June 1, 1998

We are less the nuclear lion than the mouse that roared.

Mani Shankar Aiyar

The nation of the Mahatma was informed on Buddha Purnima that its Government had exploded three nuclear devices. The leader of the Opposition rang the prime minister to enquire what the explosions were all about. The prime minister solemnly informed him that they were for peaceful purposes only. Atal Bihari Vajpayee must rank as the first politician to have discovered a peaceful use for the hydrogen bomb.

The hypocrisy is mind-blowing. We do not have a nuclear weapon. The claim to having a "big bomb", made to this magazine, stands retracted. Our armed forces are not "weaponised". Yet, Vajpayee wants us to be regarded a nuclear weapon power. Like a polytechnic seeking "deemed university" status. The fact is that in military terms we are exactly where we have been since 1974: a nation with nuclear weapon capability. Which is emphatically not the same thing as a nation with nuclear arms.

During the past 24 years, India has had the privileged position of being on, but not crossing, the deadly threshold. In these 24 years, we have fought no wars. On the contrary, we have sought to find ways and means of ending the discord which made our neighbourhood so unsafe that in our first 24 years of freedom we found ourselves engaged in armed conflict in 1947, 1948, 1962, 1965 (twice, first in the Rann of Kutch) and, finally, in 1971. True, we have been subject to proxy and proximity conflicts. But anyone who suggests the right response to a Pakistani incursion at Uri would be to nuke Lahore would be mad. He would also probably be from the BJP.

Our real security lies in addressing the cause of conflict. Which is why the Simla Agreement signalled the start of a process of reconciliation with Pakistan just as Rajiv Gandhi's visit to Beijing did as much with China.

No one was under any illusion that reconciliation would be achieved instantly. Nor was there any romancing of the fact that a nuclear exchange would lead to extinction in an instant. We, therefore, did not allow ourselves to be overawed by the Chinese bomb; nor did we seek to overawe Pakistan with a bomb of our own making. Instead, it made sense to inform the world we could make the bomb -- but that we would not be frightened, bullied or tricked into doing so just to prove we could.

That was the meaning of "keeping our options open". We became the only power in the world able to go nuclear but choosing not to do so of its own will. The Pakistanis said they would desist from going nuclear if we so desisted. They went so far as to say they would sign any piece of paper -- NPT, CTBT, what have you -- if India signed.

Their policy was based on paranoia, ours on principle. We did not ask that Pakistan sign as a precondition to our signing. We said we would not sign without a binding commitment from the nuclear weapon powers to eliminate all nuclear weapons.

The Vajpayee Government has proved just how strong the thermonuclear device has made it by offering to accede to discriminatory treaties if only Bill Clinton will do it the favour of certifying India as a nuclear weapons state. Indeed, the US and its allies have made the Vajpayee Government a laughing stock by imposing sanctions so mild they would not cause a flutter in its bhagwa dhwaj (saffron banner). The message is clear. Go really nuclear -- and we'll take your khaki knickers off.

We have thus got the worst of both worlds. We do not have a bomb; so we are not a nuclear weapons power. But by seeking this status we have lost the moral authority and political legitimacy which enabled us to press the trade-off which lay at the centre of the "Action Plan for a Nuclear Weapons-free and Non-violent World Order" that we presented to the UN in 1988.

That plan offered to convert our unilateral decision not to go nuclear into a multilateral pledge to refrain -- provided the nuclear weapons powers converted their unilateral intention to eliminate nuclear weapons into a multilateral commitment to do so. We were able to credibly refuse to sign the NPT and the CTBT, and hold back on the fissile materials cut-off treaty, because we argued that in the absence of a time-bound commitment to eliminate nuclear weapons all such measures were not measures of disarmament but of discriminatory non-proliferation.

Pokhran II has destroyed our credibility to press that trade-off any further. At the same time, it has not given our armed forces nuclear weapons. We have closed our nuclear option without going nuclear.

Fifty years of foreign policy is being junked because Vajpayee thinks he can win the mid-term polls (now inevitable) with his patakas (fireworks). He would be well-advised to remember how transient is the euphoria that goes with bomb explosions. In May 1974, Indira Gandhi not only had Bangladesh under her belt, she also startled the world with Pokhran I. That was not enough to stall the JP movement; or to stop Georgie-Porgie from stocking up on his private collection of Baroda dynamite. In the elections of 1977, Indira Gandhi was utterly defeated.

Across the border, people went wild as Z.A. Bhutto announced Pakistan would eat grass for 1,000 years but have its Islamic bomb. They hanged Bhutto a few years later. And not a blade of grass even blew in the wind.

The author is secretary, All-India Congress Committee.

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