

security in the spotlight.118 In the absence of an immediate nuclear threat, however, the BJP’s explanation that Pokharan II had been ‘guided’ by the ‘touchstone […] [of] national security’ was contested by that minority of refl ective Indians who opposed the tests.119 Th eir criticism ushered in a renewed engagement with the defi ning of ‘security’ for India: whether it lay in military strength or economic stability; whether India was better off staying true to its Gandhian and Nehruvian heritage and the global role that this allegiance created, or if realpolitik and the ability to behave like a ‘normal’ state was indeed the best guarantor of security. Once again, the greatest tension lay in fi nding the balance between development and security. Initially, a comparison between these two goals was further muddied by the BJP’s successful equating of support for the nuclear tests with patriotism.120 For Outlook, ‘Pokharan II [went] to the heart of middle-class nationalism’ in pitting the ‘peaceful social welfarist’ against the ‘aggressive nuclear realist’.121 As the dust settled, however, a less Manichean view emerged. ‘Is “national security” the fundamental anxiety of millions of people in this country’, one critic questioned, ‘or is it the availability of water, food, housing, health- care and primary education, which continues to be denied to an overwhelming number of our fellow-citizens?’122 Yet the thoughtful and well-regarded Economic and Political Weekly, which carried this and other deeply critical articles in a special section, ‘Testing Times’, soon

118 Sunil Narula, Ramananda Sengupta, ‘Rogue Letter’, Outlook, June 1, 1998. Relations with China had improved markedly in the decade preceding the tests, until the new Defence Minister George Fernandes (often referred to as a ‘maverick’ in Indian political circles) stirred a hornets’ nest by publicly identifying China as ‘potential threat no 1’ days before the Pokharan tests. Manoj Joshi, ‘George in the China Shop’, India Today, May 18, 1998. Vajpayee’s letter, following this surprising announcement, proved too much for Chinese equanimity. 119

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Th e government’s justiﬁ cation is presented in the White Paper it tabled in Parliament on the tests. Government of India, ‘Evolution of India’s Nuclear Policy’, May 27, 1998, at http://www.indianembassy.org/pic/nuclearpolicy.htm (accessed on April 23, 2004). 120 Sukumar Muralidharan, ‘Nuclear Heat’, Frontline, June 19, 1998. 121 Ghose, ‘Guns ‘N’ Butter’. 122 Rustom Bharucha, ‘Politician’s Grin, Not the Buddha’s Smile’, Economic and Political Weekly 33:22 (June 5, 1998), p. 1296. 234 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

after Pokharan II, had already added another layer of complexity to the tension between security and development which these critics highlighted. In a commentary published in the previous issue, one observer had reminded his audience that while it was ‘legitimate’ to challenge the decision to weaponise, the question ‘has to be asked in terms of defence and security and not in terms of the state of development’.123 As he pointed out, ‘[n]ations seek development always in a situation of contradictions’.124 Th e debate had veered back to the defi nition of security, what price was too high for defence, and whether, in a world of rapidly increasing trade, economic, political and social ties, defi nitions of security could indeed be confi ned to the physical borders that defi ned a state. Contesting Image and Status Prime Minister Vajpayee, in explaining the need for the tests had stated in Parliament that ‘India is now a nuclear weapons state. […] It is not a conferment we seek; nor is it a status for others to grant’.125 Yet, he went on to assert that this status was ‘India’s due, the right of one- sixth of humankind. Our strengthened capability adds to our sense of responsibility’.126 Th is was an argument that invoked a tradition of disarmament advocacy and a history of ‘restraint’ to mark India as a global power, a member of the club of major powers. Th e assertion did not go unchallenged. Th e small yet growing faction of anti-nuclear voices questioned the assumption that with these tests, India had somehow risen to the ranks of the nuclear managers. Partha Chatterjee observed that though the government claimed to honour a tradition of responsible behaviour and to continue to work towards nuclear disarmament, which it declared was still the best guarantor of global security, ‘the real objective [of the tests] is not universal disarmament […] but rather to move from the side of the discriminated to the discriminators in a world’ where nuclear weapons will continue to exist.127 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 123 GPD, ‘A Fatal Attraction’, Economic and Political Weekly 33:21 (May 29, 1998), p. 1223. 124 Ibid. 125 Suo Motu statement by Prime Minister Vajpayee, May 27, 1998. 126 Ibid. Th e White Paper laid at the House on that occasion developed this theme further by adding ‘the responsibility and obligation of power’. Government of India, ‘Paper laid on the table of the House on Evolution of India’s Nuclear Policy’. 127 Chatterjee, ‘How We Loved the Bomb…’. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 235

Th e criticism intensiﬁ ed as some analysts backed the government in suggesting that after the tests, India was now in a position to consider signing the CTBT. As one article noted, ‘the self-serving opportunism’ inherent in claiming with American help ‘a position of pre-eminence’ in South Asia undermined all the arguments that India had employed against an iniquitous global order.128 For this section of the attentive public, long used to constructing their idea of India with the rhetoric of idealism that had rung out in the Central Hall of Parliament on midnight of August 14–15, 1947, the negotiation of India as a ‘normal’ global power required far too violent a break with the comfortable assumptions of old.129 Few thought to question the wisdom of those assumptions when it should have been clear to those who cared to probe the matter that, for all intents and purposes, ‘[t]he 1974 test and the subsequent refusal to sign the CTBT had made it certain that we would be a nuclear weapons state’.130 Th e CTBT debate once again raised questions about how much sovereignty India could cede, and in which areas — economic, political, military — before its independence was reduced to a mockery of the freedom struggle. Defending Sovereignty Picking up on the arguments of sovereignty, analysts such as Bharat Karnad, always strongly pro-nuclear, lost no time in declaring that India should acquire a ‘thermonuclear deterrent’ to counter threats not just from its neighbours but also from an increasingly ‘imperial’ United States.131 Stating that nuclear weapons promoted ‘strategic independence’ while being ‘an attribute of Great Power’, he argued that national security, as an absolute good, could not be compromised in any way. Before it, other considerations of ethics and development would have to yield.132 Not everyone was convinced by the sovereignty argument, however. Historian Barun De remarked that the establishment of

128 S. M. Menon, ‘Th e Nuclear Imperium and its Vassal Kinds’,Economic and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Political Weekly 33:31 (August 1, 1998), p. 2055. 129 Several analysts have characterised the May 1998 tests as the rupture which allowed India to behave like any other ‘normal’ rising power, and speciﬁ cally, a ‘nuclear power’. See, for example, C. Raja Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon: Th e Shaping of India’s New Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Viking, 2003). 130 GPD, ‘A Fatal Attraction’. 131 Karnad, ‘A Th ermo-Nuclear Deterrent’. 132 Ibid., pp. 111, 114. 236 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

the UN had changed the ‘concept of sovereignty’; even more signifi cant curbs resulted from India’s accession to the WTO.133 Yet, half a decade of fairly relentless non-proliferation pressure, capped by the entry-into-force provisions of the CTBT had privileged India’s nuclear option as a totem of the country’s sovereign right to decide its own security interests. Th e CTBT had ironically succeeded in setting back progress on non-proliferation in breeding a greater degree of dissatisfaction amongst the very states it sought to control. Recalling the fi nal negotiations at Geneva, I. K. Gujral remarked that in being forced into the treaty through Article XIV, ‘[w]e were being dismissed with contempt’.134 For several of those who had followed the CTBT negotiations, these tests symbolised a repudiation of the apparently inexorable pressure applied to India, which could be expected to remain, if not intensify, in the run-up to September 1999. Th is had to be rejected.135 According to Lt-General Raghavan, the perception that India was being bullied, most visibly by the United States where under Clinton, non-proliferation had been replaced by counter-proliferation, greatly infl uenced Indian responses to the tests. Misinformed or not, the overwhelming domestic endorsement of the tests was infl uenced to some degree by the frustration borne of the belief that the United States treated India as an ‘adversary’.136 Yet, as the reality of the tests settled in, attentive India began to realise that simply declaring oneself a nuclear weapons power did not quite add up to behaving like one, or indeed being taken as one. As one Ministry of Defence offi cial speaking on condition of anonymity reminded his compatriots, a credible deterrent required a fairly sophisticated range of delivery vehicles, a stockpile of actual weaponised devices of various yields and safe storage facilities, in addition to a reliable command and control system.137 While R. Chidambaram may have been prompted by ulterior motives in observing that India still lacked all the basics of a nuclear weapon state because of the absence of the factors outlined by Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

133 Sagarika Ghose, ‘Guns ‘N’ Butter’, Outlook, June 1, 1998. 134 Conversation with Gujral, January 5, 2004. 135 Pranab Mukherjee, ‘Should India Sign the CTBT?’, Th e Hindu, May 26, 1998. Mukherjee, a former union minister and in the Opposition at the time was (and is) a senior Congress Party leader. 136 Conversation with Lt-General V. R. Raghavan (retd), August 30, 2005. 137 B. R. Srikanth, ‘Want Real Nukes? Spend a Billion’, Outlook, June 8, 1998. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 237

this offi cial, coming from him, this statement carried weight.138 Indeed, a meaningful debate on weaponisation and nuclear deterrence had only just begun in India. Calculating the Cost of Weaponisation Th ough the Prime Minister assured the nation that India did not seek to enter an arms race, the fears of a slide into a ruinous weapons acquisition frenzy added a degree of urgency to the discussions about ‘nuclear India’ after the tests. Th e question of costs provided the opponents of nuclearisation with their most eff ective argument in engaging an attentive public that had traditionally focussed considerably on topics of development. As the debate developed, it became clear that the old Nehruvian criteria retained their relevance: ‘[n]ational security in India’ one commentary noted, ‘is, feeding its citizens, providing them the means to live, lead healthy lives and earn a livelihood that can meet some of their expectations’.139 Former Naval Chief and one of India’s more prominent peace activists Admiral L. Ramdas translated the projected cost (of Rs 15 billion) of a command and control system debated in 2000 into a trade-off between primary education, fresh drinking water, primary health centres and primary welfare and adult education for 100,000 of India’s villages.140 Rammanohar Reddy published a series of articles highlighting the exorbitant price that the logic of nuclear arms races had extracted from the other members of the nuclear club. Seeking to create a ‘public debate’ that would hold the government accountable for defence spending, he cautioned against acquiescence in the establishment’s ability ‘to whip up fears of a threat to national security’.141 Reddy’s arguments acquired an edge of urgency when he illustrated the lost ‘opportunity costs’ that would be extracted from the nation in terms of rural health and sanitation, education, drinking water and the other basic necessities of human existence that India still could not provide all its citizens despite the promises of 1947. In the weeks and months that Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

138 Ibid. 139 Dipankar Bannerjee, ‘Buddha’s Smile and National Security’, Economic and Political Weekly 33:20 (May 22, 1998), p. 1160. 140 Ramdas, ‘Nuclear Weapons and India’s Security’, p. 57. 141 C. Rammanohar Reddy, ‘Destroyer of Worlds’, Th e Hindu, December 20, 1998. 238 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

followed the upheaval of Pokharan II, costing the BJP’s decision in the continuing absence of any specifi c information on the nuclear programme necessarily became an exercise in speculation.142 Th e uncertainty added to the emotional power of the argument against which the establishment’s promise of minimum deterrence sounded trite. Few paused to question the assumption, as did Kanti Bajpai, no apo- logist of India’s nuclear policy, whether there was indeed a direct trade-off between the ‘militarisation of security and the deprivation of the larger mass of people’. It was facile to posit a simple exchange: as he explained, development ‘goes out of the window’ in the face of a military threat.143 Confronting a Nuclear South Asia For a decision apparently guided by national security considerations, the immediate fallout was strongly negative. Pakistan declared itself a nuclear weapon power soon afterwards, and relations with China, which had been moving into positive territory over the past decade, deteriorated into ‘a public brawl’.144 Nationalistic exuberance soon yielded to a more reasoned engagement with the consequences of weaponisation. Th ough Vajpayee shrugged off the Pakistani tests, by remarking that they ‘had not come as a surprise’, the heated rhetoric on both sides of the border had former Prime Minister Gujral publicly calling for ‘sanity’ to counter the ‘prevailing din’.145 Th e Opposition, which had fl oundered for an appropriate response to the tests, fi nally rallied to question the BJP’s motives for testing at that time, without recanting their original felicitations of the scientists.146 As Parliament debated Pokharan II for the fi rst time (coincidentally just as Pakistan conducted its own tests), the government’s heated anti-Pakistan rhetoric attracted strong criticism. In the words of Madhav Rao Scindia, a

142 C. Rammanohar Reddy, ‘Th e Wages of Armageddon–I, II, III’,Th e Hindu, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 August 31, September 1 and 2, 1998. 143 Kanti Bajpai, quoted in Janaki Bahadur Kremmer, ‘Mindless Binge’, Outlook, May 4, 1998. 144 China specialist Giri Deshingkar, quoted in Sunil Narula, Ramananda Sengupta, ‘Ad-Hawk Noises’, Outlook, June 1, 1998. 145 Mariana Baabar, Sunil Narula, ‘Nuclear Frenzy: A Tale Of Two Nations’; Sunil Narula, interview with I. K. Gujral, ‘“War Hysteria Is No Good. Both Sides Must Act Coolly”’, both in Outlook, June 8, 1998. 146 Ranjit Bhushan, ‘A Deterred Defence’, Outlook, June 8, 1998. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 239

senior Congress Party Member of Parliament (MP), ‘If this is the way nuclear states behave, heaven help all of us’.147 As news of Pakistan’s tests fi ltered through into the assembly, the fears of a subcontinental arms race appeared only too realisable. One journalist, describing this debate remarked, the discussion in the Lok Sabha was unprecedented: never before had Parliament debated national security with such thoroughness or so publicly.148 More strategic concerns with the outcome of the tests began to surface. Writing soon after Pokharan II, Kanti Bajpai attempted to cut through the ‘fallacy’ of the belief that weaponisation had off ered India a credible deterrent.149 Instead, it had put the country in the unenvi- able position of facing a two-front nuclear threat. Without eff ective delivery systems to threaten China, India’s deterrent vis-à-vis the Middle Kingdom only made India a target of China’s nuclear weapons, in keeping with Beijing’s policy of no-fi rst-use against a non-nuclear weapons power. Th e confi rmation of Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons, suspected since 1987, had publicly neutralised India’s conventional superiority and raised the possibility that armed confl ict could quickly escalate into a nuclear exchange.150 At the very least, it could encourage adventurism across the border under the nuclear umbrella. Kargil confi rmed these fears with its demonstration that in Pakistan’s calculus, the logic of nuclear parity had left Islamabad free to support insurgency in Kashmir.151 Yet, perhaps perversely, Kargil empowered the hawks. It privileged arguments about national security once again, and not in terms of the larger concepts of power and coercive diplomacy (which sat uneasily with the vestiges of Nehruvian ideas underpinning attentive India’s negotiation of India) but in terms of the more immediate and familiar threat of implacable Pakistani hostility. As will be discussed in the next chapter, Kargil to some extent also democratised the debate about military security in a manner that the CTBT, which had opened up the debate about security, more broadly defi ned, had been unable

147 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Ibid. 148 Ibid. 149 Bajpai, ‘Th e Fallacy of the Indian Deterrent’. 150 Ibid. 151 Kanti Bajpai, ‘Strategic Th reats and Nuclear Weapons: India, China and Pakistan’, in Ramana and Reddy, Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003), pp. 50–51. Raja Menon makes the same point in ‘Th e Nuclear Calculus’, Outlook, July 26, 1999. 240 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

to achieve. Now the risks of nuclear uncertainty were too real to be ignored. While disarmament remained a worthy goal and the repercussions of the tests seemed on balance decidedly negative, public opinion veered towards demanding assurances that future Kargils would be prevented.152 In the absence of any hope of Pakistani nuclear disarmament, the only option remained an active engagement with the fi ner points of deterrence. Evaluating the International Implications Perhaps the most damaging for attentive India’s negotiation of the idea of India was the tidal wave of international condemnation that engulfed the country in the wake of the tests. While some criticism was expected, and most countries, especially the United States, had made it very clear that sanctions would automatically follow any test, not many in India were prepared for the degree of censure or indeed the tone of betrayal that the United States employed.153 Th ough N. Ram may have been dismissive of Clinton’s assertion that the tests had put India on the ‘wrong side of history’, Clinton, as the President of the country capable of wielding considerable infl uence on much needed World Bank loans (leaving aside the fi nancial implications of US domestic sanctions and the possibility of a concerted US-led eff ort at greater technology denial) was entitled to enjoy his ‘grand phrases’.154 Economists and policymakers scrambled to assess the potential fi nancial damage resulting from cessation of overseas aid and investment from Japan, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Canada and the United States. Yet, it was not so much the fi nancial implications, which in the end appeared manageable, that rankled as much as the having to swallow communiqués and political responses that informed India that its behaviour, to quote Clinton again, was ‘simply unacceptable’.155

152 Th is led to the creation of the Kargil Review Committee, set up under K. Subrahmanyam, which published its report in the year 2000. See Kargil Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Review Committee, From Surprise to Reckoning. 153 Ludwina A. Joseph, Janaki Kremmer and Sanjay Suri, ‘Sound of Fury’, Outlook, May 25, 1998; Sridhar Krishnaswami, ‘Punitive Action’, Frontline, June 5, 1998. 154 N. Ram, ‘Th e Perils of Nuclear Adventurism’,Frontline , June 5, 1998. 155 Th omas Abraham, ‘A Divided G-8’, Frontline, June 5, 1998. On sanctions, see D. Sampathkumar, ‘Th e Force of Sanctions’ Frontline, op. cit.; Charan D. Wadhwa, ‘Cost of Economic Sanctions: Aftermath of Pokhran II’, Economic and Political Weekly 33:26 (June 27, 1998), pp. 1604–607. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 241

But despite the hypocrisy keenly felt by many Indians of the United States preaching to India not to do as it practised, Indians had to accept, as Dr K. N. Raj, one of Nehru’s hand-picked architects for the country’s initial Five Year (developmental) Plans pointed out, that nobody was ‘more hypocritical than Indians’. He continued, ‘We preach non- violence all the time in the name of Gandhiji and practice exactly the opposite’. India, in his view, ‘had lost whatever image it had’.156 Th ough advocates of weaponisation may have tried to mitigate the diplomatic implications of the tests by invoking India’s record as one of the most disciplined adherents of NPT and other related agreements despite staying out of 1968 treaty regime (and the fact that India had not breached any of its international obligations with its tests), attentive India settled down for the long siege.157 Th e beating taken by India’s global image in many ways tempered the initial nationalistic euphoria that had overtaken the announcement of the tests. It had allowed the doves to gain a voice, to make up for their complacency in the period leading up to the tests. Locating the Doves Th e end of ambiguity provided a space for anti-nuclear voices to consolidate as a faction. And yet, for the land of Gandhi and Nehru, the contradictions continued. Anti-nuclear activism failed to gain a sig- niﬁ cant hold on the Indian imagination. A small group of protestors gathered at a convention against nuclear weapons organised in Chennai at the end of July. Th e convention sharply criticised the BJP for breaking with India’s long-standing policy of keeping the option open and called on the BJP to stop and roll back the nuclear programme.158 Yet the gathering, which included Admiral Ramdas whose anti-nuclear credentials were impeccable, and Arundhati Roy, whose passionate article ‘Th e End of Imagination’ had been carried in several magazines including Frontline and Outlook, was not without controversy. Th e signiﬁ cant presence of leading members of the Left parties, the DMK Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 156 Vishnu Menon, interview with Dr K. N. Raj, ‘India Has Lost its Image’, Outlook, June 1, 1998. 157 J. N. Dixit, ‘Blasting a Straitjacket’, Outlook, June 1, 1998; Paromita Shastri, Shekhar Ghosh, Narayan D. Keshavan and Sandipan Deb, ‘Now, Defuse’, Outlook, May 25, 1998. 158 ‘Roll Back N-Weapons Programme, Government Told’, Th e Hindu¸ July 27, 1998. 242 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

and others opposed to the BJP at the national- and state-levels lead to questions about the basic motivation behind this mobilisation, taking the discussion back into the realm of politics. Th ere were other protests, such as the convention organised by the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND), which came together just under a month after the tests. Interestingly, this convention attracted some prominent members of the intelligentsia, including Rajni Kothari (as chairman), Kuldip Nayar, Admiral Ramdas, Bhisam Sahni and Aijaz Ahmad. Th ese are people with the ability to inﬂ uence public opinion, and yet their association with MIND has not been meaningfully exploited. Several of the anti-nuclear movements were spontaneous and local. It took two years for the various groups to come together as a national movement, the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. Yet, as one anti-nuclear activist acknowledged, this event ‘was barely noticed by the media’.159 Further, while numbers at a convention cannot be taken as incontrovertible proof of the popularity or otherwise of a movement, for a country with a population of over a billion, it attracted 600 delegates, which in Reddy’s view, was double the expected number. Anti-nuclear activism in India remains far removed from the mainstream. Where were the doves and why were more doubts not expressed? Th ose reservations that were expressed in the weeks after Pokharan II focussed on the political implications of the decision, with a few queries about the diplomatic and strategic wisdom of the BJP’s actions. Some columnists attempted to question a ‘manufactured consensus’, to locate the doves who by their silence appeared to have acquiesced in the BJP’s deciding for the nation what its nuclear policy should be.160 Th e economist Jean Dreze, for example, remarked on the inconsistency of the government’s claim that the tests reﬂ ected a ‘national consensus’ when they constituted such a departure from the earlier policy, itself apparently based on a widespread unanimity of opinion.161 Perhaps Amartya Sen had a valid point in suggesting that it was easier to portray on television the jubilant reception of the news than to convey the deep 162 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 doubts harboured by some about the essential wisdom of the step. Th e fact remains, however, that even published dissent remained limited in the weeks and months following the tests.

159 C. Rammanohar Reddy, ‘A Peace Movement in Born’, The Hindu, November 26, 2000. 160 Sagarika Ghose, ‘Muted Voices’, Outlook, May 25, 1998. 161 Jean Dreze, ‘Of Nukes and Men’, Th e Hindu, June 12, 1998. 162 Amartya Sen, ‘India and the Bomb’, in Ramana and Reddy, eds, Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003), p. 173. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 243

In looking for possible reasons for the lack of opposition, Kanti Bajpai suggested that nuclear weapons had melded with the ‘Nehruvian temples of science’. At a time when India was rediscovering Nehru as it celebrated 50 years of independence, opposing Nehru’s project automatically left people vulnerable to charges of being traitors.163 Further, strict government control of all information pertaining to the nuclear establishment had eff ectively stifl ed debate for years.164 Any opposition to government policy would therefore have to occur in the grey zone of conjecture about where this policy might be headed.165 Additionally, as Amitabh Mattoo argued, the traditional constituencies of anti-nuclear opposition, the Gandhians and Socialists, had faded into irrelevance. In his opinion, ‘realpolitik has replaced moralpolitik’.166 Th e negotiation of nuclear India was being made possible by other shifts that had occurred over the years. Perhaps too the BJP were reaping the benefi ts of their fait accompli. As Ruchir Joshi explained, it took years for any meaningful opposition to nuclear weapons to coalesce in the West. Th en perhaps the ‘trickle’ of anti-nuclear protestors that he had observed demonstrating against the bomb on the Saturday after the tests would swell to a mass movement.167 At the moment, however, the engagement with nuclear India seemed fi rmly weighted in favour of realpolitik. Conclusion One critic, writing soon after the test had remarked that ‘[o]nly a civilisa- tion illiterate about itself would knit the bomb and Buddha together’.168 It was perhaps a testimony to how far attentive India had traversed in

163 Ghose, ‘Muted Voices’. 164 Achin Vanaik and Praful Bidwai regularly levelled charges of excessive secrecy against the government. However, several commentators have observed that Bidwai and Vanaik’s frequent use of intemperate language and their style of rather personal attacks on nuclear advocates had earned them very

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 few friends. Conversations with observers and participants in these debates, New Delhi, August and September 2005. Also see Amitabh Mattoo, ‘Nuclear Name Calling’, India Today, February 28, 2000. 165 Vanaik and Bidwai’s charges were even more extreme. Conversation with participants, including with Praful Bidwai, New Delhi, January 27, 2005. 166 Ghose, ‘Muted Voices’. 167 Ruchir Joshi, ‘Strange Gravefellows’, Outlook, June 15, 1998. 168 Shiv Visvanathan, ‘Welcome to the Patriot Games’, Economic and Political Weekly 33:22 (May 30, 1998). 244 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

defi ning their country that this disjuncture of testing nuclear weapons on the birth anniversary of the Buddha did not generate greater discussion. Even after realising the concurrence of events, those taking the decision remained suffi ciently confi dent that the ‘coincidence’ would prove inconsequential.169 Indeed, most of the limited criticism that surfaced in wake of Pokharan II focussed mainly on the BJP’s motives for testing and on the economic consequences of entering an arms race. Th e apparent repudiation of the country’s non-violent heritage that Gandhi had stood for went largely unchallenged. Further, remarkably few people mourned the break with India’s earlier eff orts to bring about global disarmament, the government’s claims that the country would still strive for this goal notwithstanding. Perhaps, as one analyst explained, events of the 1990s, especially the unconditional extension of the NPT and the type of CTBT that was fi nally created led to a gradual acknowledgement that disarmament was a ‘lost cause’.170 Th e politicisation of nuclear policy with the CTBT debates had also engaged attentive India in debating nuclear policy with a vehemence and inclusiveness that had not been seen since the mid-1960s, if even then. Th e euphoria and relief that greeted the tests, when combined with the absence of any reasoned engagement with the fi ner points of deterrence — after May 1998 attentive India still needed to be educated on what actually constituted a credible deterrent — indicated that this wasn’t about defence in classic, military terms. Th e celebrations therefore need to be questioned, for despite the overtones of jingoism, conducting a nuclear test is very diff erent from an Indian victory in an India–Pakistan cricket match. Th e non-proliferation pressure of the early- and mid-1990s, the continuing discussions about the eff ects of sanctions on India’s space and missile programmes and fi nally, the negotiations at Geneva had made it clear that dire diplomatic and economic consequences would follow any nuclear adventurism. Yet, the tests were mostly welcomed. Given the enthusiasm that managed to survive, albeit in a somewhat battered form, the strategic, diplomatic Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 and economic repercussions that followed suggest that the devices that shook the foundations of India’s offi cially articulated foreign and defence policies upon which much of the idea of the country’s global role was based, addressed a more deep-seated and widespread need than a perceived military-security defi cit or the desire for a certain,

169 Conversation with Mishra, February 5, 2005. 170 Conversation with Raghavan, August 30, 2005. Negotiating ‘Nuclear India’ after the CTBT ( 245

small group to boost their popularity and infl uence or consolidate their access to funding. Further, if it was status that Indians were seeking, then being condemned as a global spoiler should have dampened enthusiasm for the bomb to a much greater extent than occurred. A quest for status should have led to demands for bigger, better bombs to match the arsenal of the fi ve nuclear weapon states. Instead, Indians were remarkably ready to accept a moratorium on testing. More than the devices tested, it was the act of testing itself which acquired greater meaning. Th e tests announced the government’s ability to take a sovereign decision on India’s nuclear option and reject perceived attempts at coercing New Delhi into behaving in a certain way. In short, they demonstrated the essence of the CTBT debates that had raged across newspaper headlines, magazine articles, seminar tables and, to an extent, election campaigns. India’s nuclear tests defended the idea of sovereign, independent India. Th e idea had changed over the 50 years that had led up to this demonstration, and would continue to evolve. In 1998, however, the tests showed that the little defi ned and much defended nuclear option had come to symbolise a post-colonial democratic state’s ability to decide for itself how it would address its security requirements. Until Kargil and the debate that followed forced a re-evaluation, more than the borders, the bombs defended India’s sovereignty.

M Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 VI Defending Nuclear India

Th e paradox of our age is that while weapons become increasingly sophisticated, minds remain imprisoned in ideas of simpler times. Indira Gandhi, 19831 If nuclear weapons exist, they will one day be used, as they were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as all weapons have been throughout history. And, on the last day, it will make little diﬀ erence whether their use was by design or by accident. Rajiv Gandhi, 19882

At the ﬁ rst session of Parliament after the nuclear tests of May 1998, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee declared that India’s nuclear weapons addressed threats to the country’s ‘national security’.3 Less than a year later, his government’s deﬁ nition of security came into sharp focus as New Delhi found itself embroiled in an undeclared war with its new nuclear neighbour, an engagement that Western observers, if not those in the subcontinent, feared could easily escalate into a nuclear confrontation. Th e engagement in Kargil serves as a good test case for attitudes towards nuclear weapons in a crisis.4 It also occurred at a

1 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Speech at the Seventh Conference of the Heads of State of Government of Non-Aligned Countries, New Delhi, March 7, 1983, at http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/Disarmament/

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 disarm13.htm (accessed on October 15, 2004). 2 Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Speech at the Opening Session of the Six-Nation Five Continent Peace Initiative, Stockholm, January 21, 1988, at http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/Disarmament/disarm14.htm (accessed on October 15, 2004). 3 Vajpayee, Suo Motu Statement, May 27, 1998. 4 Th e Pakistani incursions into Ladakh were discovered in the ﬁ rst week of May. ‘Operation Vijay’, the army’s response to reclaim Indian territory, was oﬃ cially launched on May 26, 1999. Hostilities drew down by the third week of July, with the army declaring July 26 ‘Vijay Diwas’, or victory day. Defending Nuclear India ( 247

time when the print and electronic media were undergoing signifi cant changes with 24-hour television news coverage and increasing internet accessibility changing the way attentive India gained access to news and information. Th e latest hostilities in the state of Jammu and Kashmir should have served as a watershed in the debate over nuclear India: here was a case study to test and refi ne deterrence theory as it was emerging in the country. It did not. While India’s fi rst ‘media war’ certainly broadened the platform for discussion on matters of defence, ‘Kargil’ (as the encounter came to be known) essentially politicised and thereby democratised debates about conventional defence in India without adequately refl ecting the changed reality of the declared possession of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan. During and after the military operations to clear Indian territory occupied by Pakistan, discussions over Kargil negotiated the balance between exceptionalism in the form of restraint versus the need for the most eff ective military retaliation. It was, in eff ect, essentially the same discussions along the identity dyad that attentive India had been negotiating in pitting exceptionalism against realpolitik for the past half century, without the discussion adequately refl ecting the fact that restraint may now have been made necessary by the declared presence of nuclear weapons on both sides of the border. If there were any concerns about Kashmir emerging as a nuclear fl ashpoint, these were expressed in Washington DC, London and other western capitals, and not in New Delhi. Of course India’s nuclear status could not be ignored, and those participating in this debate did not wish to ignore it. Th e disconnect between the existential reality of the declared presence of nuclear weapons on the subcontinent and the inadequate refl ection of this development in the discussions of the military engagement in Ladakh is perhaps indicative of the nature of the defence debate that developed. Public engagement with Kargil remained largely introspective, almost parochial; discussion focussed on accountability and the need for patriotic support of the armed forces, both of which eclipsed considerations of the implications of hostilities under a nuclear shadow. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Th ese themes were echoed in the draft nuclear doctrine released soon after the Kargil operation concluded. According to the government, it made this document public in order to generate debate on India’s nuclear policy. Yet the discussion that followed tended to engage with the country’s nuclear status in political, rather than strategic terms. Although the audience of the document — once again, mainly an educated, urban, middle- and upper-middle class group — debated 248 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

this doctrine on both the axes of identity and security, the structure of the document, the points that were contested and discussed, and questioning of the caretaker government’s motives in releasing the document when it did refl ected a greater interest in the political and economic ramifi cations of the declaration of nuclear capability than the strategic implications of possessing nuclear weapons. Undoubtedly, the nuclear debate would evolve in the years that followed; yet, in the months that succeeded the nuclear tests, it still appeared as though India’s atomic devices primarily helped carve out a political space within which the older ideas that defi ned India could be reconciled to the newer reality of declared nuclear weapons possession. Kargil: A Nuclear Crisis? The discovery of Pakistani intruders, well entrenched in remote, inhospitable terrain in Ladakh overlooking Indian posts in early May 1999 served as a rude wake-up call to a country that had been lulled by assurances of a nuclear peace by the BJP-led government and further reinforced by Prime Minister Vajpayee’s ‘bus diplomacy’ in Lahore in February of that year.5 Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore on the inaugural run of the Amritsar–Lahore bus service, resumed under American pressure, had been well received by attentive India as a step in the right direction to bring down the temperatures after the rhetoric of Pokharan II and Chagai.6 The first bilateral meeting between the leaders of the two neighbours in almost a decade had generated ‘a palpable sense of relief’.7 Th is was reinforced by the promise of the ‘Lahore Declaration’ and the accompanying Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed by the two Foreign Secretaries that

5 Pakistan denied that its army had any role to play in the incursion, insisting instead that the intruders were Kashmiri mujahideen (freedom ﬁ ghters)

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 whom Pakistan supported morally and politically. However, the Pakistani army’s Northern Light Infantry’s involvement in this operation, which, moreover, had been planned in some detail by the army leadership is widely accepted, within and outside India. 6 Vinod Mehta, ‘Th ree Cheers for Symbolism’, Outlook, March 1, 1999. Th e Hindu Right (including the RSS, who were amongst the most ardent supporters of the bomb), unsurprisingly did not share this sentiment, considering any peace overtures made to Pakistan a waste of time. See, Rajesh Joshi, ‘A Proxy War of Words’, Outlook, March 1, 1999. 7 Kanti Bajpai, ‘Lahore Balance Sheet’, Outlook, March 8, 1999. Defending Nuclear India ( 249

committed both sides ‘to engage in bilateral consultations on security concepts, and nuclear doctrines, with a view to developing Confi dence- Building Measures (CBMs) in the nuclear and conventional fi elds, aimed at avoidance of confl ict’.8 Th e reassurance of that visit proved short- lived. By late May of that year, the seriousness of the intrusion in Kargil and the rising body count as soldiers tried to recapture land occupied by Pakistan soon forced analysts and commentators to focus on the possibility of yet another war over Kashmir.9 Within weeks Kargil, as India’s ‘fi rst television war’, captured the attention of the populace and put defence fi rmly on the front pages of newspapers.10 Th ereafter, the encounter and military operations were discussed and debated at length in various fora, ranging from the traditional newspaper columns, to the relatively newer phenomenon of television talk shows and internet discussion pages. Th e spread of the internet at this time provided a medium for the middle class to participate in discussions of interest; Kargil both provided an impetus for the growth of these deliberations and benefi ted from the availability of a new platform.11 Curiously, however, for a country that had just welcomed the MoU in Lahore which explicitly mentioned nuclear CBMs, the fact that Indian and Pakistani troops were battling for territory in Kashmir failed to raise appreciable concerns about the possibility that this encounter might escalate into a nuclear war. A former intelligence chief recalled how many of India’s attentive public viewed Kargil as another ‘massive infi ltration attempt’ by Pakistan (something India had

8 Memorandum of Understanding signed on February 20, 1999, in Lahore between the Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan, quoted in Amit Baruah, ‘Bus to Pakistan’, Frontline, March 12, 1999. 9 Some analysts, including Lt-General V. R. Raghavan, disagree with the categorisation of Kargil as a war, preferring instead, to term it ‘a series of local military actions’. Raghavan quoted in A. G. Noorani, ‘Th e Kargil Committee Expedition’, Frontline, March 31, 2000. See also, V. R. Raghavan, ‘Limited War and Strategic Liability’, Th e Hindu, February 2, 2000. 10 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Th e Kargil Review Committee referred to the encounter with Pakistan as India’s ‘fi rst television war’ in its report, which was published the following year. See Kargil Review Committee, From Surprise to Reckoning, p. 248. 11 Websites such as Rediff on the Net (www.rediff .com) hosted columns by retired military offi cers, collated news articles and reports from agencies and newspapers and provided ‘chat rooms’ for discussions. See also the pages on Kargil on Bharat Rakshak, www.bharat-rakshak.com. (Th is unoffi cial site describes itself as ‘a consortium of Indian military websites’.) 250 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

much experience of), rather than an encounter almost leading to a war between two states. In his opinion, this group failed to engage with just how ‘ugly’ things could have become. 12 Bringing Defence into the Mainstream India’s fi rst television war, Kargil, has several legacies. By bringing the combat into the living rooms of the middle class, it democratised discussions about defence to an extent which all the earlier sporadic discussions about the military — from the debates over modernisation and defence spending in the early 1990s, the 1990 crisis with Pakistan and even the 1986–87 crisis over the Brasstacks Exercise — had been unable to achieve. Television lends itself naturally to human- interest stories, and the country rallied behind the non-commissioned and junior offi cers whose daily routines became the subject of prime- time viewing.13 Th at the soldiers beamed on the television sets came from all parts of the country in turn strengthened the commitment of the southern and north-eastern states to Kashmir, which until then was largely seen as a north Indian obsession.14 Th e Kargil Review Committee, set up by the government after the Pakistani pull-out to study the lapses that had led to the encounter, commended the press for acting as a ‘potent force multiplier’ in building support for the armed forces.15 Perhaps the impact of television comes across most tellingly in comparing the diff erence in public attitudes towards the troops who died during Indian peacekeeping operations in Sri Lanka between 1987

12 Conversation with M. K. Narayanan, New Delhi, January 19, 2007. Narayanan, National Security Adviser in the Manmohan Singh government (2005–2009), is a former chief of the Intelligence Bureau (1987–1990, 1991–1992). At the time of Kargil, he had retired from service. An idea of the low salience of fears of a major encounter can be gleaned from the collation of news Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 reports on the special section on Kargil on Rediff on the Net. ‘Th e Kargil Crisis’, http://www.rediff .com/news/kargil.htm (accessed on September 10, 2006). 13 Th e print media was not far behind. See, for example, Rajesh Joshi, ‘Life in the Line of Fire’, Outlook, June 14, 1999. 14 Kargil was also the fi rst time that war casualties were repatriated to their home towns for the last rites; the physical reminder that the price for recover- ing lost territory near Kargil was being paid by all parts of the country served to further mobilise patriotic support for the military operations. 15 See Kargil Review Committee, From Surprise to Reckoning, p. 248. Defending Nuclear India ( 251

and 1990, and those that were killed barely a decade later.16 In contrast to the contributions that were pouring in for the families of those killed in Kargil, a ‘collective amnesia’ appears to have overtaken the country with regard to the 1,200 soldiers who died on this earlier mission.17 Where Kargil generated much discussion about the possibility that lapses on the part of the government had allowed the intrusions to occur and remain undetected, the political advisability of letting the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) become mired in another country’s civil war, at a heavy human cost, had failed to adequately capture public attention. Th is was not a task the state-runDoordarshan news channel could easily fulfi l in the late 1980s, early 1990s. In contrast, by 1999, new television channels, such as Star News and Zee had 24-hours worth of programming to commission, which they did with remarkable eff ect.18 However, not all reviews of the role of the press were compli- mentary. After the hostilities had ceased, some journalists and observers criticised the print and electronic media for partisan and credulous behaviour during Kargil, which threw in doubt the very principle of objectivity of the fourth estate. Given that the press plays a crucial role in infl uencing public opinion, the implications of this censure are serious. As columnist Sagarika Ghose observed, the press had taken it upon themselves to generate patriotic fervour in support of the military’s eff orts, which compromised their ability to critically evaluate

16 Over 70,000 Indian personnel were deployed in Sri Lanka. Targeted by the LTTE and deeply resented by the Sri Lankan army, the IPKF paid a high price for the lack of clear objectives in deploying them to Sri Lanka’s civil war. 17 John Cherian, ‘Of Forgotten Fighters’, Interview with Lt-Gen A. S. Kalkat (retd), Frontline, July 30, 1999. Admittedly, a peacekeeping operation is not the same as the defence of a border. However, in this case, the IPKF were eventually drawn into the hostilities as unwitting participants, a development that should have been probed. For public funds raised for Kargil soldiers, see Archana Jahargirdar, ‘Th e People’s Army’,Frontline , July 12, 1999. One

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 estimate puts the fi gure collected at Rs 5,000 million; see conference report for ‘Asymmetric Confl ict in South Asia: Th e Cause and Consequences of the 1999 Limited War in South Asia’, Monterey, California, May 29–June 1, 2002, at http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/events/recent/may02Kargil_rpt.asp (accessed on September 10, 2006). 18 NDTV (which supplied the news for Star TV) also ran an appeal for funds for the soldiers of Kargil, the fi rst time a TV channel had involved itself in supporting the military in this manner. 252 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

and report what was occurring at the border. In these circumstances, she noted, ‘[t]he power of TV then becomes harnessed to creating a war machine’.19 Th e fact that these same reporters were dependant on army hospitality in order to gain access to the region they were covering further limited their independence.20 For some, this dependence on the army blurred the distinction between the journalist and the jawan (soldier).21 Th e slickly packaged minute-and-a-half audiovisuals about life in the fi ring line glamorised the encounter while implicitly endors- ing the government’s policies in this regard, all under the supposed imperative of national security. Th e problem, however, went deeper than simply becoming an unwitting accomplice in the government’s propaganda machine. As one journalist noted, several reporters censored their own stories.22 Th e eff ects were visible in the diff erence in casualty fi gures reported by the Indian and foreign press. Some reporters admitted to ‘swallowing uncritically’ army briefi ngs. Others went further. As a popular news anchor explained, he was averse to ‘carry[ing] a story that might hurt the army’s morale’.23 Th e demands of the information age also had consequences. In the age of 24-hour news coverage, the compulsions of producing something new, interesting and newsworthy on a regular basis led not just to a proliferation of human-interest stories and endless variations of the same basic report, it also spawned hours of armchair analysis on demand.24 Th e eff ects of this sustained drawing in of attentive India into the war-eff ort were far reaching. As a member of the Media Advocacy Group asked, after the cessation of hostilities in July, ‘[a]fter so much mobilisation [of the public], is the media going

19 Sagarika Ghose, ‘Not the Whole Picture’, Outlook, July 26, 1999. See also, Noorani, ‘Th e Kargil Committee Expedition’. 20 For a sense of this dependence, see Srinjoy Chowdhury, Despatches From Kargil (New Delhi: Penguin, 2000). At the time, Chowdhury was with Th e

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Statesman (Kolkata). 21 N. Ram, quoted in Rajesh Joshi, A. S. Panneerselvan, ‘Jai Journo, Jai Jawan’, Outlook July 26, 1999. 22 Bhavdeep Kang, ‘A News Twist’, Outlook, July 21, 1999. 23 Rajat Sharma, quoted in ibid. 24 Despite what they claimed in their datelines, reporters were not actually allowed up to the ﬁ ring line. See, ‘Jai Journo, Jai Jawan’. Th e author witnessed some of the compulsions of ﬁ lling air-time while working as a journalist with NDTV (Star News) when it switched from 4.5-hours to 24-hours of programming in early 1998. Defending Nuclear India ( 253

to make me, a lay person, privy to strategic issues from now on?’25 Th e democratisation of the defence debate might well have been laudable, but the implications of ill-informed or misinformed participation would also need to be addressed. However, the armed forces might yet be spared misguided if enthusiastic public interest in defending India’s borders. What Kargil demonstrated was not so much the democratisation of defence as the politicisation of it. In K. Subrahmanyam’s opinion, Kargil had allowed political parties and the media to use the crisis to ‘politicise national security in a partisan manner’.26 Despite fears that the media had assumed the role of uncritical supporters of the government’s war eﬀ ort, the Vajpayee-led caretaker government (for the government had lost a vote of conﬁ dence in April of that year on a domestic issue) found itself increasingly called upon to account for its policies during the hostilities and for any lapses that might have allowed Kargil to occur at all.27 Harnessing defence to politics broadened the base for discussion; for attentive India, this airing of views now began to tread vaguely familiar ground. Though admittedly in a minority, some voices questioned the ‘widespread consensus’ that criticism of the government’s policies should wait until after the hostilities ended, ‘as though democratic dissent was a peace-time indulgence’.28 Th e Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) especially was being held to account for having failed to act on intelligence that suggested a Pakistani operation in Kashmir.29 After years of acquiescence in the notion that defence was

25 Ibid. 26 K. Subrahmanyam, ‘Field Marshal Cariappa Memorial Lecture 2000’, quoted in ‘PMO has “Casual Approach” to National Security: Subrahmanyam’, Rediff on the Net, October 28, 2000, at http://in.rediff .com/news/2000/oct/28karg. htm (accessed on September 15, 2006). 27 V. Venkatesan, ‘Political Echoes’, Frontline, July 30, 1999. 28 Aijaz Ahmed, ‘Mediation by Any Other Name’, Frontline, July 30, 1999. See also C. P. Bhambhri, ‘Super-Patriot Games’, Outlook, July 19, 1999. 29 Murali Krishnan, ‘Silence, the Best Policy’, Outlook, September 20, 1999. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Th e debate over whether the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance ignored intelligence inputs drags on, as does the question of the culpability of senior army and intelligence offi cials. See, for example, Nitin A. Gokhale, ‘Command Failure’, Outlook, August 2, 1999, and Praveen Swami, ‘Warnings in Vain’, Frontline, September 24, 1999, on how the COAS ignored warnings sent in by his brigade commander; Ranjit Bhushan, Murali Krishnan, ‘Half-told Tales of a War’, Outlook, January 24, 2000; and Saikat Datta, ‘Th e Lie Nailed’,Outlook , May 22, 2006. 254 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

best left to government and the professionals, attentive India now began to demand greater accountability from those charged with overseeing and managing defence.30 The Nuclear Factor and Kashmir For a growing number of critics, especially those on the Left, the brunt of the censure was reserved for what they considered the primary precipitating factor of Kargil: ‘the BJP enabled nuclear weaponisation in India and Pakistan’, to quote an editorial, which encouraged ‘Pakistan’s adventurist push across the Line of Control (LoC)’.31 Despite the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA’s) assurances, India’s (and Pakistan’s) nuclear weapons had not established a nuclear peace on the subcontinent; on the contrary, as Prakash Karat argued after drawing parallels with Cold War history, ‘it provide[d] the opportunity for low- intensity confl ict’.32 L. K. Advani was especially criticised for his speech of May 18, 1998, in which he had advised Pakistan to rethink its policy on Kashmir in the wake of the changed strategic environment heralded by Pokharan II.33 As J. N. Dixit argued, the South Asian neighbour’s nuclear parity had encouraged Islamabad to believe it could ‘indulge in broad territorial adventure without provoking an Indian reaction across the international border’.34 Observers, recalling Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Pervez Musharraf’s assertion in February in Pakistan-controlled Siachen that ‘there is a zero chance of war’ between the two countries, now attributed that confi dence to Pakistan’s belief that the presence of nuclear weapons would prevent India from risking escalating hostilities. Th at the Indian Army chief General V. P. Malik responded by remarking that ‘[h]aving crossed the nuclear threshold does not mean that a conventional war is out’, only added to the irony.35 It was now evident to those participating in this discussion that Pakistan could always play on the fears of the international community that any increase in the level of confl ict could Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

30 Ranjit Bhushan, ‘Kargil, a Post-Mortem’, Outlook, July 26, 1999. 31 Editorial, ‘Th e Pokhran-Kargil Connection’; also see Praveen Swami, ‘Th e Bungle in Kargil’, both inFrontline , July 2, 1999. 32 Prakash Karat, ‘Kargil and beyond’, Frontline, July 3, 1999. 33 Ajit Bhattacharjea, ‘Th e Nuke’s Blunted Edge’,Outlook , July 5, 1999. 34 Sunil Narula, ‘Th e Bomb atTh Bombed’, Outlook, June 28, 1999. 35 John Cherian, ‘Th e Political and Diplomatic Background’,Frontline , June 18, 1999. Defending Nuclear India ( 255

invite the danger of a nuclear war on the subcontinent, a possibility that immediately made the international community stakeholders in maintaining the peace.36 K. Natwar Singh, a senior Congress politician, stated categorically that with Kargil, Pakistan had succeeded in ‘internationalising’ Kashmir. Singh was evidently amongst the few who fretted over the political implications of the long prognosis initially off ered by the army for reclaiming Indian territory.37 He pointed out that when the UN General Assembly met in September of that year, the military engagement in Kargil and by implication, the dispute over Kashmir, was bound to be raised; India would then ‘have to reply to them there’.38 Th e Left, on the other hand, worried about the prominence accorded to the United States. Th at the United States was allowed to have any hand in helping resolve the crisis, however discreet, was seen as setting a terrible precedent. Frontline warned that ‘[p]olitical India will be making a serious mistake if it understands the “personal interest” that President Bill Clinton has promised, or rather threatened […] to be a face-saving sop to the Pakistan government. Th e external, US-led pressure on India […] is likely to intensify, not weaken, in the post-Kargil period’.39 In Aijaz Ahmad’s opinion, ‘we may not call it mediation, but we are quite in the middle of it’.40 Th ough the debate had cosmetically changed to accommodate India’s and Pakistan’s declared possession of nuclear weapons, in substance it would appear as though for large swathes of attentive India international mediation in resolving the Kashmir dispute represented a greater danger than the possibility of a nuclear war. Defi ning Nuclear India Ironically, the nuclear dimension of the Kargil crisis surfaced not as a danger, but as a moderating infl uence which buttressed India’s claims

36 Sunil Narula, Nitin A Gokhale, ‘A Step Across a Th in Line?’, Outlook, July

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 5, 1999; Sukumar Muralidharan, interview with K. Natwar Singh, ‘Diplomacy Should Not be Put Aside’, Frontline, July 2, 1999. 37 Even in mid-July, the army was not certain that it would be able to reclaim all Indian territory in the near future. Sunil Narula, ‘Clouded By Distrust’, Outlook, July 19, 1999. 38 ‘Diplomacy Should Not be Put Aside’. 39 Editorial, ‘Kargil: Success and Complications’, Frontline, July 30, 1999. 40 Ahmad, ‘Mediation by Any Other Name’. 256 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

to be a responsible nuclear power. Th e catchword for India’s conduct of the encounter remained ‘restraint’. In National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra’s words, New Delhi’s refusal to escalate the encounter ‘will drive home the point that a nuclear India can and does act in a responsible manner’.41 Aides in the Prime Minister’s Offi ce (PMO) insisted that India’s ‘policy of restraint […] has paid rich dividends’.42 Th ough several junior army offi cers (and some retired senior offi cers, including former Chiefs of Staff ) were arguing in favour of crossing the LoC to cut off enemy supply lines, these requests were fi rmly rebuff ed by the government and sections of the army leadership.43 Th e fear that crossing either the LoC or the International Border (IB) risked escalating the confl ict was, however, never clearly articulated. Yet, as the weeks wore on with no real clarity on how the territory could be reclaimed and fears that Kargil could drag on (the Clinton–Sharif joint statement of July 4, 1999, in which Pakistan agreed to respect and restore the LoC, notwithstanding) the government came under increasing pressure to ‘order[] the Indian ground and air forces to cross the LoC’. Th is would, in Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy’s opinion, allow India ‘to settle the Pakistan problem once and for all’.44 While Swamy may be known for courting controversy, few bothered to challenge the cavalier attitude adopted by a Member of Parlia- ment towards a nuclear neighbour. Quite the contrary. As Frontline editorialised, instead of seriously considering the possibility that hostilities could escalate to a nuclear level, Indian military and political commentary had ‘consistently underplayed, where it has not glossed over’ repeated offi cial Pakistani assertions that the nuclear option remained on the table in the event that Pakistan’s national security was at stake.45

41 Dileep Padgoankar, ‘Policy of Restraint to Keep Pak under Global Pressure’, Th e Times of India, June 26, 1999. 42

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Ajith Pillai, Ishan Joshi, ‘Th e Road Ahead’,Outlook , July 12, 1999. 43 ‘A Step Across a Th in Line?’; some senior air force oﬃ cers too were asking to be able to take operations across the LoC as that would reduce the number of Indian troop casualties. See Saikat Datta, interview with Air Marshal Vinod Patney ‘Th reat of a Nuclear War in Kargil Was a Bogey’,Outlook , March 7, 2005. Patney as Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Command, was in charge of air operations during Kargil. 44 Subramanian Swamy, ‘Fighting Pakistan with a Handicap’, Frontline, July 16, 1999. 45 ‘Kargil: Success and Complications’. Defending Nuclear India ( 257

Resurrecting an Idea of Indian Exceptionalism? While offi cials in the PMO were free to dismiss as ‘irresponsible’ any mention, let alone proper discussion, of the circumstances in which India might resort to the nuclear option, offi cial India’s willingness to rest on India’s declared policy of ‘no fi rst use of nuclear weapons’ in the hope that Pakistan would follow suit seems unduly optimistic.46 Even when signals from the Pakistani establishment were acknowledged, such as Sharif’s aide and Information Minister Mushahid Hussain’s refusal to rule out a fi rst strike, offi cial India preferred to use these statements as ballast in support of the contention that Pakistan should be labelled a ‘terrorist state’.47 Perhaps inevitably for a polity still unwilling to fully confront the nuclear dimension of confl ict with Pakistan, the argument had returned to the dichotomy of Indian exceptionalism in contrast to the unethical behaviour of most other states in the international system. Ironically, nuclear weapons were being pulled up along the identity dyad, away from quadrant of ‘normal’ state behaviour, to force them into the quadrant that encapsulated Indian exceptionalism. Negotiating a Nuclear Doctrine In these circumstances, perhaps it was not surprising that Kargil did not lead to demands for a clearly articulated nuclear doctrine within India. Admiral Raja Menon observed that a large part of the blame for Kargil lay in New Delhi: by not clearly signalling a coherent set of principles applicable to Pakistan immediately after the nuclear tests of May 1998, Pakistani planners were encouraged to guess at Indian nuclear thresholds, with inaccurate results, as Kargil demonstrated.48 Manoj Joshi remarked that in the months after Pokharan II, the Prime Minister and his offi cials had gone to ‘great lengths’ to discuss India’s continuing approach to disarmament; however, in terms of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Even if, as Lt-General V. R. Raghavan (retd) explains, ‘at the policy planning level, [the presence of] nuclear weapons were central to the combat on India’s side’, leading those responsible for conducting the operations to accept heavy Indian casualties, the fact remains that these concerns were never made known. Publicly, this was another conventional encounter between India and Pakistan. Conversation with Raghavan, January 9, 2006. 47 ‘Pillai, Joshi, ‘Th e Road Ahead’. 48 Raja Menon, ‘Th e Nuclear Calculus’,Outlook , July 26, 1999. 258 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

what it planned to do with its demonstrated nuclear capability, the plethora of statements emerging from offi cial circles had only confused matters further. ‘Taken together,’ Joshi observed, ‘statements of the Prime Minister and his senior offi cials seem to suggest that India was simultaneously embracing three contradictory nuclear doctrines — warfi ghting, deterrence and abolitionism’.49 When a ‘draft’ nuclear doctrine, released as a discussion document, was fi nally produced in August 1999, more immediate attention was paid to the timing of the release and the government’s intentions in producing it, than to its actual substance. Nevertheless, a debate had begun, and once the dust of the politics surrounding the document had settled, attentive India began to grapple with matters of substance concerning the place of nuclear weapons in Indian strategic thought. Th e draft Indian Nuclear Doctrine (dIND) was produced by the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB), a 27-member conglom- erate of defence analysts, academics and former civil and military offi cials and journalists, chaired by K. Subrahmanyam. Th e NSAB was established in October 1998 on the recommendation of a BJP- appointed task force charged with examining the management of national security in the country. Th e report advocated a three-tier structure: a National Security Council (NSC), chaired by the Prime Minister with inputs from his cabinet; a strategic policy group, comprising serving offi cials dealing with national security matters, who made recommendations to the NSC; and fi nally the NSAB, comprising those outside government involved in some way in national security, and appointed for a one-year term. Th e NSAB essentially enjoys an advisory role, without offi cial status. Th e fi rst NSAB co-opted some vocal critics of the establishment’s nuclear and security policies — a move that perhaps silenced critical voices at a time when the government needed to consolidate its position on national security.50 Th e NSAB’s doctrine was largely acknowledged to be the product of the pro-bomb lobby. Of the group, ‘some 19’ were ‘known bomb en- Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 thusiasts’, Chari observed, whose ‘personal inclinations were refl ected in

49 Manoj Joshi, ‘From Technology Demonstration to Assured Retaliation: Th e Making of an Indian Nuclear Doctrine’, Strategic Analysis, 22:10 (January 1999), pp. 1467–481. 50 For more on the establishment of the NSAB, see B. Raman, ‘Revamping National Security’, Rediﬀ on the Net, May 24, 2004. Defending Nuclear India ( 259

the nuclear doctrine’. 51 It is of course perfectly logical that a pro-nuclear group be charged with articulating the principles governing India’s use of nuclear weapons. Th is makes the document they produced, whose opening sentence condemned the ‘use of nuclear weapons’ as the ‘grav- est threat to humanity and to peace and stability of the international system’ all the more surprising.52 Perhaps it was inevitable that all the contradictions of India — the champion of disarmament, the passionate promoter of steps to eliminate all nuclear weapons while refusing to acknowledge the ‘bomb in the basement’ demonstrated by the 1974 test, the country that had tacitly acknowledged the existence of some form of nuclear deterrence working on the subcontinent in the 1990s — would eventually come to sit in uneasy co-existence in a document purportedly seeking a debate on the role of nuclear weapons in national security. Th e struggle for India’s identity, the hankering after exceptionalism despite policies that tried to ‘socialise’ India in the global community of states, came to the fore in the attempt of this advisory body to oﬀ er their vision of nuclear India. Yet when the draft was released, ostensibly to generate ‘public […] debate and discussion’, attentive India’s engagement with it principally focussed on the politics and ethics of the exercise.53 Th e caretaker government was asked to justify the timing and status of a document dealing with national security created by a non-statutory advisory body whose term ended with the present government’s tenure.54 Th at members of the advisory board were willing to concede oﬀ -the-record that the timing was political only added to doubts about the governing alliance’s motives.55 Th e BJP was bitterly attacked by the Congress

51 P. R. Chari, ‘India’s Nuclear Doctrine: Confused Ambitions’, Th e Non- Proliferation Review (Fall–Winter 2000), p. 125. 52 Preamble of the ‘Draft Report of the National Security Advisory Board on the Indian Nuclear Doctrine’ (hereafter dIND), released on August 17, 1999, at http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/CTBT/nuclear_doctrine_aug_17_1999. html (accessed on June 15, 2005). 53 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Brajesh Mishra, quoted in John Cherian, ‘Playing the Nuclear Card’, Frontline, September 10, 1999; L. Ramdas, ‘Arrogant Nuclearism’, Frontline, October 22, 1999. According to Ashley Tellis, the NSAB might not have been aware that their recommendations to the government would be made public. Tellis, India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture, pp. 254–55, esp. note 14. 54 R. Ramachandran, ‘Unclear Nuclear Identity’, Frontline, September 10, 1999. 55 Sunil Narula, Janaki Bahadur Kremmer, ‘Hasty Afterthoughts and a Paper Bomb’, Outlook, August 30, 1999. 260 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

and the Left for the politically opportunistic timing of the release. Prakash Karat, a Polit Bureau member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), CPI(M), called for a rejection of the ‘illegitimate’ doctrine released by the ‘caretaker government’ which was playing with national and international security for ‘petty electoral gains’.56 Rumours that the NSAB had completed their product two months before the BJP saw fi t to make it public only fuelled the criticism.57 Even strategic analysts remained sceptical about the need for the BJP to push through dIND at this juncture. As P. R. Chari observed, the BJP was going to the polls at a time when the ‘patriotism that Kargil has stirred up’ lingered; it therefore made electoral sense to focus attention on national security and nuclear issues, both of which the BJP always claimed to accord a high priority.58 Th e more charitable but for large swathes of attentive India perhaps equally unpalatable view was that the doctrine sought to assuage Western, specifi cally American, fears that India had no strategic objectives in conducting Pokharan II.59 Professor Matin Zuberi, a member of the fi rst NSAB, admitted that the document was produced ‘because the Americans were asking for it’.60 According to K. Subrahmanyam, the doctrine was necessary ‘to explain our change in position from anti-nuclear to pro-nuclear’.61 In view of this sentiment, the statement of India’s traditional position in the opening sentence is perhaps unsurprising. However, as W. P. S. Sidhu observed, nuclear doctrines usually deal with the ‘deployment’ of the arsenal; they ‘never advocate abolition’.62 Th e need to square the circle had produced a doctrine that married ‘complete nuclear disarmament’ with ‘nuclear war fi ghting’. Yet, for an intelligentsia still trying to come to terms with the implications of New Delhi’s departure from the rhetoric of nuclear abstinence for India, the verbosity that Sidhu detected in the document was perhaps unavoidable.63 Given the investment in India’s image as a crusader for nuclear disarmament from a position Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 56 Cherian, ‘Playing the Nuclear Card’. 57 Ibid. 58 Chari, ‘India’s Nuclear Doctrine’, p. 125. 59 Ibid., p. 124. 60 Conversation with Professor Matin Zuberi, New Delhi, September 6, 2005. 61 Conversation with K. Subrahmanyam, New Delhi, January 21, 2005. 62 W. P. S. Sidhu, ‘Th is Doctrine is Full of Holes’,Th e Indian Express, September 8, 1999. 63 Ibid. Defending Nuclear India ( 261

of voluntary restraint, any enunciation of a doctrine that did not acknowledge New Delhi’s preference for global disarmament would constitute far too great a break with the past.64 Th e attachment to earlier rhetoric signalled a continuing struggle between two broader images of India based as much on domestic politics and the changes occurring within the borders, as outside. Th e danger, of course, was that in trying to be inclusive — as refl ected in the ambiguous phrasing that clutched at a consensus somehow cobbled together by a group with quite widely diff ering views — the doctrine risked ‘being all things to all people’.65 Th e doctrine was also sharply criticised for its ‘no fi rst use posture’ (NFU), which left unclear, as Sidhu and others pointed out, whether India considered a conventional strike on its nuclear installations a case of fi rst use or not, or even whether an attack on Indian armed forces by other weapons of mass destruction, not on Indian soil, would justify nuclear retaliation.66 Matters were not much clarifi ed when a member of the NSAB declared ‘NFU a fraud’.67 Th ese were questions of substance, which attentive India had until then not meaningfully considered. Yet the sentiment of NFU was of a piece with India’s traditional position of nuclear restraint. Regardless of the anomalies of maintaining this posture, the inclusion of this intent was necessary for India’s self-image. In the words of Air-Commodore Jasjit Singh (a member of the NSAB), India’s doctrine sought ‘to chart a new path’ that rejected the ‘conventional wisdom of other nuclear weapon states’.68 Nevertheless, for opponents of the BJP’s policy of weaponisation, the battle between the logic of self-restraint and of deterrence

64 Professor Varun Sahni was emphatic that, in the Indian context, disarmament had to be mentioned in any document that dealt with nuclear weapons. Conversation with Varun Sahni, New Delhi, September 7, 2005. 65 Bajpai, ‘The Great Indian Nuclear Debate’. Rumours of differences amongst the group leaked out. Some of the younger members apparently

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 considered the convenor, K. Subrahmanyam, for years regarded by attentive India as the country’s leading hawk, too dovelike. Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 481–82. 66 Sidhu, ‘Th is Doctrine is Full of Holes’; Narula, Kremmer, ‘Hasty After- thoughts And A Paper Bomb’. 67 Bharat Karnad, quoted in Narula, Kremmer, ibid. 68 Jasjit Singh, ‘Introduction to “India’s Nuclear Doctrine”’, Background Document at the 49th Pugwash Annual Conference, September 7–13, 1999. 262 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

as practised by other nuclear powers had already been weighted in favour of the latter by the doctrine’s ‘abject acceptance of the cast- off intellectual rags of western nuclear weapons establishments’.69 Nuclear doctrine was now being used to debate not just India’s strategic posture, but much wider ideas about India: the country’s nuclear assets provided the basis for discussing the move from the language of morality to that of realpolitik. It would be a long journey. Th e doctrine also invited much criticism for stating that it would ‘pursue […] credible minimum deterrence’ based on a triad of air-, land- and sea-based assets. Th e very mention of the triad — with the prospect of expensive nuclear powered submarines — triggered a wave of questions about the advisability of India pursuing what was almost certainly a very costly route to deterrence.70 In so doing, the debate was steered back to the familiar ground of the tension between development and security on the security dyad since the triad left open-ended the defi nition of what constituted minimum deterrence.71 Many viewed the doctrine’s commitment to ‘credible minimum deterrence’ as a classic slide into escalating nuclear spending, a nuclear arms race whose ‘crushing burden’ would fall on ‘the ordinary people’.72 As Rear Admiral Raja Menon pointed out, the joining of the concepts of credible and minimum amounted to ‘yoking a horse and a camel together’.73 Explaining why he thought minimum deterrence could not be based on aircraft, which had high vulnerability in the context of the Indian subcontinent, or indeed why NFU did not lend itself to India’s declared land-based assets at the time (with a sea-based deterrent still many years in the future), he argued, as did several others who had commented on the document, that a proper debate on India’s nuclear posture was imperative. Th e government had declared that the purpose of the document was to invite comment and discussion: in the acknowledgement that attentive India needed to take cognisance of its nuclear status, India was fi nally learning to behave like a ‘normal’ nuclear power. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

69 N. Ram, Editorial, ‘Dreaming India’s Future’, Frontline, September 10, 1999. 70 Ramachandran, ‘Unclear Nuclear Identity’; Ramdas, ‘Arrogant Nuclearism’. Ramachandran had dismissed the doctrine as ‘not worth the paper it was written on’, given the contradictions and lack of clarity he perceived in it. 71 M. V. Ramana, ‘A Recipe for Disaster’, Th e Hindu, September 9, 1999. 72 Th e CPI(M)’s Prakash Karat, quoted in Cherian, ‘Playing the Nuclear Card’. 73 Raja Menon, ‘Th e Nuclear Doctrine’, Th e Times of India, August 26, 1999. Defending Nuclear India ( 263

Th e learning process remained fi tful, however. Lt-General (retd) Raghavan wrote almost a year later about the lack of movement on a fi nal nuclear doctrine after the document was released. 74 It did not help that the government tried to distance itself from the document, following the harsh criticism with which it had been received.75 Th e compulsions of electoral politics also played a part: despite the BJP’s attempts to highlight the victory in Kargil and its self-appointed image as the guardians of Indian security, the elections were mainly contested on matters concerning the economy, and state and local-level politics.76 Th ough the NDA returned to power with a larger share of parliamentary seats, this majority rested on the BJP having gathered new allies rather than attracting greater mass support.77 National security was not a priority and the debate over the draft nuclear doctrine was overtaken by domestic concerns. Indeed, Parliament never debated the draft doctrine (or even the fi nal one announced by the BJP in January 2003).78 Further, as Raghavan remarked, since the government had ‘neither accepted nor rejected’ dIND, there was little clarity on the form and bases of India’s nuclear posture.79 In addition to the scientifi c doubts that had been raised about the credibility of the test results, India’s foreign policy still did not refl ect any serious acknowledgement that the government had declared India a nuclear weapons power. Moreover, there had been little movement on updating delivery mechanisms for the ‘bombs’ that India had demonstrated. As Raghavan pointed out, a ‘credible deterrent’ needs more than ‘mere bombs’. Yet, interestingly, he feared the debate now suff ered from too much attention to nuclear matters: remarking on the ‘cacophony’ that had overtaken discussions on policy issues, he urged for the establishment of ‘an apex nuclear policy establishment which can speak solely, authoritatively and only when in the interest of policy’.80

74 V. R. Raghavan, ‘Whither Nuclear Policy?’, Th e Hindu, July 1, 2000. 75 Tellis, India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture, pp. 254–55; C. Raja Mohan, ‘Interview with Jaswant Singh, Minister of External Affairs’, The Hindu, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 November 29, 1999. 76 Devesh Kapur, ‘India in 1999’, Asian Survey XL:1, p. 198. 77 Yogendra Yadav, Sanjay Kumar, ‘Interpreting the Mandate’, Frontline, November 5, 1999. 78 Inder Malhotra, ‘Doubts Over N-Deal’, The Tribune (Chandigarh), August 12, 2005. 79 Raghavan, ‘Whither Nuclear Policy?’. 80 Ibid. 264 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Th e cacophony, however, produced some results. Apparently stung by domestic criticism over the lack of clarity on some issues, and perhaps more importantly, nudged by Western powers to produce a coherent, credible doctrine after the massive troop mobilisation along the international border with Pakistan and the LoC in 2002, which renewed fears of a nuclear war in the subcontinent, the government’s Cabinet Committee on Security announced the broad out- line of the Nuclear Command Authority and a fi nal nuclear doctrine in January 2003.81 For some critics, this was long overdue, even if the fi nal doctrine did not fully address the ‘strategic gap’ between the doctrines of India and Pakistan — a gap caused by Indian declarations of restraint when it came to contemplating the use of nuclear weapons, in contrast to Pakistan’s declared intention to use nuclear weapons early in case of a confl ict.82 Yet, some criticism of the dIND remained valid; the fi nal announcement on doctrine essentially confi rmed the 1999 version, with the exception that India’s pledge on NFU was modifi ed to threaten nuclear retaliation for any attack by chemical, biological and nuclear weapons on India or on Indian forces anywhere.83 Yet the emphasis on not initiat- ing a nuclear exchange remained central to the fi nal doctrine, thereby still calling into question New Delhi’s will to use its atomic arsenal at all, or the credibility of its threat to absorb a fi rst strike and retaliate massively.84 At the same time, the old questions of aff ordability of a triad and the mechanics of maintaining a credible minimum deterrent in circumstances of a no fi rst use pledge remained.85 Th ese however, received less attention than the problems of establishing a Strategic Forces Command (tasked with operating India’s nuclear assets, under civilian control), as promised by the January 4 announcement.86

81 C. Raja Mohan, ‘Nuclear Command Authority Comes into Being’, Th e Hindu, January 5, 2003, p. 1; John Cherian, ‘Th e Nuclear Button’, , January 31,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Frontline 2003. Th e mobilisation was authorised in response to a terrorist attack on the Parliament on December 13, 2001, for which India blamed Pakistan. 82 Rear Admiral Raja Menon, quoted in V. Sudarshan, Ranjit Bhushan, ‘Virility Unstuck’, Outlook, May 19, 2003. 83 Mohan, ‘Nuclear Command Authority Comes into Being’. 84 W. P. S. Sidhu, ‘A Strategic Mis-Step?’, Th e Hindu, January 13, 2003. 85 Achin Vanaik, ‘A Degenerating Nuclear Logic’, Th e Hindu, January 23, 2003. 86 Lt-General V. R. Raghavan, ‘Nuclear Building Blocks’, The Hindu, January 7, 2003. Defending Nuclear India ( 265

Th e government chose not to engage with these criticisms publicly. In any case, attention was soon diverted back to the ‘war of words between New Delhi and Islamabad’ over the deployment of Indian (and Pakistani) troops along the border, which had formed the backdrop for the announcement on the fi nal doctrine.87 In the face of the more immediate threat, South Block’s domestic audience was willing to postpone any meaningful engagement with doctrinal questions. Th ese more long-term issues would only really surface again, briefl y, in 2005, with the civilian nuclear energy deal between India and the United States, only to be overtaken by politics yet again.88 Conclusion Th e tests at Pokharan brought to a close one set of deliberations about India’s nuclear weapons policy. Once New Delhi came out of the atomic closet, the defi ning of the idea of India now had to factor in attempts to create a nuclear weapon state. Th e results were mixed as, in the words of one analyst, India’s ‘reluctance to play the power game and a profound ambivalence towards nuclear weapons’ were bound to impinge on attempts to factor in nuclear weapons in ideas about foreign and defence policy.89 Th ere remained a disconnect between the declaration of India’s nuclear weapons capabilities and the assimilation of the concept of nuclear India within the negotiation of the overarching idea of India. Th e debates generated by Kargil and the draft nuclear doctrine which followed soon after illustrate this disjunction well. While attentive India was willing to grant that the declared possession of nuclear weapons on the subcontinent might well have encouraged Pakistani military adventurism in the hope that India would be deterred from responding with decisive force, the discussion generally seemed to falter at the threshold of acknowledging that these calculations were based on the assumption that nuclear weapons might actually be used. For attentive India, the main attributes of nuclear weapons were political. Accordingly, Kargil exemplifi ed the political management of hostilities between two neighbours whose nuclear weapons could at- Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 tract international attention to India’s Achilles heel, Kashmir. Unsurprisingly, in these circumstances, the release of the draft nuclear doctrine soon after the declaration of victory in Ladakh did not

87 Cherian, ‘Th e Nuclear Button’. 88 Malhotra, ‘Doubts over N-Deal’. 89 Joshi, ‘From Technology Demonstration to Assured Retaliation’. 266 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

lead to much discussion on how the doctrine addressed the most recent confl ict, the postmortem of which was being conducted at that time. At a basic level, Kargil fell within the ambit of conventional military security where the main questions related to the conduct of operations and the responsibility for letting the intrusions occur at all — most of which discussions could have taken place in pre-Pokharan II India as well. Th e draft nuclear doctrine, on the other hand, was debated as it was presented — as a set of principles, not quite related to the actual defence of the borders, though there was some discussion of how achieving the nuclear India presented in this document would aff ect defi nitions of national security. Yet, the thread on national security and its relationship to a ‘few bombs’ was never adequately followed. Unfortunately, the doctrine became hostage to domestic politics. Th e sense of engagement with nuclear policy can be judged from the fact that it took New Delhi three-and-a-half years to eventually release an offi cial nuclear doctrine. In the end, both Kargil and the draft doctrine were employed in pulling the idea of India up the identity dyad into the quadrant of exceptionalism just when the nuclear tests appeared to attract it towards the opposite pole symbolising India’s attempt to behave like all other states in the system. Th is was neither Nehruvian exceptionalism nor a continuation of Gandhi’s legacy, both of which ideas had sustained the defi ning and defending of the state for almost 50 years. Instead, the contradictions of the past 24 years overshadowed the exercise of negotiating nuclear India so that New Delhi could still possess nuclear weapons while not contemplating their use, could continue to argue for disarmament and yet refuse to give up the arsenal it had just demonstrated and all the while work towards carving out a new global space for nuclear India.

M Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Conclusion: The Idea of Nuclear India

India must break with much of her past and not allow it to dominate the present. […] But that does not mean a break with, or a forgetting of, the vital and life-giving in that past. […] If India forgets them she will no longer remain India and much that has made her our joy and pride will cease to be. Jawaharlal Nehru, 19461

For attentive India, India’s possession of nuclear weapons matters not because the country needs them to protect its territorial integrity but because they defend a certain political idea of India that had been negotiated during discussions of its foreign, defence and economic policies in the 1990s. Statistically, attentive India — a collective of educated, urban, largely English speaking middle-and upper-middle class — may be tiny, but its views are signifi cant for they cannot be ignored by the government. In an increasingly interconnected world, moreover, these opinions are also picked up by an international audience as an indication of domestic public opinion. Hence the fact that this group by and large approved of the BJP’s decision to conduct nuclear tests within weeks of it assuming offi ce at the head of a tenuous coalition and without eliciting any wider views on a policy that would constitute a drastic break with India’s past of active disarmament diplomacy, needs to be probed. As this study has argued, attentive India’s approval of the tests refl ects an enthusiasm for the BJP having defi ed international non-proliferation pressure to assert New Delhi’s right to set its own foreign and defence policies. Yet the connection between nuclear defi ance and sovereignty

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 did not occur spontaneously. It had been cultivated during the freewheeling, often impassioned debates on India’s nuclear ‘option’ in the 1990s, as attentive India sought to make sense of a rapidly changing international context which exacerbated the tensions in a fragmenting

1 Nehru, Discovery of India, p. 620. 268 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

domestic political environment, against which backdrop the old Nehruvian ideas about the country’s international and domestic goals seemed outdated and inadequate. Th e themes that surfaced in discussing the pros and cons of ‘going nuclear’ had been established in the discussions that sought to defi ne the ‘idea of India’ as the country approached its fi ftieth anniversary of independence. In light of the lively exchange of views on India’s nuclear future which fed into the plebiscitary politics that supports the country’s untidy democracy, it is surprising that little scholarship has concentrated on the debate on India’s nuclear policy. Th is is especially so since nuclear policy had been debated despite the offi cial veil of secrecy that shrouded India’s intentions and capabilities, which Pokharan II removed. Yet most research has focussed on explaining nuclear policy, which falls within the well-established fi eld in international relations on ‘why states build the bomb’. Th ese studies, however, focus on factors infl uencing those with the power to authorise or develop nuclear weapons programmes without examining how these individuals justify their policies, especially in a democracy that has debated the consequences of ‘going nuclear’, however basic those discussions might have been. Th is study has attempted to address this gap. It has sought a greater understanding of what nuclear weapons signify for attentive India and what this might mean for the future of New Delhi’s foreign and defence policies. So, while this work has been based in the fi eld of international relations, the nature of the study has pushed it into overlapping with the fi eld of politics in examining the nature of democratic debate on India’s defence and foreign policy. Nuclear policy sits at the cusp where offi cial India’s inherited imperial tradition of maintaining tight control over certain areas of foreign and defence policy rubs up against the democratic impulse established with the freedom movement and cemented with the Constitution that was framed thereafter. As a result, the nuclear debate could only fl ourish when it received offi cial encouragement, as occurred when the government began to publicly discuss the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), or when the veil of secrecy was fi nally removed with the tests of 1998. And yet it is precisely this offi cial control over information pertaining to the nuclear programme which shows the limits of civil society and attentive India’s ability to infl u- ence a key area of policy. Further, this is an area completely unrelated to the democratic apparatus of accountability: quite simply, governments have not been voted into and out of power on the basis of their nuclear policy, though this might be changing now, after 60 years of independence. Conclusion ( 269

At a basic level, this work is also a history of the imagining and creating of a defence policy for India, though this exercise has been contained largely within the greater project of creating an idea of India. Accord- ingly, this historical study has traced the manner in which nuclear policy entered the mainstream at a time of considerable fl ux in India’s national politics and external relations, all of which necessitated a re-imaging of the country’s global and domestic role. Th e nuclear debate is now part of established political life in India. Th is is a remarkable development, given that until 1998, no government’s electoral fortunes were infl uenced by its nuclear policies. After Pokharan II, however, no political party could seriously advocate unilateral nuclear disarmament for India and hope to win an election. Th is is a telling commentary both on how far India has traversed since Nehru’s passionate test-ban advocacy and on the role that democracy might play in retarding disarmament. Further, in September–October 2007, the Congress-led government of Dr Manmohan Singh teetered precariously as it faced opposition from most other political parties, including some of its coalition allies, over the proposed civil nuclear co-operation agreement that it was trying to conclude with the United States.2 Th at the government could be brought down on a foreign policy issue was remarkable enough, for it would have been a fi rst. Th at the foreign policy in question involved India’s nuclear programme made this development even more extraordinary: this was a far cry from the normal domestic issues that had ruled the electoral fortunes of previous governments.3 It would appear that nuclear policy is now fi rmly entrenched in Indian plebiscitary politics.

2 Th e government chose to face a conﬁ dence vote on the matter the following July, after the Left stated its inability to continue its support to the government because of this proposed deal. Th e US–India Civil Nuclear Co-operation Initiative, ﬁ rst mentioned on July 18, 2005, during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s state visit to Washington DC would, if implemented, allow full civil

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 nuclear energy co-operation and trade between the two countries, and between India and the other members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, in return for India accepting IAEA safeguards on the technology and material so provided. 3 Opposition to the deal has ranged from fears of too close a relationship with the US, which might give Washington undue inﬂ uence over New Delhi’s foreign policy, to a reluctance to open up some of India’s nuclear reactors to IAEA inspections, to opposition to any implied limits on India’s nuclear freedom, for example, in the ﬁ eld of further nuclear tests. 270 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Th e actual picture is slightly more nuanced. While it is true that there appears to be a greater interest in nuclear policy amongst India’s attentive public, the noise over the civil nuclear deal does not refl ect any greater commitment to nuclear weaponisation or a serious understanding of India’s energy needs or even its strategic interests. After all, the country’s nuclear doctrine is still to be debated in Parliament. And yet there has been much opposition to any suggestions that India convert the Vajpayee government’s de facto moratorium on testing (announced immediately after the tests of May 11 and 13, 1998) into a de jure commitment in order to receive the nuclear technology and uranium required to meet the country’s infrastructure needs. Instead, the debate has been politicised. India’s nuclear autonomy is once again being held up as a test of New Delhi’s sovereignty. Indeed, this antipathy to the nuclear deal could have been predicted by the vociferous resistance to any suggestions that India sign the CTBT after the May 1998 tests, as the Vajpyaee government had briefl y considered in an attempt to mend relations with the US and other Western countries. Th e treaty’s perceived inequality and the controversy over its entry-into-force had indelibly sullied it for India’s attentive public. India’s nuclear weapons, then, have come to defi ne a political idea of India. Th ey have been brought into attentive India’s discussions about the future of the country because they provide a shorthand for certain ideas about the country that are now considered important: New Delhi’s sovereignty; its ability to behave as a mature power, in which India’s handling of its nuclear capability is used to demonstrate New Delhi’s restraint and responsibility; and a global role for New Delhi. Th ese associations did not occur automatically or by accident. Th ey emerged through the discussions on India and its future that occurred over the course of the decade examined in this study. Hence the association with India’s sovereignty, invoked intermittently whenever external non-proliferation pressure was brought to bear on New Delhi, was most categorically asserted when India rejected the CTBT on the grounds Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 of protecting India’s sovereign right to decide which treaties it wished to accede to. Attentive India rejected the CTBT in 1996 not because it wanted nuclear weapons, but because it wished to repudiate any hint of external pressure on the country’s nuclear options. As this study shows, the link to restraint surfaced whenever India was asked to come within the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) fold. Indians rejected these requests by stating that their country had demonstrated remarkable prudence and responsibility in the decades Conclusion ( 271

that it had stayed outside the NPT while still possessing demonstrated nuclear capability (after the 1974 ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’). Th is connection was made more explicit after India’s nuclear tests of 1998, and especially during the encounter with Pakistan over Kargil, when Indian moderation in not invoking the nuclear shadow overhanging this engagement between the two declared nuclear neighbours was held up by New Delhi as an example of the country’s responsible behaviour.4 Th ese factors, together with India’s self-declared new status as a nuclear power, buttress New Delhi’s continuing assertions of a global role in a world where its historic claims to global leadership based on non- alignment and exceptionalism were paying decreasing dividends. Th e Kargil confl ict provided an interesting test case for Indian attitudes towards nuclear weapons. Whatever the policy considerations that drove the military campaign to reclaim Indian territory occupied by Pakistani troops, attentive India saw this engagement with Pakistan as yet another conventional military encounter, the recent declarations by the two states of their nuclear weapons status notwithstanding. And, in a curious twist, any Pakistani reminders that the nuclear factor could not be completely dismissed was held up by Indians as further proof of their country’s responsible behaviour and great power status. Regardless of the reasons put forward by some strategic analysts about the nuclear weapons of Pakistan necessitating the nuclear weapons of India, attentive India remained reluctant to focus on the fi ner points of nuclear deterrence maintaining an atomic peace in the subcontinent. By and large, India’s nuclear weapons do not fi gure prominently in discussions that address the military threat posed by Pakistan. China, on the other hand, has been a nuclear challenge for too long in Indian minds to be ignored completely. Yet, here again, Indian attitudes towards the Middle Kingdom focus on managing the Chinese threat through non-military means. In accepting China as a medium- or long-term threat, attentive India seems happy to acquiesce in New Delhi’s treatment of the challenge posed by Beijing’s non-recognition of the state of Arunachal Pradesh and the long disputed land-border as a

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 political problem that should be addressed by engagement and negotiation. Nuclear weapons have no role to play in this arena, even though some analysts arguing for nuclear weapons for India before Pokharan II

4 Th is theme was repeated during the 2001–02 border confrontation between the two countries following the December 2001 terrorist attack on India’s Parliament. 272 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

had cited reports of Chinese nuclear armed missiles aimed at India as provocation enough for the country to develop retaliatory capability. Th is leaves India’s nuclear arsenal defending the country from the nuclear weapons of the fi ve nuclear weapons states as a whole, for India has also declared that its nuclear weapons exist for retaliation only. When India rejected the CTBT, one of the reasons put forward was that the country could not countenance a world in which the possession of nuclear weapons was sanctioned in perpetuity for a few on security grounds while denying that same means of security for other states. For Indians, this was a security argument. But security defi ned not in military but in political terms. For, in the mid-1990s, almost fi ve decades of independence would be grossly devalued if outside powers (most of them either nuclear weapons states or under a nuclear umbrella) could presume to dictate to India how to manage its security by requiring the country to renounce its option to rely on nuclear deterrence and force New Delhi to sign a treaty that it did not wish to accede to. And yet, the shadowy ‘option’ that Indians had defended so vigorously since New Delhi refused to sign the NPT in 1968 was increasingly becoming a burden on India’s foreign policy in the 1990s, not least because few could precisely defi ne just what it was an option to do. Th e nuclear tests removed this ambiguity. Th e celebrations that greeted the tests were in part infl uenced by relief at having released India’s nuclear policy from the limbo in which it had languished for decades. Th e tests thus became a show of defi ance, a celebration that India could decide for itself what its security interests should be. Th ey brought into relief the sentiments that had animated the debates on foreign, economic and security policies as Indians struggled to adapt to the changes ushered in the 1990s, against a backdrop of the looming anniversary of 50 years of independence, in 1997. In short, the idea of nuclear India is not, for the most part, the idea of a nuclear weapons state, with ever bigger, better bombs and missiles to compel military respect. Instead, India’s nuclear arsenal was and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 continues to be co-opted into a political imagining of the country, as attentive India seeks to defi ne a global, regional and domestic role for the country for its next 50 years of independent existence. As a result, Indians will still argue, without irony, that they remain in favour of global nuclear disarmament and would be happy to see the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Indeed, for some, India’s nuclear weapons provide New Delhi with a bargaining chip to work towards nuclear disarmament. Of course, there may be a degree of disingenuity in Conclusion ( 273

this stance, but it should not be dismissed as complete hypocrisy either. Hence it was important for most Indians that the draft nuclear doctrine begin with a preambular statement expressing India’s preference for nuclear disarmament. Equally telling was the importance attached to the country’s declaration of ‘no fi rst use’ of nuclear weapons, even though most strategic analysts pointed out that the pledge might be diffi cult to implement and would, moreover, require an investment in India’s nuclear assets that would militate against the promise of ‘credible minimum deterrence’. Attentive India’s negotiation of nuclear India within the broader idea of India will continue. It will be somewhat diff erent from the earlier idea of India that privileged the legacies of Gandhi and Nehru, but it will not be completely divorced from it either. A Gandhian antipathy towards nuclear weapons has seeped in too deeply for Indians to completely dismiss his ideas, as attentive India’s reluctance to consider the country’s atomic arsenal as weapons of war-fi ghting demonstrates. Th e shadow of Nehru too looms large. India will persevere with championing disarmament as part of its attempts to create a global role for itself based on the presumption of a moral authority that, amongst other things, paradoxically relies on the weapons it seeks to abolish. Th ese contradictions will persist, muddying India’s raucous political debate, now widening to include nuclear policy. In the meantime, the defi ning and defending of the political idea of nuclear India will continue, to create an India to meet the challenges of the next 50 years.

M Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Epilogue

It is perfectly true that in politics, as in most other things, we cannot start with a clean slate. […] We have to take things as they are, whether we like them or not, and to reconcile our idealism with them. Jawaharlal Nehru, 19361

If the 1990s saw the carving out of a certain political space for the accommodation of nuclear weapons in projecting Indian exceptionalism, the following decade saw the testing of the ideas supporting this project against the reality of life on a crowded, pluralistic and divided planet. By the start of the millennium, India’s demonstrated nuclear capability had, for its attentive public, come to be associated with certain ideas of India regarding its sovereignty, its ability to behave as a mature nuclear power and its manifest destiny as a global player. Events in the early 2000s challenged these notions, especially India’s response to the Parliament attack of December 13, 2001, the India–US civil nuclear co-operation agreement and the attacks on Mumbai in late November 2008. Indian reactions to the attack on Parliament put pressure on established ideas of defence and security, and on the country’s image as a restrained and responsible power. Seven years later, its response to an even more audacious attack on Mumbai, which New Delhi once again blamed on Pakistan-based terrorist groups, was a study in contrast. Lessons evidently had been learned from 2001–02, both with regards to the limits (and perhaps the associated liabilities) of nuclear deterrence and the fact that a nuclear India was now not free to decide on matters of war and aggression on its own. Th e guarantors of sovereignty were,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 ironically enough, placing appreciable limits on the country’s freedom of action. Sovereignty remained the touchstone of the nuclear debate during this period, as was amply demonstrated by the discussions over the

1 Jawaharlal Nehru, India and the World, ‘A Letter to an Englishman’ (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1936), p. 186. Epilogue ( 275

nuclear deal with the United States and the subsequent waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to enable nuclear commerce between this consortium and India. Th ese deliberations could have freed attentive India from conventional ways of thinking about foreign and defence policy. Th e reality, however, was disappointing. A discussion that ought to have brought in India’s future energy needs, its global aspirations and its economic trajectory became hijacked by narrow, petty politics that played on the sentiments of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) debates in a world where the United States had demonstrated its willingness to change precisely those rules that had provoked such impassioned responses in the mid-1990s. As the shackles of a decades-old nuclear denial regime fell away after the NSG waiver came through on September 6, 2009, more thoughtful commentators were pointing to the damage sustained by India with its mismanagement of the debate on this deal. Much work would have to be done to prove that the country’s newly won status as a responsible power with advanced nuclear technology and the duties associated with this special category sat easily with traditional ideas about India’s global role. On the whole, what was on display in the decade following Pokharan II in the ongoing, somewhat sporadic debate on nuclear policy was a coming to terms with the limits and potential of India’s newly declared status. It was, moreover, a political discussion, with very little engagement with the military aspect of the country’s atomic arsenal. Th ose who advocated a maximalist nuclear policy found themselves pushed to the margins of the new engagement with India’s nuclear status. However, those who had wrung their hands at the nuclear tests and subsequent declarations of India as a nuclear weapons power could clutch at some hope. What the country has not done since May 1998 is instructive of where nuclear weapons ﬁ t in the overarching idea of India. New Delhi has not embarked on a visibly urgent weaponisation of its nuclear programme; it has not broadened the scope of its two military encounters with Pakistan since 1998; and it has not rejected the nuclear mainstream. Further, India has accepted the demands placed

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 on it of nuclear responsibility by reiterating its moratorium on nuclear testing, ﬁ rst announced by the Vajpayee government immediately after Pokharan II. Taken together, these self-imposed constraints show that nuclear weapons do not dominate the country’s foreign and defence policies but remain subservient to them. In this scheme of thinking, nuclear weapons are a regrettable necessity, a guarantor of certain attributes of India in an uncertain world. 276 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

The Military Reality of Political Weapons India only began to appreciate the military nature of the country’s nuclear arsenal during the mobilisation of the army after the December 13, 2001 attack. Unlike the Kargil encounter, which was short, sharp and ended decisively in India’s favour, Operation Parakram, as the mobilisation came to be known, had a decidedly mixed outcome. For several commentators, the foiled terrorist attack on India’s Parliament — which, had it been successful, could have resulted in much of the country’s top leadership being taken hostage or killed — was India’s ‘9/11’.2 Once it was identifi ed in these terms, however, there were strong public expectations of India’s leadership emulating the United States in launching decisive military action against the perpetrators of the crime, who, India alleged, came from Pakistan and enjoyed the backing of the establishment across the border.3 Almost without any discussion on the options before India, and with virtually no parliamentary debate on the matter, the government mobilised the army to the border with Pakistan. Indeed, veteran Communist Party of India-Marxist, CPI(M), leader, Somnath Chatterjee, complained that the only people that the government seemed to have consulted were the Americans.4 In eff ect, India had given Pakistan an ‘or else’ ultimatum but without the benefi t of thinking through, at least publicly, just what the penalty for not complying would be.

2 Th e epithet was of course reassigned after the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November 2008, but until then, the assault on Parliament represented the most audacious terrorist plot in India to date. 3 Within days of the attempted assault, the Indian government blamed two Pakistan-based groups, the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, for the planning and execution of the attack. See Davinder Kumar, ‘Tracing a Puppet Chain’ Outlook, December 31, 2001. 4 A. G. Noorani, ‘Of War-mongering and Accountability’, Frontline, February 15, 2002. Even the National Security Advisory Board, established supposedly Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 to provide inputs to government on matters such as this, was not consulted. Th e mobilisation was ordered ﬁ ve days after the attack on Parliament — after a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security and on the day that Parliament began debating the assault. Th e Indian army deployed three strike corps (including mechanised and armoured formations) to forward positions along the International Border (IB). Eventually, almost 800,000 troops were mobilised. India also activated air force units and satellite airﬁ elds and shifted the navy’s Eastern Fleet from the Bay of Bengal to the Northern Arabian Sea, where it joined the Western Fleet. Epilogue ( 277

Indeed, the political rhetoric in days following the attack undercut non-military responses available to India. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee set the tone when he declared that ‘a decisive battle would have to take place’; the home minister in turn refused to rule out rumours of planned surgical strikes against terrorist outﬁ ts in Pakistan.5 Th e Union Cabinet, meeting hours after the attack, declared with ‘Texan’ swagger (according to one set of commentators) India’s decision to ‘liquidate the terrorists and their sponsors, wherever they are and whoever they are’.6 Having declared war a serious option, India then chose to snap all communication links with Pakistan — with few people pointing out that nuclear neighbours could not enjoy the luxury of not speaking to each other.7 To underscore the seriousness of the crime, India recalled its high commissioner to Pakistan and cut oﬀ bus and train links. Even during the 1971 war, India had not recalled its envoy to Islamabad.8 However, not all of India sought war. Th e opposition cautioned against precipitate military action, while reiterating its resolve to present a united front on the need to combat terrorism.9 Th e Congress made it clear that it would adopt the role of ‘constructive opposition’ in this matter.10 Most strategic analysts and commentators too were calling for ‘cool heads’ that would keep the nuclear backdrop in focus.11 Even

5 Harish Khare, ‘A Decisive Battle Has to Take Place: PM’, Th e Hindu, December 14, 2001. 6 Raj Chengappa, Shishir Gupta, ‘In Cold Pursuit’, India Today, December 24, 2001. 7 Admiral Raja Menon had argued a year and a half earlier that nuclear neighbours cannot aﬀ ord to stop talks on nuclear arms control. See Raja Menon, ‘Th ese Talks Can’t Wait’, Outlook, August 7, 2000. Indian outrage over the attack, however, evidently trumped other, more restrained considerations as Indians sought to convey the depth of their anger to the international community. After the long mobilisation, however, thoughtful Indians appear to have learned, or have impressed upon them by outside powers, that nuclear neighbours have little choice in the matter of maintaining a diplomatic and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 strategic dialogue. 8 John Cherian, ‘Upping the Ante’, Frontline, January 18, 2002. 9 PTI, ‘Don’t Act in Haste: Opposition’s Advise to Govt’ [sic], December 18, 2001, available on Outlook’s dossier on the Parliament attacks, at http://www. outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=30195 (accessed on March 15, 2009). 10 Bhavdeep Kang, ‘Tempers Tempered’, Outlook, December 31, 2001. 11 Vinod Mehta, ‘Wanted: Cool Heads’, Outlook, December 24, 2001; see also, the Editorials in Frontline, January 4, 2002 and January 18, 2002. 278 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

the government appeared, in the fortnight after the attack, to have rethought its initial bellicose position and talk instead of diplomacy being the fi rst option.12 Yet, in the end, politics appears to have taken over. Legislative assembly elections were due in Uttar Pradesh and the Vajpayee government, for some analysts, had to redeem its reputation after its mishandling of the hostage swap at Kandahar for the passengers of a Kathmandu-bound plane that was hijacked and taken to Afghanistan.13 Further, BJP cadre were calling for decisive military action and RSS affi liated bodies worldwide had begun to lean on the government.14 With the mobilisation gathering pace and, by all appearances, the rhetoric running away from the government, the BJP set the tone for India’s engagement with its neighbour for the better part of a year. All this, moreover, occurred without taking its own coalition partners into confi dence, much less the rest of political India.15 Ironically, the same medium that helped the BJP-led government win the diplomatic war over Kargil — the press, especially 24-hour news programming — may have been its undoing in 2001–02.16 Th e incessant television coverage of the assault on Parliament may have forced the government to appear more decisive than it had grounds to be. In the end, the BJP was allowed to set the parameters of the immediate discussion and then, if not stifl e, certainly dampen dissenting views on its action, citing national interest.

12 Kang, ‘Tempers Tempered’ 13 Brahma Chellaney, ‘Anniversary of Shame’, Hindustan Times, December 31, 2004. On December 24, 1999, a Kathmandu-bound Indian Airlines fl ight was hijacked and eventually fl own to Kandahar. In return for the 154 hostages on board that had been spared thus far, the government eventually agreed to hand over three terrorists, who were then, controversially, accompanied to Kandahar by the then External Aff airs Minister Jaswant Singh. Quite apart from being criticised for negotiating with terrorists, the government later suff ered

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 even more adverse press when it turned out that one of the released hijackers was behind the Parliament attack. 14 ‘Rivals in Hawkhood’, Outlook, December 31, 2001. A. G. Noorani argued convincingly that the deployment was decided on by the BJP alone, instead of by the coalition government, which by then was faltering under the strain of its internal contradictions. See Noorani, ‘Of War-mongering’. 15 Noorani, Ibid. 16 P. R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema and Stephen P. Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process: American Engagement in South Asia (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2008). Epilogue ( 279

Further, if, as was reported, the nuclear question was indeed discussed ‘threadbare’ at a high-level meeting of ministers, bureaucrats and experts chaired by the prime minister soon after the attack, the issue was pushed to the background, not to be discussed in any meaningful manner in Parliament for weeks.17 Publicly, the image put forward by the Vajpayee government by the end of December was that restraint had not worked to India’s advantage; now was the time for New Delhi to use its military might to compel Pakistan to clamp down on cross-border terrorism.18 As Raja Mohan observed a few months later, New Delhi was using Pakistan’s strategy of playing up the risks of nuclear war to its advantage. Now it was New Delhi who emphasised the dangers — albeit ‘subtly’ — of a nuclear war to induce the international community to lean on Pakistan to stop such terrorism.19 Yet, New Delhi had not entirely given up its self-image of the responsible nuclear power — an idea which had percolated into Indian ideas of self over decades of nuclear capability and then possession. Taking the two strands together, India was trying to play the nuclear card responsibly, with predictably disastrous results. As New Delhi learned, it could not play both games simultaneously — the threat, however subtle, of a nuclear fl ashpoint came at the expense of its image as a restrained power. The Problem of Multiple Audiences in an Interconnected World In eff ect, the BJP had come up against the problem of addressing three audiences in a democracy where, ironically enough, the media was largely toeing the government line.20 To its domestic constituency, angered by the assault on one of the most potent symbols of the republic, the government had to signal its own outrage and resolve to bring the perpetrators to book. Th e government’s message to Pakistan was that it meant business and that it would resort to military action if Islamabad did not comply with New Delhi’s wishes. But to the United States and the rest of the international community, New Delhi was keen to convey Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 17 Ranjit Bhushan, ‘Defending Restraint’, Outlook, December 31, 2001. 18 V. Sudarshan, ‘Talk Th e Talk, Walk The Walk’, Outlook, January 21, 2002. 19 C. Raja Mohan, ‘Drawing America into Kashmir’, Th e Hindu, June 6, 2002. 20 See also, Sumit Ganguly and Devin T. Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry: India- Pakistan Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons (New Delhi: Oxford 2005), 172ff ; and Sudarshan, ‘Talk Th e Talk…’ 280 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

the message that war against a nuclear backdrop was not its fi rst choice and that it would much rather that Pakistan was forced, to halt support for terrorism. In eff ect, the government was saying three things to three audiences: it would take the necessary action, diplomatic or otherwise; it was prepared to go to war; and it did not wish to go to war and wanted to be restrained. Th e result was confusion. Domestically, the country wondered at the effi cacy of mobilising the army and putting it on high alert without, apparently, planning to go to war.21 Th e voices now being heard above the government’s rhetoric made it increasingly clear that war could not seriously be considered because of nuclear weapons. As General Raghavan explained, the deployment might have off ered the limited utility of leaning on General Musharraf to declare in his public address of January 12, 2002 that he would not allow Pakistani soil to be used for terrorism anywhere in the world, and to ban the two terrorist organisations that India blamed for the attack on Parliament.22 Beyond that the mobilisation could not have served any other purpose since war as an ‘option […] never really existed’.23 Besides, as senior Congress leader and Member of Parliament (MP), Pranab Mukherjee argued in Parliament on January 12, with nuclear weapons on the subcontinent, India was in eff ect not free to act on its own. He reminded his colleagues that the permanent fi ve members of the UN Security Council were unlikely to allow two nuclear powers to descend into war.24 With war being ruled out as a viable choice, the purpose of the deployment came under further scrutiny. When pushed, the government was unable to defi ne the concrete goals that were to be reached with the mobilisation, leading most observers, inside and outside politics, to conclude that it was primarily aimed at infl uencing the outcome of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections by portraying the BJP as the only party who took national security seriously.25 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

21 V. Sudarshan, ‘How Long is Too Long?’, Outlook, March 18, 2002. 22 Lt-General V. R. Raghavan, quoted in Ibid.; for more on Musharraf’s speech, see B. Muralidhar Reddy, ‘Musharraf Bans Lashkar, Jaish; invites Vajpayee for Talks’, Th e Hindu, January 13, 2002. 23 Sudarshan, ‘How Long …’ 24 Noorani, ‘Of War-mongering’. 25 Sudarshan, ‘How Long…’ Epilogue ( 281

In eff ect, politics as usual could not be played against a nuclear backdrop, even though the BJP were allowed to get away with it initially. Th e prime minister, home minister, defence minister and the Army Chief (acting, it was widely felt, after an affi rmative nod from South Block) all spoke loosely of nuclear war, if it came to that. As A. G. Noorani pointed out, the prime minister and the defence minister were not even criticised, in his opinion, for their cavalier attitude towards nuclear weapons and war.26 While campaigning for the assembly elections, the prime minister had invoked ‘whatever weapon was available’ for India’s ‘self-defence’; the defence minister had spoken of being able to ‘take a [nuclear] strike and then hit back’.27 Th ough the government quickly distanced itself from Army Chief General Padmanabhan’s January 11, 2002 declaration that Pakistan would not survive if it chose to launch a nuclear attack on India, most analysts felt that he would not have spoken at a press conference without government clearance.28 Matching Doctrine to Nuclear Reality Th ese debates only served to remind India just how limited its options were. As General Raghavan explained looking back on the episode, after Operation Parakram, Pakistan and the United States both concluded that India had been deterred by Islamabad’s nuclear weapons. But, he pointed out, contrary to that impression, ‘India’s nuclear weapons imposed caution on New Delhi as well’.29 Before Operation Parakram, there had been much discussion of the government’s position that limited war was still possible in a nuclear environment. For many, this new doctrine was a rejoinder to the criticism that the presence of nuclear weapons had allowed Pakistan to undertake operations such as Kargil, confi dent that the presence of nuclear weapons would prevent India from mounting a decisive military response.30 Th e doctrine was

26 Noorani, ‘Of War-mongering’ 27 Ibid. 28 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Ganguly and Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry, p. 174; Chari, et al., Four Crises and a Peace Process, pp. 177–78. See also, ‘We are Prepared: Army Chief’; and ‘Uncalled for Concerns: Fernandes’, both in Hindu, January 12, 2002, p. 1. 29 Conversation with Lt-General V. R. Raghavan (retd), New Delhi, September 30, 2008. 30 ‘Fernandes Blames US for Duplicity on Terrorism Issue’, Rediﬀ on the Net, January 5, 2000; V. R. Raghavan, ‘Limited War and Nuclear Escalation in South Asia’, Nonproliferation Review (Fall–Winter 2001), at http://cns.miis.edu/npr/ pdf/83ragh.pdf (accessed on September 2, 2009). 282 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

announced by the Defence Minister George Fernandes and elaborated on in a paper presented on behalf of the Army Chief, General V. P. Malik, at a seminar on the ‘Challenges of Limited War’, organised by the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), presumably at the behest of the government.31 George Fernandes later elaborated on the doctrine at a conference on regional security, again convened by the IDSA.32 More thoughtful analysts sharply criticised the government for publicly espousing a potentially destabilising doctrine, the full implications of which may not have been thought through. Judging the doctrine a ‘strategic liability’, Lt-General Raghavan explained that ‘the new strategic realities’ on the subcontinent could not be pushed aside in establishing any new military doctrine. ‘Th e choice of keeping the war limited’, he observed, ‘cannot entirely be in Indian hands’.33 In an article published just before the Parliament attack, General Raghavan elaborated on the fl aws in the doctrine and his doubts about the political leadership’s understanding of the concept it was espousing.34 Th e truth of this was more fully appreciated when India actually had a chance to test the doctrine during Operation Parakram. As retired Army Chief and Member of the Rajya Sabha, General Shankar Roy Chowdhury, explained to his colleagues, the government ‘will have to understand’ that they will be unable to prevent any limited war from escalating into ‘a full-blown conventional confl ict’.35 Perhaps a more devastating dismissal of this concept came from another senior retired offi cer who declared, ‘It’s a meaningless term, good for the seminar circuit’.36

31 ‘Fernandes Does Not Rule Out Conventional War With Pak.’, Th e Hindu, January 5, 2000; V. R. Raghavan, ‘Limited War and Strategic Liability’, Th e Hindu, February 2, 2000. 32

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 C. Raja Mohan, ‘Fernandes Unveils “Limited War” Doctrine’, Th e Hindu, January 25, 2000. 33 V. R. Raghavan, ‘Limited War and Strategic Liability’. 34 Raghavan, ‘Limited War and Nuclear Escalation’. Th ough the paper was published outside India, the salient points of this critique were reproduced in an article in the Indian press: Atul Aneja, ‘Limited War Between India, Pakistan, Can Lead to Nuclear Conﬂ ict’, Th e Hindu, March 26, 2002. 35 Chengappa, Gupta, ‘In Cold Pursuit’. 36 Maj-General (retd) Afsir Karim, quoted in Davinder Kumar, ‘Th e Limits of a Limited War’ Outlook, May 27, 2002. Epilogue ( 283

Sovereignty and Nuclear Weapons Th e frustration at India’s hands being tied by the presence of nuclear weapons came to the fore after the Kaluchak killings of May 14, 2002.37 Th e attack on the families of jawans posted to duty, at a time when the mobilisation was ostensibly meant to compel Pakistan to stop terrorism from within its borders hit a raw nerve across the nation. Th ere were reports in the days after the incident that the army, angered by the apparent lack of political direction, asked for the mobilisation to be taken to its logical conclusion: war with Pakistan.38 Th e passage of days and undisguised international pressure on India stayed New Delhi’s hand. Th ose advocating war had to grapple with not just Pakistan’s nuclear weapons but also America’s serious aversion to having its operations in Afghanistan hampered by the diversion of Pakistani resources to the country’s eastern front.39 Th e decision to test its nuclear weapons was perhaps the last independent choice that New Delhi would have taken in this fi eld. Hereafter, as became clear from the commentary on the mobilisation of 2001–02, the decision to use or not use its atomic weapons would never remain solely in Indian hands.40 In the end, whatever the nuclear calculations that infl uenced the Government of India’s lack of action after Kaluchak, publicly, international pressure prevailed. Th e realisation that, perhaps even more so with its new nuclear status, India remained susceptible to international — specifi cally American — pressure was for one editor ‘both shameful and humiliating’.41 And yet there was no point in fulminating over ‘this paranoid fear of Uncle Sam’, for, as Mehta conceded in a later column, India had in some measure invited concern from other capitals by playing on the nuclear fears of other countries.42 As he reminded his readers, ‘It seems we can live calmly under the nuclear

37 In an audacious attack, three ﬁ dayeen (suicide attackers) walked into an army camp in Jammu, which was largely occupied by the families of jawans,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 and opened ﬁ re, killing 31 people, including a large number of women and children. 38 V. Sudarshan and Ajith Pillai, ‘Game Of Patience’, Outlook, May 27, 2002. 39 Sukumar Muralidharan, ‘Lacking in Strategy’, Frontline, June 7, 2002. 40 See, for example, V. R. Raghavan, ‘India’s Nuclear Balance Sheet’, Th e Hindu, May 7, 2002; Praful Bidwai, ‘Nuclear Ostriches All?’, Frontline, July 5, 2002. 41 Vinod Mehta, ‘Let Us Defy Uncle Sam’, Outlook, June 3, 2002. 42 Ibid.; Vinod Mehta, ‘Take it With Grace’, Outlook, June 17, 2002. 284 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

shadow; the rest of the world cannot’.43 What was becoming clear to those participating in the debate was that, paradoxically, India’s guarantor of sovereignty — that jealously guarded atomic arsenal — was in fact becoming a major constraint on New Delhi’s freedom of manoeuvre. Th ere were other ironies. After Kargil, New Delhi had touted its ‘restraint’ in addressing Pakistani aggression as one of the defi ning characteristics of the new, nuclear India. Once again, the rhetoric of restraint would prove to be a somewhat diffi cult concept to manage successfully, as Indians seem not have to have learned much from New Delhi’s experiences of negotiating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and to some extent, the CTBT. Th e very moderation and maturity that India had cited as proof of its right to nuclear weapons then turned to haunt New Delhi as it weighed up its options after the attack on Parliament.44 And yet, turning its back on restraint risked India being ‘bracketed’ with Pakistan as an ‘unstable’ state.45 Th e damage went deeper than self-image. Th e increasingly aggressive rhetoric after Kaluchak had alarmed the international community enough for several countries, led by the United States, and including the UK, Germany, France and Japan, to issue travel advisories in late- May warning their citizens not only to not travel to India, but also, more seriously, to leave the country if they were already there.46 All non-essential staff of diplomatic missions were evacuated. Quite apart from the damage done to India’s image, these advisories had a serious, measurable eff ect on the economy as tourism and industry — particularly its growing IT industry — were seriously aff ected by the negative press.47 Offi cially, India observed that the American travel advisory was not justifi ed by the conditions on the subcontinent.48 Unoffi cially, Indians

43 Mehta, ‘Take it With Grace’. 44

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Nitin A. Gokhale, ‘Now Th rust, Now Parry’,Outlook , June 3, 2002. 45 Anita Pratap, ‘Choking on Our Own Froth’, Outlook, June 17, 2002. 46 ‘US, UK, Advise 80,000 of Th eir Nationals to Leave India’,Rediff on the Net, May 31, 2002; Sridhar Krishnaswami, ‘Avoid Travel to India’, Th e Hindu, June 1, 2002. 47 Aziz Haniff a, ‘US Travel Advisory Costs India Millions’, India Abroad, June 28, 2002; Preeti Mishra, ‘IT Industry Concerned Over Travel Warnings’, Th e Hindu, June 10, 2002. 48 ‘US Travel Advisory Not Needed: Mansingh’, Rediff on the Net, June 1, 2002. Lalit Mansingh was the Indian Ambassador to Washington at the time. Epilogue ( 285

fumed at what they perceived as ham-handed tactics by the Americans to impose moderation on New Delhi.49 However, more thoughtful analysts pointed out that New Delhi had invited this international response with its ‘brinksmanship’; with nuclear weapons, India simply could not aff ord to not think of the international repercussions of its bellicosity.50 In some ways then, the travel advisories served as a wake-up call, prompting for the fi rst time since the mobilisation a sustained examination of questions of deterrence, nuclear stability, the costs of war, and the options that were eff ectively open to India.51 Until then, the debate had been inward-looking, focussing on the wrongs suff ered by India at the hands of Pakistan, what Indians wanted Pakistan to do, and how India needed to look and behave decisively. To the extent that these deliberations had any external reference points, these required the international community to understand India’s grievances and act in accordance with New Delhi’s wishes. Th ere was little sustained engagement with how New Delhi’s rhetoric might look from the outside. As General Raghavan pointed out, analysts and political commentators in the same Western capitals that India was courting to rein in Pakistan found themselves at a loss to understand what India hoped to gain by risking precipitating a war.52 Even worse for India’s image was South Block’s belief that India could win a war against Pakistan even in the presence of nuclear weapons. As Raghavan concluded, ‘Th at nuclear weapons have made the political leadership confi dent of taking greater military risks instead of avoiding them defi es logic in knowledgeable circles’. Th e result, he pointed out, was ‘a perceptible turning away’ from the earlier impression that India was ‘a stabilising infl uence on the international scene’.53

49 ‘India Welcomes US Decision on Travel Advisory’, Th e Hindu, July 23, 2002. 50 Kanti Bajpai, ‘Foreign Policy Dilemmas’, Seminar, 519, November 2002,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 at http://www.india-seminar.com.2002/519/519%20kanti%20bajpai.htm (accessed on March 25, 2009). 51 Sukumar Muralidharan, ‘Th e Lurking Danger’, and John Cherian, ‘Active Interventions’, both in Frontline, June 21, 2002; Nitin A. Gokhale, Murali Krishnan, ‘Small is Scary’, Outlook, June 10, 2002; Prem Shankar Jha, ‘Mixing Fact and Fission’, Outlook, June 17, 2002. 52 V. R. Raghavan, ‘Losing Strategic Credibility’, Th e Hindu, June 5, 2002. 53 Ibid. 286 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

A Greater Engagement with Defence Th e introspection proved useful in one respect. Th e discussions of India’s options and the mobilisation served to deepen the engagement with defence that had been precipitated by Kargil. Even if this was not the best-informed debate, as some commentators argued, because of biased journalism and the perceived need for the media to be patriotic, the greater volume of coverage on security and defence was still signifi cant.54 To begin with, India was showing a greater willingness to question the government line, albeit quietly. From the start of the mobilisation, thoughtful Indians queried the appropriateness of putting a million men in uniform along a border darkened by a nuclear shadow.55 Th at these muted outpourings did not become a deluge that tested the government’s position is testament to the overriding concern that India somehow had to pull together, that national interest demanded some semblance of unity. Pranab Mukherjee, the then Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, voiced precisely these sentiments when he explained that the Congress was supporting the government only to remove any impression that there was ‘a divergence of views in the political establishment’. However, it did not mean that he did not have doubts about the motives behind the mobilisation which to him seemed too closely geared towards ‘infl uenc[ing] the local elections’ or about the advisability of threatening war in a nuclear environment.56 If political India was going to quash democratic dissent on grounds of national interest, then it was not surprising that the fourth estate, who look to the political establishment for guidance, chose not to seriously challenge the offi cial line. Yet, a debate of sorts had begun. Th e beginnings of this more assertive approach to defence rested on the foundations laid during Kargil. Th is engagement was enough for the government not to take attentive India for granted and to actively court its support. Conventional wisdom had always asserted that India was the superior military power. Indians were

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 now learning that despite the ‘posturing’ of the army high command,

54 Chari, et al., Four Crises and a Peace Process, pp. 186–87; A. G. Noorani, ‘Th e Truth About Kargil’,Frontline , December 5, 2003. 55 Praveen Swami, ‘War and Games’, Frontline, February 15, 2002; Ranjit Bhushan, ‘Defending Restraint’, Murali Krishnan, ‘Just Short Of War’, both in Outlook, December 31, 2001. 56 Noorani, ‘Of War-mongering’. Epilogue ( 287

India’s conventional superiority over Pakistan might not be quite as decisive as they had been led to believe.57 India was also being forced to think of the deployment from the point of view of the army, especially the eff ect that months of uncertainty might have on its oper- ational eff ectiveness.58 Apart from cases of sagging morale amongst the troops stationed on high alert in the punishing desert conditions of Rajasthan during the summer months, there were also signs of increased Pakistani incursions in Kashmir where the troops should have been at their most vigilant.59 It led to conclusions that the state of high alert, coupled with political indecisiveness was taking its toll on the military effi ciency of the force.60 Th ere was another signifi cant breaking of the faith. Until the mobilisation of 2001–02, and the attendant engagement with the possibility of nuclear war, India’s missiles had stood out as the ultimate symbol of nationalist myth-making.61 Despite the delays and false starts of the missile programme, these delivery vehicles had remained bathed

57 Praveen Swami, ‘War and Games’, Raja Menon, ‘Hot Pursuit, Cold Turkey’, Outlook, December 31, 2001. Manoj Joshi in fact argues that all India’s wars with Pakistan have been kept limited geographically, temporally and politically because of Pakistan’s ability to maintain ‘eﬀ ective parity’ with India. Accordingly, India did not go to war with Pakistan in 2002 because it lacked kit and capability. Manoj Joshi, ‘2002 Confrontation: Military and Political Background’, draft paper, supplied by the author. 58 Praveen Swami, ‘Building Confrontation’, Frontline, June 7, 2002. 59 V. Sudarshan, ‘Morale of the Story’, Outlook, November 4, 2002; Praveen Swami, ‘When Pakistan Took Loonda Post’, Frontline, September 13, 2002 and Praveen Swami, ‘Zones of Incursion’, Frontline, September 27, 2002. Incidentally, Chari et al. disagree that morale suﬀ ered during Operation Parakram, but they seem to be the only ones to hold this view. See Chari et al. Four Crises …, p. 162. 60 Priya Sahgal, ‘Fuzzy Signals’, Outlook, June 3, 2002; V. Sudarshan, ‘Mirage 2001–02’ Outlook, November 4, 2002. 61 Interestingly, India’s ‘Missile Man’ was elevated to the top constitutional

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 post in the country when A. P. J. Abdul Kalam became India’s 12th President on June 13, 2002. However, in pushing Kalam’s candidacy, the BJP appeared more enamoured of his being a Muslim than the father of India’s missile programme. Even here, in appointing someone to a sensitive post at an extremely sensitive time, the BJP were inﬂ uenced by the domestic compulsions of having to address the blot on their copybook caused by the riots in Godhra, Gujarat. See Abhik Siddiqui, interview with Sitaram Yechuri, ‘BJP Wants to Whitewash Gujarat’, Outlook, June 24, 2002. 288 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

in the national tricolour, the ultimate indigenous project that showcased Indian brilliance. Th e fl ip side of this argument had been that Pakistan’s missiles had been devalued as borrowed, bought or stolen technology. Now faced with the possibility that those missiles might actually fl y across the border, Indians realised that the provenance of the missiles did not matter as much as their ability to deliver even a single payload.62 Further, analysts were becoming impatient of the traditional offi cial rhetoric that was on display when Pakistan tested a series of missiles at the end of May, during the height of the second phase of tensions following Kaluchak. While the offi cial Indian line proclaimed that these tests did not disturb India, and one missile scientist tried to discount Pakistan’s scientifi c ability by stating that India’s neighbour had demonstrated ‘the technology of label changes’ as the missiles had come from North Korea, strategic analysts in the country were not impressed with these heroics. As one analyst explained, if even a single nuclear tipped missile made it across the border, the fact that they were imported became irrelevant.63 Gradually, discussions about defence began to shed some of their emotional baggage. Th ere was, of course, still some distance to a truly informed debate. For most Indians (helped, it must be said, in this opinion by concerns voiced in Western capitals), a few nuclear devices still equalled a usable deterrent. It is telling that Ashley Tellis’ magisterial work on India’s nuclear posture was published in 2001 to much acclaim and little real understanding.64 Judging by the tiny number of references to the book in the year that followed, few people had the stamina to go through the voluminous tome, and even fewer to digest the implications of his conclusions.65 Despite Tellis’ discussion on India’s nuclear deterrent as a ‘force-in-being’ which, he argues, diff erentiates it from nuclear weapons powers that boast the full paraphernalia of deterrence, Indians remained confi dent that nuclear deterrence would work on the subcontinent because both countries possessed nuclear devices. Th e mechanics of deterrence were still not going to engage Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 attentive India.

62 R. Ramachandran, ‘Missile Match’, Frontline, June 21, 2002. 63 T. S. Subramanian, ‘Missile Manoeuvres’, Frontline, June 21, 2002. 64 Tellis, India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture. 65 K. P. Fabian, ‘A Nuclear Neighbourhood’, Frontline, December 6, 2002. Epilogue ( 289

All in all, from a policy point of view, the mobilisation of 2001–02 was not a success. For some commentators it was, in fact, a ‘disaster’ on a par with India’s 1962 debacle against China.66 Indians were angry at the wastefulness of the whole exercise. Quite apart from the expense — estimated conservatively at Rs 8,000 crore — Operation Parakram also cost 387 army lives in addition to 1,051 injured without a single shot having been fi red across the border.67 Additionally, as some observed, India’s credibility had suff ered with the ‘empty display of force’ that seemed to lack any coherent goals.68 Yet, there may have been some gains for civil society. Most importantly, lessons from 2001–02 had been learned, as was evident from India’s response to the Mumbai terrorist attacks. India had discovered that the government did not always know best when it came to defence, and that a little thoughtful questioning of the government’s position was not necessarily anti-national. However, civil activism can be taken too far. Th is time, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks there was a strong tide of public opinion calling for decisive military action against Pakistan for the carnage wrought in Mumbai. Th e polity had roused itself. But it may be some time before it becomes a reasoned, stabilising force in the country. In the meantime, Indians pondered the legacy of Operation Parakram: the double-edged nature of nuclear weapons possession; the lack of meaningful external support in dealing with India’s internal terrorist problems; and the country’s accountability to the rest of the world in matters of war and peace. The Mumbai Attacks: Learning from the Past When 10 gunmen held India’s fi nancial capital hostage for three days in late November 2008 killing over 170 people, including several for- eigners, and bringing the entire country to a standstill before a horrifi ed domestic and international audience, Indians were quick to declare, once again, that this was India’s ‘9/11’. Yet India’s response to the attacks was a study in contrast to what occurred in 2001. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 66 Sudarshan, ‘Mirage 2001/02’. 67 Murali Krishnan, Chander Suta Dogra, ‘Burden of Peace’, Outlook, May 19, 2003; see also, Ganguly and Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry, p. 168. Th e fi gures for 2001–02 were later revised to 682 soldiers killed, an offi cial cost of Rs 700 crore, which, unoffi cially, could have been as high as Rs 6,000 crore. See Pranay Sharma, ‘Words in the Sheath’, Outlook, December 15, 2008. 68 Chellaney, ‘Anniversary of Shame’. 290 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Initially, there were furious public calls for military action. Indeed, the degree of anger was quite unprecedented in a city that appeared inured to violence after countless major terrorist attacks.69 Th ough some observers attributed the heightened sense of outrage to the fact that the elite were targeted with attacks on two of Mumbai’s most famous hotels, the anger actually cut across class lines.70 Th e audacity of the crime and the growing evidence that it had originated from across the country’s border led to an increasing sense of vulnerability and frustration that India’s nuclear status (newly burnished with the waiver from the NSG in September that affi rmed India’s entitlement to be held to the same rights and responsibilities as the fi ve nuclear weapons states) did nothing to assuage. So strident was civil society’s anger that Muhammad Saleem of the CPI(M) was led to observe in Parliament that unlike in 2001, when the government had steered the discussion on Operation Parakram with the media following, this time ‘it is the media which is leading the way and wants the government to follow it’.71 Th e culture of talking heads may have been moving towards its logical — if irrational — conclusion in a free-wheeling democracy where 24-hour news programming had airtime to fi ll. However, the debate veered away from talk of war after the initial outburst, partly because the government fi rmly steered the discourse down the path of diplomacy and partly because India had digested the lessons of 2001–02. After an initial hiccup in mid-December when the Minister of External Aff airs Pranab Mukherjee told a conference of India’s ambassadors and high commissioners that India would ‘take all measures necessary’, leading to fears of military action, ‘restraint’ became the watchword governing India’s response.72 Inci- dentally, this was the fi rst time since 1969 that a conference of all India’s

69 Smruti Koppikar, ‘Vocal Demands’, Outlook, December 15, 2008. Th ere have been several major terrorist attacks in and around Mumbai in the past two decades, including two in which the number of people killed exceeded Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 those who fell in the November 2008 attack. On July 11, 2006, seven bombs exploded in crowded commuter trains during the evening rush hour, killing 200 and injuring 700. Before that, on March 12, 1993, 257 people were killed and 1,000 injured by 15 co-ordinated bomb blasts at some of Mumbai’s most famous and crowded buildings, including the stock exchange. Th is is in addition to communal riots that have periodically engulfed the city. 70 Ibid., Ajith Pillai, ‘Bombay, Duck’, Outlook, December 15, 2008. 71 A. G. Noorani, ‘Pakistan’s Burden’, Frontline, January 16, 2009. 72 Sandeep Dikshit, ‘Pakistan Back to its Old Ways: Pranab’, Hindu, December 23, 2008; John Cherian, ‘Talking Tough’. Epilogue ( 291

heads of missions had been convened, an indication of how seriously the government took diplomacy this time. Further, the minister’s words were quickly moderated by the prime minister who ruled out war the following day.73 Indeed, after Pakistan had accepted on February 12 that ‘some part’ of the Mumbai attacks may have been planned on Pakistani soil, marking a substantial departure from its earlier stance, Mr Mukherjee declared to Parliament that war with Pakistan had ‘never’ been India’s ‘intention’.74 After the Mumbai attacks, India worked all ‘diplomatic levers’ at its disposal to get the international community to put pressure on Pakistan to accept that the attacks had been planned there.75 Th is time, however, it did not have to raise the threat of war because Pakistan did that for New Delhi, complaining of India’s war-mongering to Washington. Islamabad’s words and accompanying threat to move its troops to its eastern front to counter a possible Indian strike raised the nuclear spectre abroad, causing a spate of high-level diplomatic visits led by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Once again, the question of a nuclear conﬂ agration was more of a concern outside the subcontinent than within, as India was more irritated than worried by the prospect of Pakistan raising military stakes over this episode.76 Th at said, this time India did not want to play the war card, domestically or internationally. Domestically, Operation Parakram had proved that mobilisation achieved very little at a high cost, economically and in terms of credibility. Internationally, war could dilute sympathy for India as also jeopardise its image after it had just about man-aged to assert itself independently as an economic and diplomatic force for stability regionally and globally.77 Political India was very vocal in rejecting war as an option — with some members of the BJP-led NDA

73 Cherian, ‘Talking Tough’. 74 PTI, ‘War with Pak was Never Our Intention: Pranab’, February 18,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 2009. 75 Pranay Sharma, ‘Words in the Sheath’, Outlook, December 15, 2009. 76 India’s minister of external aﬀ airs referred to the ‘prevarication, denial, diversionary tactics and misplaced sense of victimhood’ that Pakistan used to deﬂ ect attention from its culpability. Pranab Mukherjee, Suo Motu statement in Parliament on February 13, 2009, at Outlookindia.com, http://www. outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20090213&fname=pranab&sid=1&pn=1 (accessed on March 25, 2009). 77 Ibid. 292 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

publicly stating a change of heart — and bureaucratic India proved equally forthcoming in its views, albeit off -the-record.78 Gradually, attentive India hewed to this line of thinking. Th e initial calls for strong retaliatory action against Pakistan were channelled into anger at the domestic security lapses that allowed the attack to occur.79 Old habits, would, however, die a slow death. As one observer pointed out, the solutions brought out in the media (he seems to be referring more to television than print media) were notably lacking in substance. Th ey ranged from ‘replay[ing] Operation Parakram as if that was a resounding success’, to suggesting diplomatic retaliatory measures such as abrogating the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, the one working agreement between the two countries that moreover had the international community and the World Bank as stakeholders in its success.80 Th ere seemed to be little constructive engagement with getting Pakistan to comply with India’s wishes without sparking a military confrontation. Arguments advocating a calm response that took into account Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and the unpredictability of military action, however limited, against a nuclear neighbour were in short supply. Even for the Editor of Outlook, the more important fact for India was the need to marshal its evidence of Pakistani involvement in the crime to convince the US and other Western nations of Pakistan’s culpability. Pakistan’s ‘dreaded bomb’ was of secondary importance, though to his credit he does briefl y touch upon the fact that escalation control in a limited military encounter might not lie with New Delhi.81 Now, more than ever, it was important to court world opinion in India’s favour, to show that an India with nuclear weapons acted responsibly and with restraint. It was a study in contrast to the earlier image of India after the Parliament attack: then, an India with nuclear weapons could not be expected to hold itself back indefi nitely. Political India also had to walk a tightrope in managing domestic expectations of what the international community could and would Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

78 ‘“I Oppose Military Action. I Backed Operation Parakram, Lost Polls”’, Outlook, December 15, 2008. Th e quote is Farooq Abdullah’s. See interview with Jaswant Singh, ‘“Well I Would Certainly Not Defend Operation Parakram”’, Outlook, March 2, 2009. Also see, Sharma, ‘Words in the Sheath’. 79 Koppikar, ‘Vocal Demands’. 80 A. G. Noorani, ‘Diplomacy and the Mumbai Attacks’, Frontline, February 13, 2009. 81 Vinod Mehta, ‘Look Before Your Leap’, Outlook, December 15, 2008. Epilogue ( 293

deliver. Operation Parakram had made it clear that India could not play the nuclear card, however indirectly, without it backfi ring to damage India’s image. If the United States and other Western nations chose to act — and there was extensive intelligence sharing between the United States and India — it would be because these countries perceived terrorism to be a common threat, which had in fact resulted in several of their citizens being killed in the Mumbai attacks as well.82 Yet, as political India reminded the rest of the country, this help could not be taken for granted. In the fi nal analysis, India was on its own in dealing with the problem of Pakistani-sponsored terrorism and it was up to New Delhi to come up with some viable and responsible resolution to this problem.83 Th e solution probably lay in quiet and fi rm diplomacy, yet in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, with the mass public (those who would, after all, be voting in a few months for the next Government of India) wanting visible action, the government found it had few options to bank on. Yet military action, however limited, had to be ruled out because the nuclear backdrop could not be wished away either. In fact, the immediate period saw the discarding of yet another military doctrine created, to all appearances, to deal with just such a situation. Th e Indian army’s ‘Cold Start’ doctrine was published in April 2004. Despite the army saying it did not want to divulge too many details, enough information was released to let it be known that the military was creating eight ‘integrated battle groups’ drawn from all three forces to be deployable at very short notice to achieve limited goals within enemy territory.84 Th is doctrine had become necessary, army sources leaked, because of the time it took India to mobilise, which allowed the international community to intervene, as occured in 2001–02, before the country could take any action against terrorist groups.85 Yet, when faced with the situation where the doctrine might have been called into action — to take out terrorist training camps in Pakistan administered Kashmir, or the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s headquarters in Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 82 Praful Bidwai, ‘India Must Decide’ Frontline, March 13, 2009. 83 Cherian, ‘Talking Tough’; ‘“Well I Would Certainly Not Defend Operation Parakram”’. 84 ‘“Cold Start” to New War Doctrine’, Times of India, April 14, 2004. Th e exercises to test this doctrine, held a year later, were similarly well reported. 85 Ibid., Sujan Dutta, ‘“Cold Start”’ in War Game’, Telegraph (Calcutta), March 7, 2008. 294 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Muridke, outside Lahore — those advocating Cold Start fell silent.86 As one observer explained, when pushed, the proponents of this doctrine could not explain how such ‘surgical strikes’ or limited action would not lead to ‘conventional escalation’.87 Against a nuclear backdrop, India really did not have much choice but to depend on diplomacy. In the end, restraint became a necessity. Even at the height of India’s frustration with Pakistan when it discounted or ignored the dossier of evidence that India had provided, before accepting that ‘some part’ of the plot might have been hatched on its soil, Indians realised the futility of bellicose statements or actions. Writing a month earlier, Siddharth Varadarajan had observed that ‘What the government has said and done so far has been measured and correct. It has been mindful of the responsibility and restraint with which the world expects India to conduct itself’.88 Restraint may have been imposed on India by its nuclear weapons, but Indians could still make a virtue out of necessity. India’s response to the Mumbai attacks showed that the project of imagining the next phase of the country’s history, that of a mature, stable nuclear power, had clearly begun. Playing Politics with Military Capability Th e idea of nuclear India was tested during the negotiation of the civil nuclear cooperation agreement between India and the United States, involving, along the way, a successful application for a waiver from the NSG that would allow nuclear commerce between the members of this grouping and India.89 Sadly, attentive India’s engagement with the scope and nature of this path-breaking agreement over the three and a half years it took to conclude negotiations shows that its grasp of

86 IBN Live, ‘Army May Use Cold Start Doctrine Against Pak’, December 9, 2008, at http://ibnlive.in.com/news/army-may-use-cold-start-doctrine-against- pak/80160-3-1.html (accessed on March 22, 2009). Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 87 Siddharth Varadarajan, ‘India’s Pakistan Problem is Pakistan’s Problem Too’, Th e Hindu, December 3, 2008. 88 Ibid. 89 Th e agreement consisted of ﬁ ve steps: India had to separate its military nuclear facilities from its civilian ones (the ‘separation plan’, agreed in March 2006); the United States would have to pass domestic legislation that enabled a one-time waiver of Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act to allow nuclear commerce with a country not party to the NPT (this eventually became the Henry J. Hyde Act of December 2006); India had to put its civilian nuclear Epilogue ( 295

the potential and nature of India’s nuclear capability, or indeed, of the deal itself, could be improved upon considerably. Th e US–India Civil Nuclear Co-operation Agreement, fi rst announced on July 18, 2005 during a state visit by the prime minister to the United States, promised ‘full civil nuclear energy cooperation’ between the two countries, with the US recognising the younger democracy as ‘a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology […] [that] should acquire the same benefi ts and advantages as other states’.90 Th e statement also promised that the US President would work with other friendly states ‘to adjust international regimes’ to allow nuclear commerce with India. New Delhi, in return, would agree to voluntarily place its civilian nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. India, according to the document, would then be ‘ready to assume the same responsibilities and practices and acquire the same benefi ts and advantages as other leading countries with advanced nuclear technology, such as the United States’.91 Th e agreement was amazing in its determination to mark a break with a past marred by decades of refl exive suspicion, if not hostility. President Bush was in eff ect agreeing to re-write the rules of the global nuclear order just for India so that it could be recognised as a nuclear weapons state in all but name and could, therefore, enjoy the benefi ts of the small, select club. Far from asking India to give up its nuclear weapons, Bush was proposing to amend the rules of the very club that owed its existence to India’s nuclear weapons ambitions, the NSG. Engaging with the United States Th e initial Indian response was euphoric, even triumphal. As one magazine, not normally given to breathless excitement, wrote in its opening paragraph on the visit:

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 facilities under IAEA safeguards; India had to obtain a waiver from the Nu- clear Suppliers Group (with the help of the US; this came through in September 2008); and ﬁ nally, the US and India could sign a bilateral agreement (the so-called 123 Agreement) on nuclear commerce between the two countries (this was signed in October 2008). 90 Indo-US Joint Statement, July 18, 2005, at http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/ nic/indousjoint.htm (accessed on March 22, 2009). 91 Ibid. 296 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Th ere are moments in history when hyperbole is not enough. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the United States was surely one such, a moment that deﬁ ed expectations, broke orthodoxy and aligned two major forces of the world, one gathering and the other already in place.92

Yet, the years spent as ‘estranged democracies’, in Dennis Kux’s now celebrated phrase, would not fade away easily. Fears soon surfaced about why India was getting so much — a de facto acceptance as the sixth member of the nuclear club with the same obligations as nuclear weapons states — for so little.93 Old suspicions lurked of whether India was being tethered to some greater US foreign and defence policy plan, or worse, if it was being brought into the non-proliferation fold through the back door. Politically, the Left and the Right criticised the deal, though apparently on diff erent grounds. Th e Left raised ‘principled’ objections on the grounds that the agreement compromised the independence of India’s nuclear policy and ostensibly signalled an end to India’s ‘nuclear disarmament policy’.94 It also expressed fears that India may have to pay a heavy price for the promised civilian nuclear cooperation should it come through (for they also doubted the sincerity of the ‘intangible’ promises made by the United States).95 Th e BJP, on the other hand, having prepared the ground for much of this agreement during its time in offi ce, could not apparently accept the kudos going to the Congress. It criticised the announcement for not having obtained recognition for India as a nuclear weapons state, for agreeing to a moratorium on testing (even though it had been announced by their government), and for making specifi c commitments in return for mere ‘promises’. Th e former National Security Adviser, Brajesh Mishra, also questioned the wisdom of signing something that ‘amounts to a cap on the size of New Delhi’s minimum credible deterrent’.96 Strategic analysts criticising the deal questioned India’s moratorium on testing, the agreement to negotiate a fi ssile material cut-off and the acceptance Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

92 Seema Sirohi, ‘To the Power of N’, Outlook, August 1, 2005. 93 N. Ravi, ‘India Will Have the Same Obligations as Nuclear Weapons States: Saran’, Hindu, July 20, 2005; Prem Shankar Jha, ‘Coming of a Nuclear Age’, Outlook, August 1, 2005. 94 John Cherian, ‘Deals and Doubts’, Frontline, August 12, 2005. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. Epilogue ( 297

of what one called ‘a second-class nuclear power’ status. Th e past too returned to haunt some, with fears that India’s dependence on American nuclear fuel could lock the country into a subservient relationship with the United States that could potentially replay the acrimonious dealings over Tarapur, should circumstances require India to act in a way that met with Washington’s disapproval.97 Underlining the criticism from both ends of the spectrum was the question of India having ceded sovereignty. Even though the Left did not approve of the weaponisation of India’s nuclear programme, it railed against the thought of anyone imposing curbs on the country’s ability to refi ne its nuclear arsenal. Th e BJP lamented the loss of India’s freedom to hone its deterrent, and promised that, should it come to power, it would renegotiate the deal to gain more favourable terms. So emotive did the question of sovereignty become that even hard-core strategic analysts, spoke in terms of ‘concessions [made] on national dignity and capability’ under the terms of the July 18 agreement.98 Snuffi ng Out a Debate Th is was a discussion that ought to have touched on India’s domestic energy needs and the means of sustaining a high GDP growth-rate; the requirements of a credible minimum deterrent; and India’s needs as an aspiring global power. Indeed, there was an attempt to start discussing the country’s energy needs. However, it soon became a casualty of the political noise surrounding the agreement.99 Th e Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) devoted its fi rst newsletter, published soon after President George Bush’s visit to India (when the separation plan was agreed upon), to a debate on the benefi ts of nuclear energy and the deal

97 Brahma Chellaney, ‘India Has Sold its Nuclear Soul to the US’, Rediﬀ India Abroad.com, April 27, 2006, at http://www.rediﬀ .com/news/2006/apr/ 27brahma.htm (accessed on March 22, 2009). 98 Ibid. 99 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 See Manpreet Sethi, ‘Go for Nuclear Power’, Th e Times of India, October 24, 2005, and the rejoinder by Suchitra J. Y. in ‘N-energy Not the Best Option’, Times of India, November 17, 2005. Th e prime minister had tried to place the deal before Parliament as an energy security issue, but the Left and the Right shifted the debate to India’s foreign policy. See statement by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to both houses of Parliament on his July 2005 visit to the United States, July 29, 2005, at http://www.outlookindia.com/full/asp?fodname =20050729&fname=manmohan&sid=1&pn=1 (accessed on March 22, 2009). 298 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

for India’s growing energy needs.100 Some, such as R. K. Pachauri, argued in favour of nuclear energy, pointing out that India’s growing energy needs and its current massive shortfall in capacity needed to be met in an environmentally ‘clean’ way that, in addition, freed the country from its dependence on oil.101 Th e environmental lobby, by and large, had thrown its weight behind the deal. Th eir views, however, were opposed in this newsletter, by Suchitra J. Y., a researcher at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, and M. V. Ramana of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, who argued that the environmental and economic costs along with security concerns made nuclear energy an unviable proposition.102 Another article on the potential political costs of the nuclear deal which, while supporting the agreement between the two countries, cautioned India against putting all its energy eggs into the American-sponsored nuclear basket.103 Th ese were valid points and there should have been a bigger debate on India’s energy needs and the best way to meet them. Th ere was also a discussion to be had on the country’s foreign policy in the shadow of a much closer relationship with the United States and how this might aﬀ ect its choices with respect to the Iran–Pakistan–India gas pipeline that was being negotiated when the deal was mooted.104 Unfortunately politics took over. Th e din that ensued with the Left and the Right playing petty, opportunistic politics with India’s foreign and energy policies drowned out all reasoned discussion on the matter.

100 TERI, Energy Security Insights 1:1, March 2006, at www.teriin.org/div/ eissue1march06.pdf (accessed on March 22, 2009). 101 R. K. Pachauri, ‘Nuclear Power: The New Global Interest’, Energy Security Insights 1:1, at www.teriin.org/div/eissue1march06.pdf (accessed on March 22, 2009). Others in favour of nuclear energy included the Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy, Dr Anil Kakodkar, — ‘Securing our emerging energy needs: what nuclear energy can do’, at www.teriin.org/div/ eissue1march06.pdf (accessed on March 22, 2009), and several articles by Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 members of TERI. 102 Suchitra J. Y., M. V. Ramana, ‘Nuclear Power: No Route to Energy Security’, Energy Security Highlights. 1:1, at www.teriin.org/div/eissue1march06.pdf (accessed on March 22, 2009). 103 Siddharth Varadarajan, ‘Looking Beyond the Nuclear Deal’, Energy Security Highlights 1:1, at www.teriin.org/div/eissue1march06.pdf (accessed on March 22, 2009). 104 See Varadarajan’s arguments on this in ‘Looking Beyond the Nuclear Deal’. Epilogue ( 299

The Political Game of Survival Th ough the BJP played a lamentable political game with the nuclear agreement (perhaps the weakness of the BJP’s stand was best brought out by Brajesh Mishra breaking ranks with the party to support the deal in April 2008), the Left ought to bear the lion’s share of blame for hijacking the proposed agreement into the realm of pure politics.105 Since the Left combine supported the UPA without actually joining the government, it was able to hold the agreement to ransom by demanding that the government clear with it every stage of the sequence of steps envisaged in the July 18, 2005 agreement. Th e main problem, for the Left, was that the nuclear deal was being pursued with the United States. Th e Communist Party of India (CPI), CPI(M) and fellow travellers’ protests, which had begun as murmurs of discontent soon after Prime Minister Singh’s 2005 visit to the United States, gathered momentum as it became clear that India and the United States were serious about pursuing this agreement. Years of unremitting hostility burst forth with President Bush’s fi rst visit to India (during which the offi cial air of bonhomie was marred by Left-inspired and -led protests over Iraq, which included a rally organised by the Jamait Ulema-i-Hind).106 More than the nuclear deal, issues such as democracy building, mentioned by the president in his speech at the Purana Qila in New Delhi, and fears of greater defence co-operation led the CPI(M) General Secretary, Prakash Karat, to speak darkly of a ‘strategic alliance’ between India and the United States.107 Th e nuclear deal, however, was the most visible and politically charged symbol of this changing relationship, in addition to being the most vulnerable to political pressure. Th e US and India had just announced the successful negotiation of a separation plan for India’s nuclear facilities and one pocket of resistance — nuclear scientists — was slowly dissolving as it became clear that India had been able to preserve the independence of its future research and keep its fast-breeder reactor off the safeguards list.108 Th e Left began to fl ex it muscle by end July after the US House

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 of Representatives had passed its version of the ‘Henry J. Hyde

105 Neena Vyas, ‘Brajesh Mishra — BJP Diﬀ erences on Nuclear Deal Out in the Open’, Hindu, April 29, 2008. 106 Anuradha Raman, ‘Read Th eir Lips’, Outlook, March 13, 2006. 107 John Cherian, ‘Th e Bear Hug’, Frontline, March 24, 2006. 108 V. Sudarhsan, ‘Fusion Material’, Outlook, March 13, 2006. 300 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

United States–India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act 2006’. Th e combine demanded a full discussion on the issue in Parliament; short discussions aside, however, it took another year for the prime minister to make a suo motu statement on the deal in Parliament, on August 13, 2007. Th e combine kept up the pressure on the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) but the government went ahead with negotiations after each round of placating discussions with the Left. By the middle of September 2007, any semblance of political consensus or backing on the deal lay in shreds, with the CPI(M) Polit Bureau meeting on September 17 and 18 to declare that the deal was not in the interests of India’s ‘independent foreign policy, sovereignty and economic interests’.109 Th ere was very little in their statement about the country’s energy needs or its nuclear deterrent, though presumably the Left was referring to the thorny question of further tests by invoking India’s sovereignty. No one from that group, however, had discussed how a test might beneﬁ t India, apart from acting as an assertion of sovereignty. Th e Left–UPA association then tottered on, threatened by the continuation of negotiations on the nuclear deal, through various ultimatums in early February and March 2008 before the Left ﬁ nally withdrew support to the government on July 8, 2008.110 Once the politics of the nuclear deal had played itself out to its less than edifying conclusion with the trust vote in Parliament on July 22, 2008, a real debate on the issues of energy security and India’s nuclear deterrent could take place once again. Th e intervening period, however, had damaged attentive India’s engagement with the issue by reducing it to a mere political spectacle, high on matters of ‘principle’ but low on substance. It should, of course, not have taken the Left’s ultimatum to galvanise the government into placing a potentially path-breaking deal before the people. It appeared, however, that the old rules of secrecy on matters nuclear still ruled the day. Even though the government had apparently thought at the highest levels of precipitating a public debate on the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 matter, it never successfully took the issue to the wider public, with negative consequences for the negotiating process and as a consequence,

109 ‘CPI(M) Politburo Statement on the Nuclear Deal’, at http://www.hindu. com/nic/cpimstatement.htm (accessed on March 22, 2009). 110 A good chronology of the politics of the deal can be found on the Outlook website at http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080906&fname =nsg&sid=3 (accessed on March 25, 2009). Epilogue ( 301

India’s credibility as a negotiating partner.111 Indeed the very existence of the government became a matter of some concern for a year and a half because politics had been allowed to crowd out any reasoned discussion on the merits of the civil nuclear agreement. Th e gross mismanagement of public diplomacy to sustain the deal also meant, in eﬀ ect, that the prime minister was the only person in the country really arguing for the deal. Quite apart from the Opposition (and the Left), the Congress Party itself was not convinced of the wisdom of pushing for the deal.112 Many viewed this as the prime minister trying to ensure his legacy, primarily by ‘doing for foreign policy what he did for the economy in the early 1990s, of projecting India as a global player, a powerhouse of the 21st century’.113 Leaving aside the alleged personal motivation, there was still room for discussion on the goals encompassed in that vision; yet even his colleagues in the Congress Party were not willing to engage with the topic. Most of the Congress and its UPA allies were apparently unwilling to dispassionately examine the implications of the nuclear deal: by all accounts, they were more concerned with avoiding an early election so that the government did not have to face the people at a time of high inﬂ ation and declining economic indicators.114 Put simply, the nuclear deal was not considered a vote winner.115 Th at is not surprising: the nuclear deal was largely a middle-class concern, with large swathes of rural India either ignorant of

111 Conversation with NSA M. K. Narayanan, January 19, 2007. 112 It apparently took the threat of the prime minister’s resignation for the Congress Party to fall in line. See Smita Gupta, ‘Oﬀ on a Bicycle’, Outlook, July 14, 2008. 113 Smita Gupta, ‘One Man on an Island’, Outlook, July 7, 2008. 114 Ibid. 115 Th e nuclear deal did not really ﬁ nd mention in the 2009 election campaigns or manifestos of the Congress Party (or the BJP), despite the gloating headlines screaming across the tops of newspapers after the NSG waiver came through

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 on September 6. Th e Congress Party manifesto dismissed the whole exercise of securing various nuclear agreements with different countries in one short sentence (which was at pains to point out that the deals were struck ‘entirely on our terms’). Congress Party Manifesto, https://www.congress. org.in/manifesto09-eng.pdf (accessed on May 10, 2009). It is an interesting commentary on where the nuclear question lies in a country in which a global economic crisis and cross border terrorism are chipping away at old notions of security. 302 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

the deal or not interested in it at a time of rising prices in the run-up to the trust vote.116 Issues at Stake Political histrionics aside, there were substantive issues arising from the agreement with the United States that ought to have had a decent public airing. Th ese included India’s foreign policy, especially as concerned Iran; and the issue of testing, which rubbed up against American non- proliferation imperatives and had been a source of tension between the two nations for 30 years. Iran The Left’s dire predictions of unwelcome American influence on India’s foreign policy appeared, on the surface, to have come true when India voted at the IAEA on September 25, 2005 to refer Iran to the UN Security Council should it not suspend uranium enrichment and provide agency oﬃ cials with access to certain locations and documents.117 Th oughtful Indians across the board were dismayed, for there was some sneaking sympathy with Iran’s claims that it had the right to enrich uranium to meet its energy needs.118 Th ough the government swung into damage control after the Left and the Opposition accused it of caving in to American pressure, with Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran arguing that India had actually acted in the interest of Iran by working for a resolution that gave it more time before the case was referred to the Security Council, its critics were not convinced.119 Th at the US ambassador David Mulford had not been reticent in his view that India not voting with the United States might put the nuclear deal in jeopardy did not help make India’s apparent change of heart more palatable.120 Matters came to a head in late January 2006 when Mulford remarked to the press that if India did not vote against Iran, the consequences for the deal could be ‘devastating’. In his view, the political machinery in Washington would take a dim view of a contrary Indian decision on Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

116 Team Outlook, ‘So, Big Deal’, Outlook, July 7, 2008. 117 Th e IAEA normally works by consensus and this was only the second time in two decades that a vote had been forced on an issue. 118 John Cherian, ‘Th e Indian Volte-face’, Frontline, October 21, 2005. 119 ‘India spoke for Iran: Saran’, Th e Hindu, September 27, 2005. 120 Ibid. Epilogue ( 303

Iran, with the result that the ‘initiative will die in the Congress’.121 Th is time, both governments in Washington and New Delhi swiftly tried to retrieve the situation. Th e foreign secretary summoned the envoy and informed him that his comments were ‘inappropriate’; the Americans in turn stated that Mulford was voicing a personal opinion.122 Th e damage, however, had been done. Iran was fi nally referred to the Security Council by the IAEA after a vote on February 4, 2006, which India supported. Th e Left promptly called for a full debate on the issue in Parliament.123 Th e prime minister replied with a suo motu statement on February 17, 2006, asserting Iran’s ‘legal right to develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy consistent with its international obligations [under the NPT]’.124 However, he did add, referring obliquely to the nuclear black market operated by Pakistan’s A. Q. Khan, that ‘the proliferation activities in our extended neighbourhood’ had infl uenced India’s vote. Finally, a hint of the security concerns that ought to have infl uenced Indian rhetoric on Iran had surfaced, but what the prime minister perhaps could not say in public — that a nuclear Iran might not be in India’s best interest — was still not mentioned by others in public or private. India’s former ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament Arundhati Ghose was in a defi nite minority in spelling out the implications of the links between A. Q. Khan’s nuclear market and Iran, given that ‘Khan was not dealing in civilian nuclear technology’. In light of these considerations, the domestic opposition to India’s vote, she argued, had little to do with ‘an appreciation of the dangers of further proliferation in our neighbourhood’, or indeed with India’s relations with Iran, and was more infl uenced, unfortunately, by anti-Americanism.125

121 ‘India Rejects Linking Iran Vote to Nuclear Deal with US’, Th e Hindu, January 26, 2006. 122 ‘India Summons US Envoy Over Iran’, BBC, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/world/south asia/4649742.stm (accessed on March 25, 2009). Ashish Kumar Sen, ‘When In Doubt, Shut Up’, Outlook, February 13, 2006. 123

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 ‘Left Wants Parliament Debate on Iran’, Rediﬀ .com, news, February 5, 2006. 124 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ‘Suo Motu statement on Iran’, at http:// www.outlindia.com/full/asp?fodname+20060217&fname=pm&sid=1 (accessed on March 25, 2009). 125 Arundhati Ghose, ‘Enlightened Independence’, Outlookindia.com, at http://www.outlookindia.com/full/asp?fodname+20060210&fname=iran& sid =1&pn=1 (accessed on March 25, 2009). 304 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Another Indian Test Th e question of India retaining the right to conduct more nuclear tests managed to bring together the most avid supporters of India’s nuclear weapons with the staunchest critics of the BJP-led government’s decision to test nuclear weapons and declare the country a nuclear weapons power. For the Left, it was a question of sovereignty. In their view, nobody could demand of India that it give up the right to further nuclear tests. Th e Hyde Act, which was made a law in December 2006, provided ample fuel for the BJP as it contained speciﬁ c references to the cessation of all nuclear cooperation and the return of nuclear materials should India conduct a nuclear test.126 Th ough the Hyde Act was the enabling US legislation that allowed it to negotiate a civil nuclear agreement under Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act (hence the name of the agreement), and therefore not binding on India, the BJP insisted that this Act would govern all American transactions with India and impose strict non-proliferation demands on New Delhi. Having taken this stance, the BJP kept up the pressure once the 123 Agreement was negotiated in July 2007.127 It refused to accept the government’s assurances that India retained ‘the sovereign right to test […] should it become necessary in the national interest’.128 Th e deal, the Opposition asserted, was tantamount to an eﬀ ort by the US to ‘cap, roll back and eliminate India’s nuclear weapons programme’.129

126 A number of leading nuclear scientists, including H. N. Sethna, and almost all former heads of oranisations connected with nuclear energy had met with the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (also the Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy, and the government’s main scientist involved in the negotiations), Dr Anil Kakodkar, on December 18, 2006, to voice their reservations about certain provisions, including the reference to testing, in the Hyde Act. See Outlook.com, ‘Right To Conduct Future Nuclear Weapon Tests’, at, http://www.outlookindia.com/fullname?fodname=20061218&fname=manmoahnnuke&sid=3 (accessed on March 25, 2009). Also see V. Sudarshan, ‘Not Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Much Frisson’, Outlook, December 25, 2006. 127 Th e Hyde Act provides the domestic framework for the United States to negotiate a nuclear agreement with India under Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act. As such, India is not bound by the provisions of the Hyde Act, only by the bilateral 123 Agreement. 128 Statement by the External Aﬀ airs Minister Pranab Mukherjee in Parlia- ment on the Cooperation for Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy with the United States of America, August 16, 2007, available on the Outlook dossier on the nuclear deal. 129 Neena Vyas, ‘Negotiate Deal Again, Says BJP’, Th e Hindu, August 17, 2007. Epilogue ( 305

Th e BJP was joined in its protests by a small group of strategic analysts and the newspaper Asian Age, which had taken an editorial stand on opposing the deal.130 Brahma Chellaney published a series of articles attacking the government for ‘put[ting] the nuclear programme on the negotiating table to reach a deal that implicitly imposes qualitative and quantitative restrictions’ on India’s nuclear weapons capability.131 In his view, India had unilaterally tied itself to the US-led non-proliferation regime, and once again had left itself vulnerable to American non- proliferation laws. As Bharat Karnad argued, India needed more tests to refi ne its deterrent, particularly the thermonuclear deterrent, as the test of the thermonuclear device in 1998 was, according to reports, unsuccessful.132 Although those calling for further tests were in a minority, few people stopped to question: test to what end? Most Indians were satisfied with the declaration of a ‘minimal credible deterrent’, however diffi cult it may be to defi ne the concept or put numbers to it. Th ere is little appetite for a large arsenal or the inevitable arms race that would result from a public refi ning of India’s nuclear capability. Tests, therefore, are not needed in the foreseeable future, unless India wants to treat nuclear weapons as militarily useable weapons. In any case, as the external aff airs minister stated in the Lok Sabha after the 123 Agreement was negotiated with the United States, India would have to decide that a nuclear test was in the national interest.133 At a time when the economy was going from strength to strength with ever closer ties to the global economy, India was in no position to risk alienating international opinion, and the middle class, who had never had it so good economically, were in no mood to do so either. Th ere was a passive acceptance of this reality without any sustained debate on why the country would not want to test a nuclear device in the near or medium term, given current circumstances. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 130 Conversation with the then Editor of the Asian Age, M. J. Akbar, January 2007. 131 Brahma Chellaney, ‘A Divisive Deal’, India Today, September 7, 2007. Chellaney also commented extensively for the Asian Age. 132 Bharat Karnad, ‘Minimum Deterrence and the India-US Nuclear Deal’, Seminar 596, January 2007, at http://www.india-seminar.com/2007/569/569- bharat-karmad.htm (accessed on March 25, 2009). 133 ‘We Have the Right to Test: Pranab’, Th e Hindu, August 17, 2007, p. 1. 306 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Besides, as one commentator pointed out, India had no option but to honour the obligations contained in the spirit (and the letter) of the 123 Agreement.

Speaking purely militarily, it [India] must [test]. … But for that India would need another 50 to 100 tests, not another symbolic one; it would need the uranium, the money, the technology, an economy strong enough to defy the world. India isn’t there, face it. Th e level of testing militarily needed is not an option, we really have no alternative to being honourable.134

In the end, the NSG waiver, upon which the India–US nuclear deal was predicated, came through after much drama in Vienna. Attentive India looked at the 45-member grouping’s bending of the very rules it had put in place to contain India after 1974 as a vindication of 30 years of holding out against an iniquitous non-proliferation regime. Amid screaming headlines that proclaimed India ‘Th e Sixth Power’, and news reports that spoke of New Delhi having changed the rules of the nuclear non-proliferation regime ‘largely on India’s own terms’ to ‘enter the nuclear mainstream’, there was much, it seemed, to be self- congratulatory about.135 It was as if India had been yearning for years for this certiﬁ cate of good behaviour, with the promise of greater civil nuclear co-operation being a nice extra thrown in. India’s Credibility after the Negotiations Once the euphoria had settled, old and familiar doubts which had received a generous airing during the long negotiations, began to surface. Fears that India would now be tied to the US’ bidding were voiced, leading one former diplomat to ask in exasperation, ‘Why do they [those Indians who fear India’s foreign policy will be now be inﬂ uenced by Washington in return for the Americans delivering the waiver at Vienna] always overestimate America’s abilities and underestimate India’s?’136 It went Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

134 Sanjay Suri, ‘N-Tape: Side A, Side B’, Outlook, October 20, 2008. 135 Cover of the Outlook issue of September 22; Seema Sirohi, ‘Raised to the Power of N…’, Outlook, September 22, 2008. See also, ‘Nuclear Dawn’, the banner that covered the articles of the negotiations at Vienna in the Hindustan Times, 7 September 2008; and Indrani Bagchi, ‘India N-abled’, Th e Times of India, September 7, 2008. 136 Sirohi, ‘Raised to the Power of N’. Epilogue ( 307

to the heart of the problem plaguing the Indian engagement with the nuclear deal: did Indians inherently lack the confi dence to grasp the opportunity to rewrite the rules of the game to accommodate a rising India? Perhaps India let the Left hijack the discussions on the India– US civil nuclear cooperation agreement because their objections struck a not-completely buried raw nerve that instinctively mistrusted American perfi dy. After all, the US would naturally act in its own interest. A stronger non-proliferation regime is certainly in American interests, which may well have driven a tougher American negotiating position during the NSG’s fi rst (but failed) round of negotiations on August 21–22, 2008 which had tried to tie India down to a commitment not to test in the waiver.137 However, a strong India was also in America’s interest. Further, though the United States sponsored it, the NSG waiver made it a ‘global’ deal with New Delhi, as the French Ambassador to India explained.138 Th e Russians and the French had a large stake in the deal going through, yet the focus remained on the Americans, perhaps because in the end, only they could deliver the NSG. Yet, India’s dithering over the deal and the unedifying political dramas that were played out over the course of the negotiations damaged New Delhi’s credibility abroad.139 One commentator stated impatiently that ‘[t]he parleys preceding the nuke deal have so badly exposed Indian politicians and the media that it defi es logic that this nation aspires to be a global player’.140 As more thoughtful Indians were pointing out, India’s reputation as a serious global player who could be relied on to bring its domestic constituency along with it when others were trying to bend global rules in its favour had taken a beating.141 Th ough Indian negotiators had managed to ‘wreck a rule-based international non- proliferation regime […] to suit India’, the domestic politics played over the foreign policy of the deal diminished brand India.142

137 Siddharth Varadarajan’s presentation to the IPCS, September 17, 2008, recorded by Rekha Chakravarthi, Article #2688, at http://www.ipcs.org/article_

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 details.php?articleNo=2688 (accessed on March 25, 2009). 138 Interview with Jerome Bonnafont, ‘It’s a Global Pact with Sovereign India’, Outlook, July 7, 2008. 139 Seema Sirohi, ‘Credible India?’, Outlook, July 7, 2008. 140 Rajinder Puri, ‘Bullseye’, Outlook, July 21, 2008. 141 Harsh Pant, ‘Anatomy of Defective Decision-Making’, Outlookindia.com, posted on August 8, 2008; see also Sirohi, ‘Credible India?’ 142 Editorial, Th e Times of India, August 9, 2007. 308 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Conclusion Th e decade since India’s nuclear tests has probably been a diffi cult one for the non-proliferation community to easily accept. Not only has India moved from being a nuclear pariah to being a nuclear weapons state in all but name, it has also fi nally succeeded in rewriting the rules of the international non-proliferation regime to reward an observance of the spirit of the regime even while remaining legally outside it. Yet, it has not been all good news for either. India’s relations with Pakistan have been rocky at best. A realisation that two nuclear neighbours cannot aff ord to live in open hostility may have prompted the peace process of 2004, drawing upon the lessons that India and Pakistan learned from the long mobilisation of 2001–02. Yet that peace process remains fragile, as the terrorist attacks on Mumbai proved. And, regardless of the politics of the subcontinent, military doctrine continues to plan for the next war with Pakistan. Indeed, Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor felt it necessary to declare on the eve of Army Day 2009 soon after the Mumbai attacks that the Indian army is fully prepared to face a nuclear terrorist attack while expressing his hope that Pakistan’s nuclear materials and weapons are ‘as secure as that of any civilised country’.143 Th e odd statement about India’s nuclear preparedness notwithstanding, the absence of any real discussion on nuclear deterrence after Pokharan II is a telling commentary on Indian attitude towards the country’s nuclear arsenal. All three of the episodes covered in this chapter could have prompted calls for substantially upgrading its nuclear arsenal. Certainly, outside observers saw plenty in these events to cause fears for deterrence stability and for a long line of high ranking diplomats and politicians to periodically beat a path to New Delhi and Islamabad. Within India, some strategic analysts continued to argue in favour of a thermonuclear deterrent, or for India to refi ne its deterrence capabilities to at least match the mid-level nuclear weapons states, but these remained on the fringes of a largely somnolent debate. In any

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 case, they were not reacting to the periods of heightened tension with Pakistan. So those who paid attention to India’s nuclear weapons capability inside and outside the country were reacting to diﬀ erent triggers.

143 Rajat Pandit, ‘Army Chief: Hope Pak N-arms in Safe Hands’, Th e Times of India, January 15, 2009. Epilogue ( 309

For the large part, attentive India chose to relegate the military aspect of India’s nuclear deterrent to benign neglect. A militarised, hyper-nationalistic approach to nuclear weapons did not sit comfort- ably with self-images of India. Equally, the idea of a restrained, mature India, whose nuclear weapons served to underscore just how deserving it was of a place at the nuclear high table found resonance with the idea of India that was in the making after 1998. It was therefore with some surprise, even pique, that attentive India looked at the fears being voiced outside the country when tensions with Pakistan escalated in 2001–02 and again in 2008. India’s nuclear weapons, then, are not the main story, though they certainly are an important part of the narrative of a rising India. Th oughtful Indians are aware that their country is now being heard because of its economic success and for the potential that it holds to become one of the largest economies in the next few decades. Yet, there is a sneaking suspicion that India’s ascent in the past decade has been helped along by its nuclear status, though that cannot be proved. Yet India is probably not going to behave like the fi ve nuclear weapons states, even if it now basks in the fact that it is one in all but name. India, by all accounts, is not moving ahead aggressively to stockpile a large number of warheads. While it is refi ning its delivery capabilities, these missiles are a symbol of national pride, not of nuclear heft. Further, the pace of missile development has not picked up substantially. Beyond policy circles, India does not behave like a nuclear weapons power. Un- like in other nuclear weapons democracies at the height of the Cold War, there are no significant coalitions for nuclear disarmament that have captured the public imagination. Indeed, India remains quite detached from the horrors of nuclear war, perhaps precisely because it has persuaded itself that it will not happen on the subcontinent. India certainly has not witnessed any call for nuclear shelters (however ineff ectual those might be in the case of an actual nuclear explosion), or for greater information on how the country’s politicians intend to prevent the Bomb falling on its citizens. Equally, there are no

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 calls for an ever bigger, better arsenal, for hair-trigger alert positions (most Indians are pleased that the weapons are ‘demated’), escalation dominance, and so on. While complacency may be dangerous, in this case it may not be entirely negative. A concerned India is learning to slot nuclear weapons into an overall idea of an India capable of meeting the challenges of the next 60 years. At the moment, the most important of these hurdles 310 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

seems to be climate change, energy and food security, and for India, the building of a better life for all of its citizens. Th e Bomb, attentive India knows, will not overcome these hurdles. Th is may be why the calls for complete nuclear disarmament have not gone away. Nuclear weapons, for India, are a regrettable necessity, an insurance policy in an uncertain, changing and sometimes unpredictable world. In many ways, the story may be just beginning.

M Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Glossary

AEC Indian Atomic Energy Commission ANC African National Congress BARC Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (formerly TIFR) BJP Bharatiya Janata Party CD Conference on Disarmament (Geneva) CND Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, UK CTBT Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty dIND Draft Indian Nuclear Doctrine DRDO Defence Research and Development Organisation EIF Entry into Force (provision contained in Article XIV of the CTBT) ENDC Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee (established 1965) FMCT Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty GoI Government of India IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency IB International Border (with Pakistan) IDSA Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses IMF International Monetary Fund ISRO Indian Space Research Organisation JNU Jawaharlal Nehru University LoC Line of Control (Kashmir) MEA Ministry of External Aff airs (India) MoD Ministry of Defence (India) MTCR Missile Technology Control Regime NSG Nuclear Suppliers Group Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 NPT Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty PMO Prime Minister’s Offi ce PNE Peaceful Nuclear Explosion PTBT Partial Test Ban Treaty RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh 312 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

SNEP/SNEPP Subterranean Nuclear Explosion Project/Study of Nuclear Explosions for Peaceful Purposes (both expansions have been used interchangeably) SSOD (United Nations General Assembly) Special Session on Disarmament TIFR Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (renamed BARC)

M Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Bibliography

Abraham, Itty, Th e Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State. London: Zed Books, 1998. Abraham, Th omas, ‘A Divided G-8’, Frontline, June 5, 1998. Acharya, Alka, ‘India-China Relations: An Overview’, in Kanti P. Bajpai and Amitabh Mattoo, eds, Th e Peacock and the Dragon: India-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century. Delhi: Har Anand, 2000, pp. 168–98. Acharya, Shankar, ‘India’s Macroeconomic Management in the 1990s’, Paper presented at ‘Ten Years of Economic Reform’, ICRIER, New Delhi, October, 2002. Adhikari, Gautam, ‘Rethinking Foreign Policy: Change Needed for India’s Sake’, Times of India, September 2, 1991. Agarwal, Amit, ‘Opening up at Last’, India Today, April 15, 1994. Agence France Presse, ‘India Flays US for Ban on Space Agency’, May 12, 1992. ——— , ‘India Planning Missile Test, Not Nuclear Blast: Report’, December 19, 1995. ——— , ‘Geneva Disarmament Conference Criticises French’, June 29, 1995. ——— , ‘India Cannot Give Up Nuclear Option: Foreign Minister’, November 16, 1996. ——— , ‘Indian Media Raps Hindu Nationalists’ Motives for N-tests’, May 16, 1998. Ahmad, Aijaz, ‘Th e Hindutva Weapon’,Frontline , June 5, 1998. ——— , ‘Mediation By Any Other Name’, Frontline, July 30, 1999. Ahmed, Samina, ‘Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program: Turning Points and Nuclear Choices’, International Security, 23, 4 (Spring 1999), pp. 178– 204. Aiyar, Mani Shankar, ‘Towards a Nuclear-Weapons-Free and Non-Violent World Order’, Statement at the Satyagraha Conference in New Delhi, January 29–30, 2007. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 ——— , ‘1192 and All Th at’, India Today, April 27, 1998. Aiyar, Shahnaz Anklesaria, ‘Th e Nuclear Tangle’, India Today, March 31, 1992. ——— , ‘Interview with Manmohan Singh’, India Today, July 31, 1991. Akbar, M. J., Nehru: Th e Making of India. London: Viking, 1988. ——— , India: Th e Siege Within. New Delhi: Penguin, 1985. 314 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Albright, David, ‘South Africa and the Aff ordable Bomb’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 50, 4 (July/August 1994). Albright, David and Mark Hibbs, ‘South Africa: Th e ANC and the Atom Bomb’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 49, 3 (April 1993), pp. 32–37. Alexander, P.C., India in the New Millennium. Mumbai: Somaiya Publications Pvt. Ltd, 2001. Allison, Graham T., Albert Carnesale, Joseph S. Nye, eds, Hawks, Doves, and Owls: An Agenda for Avoiding Nuclear War. New York: W.W Norton and Co, 1985. Almond, Gabriel, Th e American People and Foreign Policy. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1960. Aneja, Atul, ‘Limited War Between India, Pakistan, Can Lead to Nuclear Confl ict’, Th e Hindu, March 26, 2002. Anumukti, ‘Country Report: India’, A Report to the No Nukes Asia Forum 1997, held in the Philippines, at http://members.tripod.com/~no_nukes_sa/ overview.html (accessed on June 25, 2005). Arnett, Eric, ‘And the Loser is… the Indian Armed Forces’, Economic and Political Weekly 33, 36 & 37 (September 5, 1998). Atomic Energy Commission, ‘A Profi le for the Decade 1970–‘80’, in J. P. Jain, ed., Nuclear India, vol. 2. New Delhi: Radiant, 1974. Ayoob, Mohammad, ‘India in South Asia: Th e Quest for Regional Predominance’, World Policy Journal (Winter 1989/90), pp. 107–133. ——— , ‘I Worked for K Subrahmanyam’, in C. Uday Bhaskar (comp.), Subbu at 75: A Bouquet of Tributes. New Delhi: Shri Avtar Printing Press, 2004. Baabar, Mariana and Sunil Narula, ‘Nuclear Frenzy: A Tale Of Two Nations’, Outlook, June 8, 1998. Bagchi, Indrani, ‘India N-abled’, Times of India, September 7, 2008. Bajpai, Kanti P., ‘India’s Nuclear Posture After Pokharan II’, International Studies 37, 4 (October–December 2000). ——— , ‘Th e Fallacy of the Indian Deterrent’, in Amitabh Mattoo, ed., India’s Nuclear Deterrent: Pokhran II and Beyond. New Delhi: Har Anand, 1999. ——— , ‘Abstaining: Th e Nonnuclear Option’, in David Cortright and Amitabh Mattoo, eds, India and the Bomb: Public Opinion and Nuclear Options.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996, pp. 23–52. ——— , ‘Secure Without the Bomb’, Seminar, 444 (August 1996). ——— , ‘Th e Great Indian Nuclear Debate’,Th e Hindu, November 12, 1999. ——— , ‘India in a Diplomatic Soup’, Outlook, September 4, 1996. ——— , ‘Cut Out the Bombast’, Outlook, March 30, 1998. ——— , ‘Strategic Th reats and Nuclear Weapons: India, China and Pakistan’, in M. V. Ramana and C. Rammanohar Reddy, eds, Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003. ——— , ‘Lahore Balance Sheet’, Outlook, March 8, 1999. Bibliography ( 315

Bajpai, Kanti P., ‘Foreign Policy Dilemmas’, Seminar, 519, November 2002, at http://www.india-seminar.com/2002/519/519%20kanti%20bajpai.htm (accessed on March 25, 2009). Bajpai, Kanti P. and Amitabh Mattoo, eds, Th e Peacock and the Dragon: India- China Relations in the Twenty-First Century. Delhi: Har Anand, 2000. ——— , Securing India: Strategic Th ought and Practice. New Delhi: Manohar, 1996. ——— , ‘Preface’, in Kanti P. Bajpai and Amitabh Mattoo, eds, Securing India: Strategic Th ought and Practice. New Delhi: Manohar, 1996, p. 9. Bajpai, Kanti, Pervaiz I. Cheema, S. Ganguly, P. R. Chari and S. P. Cohen, Brasstacks and Beyond: Perception and Management of Crisis in South Asia. New Delhi: Manohar, 1995. Bajpai, Kanti P. and Stephen P. Cohen, eds, South Asia After the Cold War: International Perspectives. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993. Baruah, Amit, ‘Bus to Pakistan’, Frontline, March 12, 1999. Baru, Sanjaya, Strategic Consequences of India’s Economic Performance. New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2006. ——— , ‘Th e Bombay Plea’,Times of India, November 12, 1993. ——— , ‘Beyond Nuclear Policy’, Times of India, December 16, 1999. Basu, Tarun, ‘India Toughens Stand on Test Ban Treaty’, India Abroad, July 26, 1996. Barnds, William J., ‘Th e United States and South Asia: Policy and Process’, in Stephen Phillip Cohen, ed., Th e Security of South Asia: American and Asian Perspectives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Bannerjee, Dipankar, ‘Buddha’s Smile and National Security’, Economic and Political Weekly 33, 20 (May 22, 1998). Baweja, Harinder and Zahin Hussain, ‘Fire in the Sky’, India Today, April 20, 1998. Benn, Aluf, ‘Israel: Censoring the Past’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 57, 4 (July/August 2001). Bhambhri, C. P., ‘Super-Patriot Games’, Outlook, July 19, 1999. Bharat Rakshak, at www.bharat-rakshak.com (accessed on September 10, 2006). Bharucha, Rustom, ‘Politician’s Grin, Not the Buddha’s Smile’, Economic and Political Weekly 33, 22 (June 5, 1998). Bhaskar, C. Uday, (comp.), Subbu at 75: A Bouquet of Tributes. New Delhi: Shri Avtar Printing Press, 2004. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 ——— , ‘Encouraging Signs in Nuclear Talks’, India Abroad, February 25, 1994. Bhattacharjea, Ajit, ‘Th e Nuke’s Blunted Edge’,Outlook , July 5, 1999. Bhimaya, Kotera M., ‘Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia: Civil–Military Relations and Decision-Making’, Asian Survey 34, 7 (July 1994), pp. 647–61. Bhushan, Ranjit, ‘All Roads Lead to Rajiv’, Outlook¸ February 2, 1998. ——— , ‘A Deterred Defence’, Outlook, June 8, 1998. ——— , ‘Kargil, A Post-Mortem’, Outlook, July 26, 1999. 316 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Bhushan, Ranjit, ‘Defending Restraint’, Outlook, 31 December 2001. Bhushan, Ranjit and Murali Krishnan, ‘Half-told Tales of A War’, Outlook, January 24, 2000. Bidwai, Praful, ‘BJP’s Nuclear Stance Seen as Undermining Security’, India Abroad, April 10, 1998. ——— , ‘Nuclear Ostriches All?’, Frontline, July 5, 2002. ——— , ‘India Must Decide’ Frontline, March 13, 2009. Bidwai, Praful and Achin Vanaik, South Asia on a Short Fuse: Nuclear Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999. ——— , ‘A Very Political Bomb’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 54, 4 (July/ August 1998). ——— , ‘After the CTBT … India’s Intentions’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 53, 2 (March/April 1997). ——— , ‘Th e Treaty Can’t Be Held Hostage’,Outlook , July 17, 1996. BJP, election manifesto, February 4, 1998, at http://www.bjp.org/newsite/index. php?fi le=s-viewcategory&tag=manife99.htm&catid=9#bb (accessed on November 10, 2004). Bobb, Dilip, ‘Turning the Screws’, India Today, November 30, 1993. ——— , ‘A Slippery Summit’, India Today, May 31, 1994. ——— , ‘A Quiet Triumph’, India Today, June 15, 1994. ——— , ‘Groundbreaking Shift’, India Today, February 29, 1991. Bobb, Dilip and Amarnath K. Menon, ‘Chariot of Fire’, India Today, June 15, 1989. Bobb, Dilip and Harinder Baweja, ‘Interview with Robin Raphel’, India Today, April 15, 1994. Bobb, Dilip and Raminder Singh, ‘Pakistan’s Nuclear Bombshell’, India Today, March 31, 1987. Bowen, Wyn Q., Libya and Nuclear Proliferation: Stepping Back from the Brink, Adelphi Paper 380. London: Routledge for Th e International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2006. Brecher, Michael, ‘Non-Alignment Under Stress: Th e West and the Indo-China Border War’, Pacifi c Aff airs, 52, 4 (Winter 1979–80), pp. 612–630. ——— , Nehru’s Mantle: Th e Politics of Succession in India (New York: Praeger, 1968).

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Brown, Judith M., Nehru: A Political Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Burrows, William E. and Robert Windrem, Critical Mass: Th e Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmented World. London: Simon and Schuster, 1994. Byrnes, Michael, ‘A Silent Superpower on our “Doorstep”’, Australian Financial Review, December 3, 1987. Campbell, Kurt M., Robert J. Einhorn and Mitchell B. Reiss, Th e Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider their Nuclear Choices. Washington, DC: Brookings, 2004. Bibliography ( 317

Campbell, Kurt M. and Tsuyoshi Sunohara, ‘Japan: Th inking the Unthinkable’, in Kurt M. Campbell, Robert J. Eihorn and Mitchell Reiss, eds, Th e Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider their Nuclear Choices. Washington, DC: Brookings, 1994, pp. 218–53. Cann, Peter R., Donald A. Macdonald and Matt Miller, ‘Gandhi of the Computer Age’, Wall Street Journal, September 26, 1985. Center for Contemporary Confl ict, ‘Asymmetric Confl ict in South Asia: Th e Cause and Consequences of the 1999 Limited War in South Asia’, Conference report at http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/events/recent/may02Kargil_rpt.asp (accessed on September 10, 2006). Chandy, Anil Joseph, ‘India, China and Pakistan’, in Kanti P. Bajpai and Amitabh Mattoo, eds, Th e Peacock and the Dragon: India-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century. Delhi: Har Anand, 2000, pp. 298–332. Chari, P. R., Indo-Pak Nuclear Standoff : Th e Role of the United States. New Delhi: Manohar for the Centre for Policy Research, 1995. Chari, P. R., Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema and Stephen P. Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process: American Engagement in South Asia. New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2008. ——— , ‘India’s Nuclear Doctrine: Confused Ambitions’, Th e Non-Proliferation Review (Fall-Winter 2000), pp. 123–35. Chari, P. R., Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema and Iftekharuzzaman, Nuclear Non- Proliferation in India and Pakistan. New Delhi: Manohar for Th e Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Colombo, 1996. Chatterjee, Partha, ‘How We Loved the Bomb and Later Rued It’, Economic and Political Weekly, June 13, 1998. Chatterjee, Saibal, ‘Dateline India’, Outlook, December 20, 1995. Chawla, Prabhu, ‘India is Now a Weapons State’, Interview with the Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, India Today, May 25, 1998. Chellaney, Brahma, ‘India’, in Mitchell Reiss and Robert S. Litwak, eds, Nuclear Proliferation After the Cold War. Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, 1994, pp. 165–90. ——— , ‘Th e Challenge of Nuclear Arms Control in South Asia’,Survival 35, 3 (Autumn 1993), pp. 121 –36. ——— , ‘South Asia’s Passage to Nuclear Power’, International Security 16, 1 (Summer 1991), pp. 43–72. ——— , ‘Arms Sales Aggravate U.S.-India Ties’, Th e Washington Times, December

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 23, 1995. ——— , ‘India May Balk at Ban on Nuclear Tests; Opposition Bipartisan on Election Eve’, Washington Times, April 26, 1996. ——— , ‘Anniversary of Shame’, Hindustan Times, December 31, 2004. ——— , ‘India Has Sold its Nuclear Soul to the US’, Rediﬀ India Abroad.com, April 27, 2006, at http://www.rediﬀ .com/news/2006/apr/27brahma.htm (accessed on March 22, 2009). ——— , ‘A Divisive Deal’, India Today, September 7, 2007. 318 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Chengappa, Raj, ‘A Sudden Cooling’, India Today, July 15, 1991. ——— , ‘How the World Sees India’, India Today, October 15, 1991. ——— , ‘Joining the Big Boys’, India Today, April 15, 1993. ——— , ‘A Nuisance’, India Today, April 15, 1993. ——— , ‘Misguided Muscle’, India Today, August 15, 1993. ——— , ‘Interview with A. P. J. Abdul Kalam’, India Today, April 15, 1994. ——— , ‘Now Nobody Can Th rottle Us’, India Today, April 15, 1994. ——— , ‘Interview with R. Chidambaram’, India Today, April 30, 1994. ——— , ‘Nuclear Dilemma’, India Today, April 30, 1994. ——— , ‘Ominous Incidents’, India Today, June 30, 1994. ——— , ‘Testing Times’, India Today, December 31, 1995. ——— , Weapons of Peace: Th e Secret Story of India’s Quest to be a Nuclear Power. New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2000. Chengappa, Raj and Shishir Gupta, ‘In Cold Pursuit’, India Today, December 24, 2001. Cherian, John, ‘Paying for Complacency’, Frontline, October 20, 1995. ——— , ‘In Our National Interests’, Frontline, July 12, 1996. ——— , ‘Treaty Trouble’, Frontline, July 26, 1996. ——— , ‘Now the Endgame’, Frontline, September 6, 1996. ——— , ‘Standing up to Pressure’, Frontline, September 20, 1996. ——— , ‘Action will Follow Review’, Frontline, April 24, 1998. ——— , ‘Th e BJP and the Bomb’,Frontline , April 24, 1998. ——— , ‘Th e Political and Diplomatic Background’,Frontline , June 18, 1999. ——— , ‘Of Forgotten Fighters’, Frontline, July 30, 1999. ——— , ‘Playing the Nuclear Card’, Frontline, September 10, 1999. ——— , ‘Upping the Ante’, Frontline, January 18, 2002. ——— , ‘Active Interventions’, Frontline, June 21, 2002. ——— , ‘Th e Nuclear Button’,Frontline , January 31, 2003. ——— , ‘Deals and Doubts’, Frontline, August 12, 2005. ——— , ‘Th e Indian Volte-face’,Frontline , October 21, 2005. ——— , ‘Th e Bear Hug’,Frontline , March 24, 2006. Chhaya, Mayank, ‘Experts Suggest Nation Walk Out of Geneva Test Ban Talks’, India Abroad, June 21, 1996. Chowdhury, Srinjoy, Despatches From Kargil. New Delhi: Penguin, 2000. Clad, James C., ‘India: Crisis and Transition’, Washington Quarterly, 15, 1 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 (Winter 1992), pp. 91–104. Cohen, Avner, ‘Th e Bomb Th at Never is’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 56, 3 (May/June 2000), pp. 22–23. ——— , Israel and the Bomb. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Cohen, Stephen P., India: Emerging Power. Washington, DC: Brookings, 2001. Coll, Steve, ‘India Faces Nuclear Watershed’, Washington Post, March 17, 1992. ——— , ‘India Pressured on the Bomb’, Washington Post, February 9, 1992. Bibliography ( 319

Constituent Assembly of India (legislative) Debates, 2nd Session, vols. 5 and 6, April 1948. Cortright, David, Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Cortright, David and Amitabh Mattoo, (eds), India and the Bomb: Public Opinion and Nuclear Options. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996. ——— , ‘Appendix B: Complete Results and Tabular Data of the Kroc Institute Opinion Survey’, in David Cortright and Amitabh Mattoo, eds, India and the Bomb: Public Opinion and Nuclear Options. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996. ——— , ‘Elite Public Opinion and Nuclear Weapons Policy in India’, Asian Survey 36, 6 (June 1996), pp. 545–60. ——— , ‘Indian Public Opinion and Nuclear Weapons Policy’, in David Cortright and Amitabh Mattoo, eds, India and the Bomb: Public Opinion and Nuclear Options. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996. Currie, Bob, ‘Governance, Democracy and Economic Adjustment in India: Conceptual and Empirical problems’, Th ird World Quarterly 17, 4 (1996), pp. 787–807. Dasgupta, Swapan, ‘BJP’s Early Surge’, India Today, January 25, 1998. Datta, Saikat, ‘Th e Lie Nailed’,Outlook , May 22, 2006. ——— , ‘Th reat of a Nuclear War in Kargil was a Bogey’,Outlook , March 7, 2005. Deb, Sandipan, ‘A Nation Called Mary Celeste’, Outlook, December 8, 1997. Deshmukh, B. G., ‘Th e Inside Story’,India Today, February 29, 1994. Dixit, J. N., Th e Makers of India’s Foreign Policy: Raja Ram Mohun Roy to Yashwant Sinha. New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2004. ——— , My South Block Years: Memoirs of a Foreign Secretary. New Delhi: UBS, 1996. ——— , ‘Hush … Th e Bomb Squad’,Outlook , March 23, 1998. ——— , ‘Blasting a Straitjacket’, Outlook, June 1, 1998. Dikshit, Sandeep, ‘Pakistan Back to its Old Ways: Pranab’, Th e Hindu, December 23, 2008. Dreze, Jean, ‘Of Nukes and Men’, Th e Hindu, June 12, 1998. Dubashi, Jay, ‘A Perennial Problem’, India Today, June 16–30, 1978. ——— , ‘A Blueprint for Frustration’, India Today, August 16–31, 1980.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Dubey, Muchkund, ‘India’s Foreign Policy: Aims and Strategies’, in Nancy Jetly, ed., India’s Foreign Policy: Challenges and Prospects. New Delhi: Vikas, 1999, pp. 10–25. ——— , ‘India’s Foreign Policy in an Evolving Global Order’, International Studies (New Delhi) 30, 2 (1993), pp. 117–29. ——— , Towards a Nuclear Weapon-Free World. Delhi: Vikas, 1988. ——— , ‘Th e Choice Cannot Wait’,Frontline , January 26, 1996. ——— , ‘India Stands its Ground’, Frontline, October 28, 1996. 320 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Dubey, Muchkund, ‘Congress and India’s N-Policy–I’, Th e Hindu, June 19, 2000. ——— , ‘Congress and India’s N-Policy–II’, Th e Hindu, June 20, 2000. Dutta, Sujan, ‘“Cold start” in war game’, Telegraph (Kolkata), March 7, 2008. Edwardes, Michael, ‘Illusion and Reality in India’s Foreign Policy’, International Aﬀ airs 41, 1 (Jan 1965), pp. 48–58. Embassy of India, Washington DC. ‘INDIA Information’, at http://www. indianembassy.org/indiainfo/india_2000/chapters/chp15.pdf (accessed on April 23, 2004). ——— , Preamble of the ‘Draft Report of the National Security Advisory Board on the Indian Nuclear Doctrine’, at http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/ CTBT/nuclear_doctrine_aug_17_1999.html (accessed on June 15, 2005). Fabian, K. P., ‘A Nuclear Neighbourhood’, Frontline, December 6, 2002. Financial Times, ‘India: External Sector: Emerging Challenges’, November 1, 2001. Foran, Virginia, ‘Th e Case of Indo-US High-Technology Cooperation’. Survival 40, 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 71–95. Frontline, ‘Standing up to Pressure’, September 20, 1996. ——— , ‘Aspects of Foreign Policy’, August 9, 1997. ——— , ‘Th e Pokhran-Kargil Connection’, July 2, 1999. ——— , ‘Kargil: Success and Complications’, July 30, 1999. ——— , ‘Editorial’, January 4, 2002. ——— , ‘Editorial’, January 18, 2002. Frankel, Francine, ‘India’s Democracy in Transition’, World Policy Journal, (Summer 1990), pp. 521–55. Gadekar, Surendra, ‘Editorial’, Anumukti, inaugural issue, August 1987, at http://members.tripod.com/~no_nukes_sa/firstedit.html (accessed on June 25, 2005). Gandhi, Gopalkrishna, ‘Gandhi’s Legacy’, Frontline, August 9, 1997. Gandhi, Indira, ‘Statement re: Underground Nuclear Experiment’, Lok Sabha Debates, 5th series, vol. 41, no. 1. ——— , ‘Speech at the Seventh Conference of the Heads of State of Government of Non-Aligned Countries’, ‘New Delhi, March 7, 1983, at http://www. indianembassy.org/policy/Disarmament/disarm13.htm (accessed on

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 October 15, 2004). Gandhi, Rajiv, ‘Action Plan for Ushering in a Nuclear-Weapon-Free and Non- Violent World Order’, Speech at the Th ird Special Session on Disarmament, United Nations General Assembly, June 9, 1988, CD/859. Gandhi, Rajiv, ‘Speech at the Opening Session of the Six-Nation Five Continent Peace Initiative’, Stockholm, January 21, 1988, at http://www.indianembassy. org/policy/Disarmament/disarm14.htm (accessed on October 15, 2004). Ganguly, Sumit, ‘India’s Pathway to Pokharan II: Th e Prospects and Sources of New Delhi’s Nuclear Weapons Program’, International Security 23, 4 (Spring 1999), pp. 148–77. Bibliography ( 321

Ganguly, Sumit, ‘Future Uncertain: Indian Security Policy Approaches the New Millen-nium’, Journal of International Aff airs 51, 1 (Summer 1997), pp. 221–38. ——— , ‘South Asia after the Cold War’, Washington Quarterly 15, 4 (Autumn 1992), pp. 173–84. ——— , ‘Th e Sino-Indian Border Talks, 1981–1989: Th e View from New Delhi’, Asian Survey 29, 12 (December 1989), pp. 1123–135. ——— , ‘Th e Prime Minister and Foreign and Defence Policies’, in James Manor, ed., Nehru to the Nineties: Th e Changing Offi ce of the Prime Minister in India. London: Hurst, 1994. Ganguly, Sumit and Devin T. Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry: India-Pakistan Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005. Garver, John W., ‘Sino-Indian Rapprochement and the Sino-Pakistan Entente’, Political Science Quarterly 111, 2 (Summer 1996), pp. 323–47. Ghimire, Yubraj, ‘Th e Dice Favour None’,Outlook , December 8, 1997. ——— , ‘Rumblings At Th e Top’, Outlook, February 16, 1998. Ghose, Arundhati, ‘Negotiating the CTBT: India’s Security Concerns and Nuclear Disarmament’, International Aff airs 51, 1 (Summer 1997), at http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/CTBT/ctbt_ghose.htm (accessed on September 1, 2009). ——— , ‘Statement in the Plenary Meeting of the Conference on Disarmament’, Geneva, June 20, 1996, CD/PV.740, at http://www.indianembassy.org/ policy/Disarmament/disarmament_list.htm (accessed on September 1, 2009). Ghose, Sagarika, ‘Indian Media: A Flawed yet Robust Public Service’, in B. G. Verghese, ed., Tomorrow’s India: Another Tryst with Destiny. Delhi: Viking, 2006, pp. 161–77. ——— , ‘Muted Voices’, Outlook, May 25, 1998. ——— , ‘Guns ‘N’ Butter’, Outlook, June 1, 1998. ——— , ‘Not the Whole Picture’, Outlook, July 26, 1999. Ghosh, Amitav, ‘Countdown: Why Can’t Every Country Have the Bomb?’, New Yorker, November 2, 1998, pp. 187–97. Global Policy Forum, ‘Subjects of UN Security Council Vetoes’, at http://www. globalpolicy.org/security/membership/veto/vetosubj.htm (accessed on March 22, 2009). Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Goheen, Robert F., ‘Problems of Proliferation: US Policy and the Th ird World’, World Politics 35, 2 (January 1983), pp. 194–215. Gokhale, Nitin A., ‘Command Failure’, Outlook, August 2, 1999. ——— , ‘Now Th rust, Now Parry’, Outlook, June 3, 2002. Gokhale, Nitin A. and Murali Krishnan, ‘Small is Scary’, Outlook, June 10, 2002. Government of India, ‘Nuclear Explosions and their Eff ects’, Offi cial Study, June 1956 and October 1958. 322 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Government of India, ‘Th e Evolution of India’s Nuclear Policy’, Paper laid at the Table of the Lok Sabha on May 27, 1998, at http://www.indianembassy. org/pic/nuclearpolicy.htm (accessed on November 18, 2004). ——— , ‘Offi cial Language Policy of the Union’, at http://www.rajbhasha.gov. in/dolpolicyeng.htm (accessed on November 10, 2007). ——— , ‘Th e Offi cial Languages Act, 1963 (as amended, 1967)’, at http://rajbhasha. nic.in/dolacteng.htm (accessed on November 10, 2007). ——— , Economic Survey, 1990–91, at http://indiabudget.nic.in/previouses.htm (accerred on September 16, 2009). Gowing, Margaret, Britain and Atomic Energy, 1939–1945. London: Macmillan, 1965. ——— , Independence and Deterrence: Britain and Atomic Energy, 1945–1952, vol. 1, Policy Making. London: Macmillan for the Atomic Energy Authority, 1974. Gujral, I. K., Continuity and Change: India’s Foreign Policy. New Delhi: Macmillan, 2003. ——— , ‘India’s Foreign Policy Today’, in Nancy Jetly, ed., India’s Foreign Policy: Challenges and Prospects. New Delhi: Vikas, 1999, pp. 3–9. Gupta, Anirudha, ‘Issues in South Asia: Geopolitics or Geoeconomics’, International Studies 34, 1 (1997), pp. 15–24. Gupta, Shekhar, India Redefi nes its Role, Adelphi Paper 293. Oxford: Oxford University Press, for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1995. ——— , ‘Shooting Ahead’, India Today, March 31, 1989. ——— , ‘Raising the Stakes’, India Today, February 29, 1992. ——— , ‘Bill’s Busy Right Now’, India Today, July 31, 1993. ——— , ‘Tolerating Reality’, India Today, July 31, 1993. ——— , ‘Keeping Bill at Bay’, India Today, December 15, 1993. ——— , ‘A Worrying Activism’, India Today, March 15, 1994. ——— , ‘A Triumph of Diplomacy’, India Today, March 31, 1994. ——— , ‘Nawaz Sharif’s Bombshell’, India Today, November 15, 1994. ——— , ‘Road to Resurgence’, Indian Express, New Delhi, May 12, 1998. ——— , ‘Turning Nukes on Th eir Head’, Indian Express, June 8, 2002. Gupta, Shekhar and Shahnaz Ankelsaria Aiyar, ‘Blundering Along’, India Today,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 December 15, 1991. Gupta, Shekhar and Sudeep Chakravarti, ‘Vital Breakthrough’, India Today, September 30, 1993. Gupta, Shekhar and W. P. S. Sidhu, ‘Cautious Manoeuvres’, India Today, June 30, 1992. ——— , ‘Th e End Game Option’,India Today, April 30, 1993. Gupta, Shekhar, W. P. S. Sidhu and Kanwar Sandhu, ‘A Middle-Aged Military Machine’, India Today, April 30, 1993. Gupta, Smita, ‘One Man on an Island’, Outlook, July 7, 2008. Bibliography ( 323

Gupta, Smita, ‘Off on a Bicycle’, Outlook, July 14, 2008. Hagerty, Devin T., Th e Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1998. ——— , ‘Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia: Th e 1990 Indo-Pakistani Crisis’, International Security 20, 3 (Winter 1995/96), pp. 79–114. ——— , ‘India’s Regional Security Doctrine’, Asian Survey 31, 4 (April 1991), pp. 351–63. Haksar, P. N., ‘Contemplations on the Human Condition: Selected Writings, Speeches and Letters’, in Subrata Banerjee, ed., Haksar Memorial, vol. 1. Chandigarh: Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, 2004. ——— , India’s Foreign Policy and its Problems. New Delhi: Patriot, 1989. ——— , ‘National Security: Aspects and Dimensions’, in Subrata Banerjee, ed., Contemplations on the Human Condition: Selected Writings, Speeches and Letters, Haksar Memorial, vol. 1. Chandigarh: Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, 2004. Hamlyn, Michael, ‘Old School Ties Renewed at India’s Eton’, Th e Times, November 2, 1985. Haniff a, Aziz, ‘Christopher: India May be Isolated on CTBT’, India Abroad, August 9, 1996. ——— ,‘US Travel Advisory Costs India Millions’, India Abroad, June 28, 2002. Hazarika, Sanjoy, ‘US Warns India over Missile Deal’, New York Times, May 3, 1992. ——— , ‘India Asserts it will Develop Rocket Engines’, New York Times, July 18, 1993. Hennessy, Peter, Th e Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War. London: Allen Lane, 2002. ——— , ‘Conclusion’, in Peter Hennessy, ed., Cabinets and the Bomb, British Academy, Occasional Paper 11. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2007. Hersh, Seymour M., ‘On the Nuclear Edge’, New Yorker, March 29, 1993, pp. 56–73. Hewitt, Vernon, ‘Th e Prime Minister and Parliament’, in James Manor, ed., Nehru to the Nineties: Th e Changing Offi ce of the Prime Minister in India. London: Hurst, 1994. Hindustan Times, ‘Standstill Agreement on H-Bomb Proposed; Nehru’s Appeal to World Powers; Four Point Plan Outlined; Small States Must Assert Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Th emselves’, April 3, 1954. Hohenthal, Annika, ‘English in India — and Who Speaks English to Whom and When?’, at http://www.postcolonialweb.org/india (accessed on November 10, 2007). Hoodbhoy, Pervez, ‘Nuclear Myths and Realities’, in Michael Krepon and Amit Sevak, eds, Crisis Prevention, Confi dence Building and Reconciliation in South Asia. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995. 324 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Hoodbhoy, Pervez, Nuclear Issues Between India and Pakistan: Myths and Realities, Occasional Paper no. 18. Washington DC: Stimson Center, July 1994. Housego, David, ‘India Urged to Attack Camps in Pakistan over Strife in Kashmir’, Financial Times, April 9, 1990. Hussain, Mushahid, ‘India Not an Emerging Colossus, Says Gandhi’, Inter Press Service, April 3, 1989. Hymans, Jacques E. C., Th e Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions and Foreign Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. IBN Live, ‘Army May Use Cold Start Doctrine Against Pak’, December 9, 2008, at http://ibnlive.in.com/news/army-may-use-cold-start-doctrine-against- pak/80160-3-1.html (accessed on March 22, 2009). Inder Singh, Anita, ‘India’s Relations with Russia and Central Asia’, International Aﬀ airs 71, 1 (1995), pp. 69–81. India Abroad, ‘Pakistan’s Bomb Scare Justiﬁ es Delhi’s Stand’, September 2, 1994. India Today, ‘Extra-terrestrial Invasion’, January 15, 1993. ——— , ‘Make the Most of it’, May 31, 1994. ——— , ‘A History of Claims’, November 15, 1994. Indian Express, ‘VHP Firm on Pokhran Temple, BJP Silent’, May 21, 1998. Indurthy, Rathnam, ‘Who is Hypocritical on the CTBT; India or the Nuclear Powers?’, Ethnic NewsWatch, News-India Times 26, 46, (1996), p. 36. Jahargirdar, Archana, ‘Th e People’s Army’,Frontline , July 12, 1999. Jain, J. P., Nuclear India, vols. 1 and 2. New Delhi: Radiant, 1974. Jain, Madhu and W. P. S. Sidhu, ‘Battle for the Box’, India Today, March 31, 1992. Jain, Sunil, ‘What Indians Th ink’, India Today, December 31, 1995. Jayaprakash, N.D., ‘Impediments to the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons–II’, People’s Democracy, Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) XXIX, 35, August 28, 2005. Jayaraman, T., ‘Beyond the Euphoria’, Frontline, June 5, 1998. ——— , ‘Of Scientists and Nukes’, Frontline, June 19, 1998. Jaywant, Dipa, ‘Bleak Prospects’, India Today, August 16–31, 1980.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Jetly, Nancy, ed., India’s Foreign Policy: Challenges and Prospects. New Delhi: Vikas, 1999. Jha, Padmanand, ‘Election Without an Issue’, Outlook, May 1, 1996. Jha, Prem Shankar, ‘Handshake with Globocop’, Outlook, October 20, 1997. ——— , ‘Mixing Fact and Fission’, Outlook, June 17, 2002. ——— , ‘Coming of a Nuclear Age’, Outlook, August 1, 2005. Joeck, Neil, Maintaining Nuclear Stability in South Asia, Adelphi Paper 312. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1997. Bibliography ( 325

Joseph, Ludwina A., ‘White House Lies’, Outlook, March 20, 1996. ——— , ‘With a Wink and a Nod’, Outlook, February 28, 1996. ——— , ‘Nuclear Testing Will Have Serious Consequences’, Outlook, February 9, 1998. Joseph, Ludwina A., Janaki Kremmer and Sanjay Suri, ‘Sound of Fury’, Outlook, May 25, 1998. Joshi, Ishan, ‘RSS has a Kind of Moral Authority over Th e BJP’, Outlook, August 6, 1997. ——— , ‘To Th e Hustings, Very Reluctantly’, Outlook, December 8, 1997. ——— , ‘Th e BJP’s Best Man’,Outlook , February 2, 1998. ——— , ‘A Deliberate Duality’, Outlook, February 9, 1998. ——— , ‘Beating Vajpayee to a Pulp’, Outlook, February 16, 1998. Joshi, Manoj, ‘From Technology Demonstration to Assured Retaliation: Th e Making of an Indian Nuclear Doctrine’, Strategic Analysis (IDSA) 22, 10 (January 1999). ——— , ‘Deadly Option’, India Today, March 4, 1998. ——— , ‘Nuclear Weapons: In the Shadow of Fear’, India Today, July 21, 1997. ——— , ‘George in the China Shop’, India Today, May 18, 1998. Joshi, Rajesh, ‘A Proxy War of Words’, Outlook, March 1, 1999. ——— , ‘Life in the Line of Fire’, Outlook, June 14, 1999. Joshi, Rajesh and A. S. Panneerselvan, ‘Jai Journo, Jai Jawan’, Outlook, July 26, 1999. Joshi, Ruchir, ‘Strange Gravefellows’, Outlook, June 15, 1998. Joshi, Vijay, ‘India’s Economic Reforms: Progress, Problems, Prospects’, Oxford Development Studies 26, 3 (1998), pp. 333–51. Kakodkar, Anil, ‘Securing Our Emerging Energy Needs: What Nuclear Energy can Do’, Energy Security Insights, 1, 1, at www.teriin.org/div/eissue1march06. pdf (accessed on March 22, 2009). Kampani, Gaurav, ‘From Existential to Minimum Deterrence: Explaining India’s Decision to Test’, Th e Nonproliferation Review (Fall 1998), pp. 12–24. Kang, Bhavdeep, ‘A News Twist’, Outlook, July 21, 1999. ——— , ‘Tempers Tempered’, Outlook, December 31, 2001. Kapur, Ashok, India’s Nuclear Option: Atomic Diplomacy and Decision Making. New York: Praeger, 1976. Kapur, Devesh, ‘India in 1999’, Asian Survey 40, 1 (January/Febuary 2000), pp. 195–207.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Kapur, Harish, India’s Foreign Policy, 1947–1992: Shadows and Substance. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994. Karat, Prakash, ‘Kargil and Beyond’, Frontline, July 3, 1999. Kargil Review Committee, From Surprise to Reckoning: Th e Kargil Review Committee Report. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000. Karnad, Bharat, ‘Minimum Deterrence and the Indo-US Nuclear Deal’, Seminar, 569, (January 2007), at http://www.india-seminar.com/2007/569/569_ bharat_karnad.htm (accessed on March 25, 2009). 326 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Karnad, Bharat, ‘Mr. K. Subrahmanyam: An Appreciation’, in C. Uday Bhaskar (comp.), Subbu at 75: A Bouquet of Tributes. New Delhi: Shri Avtar Printing Press, 2004, pp. 27–31. ——— , Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security: Th e Realist Foundations of Strategy. Delhi: Macmillan 2002. ——— , ‘A Th ermo-Nuclear Deterrent’, in Amitabh Mattoo, ed.,India’s Nuclear Deterrent: Pokharan II and Beyond. Delhi: Har Anand, 1999, pp. 108–49. ——— , ‘Minimum Deterrence and the India-US Nuclear Deal’, Seminar 596, (January 2007). Khare, Harish, ‘A Decisive Battle has to Take Place: PM’, The Hindu, December 14, 2001. Khilnani, Sunil, ‘India’s Contribution to Liberalism: Nehru’s Faith’, Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture, New Delhi, 2004. ——— , Th e Idea of India. New Delhi: Penguin, 1999. Kodikara, Shelton U., ‘South Asian Security Dilemmas in the Post-Cold War World’, in Kanti P. Bajpai and Stephen P. Cohen, eds, South Asia after the Cold War: International Perspectives. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993. Koppikar, Smruti, ‘Vocal Demands’, Outlook, December 15, 2008. Kremmer, Janaki Bahadur, ‘Mindless Binge’, outlook, May 4, 1998. Krepon, Michael and Amit Sevak, eds, Crisis Prevention, Confi dence Building and Reconciliation in South Asia. Houndsmills, Basingstoke and London: Macmillan for the Henry L. Stimson Center, 1995. Krepon, Michael and Mishi Faruqee, eds, Confl ict Prevention and Confi dence Building Measures in South Asia: Th e 1990 Crisis, Occasional paper 17. Washington DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, April 1994. Krishnan, Murali, ‘Silence, the Best Policy’, Outlook, September 20, 1999. ——— , ‘Just Short of War’, Outlook, December 31, 2001. Krishnan, Murali and Chander Suta Dogra, ‘Burden of Peace’, Outlook, May 19, 2003. Krishnaswami, Sridhar, ‘Punitive Action’, Frontline, June 5, 1998. ——— , ‘Avoid Travel to India’, Th e Hindu, June 1, 2002. Kumar, Davinder, ‘Tracing a Puppet Chain’, Outlook, December 31, 2001. ——— , ‘Th e Limits of a Limited War’, Outlook, May 27, 2002. Kumar, Satish, ‘Towards a Stronger and More Democratic United Nations: India’s Role’, International Studies 30, 2 (February 1993), pp. 173–88. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Kumaraswamy, P. R., ed., Security Beyond Survival: Essays for K. Subrahmanyam. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004. ——— , ‘National Security: A Critique’, in P. R. Kumaraswamy, ed., Security Beyond Survival: Essays for K. Subrahmanyam. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004. Kunzru, Hari, ‘I am Become Death’, Mute, at http://www.harikunzru.com/hari/ death.htm (accessed on August 20, 2006). Limaye, Satu P., US-Indian Relations: Th e Pursuit of Accommodation.Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993. Bibliography ( 327

Lok Sabha Debates, Ninth Series, vol. III, second session, April 10, 1990. Long, Simon, ‘India’s Shining Hopes’, Economist, February 2, 2004. Mackby, Jennifer and Walter B. Slocombe, ‘Germany: Th e Model Case, A Historical Imperative’, in Kurt M. Campbell, Robert J. Einhorn and Mitchell Reiss, eds, Th e Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider their Nuclear Choices. Washington DC: Brookings, 1994. Malhotra, Inder, ‘A Statement a Day … Like Old Times’, India Abroad, May 11, 1990. ——— , Th e Statesman, October 9, 1964. ——— , ‘Niagara of Words on N-Issue’, Th e Hindu, May 27, 1998. ——— , ‘Doubts over N-Deal’, Th e Tribune, August 12, 2005. Mallavarapu, Siddharth, ‘Legality of Nuclear Weapons’, in Amitabh Mattoo, ed., India’s Nuclear Deterrent: Pokharan II and Beyond. New Delhi: Har Anand Publications Pvt. Ltd., 1999. ——— , Banning the Bomb: Th e Politics of Norm Creation. New Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2007. Malik, Harji and Patwant Singh, Punjab: Th e Fatal Miscalculation. New Delhi: Patwant Singh, 1985. Mandela, Nelson, ‘Science and Technology in a Democratic South Africa: An ANC Perspective’, Speech to the Centenary Conference of the South African Institution of Mechanical Engineers, August 30, 1993. Mansingh, Surjit, ‘India–China Relations in the Post-Cold War Era’, Asian Survey 34, 3 (March 1994), pp. 285–300. Manor, James, ed., Nehru to the Nineties: Th e Changing Oﬃ ce of the Prime Minister in India. London: Hurst, 1994. Manor, James and Gerald Segal, ‘Taking India Seriously’, Survival 40, 2, (Summer 1998), pp. 53–70. Mattoo, Amitabh, ‘Imagining China’, in Kanti P. Bajpai and Amitabh Mattoo, eds, Th e Peacock and the Dragon: India–China Relations in the Twenty-First Century. Delhi: Har Anand, 2000, pp. 13–25. ——— , ed., India’s Nuclear Deterrent: Pokharan II and Beyond. New Delhi: Har Anand Publications Pvt. Ltd., 1999. ——— , ‘India’s Nuclear Policy in an Anarchic World’, in Amiatbh Mattoo, ed., India’s Nuclear Deterrent: Pokharan II and Beyond. New Delhi: Har Anand Publications Pvt. Ltd, 1999. ——— , ‘India’s Nuclear Status Quo’, Survival 38, 3 (Autumn 1996), pp. 41–58. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 ——— , ‘Ambiguity Characterizes Policy on Fissile Material’, India Abroad, July 11, 1997. ——— , ‘Nuclear Name Calling’, India Today, February 28, 2000. Mazumdar, Suman Guha, ‘Rationale for Nation’s Nuclear Test is Explained’, India Abroad, July 17, 1998. Mehta, Nalin, India on Television: How Satellite News Channels Have Changed the Way We Th ink and Act. Delhi: HarperCollins, 2008. 328 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Mehta, Vinod, ‘Shedding Old Baggage’, Outlook, October 6, 1997. ——— , ‘How a ‘Tired’ PM Became a ‘Bold’ PM’, Outlook, May 25, 1998. ——— , ‘Th ree Cheers for Symbolism’,Outlook , March 1, 1999. ——— , Mr Editor, How Close are You to the PM?: 25 Years of Selected Writings. New Delhi: Konark, 1999. ——— , ‘Wanted: Cool Heads’, Outlook, December 24, 2001. ——— , ‘Let Us Defy Uncle Sam’, Outlook, 3 June 2002. ——— , ‘Take it with Grace’, Outlook, 17 June 2002. ——— , ‘Look Before Your Leap’, Outlook, December 15, 2008. Mendl, Wolf, Deterrence and Persuasion: French Nuclear Armament in the Context of National Policy, 1945–1969. London: Faber & Faber, 1970. Menon, K. P. S., ‘Speech’, in K. P. S. Menon Collection, Speeches and Writings File no. 35, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Menon, Raja, ‘Th e Nuclear Calculus’,Outlook , July 26, 1999. ——— , ‘Th e Nuclear Doctrine’,Times of India, August 26, 1999. ——— , ‘Th ese Talks Can’t Wait’,Outlook , August 7, 2000. ——— , ‘Hot Pursuit, Cold Turkey’, Outlook, December 31, 2001. Menon, S. M., ‘Th e Nuclear Imperium and its Vassal Kings’,Economic and Political Weekly August 1, 1998. Menon, Vijay, ‘Moving at a Snail’s Pace’, India Today, November 30, 1994. Menon, Vishnu, ‘India has Lost its Image’, Outlook, June 1, 1998. Milhollin, Gary, ‘India’s Missiles: with a Little Help From Our Friends’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (November 1989). Ministry of External Aﬀ airs, External Publicity Division, Press Statement of May 11, 1998, concerning India’s nuclear tests, at http://www.ipcs.org/ newDatabaseIndex2.jsp?database=1005&country2=1998 (accessed on August 10, 2007). ——— , ‘Planned Series of Nuclear Tests Completed’, Press Statement of May 13, 1998, at http://www.ipcs.org/newDatabaseIndex2.jsp?database=1005& country2=1998 (accessed on August 10, 2007). Mirchandani, G. G., India’s Nuclear Dilemma. New Delhi: Popular Book Services, 1968. Mishra, Preeti, ‘IT Industry Concerned over Travel Warnings’, Th e Hindu, June 10, 2002.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Mistry, Dinshaw, ‘Domestic-International Linkages: India and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty’, Nonproliferation Review 6, 1 (Fall 1998), pp. 25–38. Mohan, C. Raja. ‘US Decides not to Push for NPT’, Th e Hindu, May 21, 1994. ——— , ‘Working with Nuclear Reality’, Th e Hindu, July 10, 1997. ——— , ‘Playing Football with Nuclear Weapons’, Th e Hindu, May 25, 1998. ——— , ‘India’s Security Challenges’, in Nancy Jetly, ed., India’s Foreign Policy: Challenges and Prospects. New Delhi: Vikas, 1999, pp. 45–65. ——— , ‘Interview with Jaswant Singh, Minister of External Aﬀ airs’, Th e Hindu, November 29, 1999. Bibliography ( 329

Mohan, C. Raja. ‘Towards a CTBT Consensus’, Th e Hindu, December 9, 1999. ——— , ‘CTBT and the Options Before India’, Independent (London), December 10, 1999. ——— , ‘Fernandes Unveils “Limited War” Doctrine’, Th e Hindu, January 25, 2000. ——— , ‘Drawing America into Kashmir’, Th e Hindu, June 6, 2002. ——— , ‘Nuclear Command Authority Comes into Being’, Th e Hindu, January 5, 2003. ——— , Crossing the Rubicon: The Shaping of India’s New Foreign Policy. New Delhi: Viking, 2003. Morgan, M. Granger, K. Subrahmanyam, K. Sundarji and Robert M. White, ‘India and the United States’, Th e Washington Quarterly 18, 2 (Spring 1995), pp. 155–79. Moore, Molly and John Ward Anderson, ‘Rhetoric Fuels India-US Rift: Perceptions of Washington Vendetta Th reatens Improved Business, Military Ties’, Washington Post, February 24, 1994. Moshaver, Ziba, Nuclear Weapons Proliferation in the Indian Subcontinent. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991. Mukherjee, Pranab, ‘Should India Sign the CTBT?’, Th e Hindu, May 26, 1998. Muni, S D., ‘India and its Neighbours: Persisting Dilemmas and New Oppor- tunities’, International Studies 30, 2 (February 1993), pp. 189–206. ——— , ‘India and the Post-Cold War World: Opportunities and Challenges’, Asian Survey 31, 9 (September 1991), pp. 862–74. Munro, Ross H., ‘India: Th e Awakening of an Asian Power’, Time, April 3, 1989. Muralidharan, Sukumar, ‘Promises and Policies’, Frontline, March 6, 1998. ——— , ‘Nuclear Heat’, Frontline, June 19, 1998. ——— , ‘Diplomacy Should not be Put Aside’, Frontline, July 2, 1999. ——— , ‘Lacking in Strategy’, Frontline, June 7, 2002. ——— , ‘Th e Lurking Danger’,Frontline , June 21, 2002. Nainan, Madhu, ‘India’s Main Opposition Party Vows to Build Nuclear Arsenal if Elected’, Agence France Presse, November 11, 1995. Nair, Brigadier Vijai K. (retd), Nuclear India. New Delhi: Lancer, 1992. ——— , ‘Th e Structure of an Indian Nuclear Deterrent’, in Amitabh Mattoo, ed., India’s Nuclear Deterrent: Pokharan II and Beyond. New Delhi: Har Anand

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Publications Pvt. Ltd., 1999. Nandy, Ashis, ‘Homi Bhabha Killed a Crow’, in Ashis Nandy and Zia Mian, eds, Th e Nuclear Debate: Ironies and Immoralities. Colombo: Regional Centre for Strategic Studies/Fellowship in South Asian Alternatives, July 1988. Narula, Sunil, ‘Pressure Tactics’, Outlook, January 3, 1996. ——— , ‘India Spells Out its Terms’, Outlook, February 21, 1996. ——— , ‘In Isolation Ward Again’ Outlook, July 17, 1996. ——— , ‘West Too Must Make a Commitment’, Outlook, July 17, 1996. 330 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Narula, Sunil, ‘Pushed into a Corner’, Outlook, August 14, 1996. ——— , ‘We Should Have Some Self-Esteem’, Outlook, August 28, 1996. ——— , ‘Interview with I. K. Gujral’, Outlook, March 12, 1997. ——— , ‘“War Hysteria is No Good. Both Sides Must Act Coolly”’, Outlook, June 8, 1998. ——— , ‘Th e Bomb That Bombed’, Outlook, June 28, 1999. ——— , ‘Clouded by Distrust’, Outlook, July 19, 1999. Narula, Sunil, Ludwina A. Josesph and Mariana Baabar, ‘We’ll Go Nuclear’, Outlook, February 9, 1998. Narula, Sunil and Janaki Bahadur Kremmer, ‘Hasty Afterthoughts and a Paper Bomb’, Outlook, August 30, 1999. Narula, Sunil and Ludwina A. Joseph, ‘Browning oﬀ Indo-US Ties’, Outlook, October 25, 1995. ——— , ‘Th e Battle Begins’,Outlook , September 25, 1996. Narula, Sunil and Nitin A. Gokhale, ‘A Step Across a Th in Line?’, Outlook, July 5, 1999. Narula, Sunil and Ramananda Sengupta, ‘Next Stop: United Nations?’, Outlook, August 28, 1996. ——— , ‘Rogue Letter’, Outlook, June 1, 1998. ——— , ‘Ad-Hawk Noises’, Outlook, June 1, 1998. Naval Postgraduate School, Conference report for ‘Asymmetric Conﬂ ict in South Asia: Th e Cause and Consequences of the 1999 Limited War in South Asia’, Monterey, California, May 29–June 1, 2002, at http://www.ccc. nps.navy.mil/events/recent/may02Kargil_rpt.asp (accessed on September 10, 2006). Nayar, Kuldip, ‘What if Indira Gandhi Had Not Declared Emergency?’, Outlook, August 23, 2004. Nehru, Jawaharlal, Discovery of India, 1st edn. Calcutta: Signet, 1946. ——— , India and the World. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1946. ——— , ‘Firm Adherence to Objectives’, Speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Paris, November 1948, at http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/ Disarmament/disarm1.htm (accessed on June 15, 2004). ——— , ‘Standstill Agreement’, Statement of the Prime Minister in the Lok Sabha on April 2, 1954, Hindustan Times, April 3, 1954. ——— , ‘Letter to the Ambassador to Moscow, K. P. S. Menon (June 28, 1958)’,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 in the Subimal Dutt Collection, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Subject File No. 20, June 1958, available at the Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security, at http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic. cfm?lng=en&id=94853&navinfo=96318 (accessed on March 22, 2009). ——— , ‘Message to the Press’, in Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speeches, vol. 1. Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Gov- ernment of India, 1958. ——— , ‘Tryst With Destiny’, in Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speeches, vol. 1. Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1958. Bibliography ( 331

Nehru, Jawaharlal, ‘Speech to the Non-aligned Summit, Belgrade’, New York Times, September 3, 1961. ——— , ‘Control of Nuclear Energy’, in Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian Foreign Policy: Selected Speeches, September 1946–April 1961. New Delhi: Government of India, 1961. ——— , An Autobiography, revised edn. Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1962. ——— , ‘Th e Necessity of Atomic Research in India’, in S. Gopal, ed.,Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, vol. 1. Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1984. News-India Times, ‘Experts Call for Clear-cut Nuclear Policy’, June 9, 1995. Noorani, A G., ‘India’s Quest for a Nuclear Guarantee’, Asian Survey 7, 7 (July 1967), pp. 490–502. ——— , ‘Th e Kargil Committee Expedition’,Frontline , March 31, 2000. ——— , ‘Of War-mongering and Accountability’, Frontline, February 15, 2002. ——— , ‘Th e Truth about Kargil’,Frontline , December 5, 2003. ——— , ‘Pakistan’s Burden’, Frontline, January 16, 2009. ——— , ‘Diplomacy and the Mumbai attacks’, Frontline, February 13, 2009. O’Rourke, Michael, ‘Nuclear Standoﬀ ’, Far Eastern Economic Review, September 13, 1990. ——— , ‘Interview with General K. Sundarji (retd)’, Far Eastern Economic Review, September 13, 1990. Outlook, ‘Th e State of India’s Nuclear Power Plants’, December 20, 1995. ——— , ‘Rivals in Hawkhood’, Outlook, December 31, 2001. ——— , ‘“I Oppose Military Action. I Backed Operation Parakram, Lost Polls”’, December 15, 2008. ——— , ‘So, Big Deal’, July 7, 2008. ——— , ‘It’s a Global Pact with Sovereign India’, July 7, 2008. ——— , ‘“Well I Would Certainly Not Defend Operation Parakram”’, Outlook, March 2, 2009. Outlook.com, ‘Right To Conduct Future Nuclear Weapon Tests’, at http://www. outlookindia.com/fullname?fodname=20061218&fname=manmoahnnuke &sid=3 (accessed on March 25, 2009). Pachauri, R. K., ‘Nuclear Power: Th e New Global Interest’, Energy Security Insights, 1, 1, at www.teriin.org/div/eissue1march06.pdf (accessed on March 22, 2009). Padgoankar, Dileep, ‘Policy of Restraint to Keep Pak under Global Pressure’, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Times of India, June 26, 1999. Pandit, Rajat, ‘Army Chief: Hope Pak N-arms in Safe Hands’, Times of India, January 15, 2009. Panneerselvan, A. S., ‘Way Above the Danger Mark?’, Outlook, October 27, 1997. Pant, Harsh, ‘Anatomy of Defective Decision-Making’, Outlookindia.com, August 8, 2008. 332 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Paranjpe, Shrikant, ‘India’s Security Policy: An Evaluation After Fifty Years’, International Studies 35, 2 (1998), pp. 139–65. ——— , Parliament and the Making of Indian Foreign Policy: A Study of Nuclear Policy. New Delhi: Radiant, 1997. Parthasarthy, G., ‘Pakistan’s Nuclear and Missile Programme: Th e Multiple Dimensions’, Rediﬀ on the Net, August 30, 2000, at http://www.rediﬀ .com/ news/2000/aug/30gp.htm (accessed on June 10, 2004). Perkovich, George, India’s Nuclear Bomb: Th e Impact on Global Proliferation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. ——— , ‘A Nuclear Th ird Way in South Asia’,Foreign Policy, 91 (Summer 1993). Pikayev, Alexander A., Leonard S. Spector, Elina V. Kirichenko and Ryan Gibson, Russia, the US and the Missile Technology Control Regime, Adelphi Paper 317. Oxford: Oxford University Press, for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1998. Pillai, Ajith, ‘Inertia in the Ranks’, Outlook, November 8, 1995. ——— , ‘It’s Time to Start Worrying’, Outlook, January 29, 1997. ——— , ‘Wake up Now’, Outlook, January 29, 1997. ——— , ‘Silence of the Lambs’, Outlook, May 25, 1998. ——— , ‘Bombay, Duck’, Outlook, December 15, 2008. Pillai, Ajith and Ishan Joshi, ‘Th e Road Ahead’,Outlook , July 12, 1999. Poorie, Arun, ‘Letter from the Editor’, India Today, February 28, 1994. Poulose, T. T., ‘India’s Nuclear Option and National Security’, in P. R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema and Iftekharuzzaman, eds, Nuclear Non-Proliferation in India and Pakistan. New Delhi: Manohar for RCSS, 1996. Prasad, A. N., ‘Down to the Last Atom’, Outlook, February 27, 2006. Prasad, Krishna, ‘Nuclear Slowdown’, Outlook, December 20, 1995. Pratap, Anita, ‘Choking on Our Own Froth’, Outlook, 17 June 2002. PTI, ‘Don’t Act in Haste: Opposition’s Advise to Govt’ [sic], December 18, 2001, at http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=30195 (accessed on March 15, 2009). ——— , ‘War with Pak was Never Our Intention: Pranab’, February 18, 2009. Puri, Rajinder, ‘Bullseye’, Outlook, July 21, 2008. Raghavan, Lt-Gen. V. R. (retd), India’s Need for Strategic Balance: Security in the post-cold war world. New Delhi: Delhi Policy Group, ca 1996.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 ——— , ‘Limited War and Strategic Liability’, Th e Hindu, February 2, 2000. ——— , ‘Whither Nuclear Policy?’, Th e Hindu, July 1, 2000. ——— , ‘India’s Nuclear Balance Sheet’, Th e Hindu, May 7, 2002. ——— ,‘Losing Strategic Credibility’, Th e Hindu, June 5, 2002. ——— , ‘Nuclear Building Blocks’, Th e Hindu, January 7, 2003. ——— , ‘Limited War and Nuclear Escalation in South Asia’, Nonproliferation Review (Fall-Winter 2001), at http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/83ragh.pdf (accessed on September 2, 2009). Rahman, M., ‘Th e New TV Superbazar: Now at Your Fingertips’,India Today, November 15, 1992. Bibliography ( 333

Rai, Saritha, ‘Interview with General K. Sundarji (retd)’, India Today, April 30, 1994. Rajan, M. S., ‘Th e Future of Non-Alignment’, Th e Annals of the American Academy, 362 (November 1965), pp. 121–28. ——— , ‘Th e Continuing Relevance of Nonalignment’,International Studies 30, 2 (February 1993). ——— , ‘Th e Goals of India’s Foreign Policy’,International Studies 35, 1 (1998), pp. 73–105. Ram, N., ‘Nuclear Policy: What India Must Do’, Frontline, January 26, 1996. ——— , ‘Issues that Matter’, Frontline, May 17, 1996. ——— , ‘Political India over Fifty Years’, Frontline, Anniverary issue, August 9, 1997. ——— , ‘Th e Risks of Nuclear Hawkishness’,Frontline , April 24, 1998. ——— , ‘Th e Perils of Nuclear Adventurism’,Frontline , June 5, 1998. ——— , ‘Dreaming India’s Future’, Frontline, September 10, 1999. Ram, N. and Sukumar Muralidharan, ‘India Must Say “No” to CTBT, FMCT’, Frontline, July 3, 1998. Ramachandran, R., ‘Missile Match’, Frontline, June 21, 2002. Raman, Anuradha, ‘Read Th eir Lips’, Outlook, March 13, 2006. Raman, B., ‘Revamping National Security’, Rediﬀ on the Net, May 24, 2004. Ramana, M. V., ‘A Recipe for Disaster’, Th e Hindu, September 9, 1999. ——— , ‘La Trahison des Clercs: Scientists and India’s Nuclear Bomb’, in M. V. Ramana and C. Rammanohar Reddy, eds, Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003. ——— , ‘Nehru, Science and Secrecy’, Anumkti, August 1998, at http://www. geocities.com/m_v_ramana/nucleararticles/Nehru.pdf (accessed on June 10, 2004). ——— , ‘Scientists, Nuclear Weapons and the Peace Movement’, Economic and Political Weekly¸ November 20, 2004, pp. 46–47. Ramana, M. V. and C. Rammanohar Reddy, eds, Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003. Ramanna, Raja. Years of Pilgrimage. New Delhi: Penguin, 1992. Ramachandran, R., ‘Unclear Nuclear Identity’, Frontline, September 10, 1999. Ramdas, L., ‘Arrogant Nuclearism’, Frontline, October 22, 1999. ——— , ‘Nuclear Weapons and National Security’, in M. V. Ramana and Rammanohar Reddy, eds, Prisoner of the Nuclear Dream. Hyderabad:

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Orient Longman, 2003. Rao, Buddhi Kota Subba, ‘Th e H-Bomb Issue is Crucial’,Frontline , June 19 1998. Rao, P. V., Narasimha, ‘Speech to the General Assembly on the occasion of the 2nd Special Session on Disarmament (SSOD)’, June 11, 1982, at www. indianembassy.org (accessed on September 1, 2009). Rao-Sunderji, Padma and Sunil Narula, ‘At the UN, Money Talks’, Outlook, November 6, 1996. 334 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Rasgotra, M. K., ‘India’s Foreign Policy: Some Perspectives’, in Nancy Jetly, ed., India’s Foreign Policy: Challenges and Prospects. New Delhi: Vikas, 1999, pp. 26–32. Ravi, N., ‘India Will Have the Same Obligations as Nuclear Weapons States: Saran’, Th e Hindu, July 20, 2005. Reddy, Amulya K.,‘Nuclear Power: Is it Necessary or Economical?’, Seminar, 370 (June 1990). ——— , ‘Designing Nuclear Weapons: Th e Moral Question’, in M. V. Ramana and Amulya K. Reddy, Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003, pp. 189–205. Reddy, B. Muralidhar, ‘Musharraf Bans Lashkar, Jaish; Invited Vajpayee for Talks’, Th e Hindu, January 13, 2002. Reddy, C. Rammanohar, ‘Destroyer of Worlds’, Th e Hindu, December 20, 1998. ——— , ‘Th e Wages of Armageddon–I, II, III’, Th e Hindu, August 31 and September 1 and 2, 1998. ——— , ‘A Peace Movement is Born’, Th e Hindu, November 26, 2000. Reddy, Sheela, Interview with Khushwant Singh, ‘I Don’t Know One Editor in India Who is Well-Read’, Outlook, October 18, 2005, at www.outlookindia. com (accessed on June 22, 2006). Rediﬀ on the Net, ‘Fernandes Blames US for Duplicity on Terrorism Issue’, January 5, 2000. ——— , ‘PMO has “Casual Approach” to National Security: Subrahmanyam’, October 28, 2000, at http://in.rediff.com/news/2000/oct/28karg.htm (accessed on September 15, 2006). ——— , ‘US, UK, Advise 80,000 of their Nationals to Leave India’, May 31, 2002. ——— , ‘US Travel Advisory Not Needed: Mansingh’, June 1, 2002. ——— , ‘Left Wants Parliament Debate on Iran’, news, February 5, 2006. ——— , ‘Th e Kargil Crisis’, at http://www.rediﬀ .com/news/kargil.htm (accessed on September 10, 2006). Reiss, Mitchell, Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain their Nuclear Ambition. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 1995. ——— , ‘South Asia: Th e Zero-Sum Subcontinent?’, in Mitchell Reiss,Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain their Nuclear Ambition. Washington Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 1995. Reiss, Mitchell and Robert S. Litwak, eds, Nuclear Proliferation After the Cold War. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1994. Rohrer, Finlo, ‘Whatever Happened to CND’, BBC News Magazine, July 5, 2006. Roy, Nilova, ‘Yeltsin’s Visit to India Re-establishes Close Alliance After 3-Year “Pause”’, Th e Daily Yoimuri, February 1, 1993. Bibliography ( 335

Rushdie, Salman. ‘Attenborough’s Gandhi’, in Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991. London: Granta, 1992, pp. 101–6. ——— , ‘India at Mid-life: Tell Me, What is Th ere to Celebrate?’,Th e Observer (London), August 10, 1997. Sagan, Scott D., ‘Th e Perils of Proliferation: Organization Theory, Deterrence Th eory and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons’, International Security 18, 4 (Spring 1994). ——— , ‘Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons? Th ree Models in Search of a Bomb’, International Security 21, 3 (Winter 1996/97), pp. 54–86. Sahgal, Priya, ‘Fuzzy Signals’, Outlook, June 3, 2002. Sampathkumar, D., ‘Th e Force of Sanctions’Frontline , June 5, 1998. Sandhu, Kanwar, ‘Interview with Chief of Army Staﬀ , General B. C. Joshi’, India Today, July 15, 1993. Sanghvi, Vir, ‘Bofors’ Ghost’, Seminar 485 (January 2000). Sarkar, Sumit, ‘Th e BJP Bomb and Aspects of Nationalism’,Economic and Political Weekly XXXIII, 27, July 4, 1998. Sen, Amartya, ‘How India has Fared’, Frontline, August 9, 1997. ——— , ‘India and the Bomb’, in M. V. Ramana and C. Rammanohar Reddy, Prison- ers of the Nuclear Dream. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003, pp. 167–88. ——— , Th e Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity. London: Allen Lane, 2005. Sen, Ashish Kumar, ‘When in Doubt, Shut Up’, Outlook, February 13, 2006. Sengupta, Ramananda, ‘Diplomatic Mineﬁ elds’, Outlook, December 8, 1997. Sengupta, Ramananda, Janaki Bahadur Kremmer and M. S. Shanker, ‘What the Political Parties Say’, Outlook, March 30, 1998. ——— , ‘Will the BJP Drop the Bomb?’, Outlook, March 30, 1998. Sethi, Manpreet, ‘Go for Nuclear Power’, Times of India, October 24, 2005. Sethna, H. N., ‘India: Past Achievements and Future Promises’, IAEA Bulletin 14, 6 (1972). Sharma, Dhirendra, ‘India’s Lopsided Science’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 1991. Sharma, Pranay, ‘Words in the Sheath’, Outlook, December 15, 2008. Shastri, Paromita, Shekhar Ghosh, Narayan D. Keshavan and Sandipan Deb, ‘Now, Defuse’, Outlook, May 25, 1998. Sheikh, Ali T., ‘Pakistan’, in Mitchell Reiss and Robert S. Litwak, eds, Nuclear

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Proliferation After the Cold War. Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1994, pp. 191–205. Shultz, George P., William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, ‘Toward a Nucler-Free World’, Th e Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008. Shrivastava, B. K., ‘Th e United States and South Asia’,South Asian Survey 4, 1 (1997), pp. 63–79. ——— , ‘Indo-American Relations: Search for a New Equation’, International Studies 30, 2 (February 1993), pp. 215–230. 336 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Shuey, Robert and Shirley A. Kan, ‘Chinese Missile and Nuclear Proliferation’, CRS Issue Brief, September 29, 1995. Siddhartha, M., ‘Legality of Nuclear Weapons’, in Mattoo, ed., India’s Nuclear Deterrent: Pokharan II and Beyond. New Delhi: Har Anand Publications Pvt. Ltd., 1999. ——— , Banning the Bomb: Th e Politics of Norm Creation. New Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2007. Siddiqui, Abhik, ‘BJP Wants to Whitewash Gujarat’, Outlook, June 24, 2002. Sidhu, Waheguru Pal Singh, ‘A Sea Change’, India Today, June 30, 1992. ——— . ‘Tactical Gap’, India Today, September 15, 1992. ——— , Enhancing Indo-US Strategic Cooperation, Adelphi Paper 313. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1997. ——— , ‘Th is Doctrine is Full of Holes’,Indian Express, September 8, 1999. ——— , ‘A Strategic Mis-Step?’, Th e Hindu, January 13, 2003. Sidhu, W. P. S. and Pramod Pushkarna, ‘Siachen: Th e Forgotten War’, India Today, May 31, 1992. Sidhu, W. P. S. and Jing-dong Yuan, ‘Resolving the Sino-Indian Border Dispute: Building Conﬁ dence through Cooperative Monitoring’, Asian Survey 41, 2 (March/April 2001), pp. 351–76. Sidhva, Shiraz, ‘India Unites over Nuclear Arms Stance’, Financial Times, August 22, 1996. Simons, Lewis M., ‘India Explodes A-Device, Cites “Peaceful Use”’, Washington Post, May 19, 1974. Singh, Anita Inder, ‘India’s Relations with Russia and Central Asia’, International Aﬀ airs 71, 1 (1995). Singh, Jasjit, ed., ‘Th e Wars that Never Were’, India Today, February 28, 1994. ——— , ‘Trend in Defence Expenditure’, Asian Strategic Review (1992–93) New Delhi: Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, 1994. ——— , ‘Nuclear Asymmetry: What India’s Response Should Be’, Frontline, October 4, 1996. ——— , Nuclear India. New Delhi: Knowledge World for the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, 1998.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 ——— , ‘Why Nuclear Weapons?’, in Jasjit Singh, ed., Nuclear India. New Delhi: Knowledge World for the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, 1998. ——— , ‘Th e Challenges of Strategic Defence’,Frontline , April 24, 1998. ——— , ‘Th e New Challenges’,Frontline , June 5, 1998. ——— , ‘Introduction to “India’s Nuclear Doctrine”’, Background Document at the 49th Pugwash Annual Conference, September 7–13, 1999. ——— , ‘India’s Nuclear and Strategic Policies’, in Nancy Jetly, ed., India’s Foreign Policy: Challenges and Prospects. New Delhi: Vikas, 1999. Bibliography ( 337

Singh, Khushwant, ‘Swaraj is My Birthright’, Outlook, August 18, 1997. Singh, Manmohan,‘Suo Motu Statement on Iran’, at http://www.outlindia. com/full/asp?fodname+20060217&fname=pm&sid=1 (accessed on March 25, 2009). Sirohi, Seema, ‘To the Power of N’, Outlook, August 1, 2005. ——— , ‘Credible India?’, Outlook, July 7, 2008. ——— , ‘Raised to the Power of N…’, Outlook, September 22, 2008. Smith, Chris, India’s Ad-hoc Arsenal. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. ——— , ‘Conventional Forces and Regional Stability’, in Chris Smith, Shekhar Gupta, William J. Durch and Michael Krepon, Defense and Insecurity in Southern Asia: Th e Conventional and Nuclear Dimensions, Occasional Paper no. 21. Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, May 1995. Smith, Chris, Shekhar Gupta, William J. Durch and Michael Krepon, Defense and Insecurity in Southern Asia: Th e Conventional and Nuclear Dimensions, Occasional Paper no 21. Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, May 1995. Som Dutt, Major-General, India and the Bomb, Adelphi Paper 30. London: IISS, 1966. Srikanth, B. R., ‘Want Real Nukes? Spend a Billion’, Outlook, June 8, 1998. Stewart, William and Ross H. Munro, ‘An Interview with Rajiv Gandhi’, Time, October 21, 1985. Strokan, Sergei and Sunil Narula, ‘A Determined Salesman’, Outlook, February 26, 1997. Subramanian, T. S., ‘A Guessing Game’, Frontline, January 26, 1996. ——— , ‘Missile Manoeuvres’, Frontline, June 21, 2002. Subrahmanyam, K., ‘Capping, Managing or Eliminating Nuclear Weapons?’, in Kanti P. Bajpai and Stephen P. Cohen (eds), South Asia After the Cold War: International Perspectives, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993. ——— , ‘Export Controls and the North-South Controversy’. Washington Quarterly, 16, 2, (Spring 1993), pp. 135–44. ——— , ‘It’s All Bluﬀ and Bluster’, Economic Times, May 18, 1993. ——— , ‘An Equal-Opportunity NPT’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 49, 5, June 1993. ——— , ‘Indian Nuclear Policy, 1964–’98 (A Personal Recollection)’, in Jasjit Singh, ed., Nuclear India. New Delhi: Knowledge World for Institute for Studies and Analyses, 1998.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 ——— , ‘Politics of Shakti’, Times of India, May 26, 1998. ——— , ‘A Nuclear Strategy for India’, Economic Times, May 28, 1998. ——— , ‘Narasimha Rao and the Bomb’, Strategic Analysis 28, 4 (2004), pp. 593–96. ——— , Shedding Shibboleths: India’s Evolving Strategic Outlook. Delhi: Wordsmiths, 2005. Suchitra, J. Y., ‘N-energy Not the Best Option’, Times of India, November 17, 2005. 338 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Suchitra J. Y. and M. V. Ramana, ‘Nuclear Power: No Route to Energy Security’, Energy Security Highlights, 1, 1 (2006), pp. 13–16. Sudarshan, V., ‘Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk’, Outlook, January 21, 2002. ——— , ‘How Long is Too Long?’, Outlook, March 18, 2002. ——— , ‘Morale of the Story’, Outlook, November 4, 2002. ——— , ‘Mirage 2001–02’ Outlook, November 4, 2002. ——— , ‘Fusion Material’, Outlook, March 13, 2006. ——— , ‘Not Much Frisson’, Outlook, December 25, 2006. Sudarshan, V. and Ajith Pillai, ‘Game of Patience’, Outlook, May 27, 2002. Sudarshan, V. and Ranjit Bhushan, ‘Virility Unstuck’, Outlook, May 19, 2003. Summers, Deborah, Helene Mulholland and Matthew Tempest, ‘MPs Vote to Renew Trident’, Guardian, March 14, 2007. Sundarji, K., Th e Blind Men of Hindoostan: Indo-Pak Nuclear War. New Delhi: UBS, 1993. ——— , ed., ‘Eﬀ ects of Nuclear Asymmetry on Conventional Deterrence’, Combat Papers (Mhow), no. 1 (April 1981). ——— , ed., ‘Nuclear Weapons in Th ird World Context’, Combat Papers (Mhow), no. 2 (August 1981). ——— , ‘Future Shocks’, India Today, August 31, 1990. ——— , ‘Th e Nuclear Threat’, India Today, November 30, 1990. ——— , ‘Declare Nuclear Status’, India Today, December 31, 1990. Suri, Sanjay, ‘N-Tape: Side A, Side B’, Outlook, October 20, 2008. Suraiya, Jug, ‘Bomb Mama’, in C. Uday Bhaskar (comp.), Subbu at 75: A Bouquet of Tributes. New Delhi: Shri Avtar Printing Press, 2004. Swami, Praveen, ‘Th e Bungle in Kargil’,Frontline , July 2, 1999. ——— , ‘Warnings in Vain’, Frontline, September 24, 1999. ——— , ‘War and Games’, Frontline, February 15, 2002. ——— , ‘Building Confrontation’, Frontline, June 7, 2002. Swaminathan, M.S., ‘Lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’, Th e Hindu, August 6, 2005. Swamy, Subramanian, ‘Fighting Pakistan with a Handicap’, Frontline, July 16, 1999. Taylor, A.J.P., A Personal History. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983. Tellis, Ashley J., India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 TERI, Energy Security Insights, 1, 1 (March 2006), at www.teriin.org/div/ eissue1march06.pdf (accessed on March 22, 2009). Th akur, Ramesh, ‘India After Nonalignment’, Foreign Aﬀ airs 71, 2 (Spring 1992), pp. 156–82. Th aroor, Shashi, India: From Midnight to Millennium, Millennium Edition. New Delhi: Penguin, 2000. Th e Economist, ‘Death Among the Blossoms’, May 25, 1991. Th e Hindu, ‘Vajpayee Wants no Compromise on Security’, May 9, 1994. ——— , ‘Rao Must Clarify on Missile Programme’, May 10, 1994. Bibliography ( 339

Th e Hindu, ‘BJP Against Curbs on N-programme’, May 11, 1994. ——— , ‘Govt. Statement on Prithvi Today’, May 12, 1994. ——— , ‘CTBT: Can India Resist the Blackmail?’, July 23, 1996. ——— , ‘Army Chief Calls for Steps to Counter N-Th reats’, April 20, 1998. ——— , ‘Gujral Doctrine “Continues to be Relevant”’, April 27, 1998. ——— , ‘Text of Vajpayee’s Letter to Clinton’, May 14, 1998. ——— , ‘Roll Back N-Weapons Programme, Government Told’, July 27, 1998. ——— , ‘Fernandes Does not Rule Out Conventional War with Pak.’, January 5, 2000. ——— , ‘We are Prepared: Army Chief’, January 12, 2002. ——— , ‘Uncalled for Concerns: Fernandes’, January 12, 2002. ——— , ‘India Welcomes US Decision on Travel Advisory’, July 23, 2002. ——— , ‘India Spoke for Iran: Saran’, September 27, 2005. ——— , ‘India Rejects Linking Iran Vote to Nuclear Deal with US’, January 26, 2006. ——— , ‘We Have the Right to Test: Pranab’, August 17, 2007. ——— , ‘Indo-US Joint Statement’, July 18, 2005, at http://www.hindu.com/ thehindu/nic/indousjoint.htm (accessed on March 22, 2009). The Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Initiative for the Advancement of Human Civilization, ‘Statements and Declarations’, Th e Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Initiative. New Delhi: Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, 1993. Th e Statesman, ‘ Editorial’, August 24, 1964. Times of India, ‘Sovereignty Assailed: Th e Moment of Truth for Independent India’, August 12, 1996. ——— , ‘“Cold Start” to New War Doctrine’, April 14, 2004. Th omas, Lt-Gen Mathew, ‘Comment’, in Lt-General Matthew Th omas, ed., Indian Defence Review 1990. New Delhi: Lancer, July 1990. Th omas, Raju G. C., South Asian Security in the 1990s, Adelphi Paper 278. London: Brassey’s for Th e International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1993. Th ornton, Th omas P., ‘India Adrift: Th e Search for Moorings in a New World Order’, Asian Survey 32, 12 (December 1992), pp. 1063–77. Traynor, Ian, ‘Barack Obama Launches Doctrine for Nucear-free World’, Guardian, April 5, 2009. Trivedi, V.C., ‘Peaceful Nuclear Explosives’, in J. P. Jain, Nuclear India, vol. 2. New Delhi: Radiant, 1974. United Press International, ‘Indian Lawmakers Accuse US of Acting Like a “Big

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 Bully”’, August 13, 1993. Uniyal, Mahesh, ‘Atomic Energy Program Under a Cloud’, IPS-Inter Press Service, July 6, 1995. UPI, ‘US Test Ban Pressure Angers India’, August 2, 1996. US Library of Congress, ‘Th e Media’, inIndia: Country Study, 1995, at http:// countrystudies.us/india (accessed on June 15, 2005). US Library of Congress, ‘English’, in India: Country Study, 1995, at http:// countrystudies.us/india (accessed on June 15, 2005). 340 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

Vanaik, Achin, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, Economic and Political Weekly 33, 24, June 13, 1998. ——— , ‘A Degenerating Nuclear Logic’, Th e Hindu, January 23, 2003. Varadarajan, Siddharth, ‘Tribute to Bomb Mama’, in C. Uday Bhaskar, (comp.), Subbu at 75: A Bouquet of Tributes. New Delhi: Shri Avtar Printing Press, 2004. ——— , ‘India’s Pakistan Problem is Pakistan’s Problem too’, December 3, 2008. ——— , ‘Looking Beyond the Nuclear Deal’, Energy Security Highlights, 1, 1, at www.teriin.org/div/eissue1march06.pdf (accessed on March 22, 2009). Vellodi, M. A., ‘From Geneva to New York’, Frontline, November 15, 1996. Venkatesan, V., ‘Political Echoes’, Frontline, July 30, 1999. Verghese, B.G., ‘Th e Legend that is K. Subrahmanyam’,Rediﬀ .com, October 5, 2004 (accessed on October 18, 2007). Verma, Sonali, ‘Move Driven by Widespread Domestic Support’, Ethnic NewsWatch, August 23, 1996. Visvanathan, Shiv, ‘Nuclear Energy is “Good and Clean”! A Plain and Simple Speech’, Economic and Political Weekly XXXIII, 17, 951, April 25, 1998. ——— ,‘Welcome to the Patriot Games’, Economic and Political Weekly XXXIII, 22, May 30, 1998. Vyas, Neena, ‘Negotiate Deal Again, Says BJP’, Th e Hindu, August 17, 2007. ——— ,‘Brajesh Mishra-BJP Diﬀ erences on Nuclear Deal Out in the Open’, Th e Hindu, April 29, 2008. Wadhwa, Charan D., ‘Cost of Economic Sanctions: Aftermath of Pokhran II’, Economic and Political Weekly XXXIII, 26, June 27, 1998. Weiner, Tim, ‘India Suspected of Preparing for A-Bomb Test’, New York Times, December 15, 1995. Weinraub, Bernard, ‘Economic Crisis Forcing Once Self-Reliant India to Seek Aid’, Th e New York Times, June 29, 1991. World Bank, ‘World Development Indicators’, in ‘India Country Brief’, at www. worldbank.org.in (accessed on June 5, 2004). Yadav, Yogendra and Sanjay Kumar, ‘Interpreting the Mandate’, Frontline, November 5, 1999.

M Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 About the Author

Priyanjali Malik completed her DPhil in International Relations from the Department of Politics and International Relations, Merton College, Oxford. in 2008. She was awarded the Ian Taylor Scholarship by Merton College to pursue this course. She completed her MPhil in International Relations from Balliol College, Oxford in 2001. Prior to that, she was awarded an AB from Princeton University in 1997. She was with NDTV, India, from 1997–1998 and has also worked at McKinsey & Co. (1998–1999. From 2001–2003, she was Special Assistant to the Director of Studies and Research Programme Oﬃ cer, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London.

M Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016

Index

Advani, L. K., 72, 214, 254 Desai, Morarji, 71, 72 Agni, 79, 80, 138, 141, 142, 225 Defence spending, 47, 53ff, 147ff, Anti-colonial sensitivities, 34ff , 41, 42, 164, 237 64, 73, 121, 201, 235 Democracy and disarmament, 12ff , Apsara, 37, 43 269 Atoms for Peace, 49, 50 Deve Gowda, H. D., 182, 186, 194, 231 Attentive India, 7 Disarmament: and UK, 15ff ; US, 16ff ; Atomic apartheid, 64, 69ff discrimination, 51, 64ff , 66, 69ff , Atomic Energy Act: 1948, 40, 44; 82, 110, 182ff , 184, 192, 234 1962, 44 Entry-Into-Force (CTBT), 28, 29, 34, Babri Masjid, 127, 152 119, 175, 183ff , 187, 190, 192, 193, Baruch Plan, 49, 50 197n99, 200, 208, 236, 270 Bhabha, Homi J.: and establishing the Emergency, 70ff , 94, 97 nuclear programme, 36ff ; ENDC, 62, 63n110, 65, 66 three stage programme, 36; and cost of nuclear weapons, 55 Fernandes, George, 175, 214ff , 222, Bofors, 92ff , 221 223n70, 225, 233n118, 282 Brasstacks, 89ff Financial crisis (India), 3, 127, 144ff , Buddha: smile, 31; and the bomb, 31, 161, 164 48, 209, 243ff Gandhi, Indira, 182; and NPT re- Chakravarti, B. N., 62 jection, 66, 182; 1971 war, 68ff ; Chemical Weapons Treaty, 177n4, PNE, 67, 93; 182 Cold War ‘tilt’, 74; six-nation, fi ve- China: and 1962 war, 45, 46; nuclear continent appeal, 81 tests, 26ff , 52, 53, 54, 56, 62, 63, 93, Gandhi, Rajiv, 127, 152; and Action

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 163; nuclear collaboration with Plan, 4, 83ff , 84n189, 110, 111, Pakistan, 21, 92, 152, 154, 161ff , 118, 136, 165, 192ff, 216, 218; 178, 230n107 missile programme, 79; secret CIRUS, 37, 38 committee on defence planning, CND, 15ff 85ff ‘Cold Start’, 294ff Gandhi, Mahatma, 34, 199, 205, 209, Conference on Disarmament, 133n22, 213ff , 241, 244, 266, 273; and non- 175, 181ff , 191, 193ff , 202ff violence, 31, 45, 54, 119 Cryogenic engine deal, 136ff , 141 Gates Mission, 154ff , 159 Index ( 343

Ghauri (Pakistan), 216, 219, 222 39, 42, 50, 97, 243; international Ghose, Arundhati,126, 183, 185, 188, nuclear order, 51; and foreign 194ff , 197, 304 policy, 35, 45, 101n22, 213; defence Glavkosmos, 137 policy 35, 45, 46, 101, 120; and Gujral, I. K., 22ff , 178, 182ff , 185, 188, defence spending, 35, 45, 47; 196, 198, 200, 213, 218, 226, 238 nuclear debate, 32, 40; secrecy (nuclear), 32 Hyde Act, 304ff NFU, 115, 158, 257, 261, 262, 264, 273 Non-proliferation: and pressure on ICJ and nuclear weapons, 200ff New Delhi, 4, 6, 18ff , 28, 116, 119, IGMDP 79 121, 125, 128, 131ff , 142, 171, 173ff , Indian exceptionalism, 19ff , 22, 32, 33, 181, 199, 217ff , 226, 235, 270; 45ff , 128, 184, 175, 185, 247, 257, Discrimination, 21, 28, 197, 184ff , 259, 266, 271 187, 190, 196ff , 226 Internet and defence, 25, 249 Non-alignment, 45, 60ff ISRO, 136ff , 139n50, 141 Non-Aligned Movement, 22, 129ff , 209 Kalam, A. P. J., 117, 137, 138, 230, NSAB, 258ff 288n61 NSC, 219, 222, 258 Kaluchak, 283ff Nuclear apartheid, 64, 188, 192, Kargil Review Committee, 90n212, 196, 198 99, 103, 240n152, 250 Nuclear debate: France, UK, US, 9, 11; Israel, 9ff ; South Africa, 13; Lahore Declaration, 248 UK, 15ff ‘Limited War’, 261ff Nuclear estate: and secrecy, 8, 32, 33, Missile programme, 79 41, 40ff , 43ff , 104ff , 106ff MEA, 84n186, 145, 165ff , 170, 180, 196; Nuclear guarantees, 52, 56, 60ff and disarmament, 33ff , 84n186 Nuclear programme: and scientifi c Mishra, Brajesh, 165n181, 219, 220, progress, 23, 230ff ; development, 244, 256, 297 37, 39, 40, 42, 44; MIND, 242 Nationalism, 43, 109ff , 116, 117, MTCR, 73, 80, 128, 136, 138 122, 199ff, 205, 230ff, 241; Mukherjee, Pranab, 180, 220, 280, peaceful uses, 109, 146, 216, 286, 291 227; secrecy, 120, 243, 268, 301; security, 41ff , 43, 44, 65, Narasimha Rao, P.V., 81ff , 130, 135, 109; self sufficiency, 36, 38,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 142ff , 164, 143ff , 180, 189, 194; 43, 71, 78, 109ff , 116, 231 and nuclear ‘test’, 170ff , 181 Nuclear tests, moratorium, 245, 270, Nehru, Jawaharlal, 34ff, 39ff, 45ff, 275, 297, 300, 304ff 205, 209, 212, 214, 229, 273; NNPA, 72, 73ff , 142 and disarmament, 4, 33, 41, 45, NPT: Review Conferences, 17, 182; 47ff , 51, 216, 269; development indefinite extension, 28, 175, versus security dilemma, 35ff; 177n4, 179n15, 181, 186, 197ff , development, 34ff , 35n9, 36, 38, 205 344 ( India’s Nuclear Debate

NSG, 14ff Singh, Jaswant, 157, 161, 171, 278n13, NWFZ, 72, 82, 146n91, 165 292n78 Singh, V. P., 152, 157, 219; and Obama, Barack, 16ff commission examining nuclear threats, 161 Pakistan: and pre-emptive strike SNEPP, 52, 55 against nuclear facilities, 88; SSOD, 72, 81n179, 82n184, 111 exchange of nuclear lists, 88; Standstill Agreement, 48ff , 176 nuclear hints, 90, 157ff , 166ff Parliament and security, 102ff , 239, ‘Tamil Trinity’, 113, 224 276, 286, 291 Tarapur, 72ff , 141ff , 147, 297 Planning Commission, 97 TIFR, 37 PNE, 1, 31ff Technology denial, 71, 73, 74, 80, 137, Pokharan, 1, 31, 33, 67, 170 139ff , 172, 217ff , 232, 240, 275 Press in India: and freedom of, 24ff , Travel advisories, 284ff 95, 98ff, 286; broadcast media, Triad, 115, 209, 262, 264 25, 100, 107ff , 247, 250ff , 278, 291; Trident, 16 television war, 249, 250ff Trivedi, V.C., 62, 64 Pressler Amendment, 160, 165 Prithvi, 79, 142 UN, 130, 133, 204 PTBT, 31n3, 48, 176, 204 UN Security Council, 22ff , 130ff , 212 UN General Assembly, 49, 119, 198, Ramanna, Raja, 67, 113, 157ff , 177n4, 212 215, 224 UN and Kashmir, 74, 76, 130ff , 132ff , 225 Safeguards, 37, 50n65, 72, 73, 295n89 USSR: and friendship with India 74ff Saha, Meghnad, 38, 44 Sampoorna Kranti Vidyalaya, 122, Vajpayee, Atal Behari, 72, 129, 133, 147n95 167n189, 177, 221, 231ff , 238, 246, Sarabhai, Vikram, 58ff 248, 253, 270, 277 Shastri, Lal Bahadur, 52ff Venkataraman, R., 151, 163 Singh, Manmohan, 145, 269n2, 299, 301

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:36 24 May 2016 M