Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: India

  • Stopping a Nuclear War in South Asia

    Stopping a Nuclear War in South Asia

    Two nuclear-armed countries stand on the brink of war and the world seems paralyzed as it watches events unfolding in what seems like slow motion. It is a war that could easily escalate into a nuclear holocaust taking millions or tens of millions of lives, and virtually nothing is being done to end the standoff. The US and the UK have advised their citizens to leave the region and the UN is pulling out the families of UN workers in the region, but the UN Security Council has not yet even put the matter on its agenda let alone put forward any constructive solution.

    The US has sent its Secretary of Defense to the region, but has lifted sanctions on the sale of military equipment to both countries that it imposed after they conducted nuclear tests in 1998. At the same time, the US continues to demonstrate its own reliance on nuclear weaponry, announcing on June 1st that it will resume production of plutonium “pits” used to trigger nuclear warheads.

    Here is what Indian novelist Arundhati Roy has to say about the situation:

    “Terrorists have the power to trigger nuclear war. Non-violence is treated with contempt. Displacement, dispossession, starvation, poverty, disease, these are all just funny comic strip items now. Meanwhile, emissaries of the coalition against terror come and go preaching restraint. Tony Blair arrives to preach peace and on the side, to sell weapons to both India and Pakistan. The last question every visiting journalist asks me: ‘Are you writing another book?’

    “That question mocks me. Another book? Right now when it looks as though all the music, the art, the architecture, the literature, the whole of human civilization means nothing to the monsters who run the world. What kind of book should I write? For now, just for now, for just a while pointlessness is my biggest enemy. That’s what nuclear bombs do, whether they’re used or not. They violate everything that is humane, they alter the meaning of life.

    “Why do we tolerate them? Why do we tolerate the men who use nuclear weapons to blackmail the entire human race?”

    Arundhati Roy is absolutely right. It is because we tolerate these men and their dangerous, inhumane and genocidal policies whether they be in the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India or Pakistan — that nuclear war is possible and increasingly likely.

    But what should we do now, while these men remain in control of the future of the fate of the people of India, Pakistan and the rest of the world? Here are a few modest suggestions:

    Call for the UN Security Council to take charge of the situation as a matter of highest priority, require Indian and Pakistani forces to stand down their nuclear forces, move back from their front line positions, interpose UN Peacekeeping forces between them and require mediated talks between the leaders of the two countries.

    Call for the permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, Russia, UK, France and China) to immediately cancel the sale and delivery of all military equipment to both India and Pakistan.

    To deal with the continuing dangers of nuclear war, so easy to visualize in the India-Pakistan standoff, we should also call for all nuclear weapons states to immediately commence good faith negotiations for the elimination of all nuclear weapons as required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Court of Justice.

    Forty years ago, the world stood by helplessly as the US and former Soviet Union almost stumbled into nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We obviously failed to learn the lesson then that nuclear weapons are too dangerous to be left in the hands of any military force. Now we run the risk that acts of terrorists in the Kashmir conflict could trigger a war in South Asia that could quickly escalate to nuclear war. Similar conditions exist in the Middle East.

    The potential for war in South Asia must be defused now before it erupts into large-scale conflict that could go nuclear. But it is not enough to only defuse the present crisis. The world must also become deadly serious about putting away forever these dangerous instruments of annihilation and genocide, before these instruments become seriously and massively deadly in wars that no one can truly desire or in the hands of terrorists.
    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES) and INES Against Proliferation (INESAP) Statement on Nuclear Dangers

    India and Pakistan stand on the brink of war over Kashmir with serious dangers of nuclear war between the two countries.

    We call upon the international community, through the United Nations Security Council to immediately intervene diplomatically to prevent war and with peace keeping forces, if necessary, to ensure that neither country uses nuclear weapons under any circumstance.

    In this context we express our strong dissatisfaction with the United States Nuclear Posture Review and with the United States withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and the recently signed nuclear arms treaty between the United States and Russia. This treaty, reflecting the United States Nuclear Posture Review, does far too little too slowly and continues to set the example to the world that nuclear weapons are useful even for the strongest nations.

    We urge the United States and Russia to return to the negotiation table to agree to deeper cuts, the irreversible destruction of dismantled warheads, and the immediate de-alerting of their nuclear arsenals.

    We further urge that all five declared nuclear weapon states begin multilateral negotiations to fulfill their obligation for an “unequivocal undertaking” to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons in the world, including those of India, Pakistan and Israel. The leadership of the United States and Russia, as well as that of the United Kingdom, France and China, is essential to achieve these ends and to present nuclear weapons from being used again.

  • India and Pakistan: A Crisis That Can Not Be Ignored

    India and Pakistan are moving dangerously toward war. On 22 May, Indian Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee told troops “to be ready for sacrifice…It’s time to fight a decisive battle.” The Pakistani government responded by saying they would use “full force” if India is to strike. The greatest concern not only to the region, but to the world is whether or not either country will resort to using nuclear weapons in order to “win” a war.

    Tensions have been mounting between South Asian nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, particularly since the 13 December terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament. On 12 January, Pakistani President General Musharraf made a landmark speech condemning terrorism, promising internal reform and calling for a peaceful resolution with India over the disputed Kashmir region–the issue at the center of the standoff between the two nations. However, in India’s view, Musharraf has done substantively little to stop Islamic militants and Indian officials have charged Musharraf with continuing to support them.

    Statements from India and Pakistan in the past few months have indicated that both countries are willing to fight a nuclear war, should one side attack the other with a nuclear weapon. Pakistan has gone so far as to state that it is prepared to counter any attack from India. Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf stated on 6 January, “If any war is thrust on Pakistan, Pakistan’s armed forces and the 140 million people of Pakistan are fully prepared to face all consequences with all their might.” On 30 December 2001, Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes stated, “We could take a strike, survive and then hit back. Pakistan would be finished.”

    In a move viewed by Pakistan as a provocative gesture in the region, India conducted a test of a new version of its nuclear-capable medium-range Agni missile on 25 January. After India test-fired the Agni missile, General Musharraf made an offer to work with India for the de-nuclearization of South Asia. India rejected the proposal saying that without global disarmament, the denuclearization of South Asia is meaningless.

    Although the actual numbers of nuclear weapons in each arsenal are unknown, it is estimated that India has some 65 nuclear weapons and Pakistan has some 24-48 nuclear weapons. There are serious concerns about the military and intelligence infrastructures of both countries. Admiral L. Ramdas, retired Chief of the Indian Navy, stated earlier this year, “India and Pakistan lack effective command, control, communication and intelligence systems. When these infrastructures are not there, it makes the whole system more sensitive, accident-prone, and therefore dangerous. Global zero alert would be a major step towards providing a de facto security guarantee.”

    Both India and Pakistan must show restraint and resolve the current crisis before the conflict escalates any further, making the use of nuclear weapons in a war between the two countries even more likely. Neither country will win a war in which nuclear weapons are used. The situation in India and Pakistan evidences that the use, let alone the existence, of nuclear weapons is completely irrational because they do the exactly the opposite of what they purport to do. Nuclear weapons do not provide security. Neither India, nor Pakistan, nor anyone in this world is more secure because of the existence of nuclear weapons. In fact, at this moment India, Pakistan and indeed the whole world sit on the precipice of nuclear annihilation. It is time for global leadership, particularly from the nuclear weapons states, to rid the planet of these completely irrational weapons.

    More Resources on Nuclear South Asia

    Statements from Admiral L. Ramdas are available online at http://www.ieer.org/latest/ramdas2.html.

    “Pakistan’s Nuclear Forces 2001” from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is now available in the January/February 2002 of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists at http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/nukenotes/jf02nukenote.html

    “India’s Nuclear Forces 2001” from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is now available in the January/February 2002 of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists at http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/nukenotes/ma02nukenote.html

  • Defended to Death

    India and Pakistan are governed by madmen. The prime ministers are mad, the generals, scientists, civil servants all mad. The proof of their madness is their paranoid obsession with security and nuclear weapons. What, after all, could be more insane than two desperately poor countries, struggling to feed, educate, and house their people spending scarce resources on preparing to murder millions of innocent people, then glorying in their capability and willingness to commit such a monstrous deed. More disturbing still is that while these madmen and their obsessions may mean the death of us, we do next to nothing about them. Perhaps the people, governed by lunatics for so long, have also quietly gone mad, to protect themselves from the consequences of understanding what is happening to them.

    These thoughts have been brought on by India’s recently released nuclear doctrine, and the expectation that the madmen in Islamabad will follow those in Delhi and move a step closer to deploying their nuclear weapons, and a step closer to using them.

    The Indian nuclear doctrine contains no surprises. It is what anyone should have expected from India’s National Security Advisory Board, given that it is a nest of nuclear hawks. Asked to produce a doctrine, no one should have expected reason from them. Each was bound to try to out do the others, and none would relish being found wanting in patriotism or hard-headedness. Then there is the lure of history. The nuclear tests were about science and technology, and the scientists took the credit. As strategic thinkers, the National Security Board will take credit for having made the plan for how India’s weapons are to be used. For some of them, this report is the culmination of decades of writing and arguing for India to have nuclear weapons; it reflects their hopes, dreams, fantasies, of a nuclear India.

    Given how nationalistic these men are, how committed to a kind of independence at any cost, one is reminded, ironically, of Lord Macaulay’s famous 1835 Minute on Education. Writing about British rule in India, he said the aim should be to create “a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in taste and opinions, in morals and intellect.” The British succeeded to the extent that a hundred or so years later it was anglicized Indians like Nehru and Jinnah who took over from them. American strategic thinkers, who preside like demented gods over their own nuclear weapons, can boast they have had the same effect in even less time. Despite all their differences, and animosities, within fifty years of inventing nuclear weapons, destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then claiming that nuclear weapons were for defence, the US nuclear weapons complex has successfully created enclaves of Indians, and Pakistanis, who have exactly their nuclear “morals” and “intellect.”

    The tone and content of India’s nuclear doctrine carries the stamp of the hardest of the hardest liners and their global fears and ambitions. The doctrine declares that “the very existence of offensive doctrine pertaining to the first use of nuclear weapons and the insistence of some nuclear weapons states on the legitimacy of their use even against non-nuclear weapon countries constitute a threat to peace, stability and sovereignty of states.” It is this threat, the doctrine declares, that India’s nuclear weapons are supposed to protect against. But the countries which have said they will use nuclear weapons first are the US, UK, France, Russia, and Pakistan. China has a policy of no-first-use. Israel has never said what it would do, but no doubt will use nuclear weapons whenever it feels like it. It is also the US, in particular, and its NATO allies, who have indicated policies of using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states.

    The fixation on the US is part of an established pattern. Indian hawks have always had global pretensions. For years, members of the National Security Advisory Board have justified Indian nuclear weapons with reference to the inequities of the international system and US threats to India during the 1972 war with Pakistan. One member of the Board, Bharat Karnad, wrote last year that India’s nuclear weapons should be aimed at “deterring an over-reaching and punitive minded United States leading the Western combine of nations.”

    With this in mind, the doctrine is blunt, India’s nuclear forces are aimed at “convincing any potential aggressor that… India … shall inflict damage unacceptable to the aggressor.” Worst case analysis, the kind of thing that nuclear hawks love, would suggest that India has to build a nuclear force able to retaliate against the US, even after a massive US attack on India. This may seem absurd. The USSR tried it and ended up building over 30,000 nuclear weapons. How could India possibly manage it?

    One way to try would be to follow the Chinese example. Following its first nuclear test in 1964, China is estimated to now have about 400 nuclear warheads. They are on aircraft, missiles, some artillery shells, and a few at sea. The majority are spread over about 20 locations, including some hidden in caves in mountainous regions, in the hope that they would survive an attack and could be used to retaliate – and kill even more people. China has about 20 missiles able to hit the US, each has a single warhead of 4,000-5,000 Kt, (a hundred times more destructive than the hydrogen bomb India claimed to have tested, and a few hundred times more destructive than the simple atom bombs Pakistan claimed it tested).

    It seems Indian hawks are hoping for something like a Chinese style arsenal which is to be developed over a long period of time. The doctrine describes a triad, with warheads on planes, missiles and at sea. Bharat Karnad has talked of 350-400 nuclear warheads and a cost of at least 700 billion rupees over the next thirty years as meeting the aims of the doctrine. It is certain to cost more, take longer, and be more difficult.

    What does the Indian doctrine mean for Pakistan? There are enough madmen in Pakistan who will demand that, no matter what, we must do what India does. If India has a nuclear doctrine with operational nuclear forces we must have one also. We must have the planes, the missiles, the nuclear weapons at sea. They will say this for all the usual reasons – it satisfies their hate for India, feeds their ambition to father another bomb or a missile, guarantees them and their institutions even more money, and gives them more power. In previous situations they have prevailed. If they prevail again the arms race will enter an even more tortuous lap.

    All the elements are there. Last May, Indian weapons scientists claimed that they had tested a Hydrogen bomb. Last week the head of India’s nuclear program claimed not only that India could build a neutron bomb (an advanced kind of hydrogen bomb that generates a higher than usual amount of radiation), but that they could design and build bombs of “any type or size.” Soon after the May tests last year, the managers of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program talked of being able to build a Hydrogen bomb, should they be asked, and provided they were given enough money. Now, it is said, Pakistan can build a neutron bomb also – although this verges on the unbelievable since Pakistan has not yet tested a simple hydrogen bomb.

    The missiles too are being lined up. In April, Abdul Kalam, the head of India’s missile program said that the Agni-II, a 2,000-3,000 km range, was “operationally ready” for deployment with a nuclear warhead. In his independence day speech, India’s prime minister announced that “AGNI-2 has been tested… and will be integrated into our defence arsenal.” India’s space launcher successfully launched three satellites from one rocket, and could be converted into an intercontinental ballistic missile with multiple warheads, given enough time and money. There is no doubt Pakistan’s missile men will say that they too can achieve this, if they are given enough money.

    There is no end to the madness. There is talk of an Indian anti-ballistic missile system that will shoot down incoming missiles. Bhabha Atomic Research Center even claims it is building a device (called Kali-5000) that can be used as a beam weapon which “when aimed at enemy missiles and aircraft, will cripple their electronic systems and computer chips and bring them down.” No doubt Pakistan’s scientists will claim they can match that too – given enough money.

    This is certainly the response from Pakistan that India’s hawks hope for. In early July, the Hindustan Times ran a report “What Should We Do With Pakistan?” The first answer was “smash them.” But it was not with nuclear weapons. General V.R. Raghavan (former Director General of Military Operations) said “Till now, we¹ve borne heavy costs. Now we must impose costs.” A former Foreign Secretary urged “We must hurt them in every single way…” Brahma Chellaney, a member of the National Security Advisory Board, went further: “Hit them when they least expect, ideologically, strategically and economically, with military force being only a small slice of the offensive.” The Hindustan Times reported him as calling for economic warfare.

    The clearest of all was K. Subrahmanyam, the guru of India’s nuclear hawks and head of the National Security Advisory Board. He answered the question of what to do about Pakistan by saying “The perfect war is subjugation of the adversary without going to battle. If India raises its defence expenditure to 3 per cent of GDP from the present 2.3, Pakistan will try to match it and go broke. This was how the US under Reagan precipitated the Soviet collapse.” His plan is simple. Pakistan will be incited into an arms race that it is bound to lose. It will, in effect, defend itself to death. Unless there is war.

    The alternative is to put the madness of the bomb behind us. To give it up while there is time, before the bomb’s hateful machinery and its demented mechanics take complete control of life and death.

    *Zia Mian is a physicist and peace activist from Pakistan, currently on the research staff of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University. He is a founding member of Abolition 2000, and a member of its Global Council. He is also on the Coordinating Committee of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation, and a member of the Board of Directors of the United Nations NGO Committee on Disarmament.

    He is the editor of Pakistan’s Atomic Bomb and The Search for Security (1995) and Making Enemies, Creating Conflict: Pakistan’s Crises of State and Society (1997). Other publications by ZIa Mian include “Diplomatic Judo: Using the NPT to Make the Nuclear-Weapons States Negotiate the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons” by Zia Mian and MV Ramana in Disarmament Diplomacy Issue #36.

  • “We, The People”: Weaponization and Citizenship

    “‘We, the people’ who, according to the preamble of our constitution are entrusted with sovereign power, have not been expected to participate in the decision making process on a matter as serious as this. We have been relieved of the responsibility of citizenship, spared the trouble of debating and deciding about the developmental priorities of our poor nation and the desired budgetary allocations across sectors. We have been told and, in turn, accepted that power is defined as domination and war capability and not as empowerment and human capability.”

    A year after Pokharan II nuclear explosions and a few weeks after the publication of India’s draft nuclear doctrine, this note is addressed not to the politicians and policy makers who are directly responsible for conducting those tests or drafting the `nuclear doctrine’, nor to the group of scientists whose active interests and efforts, sadly misdirected, have made such tests possible, nor to the military-industrial complex, national and international, whose vested interests relentlessly fuel the engine of weaponization worldwide. Understandably, a variety of comments and criticisms have been leveled against them and their activities during the course of the year by persons of diverse analytical and political proclivities. Here I intend to divert our attention away from “them” to “us” – to the generic public, to ordinary people, to relatives, friends, colleagues and neighbors who are my fellow citizens on a daily basis.

    Jingoism, Mass-Mesmerization, Powerlessness

    Most of us are not directly involved in the act of weaponization, nuclear or otherwise, but we have an opinion about the nation’s nuclear policies and more particularly about the recent nuclear tests. Very disturbingly, for many of us, this opinion is quite positive, occasionally veering towards a vulgar and alarming tone of jingoism (though the initial euphoria amongst some of us has died down over time). However distressed, one cannot dismiss this hard reality as mere trivia, since it involves a large number of people around us whose views, or more appropriately, blissful indifference, inaction and passificism do create a congenial yet inert public opinion – an ideal atmosphere from which elite-dominated, citizen-irreverent public policies originate.

    While one may retain a basic faith in the old maxim that “all the people cannot be fooled all of the time”, one cannot but acknowledge the dangerous possibility that a sizable number of people can be effectively persuaded within quite a short period of time to suspend their refined common sense and judgments about things that really matter in their day-to-day living and believe instead in the illusion that “military security” will enhance human security, that flexing our nuclear muscles will literally energize the muscles of our teeming millions who are poor, famished and malnourished and help them cope with the perpetual vulnerabilities which adorn their daily existence. Many of us have descended into this disillusionment in recent times. How has a country with a legacy of passive resistance, non-aligned movements and democratic socialism stooped to this level?

    Postponing the examination of this momentous issue for now, here I would like to underline the supreme need to acknowledge the reality of such a mass-mesmerization. As a fellow citizen I find it important to comprehend this not-so-insignificant support for pro-nuclear policies. Such an act of comprehension and serious recognition of the ground reality alone can enable us to launch a strategy of counter-persuasion. The plentiful nuclear-philists amidst us compel a nuclear-phobist, like myself, to take them seriously. However, it is the responsibility of the nuclear-phobist to convince them to think otherwise and help them break free of their brain-washed, pro-nuclear mind set.

    More concretely, I base my appeal to the unconverted audience on three arguments: 1) Weaponization, especially nuclear, is the poorest method of ensuring human security. 2) In uncritically endorsing the “logic” behind nuclear tests then and the nuclear doctrine now, we are playing the role of powerless subjects in the euphemistic guise of citizenship. 3) Unlike many crises that are “more or less” in nature, damages that can be potentially caused by nuclear conflicts are of the kind of “either or”; they contain the germs of total annihilation, leading to points of no return.

    Is there any military answer to the social and economic malaise that plagues the majority of the country? Does the bomb guarantee our security when it is understood in the sense of providing a safety net for all? A pragmatic look at the fragile existence of the mass of the Indian population would suggest the exact opposite.

    Excessive preoccupation with military security in fact undermines human security. Rather, it appallingly detracts our attention from issues related to development, environment and human rights. When the daily existence of a large number of people in the country is subject to calamitous conditions caused by economic, social and political constraints, to speak of bomb-bred security indeed seems to be a bombastic claim! Furthermore, the risks and costs of weaponization are bound to be socialized, though in a very regressive way.

    An oversized military budget, which is a likely fallout of the ongoing trend in armament, and an attendant decline in social sector spending are bound to create new social and economic risks and vulnerabilities for workers, agricultural laborers, slum dwellers, in short, the mass of the people who had nothing to do with the decision to go nuclear. They are the ones who will end up bearing a disproportionate amount of the costs and grievously suffering from the effects, i.e. social expenditure cuts, sanctions and so on, of acquiring the “exotic nuclear endowment”.

    It is indeed ironic that, in the current national and international climate of cost-consciousness, we often hear a clamor for rolling back or even dismantling the state in various sectors of activities. Yet, the same state is expected to be hyperactive in the task of expanding nuclear and other weapons! Let the state take the lead in proliferating the “public bad” of huge military arsenals, its absolute inertia and sloth in providing fundamental “public goods” to citizens notwithstanding! The military budget indeed appears to be a sacred cow, supplying much-needed subsidies to the military-industrial complex, while vociferous advocates of fiscal adjustment selectively target their guns at helpless victims like education and health care spending. The message is clear and simple : austerity in public spending and the “free market” are for the poor, whereas the welfare state is for the rich who will take shelter under the wings of a generous defense expenditure.

    Have the weaponization proponents amongst us noticed this role reversal of the state, while celebrating the nation’s newly acquired nuclear prowess or endorsing the recently published nuclear doctrine which appears to call for a robust nuclear force? Unfortunately, the answer is no. The reason for this is easily found. Recall that the decision to conduct nuclear tests was made in the most undemocratic fashion under tight security and control, without even full cabinet knowledge, let alone public discussions.

    “We, the people” who, according to the preamble of our constitution are entrusted with sovereign power, have not been expected to participate in the decision making process on a matter as serious as this. We have been relieved of the responsibility of citizenship, spared the trouble of debating and deciding about the developmental priorities of our poor nation and the desired budgetary allocations across sectors. We have been told and, in turn, accepted that power is defined as domination and war capability and not as empowerment and human capability.

    Simply put, we have embraced a model of citizenship in the form of subjects who remain at the margin of agenda-setting and decision-making, yet we are happy, docile and proud of the national military prowess. What is more, we are strongly discouraged, penalized, or disregarded when we try to assert our rights of citizenship.

    The ongoing political and electoral drama of coalition-breaking and coalition-making at the center is an utter disregard for popular mandates. We are encouraged to ungrudgingly consume, not to question or debate, the official “logic” of empowerment through armament. This consumer orientation to citizenship is a step towards the marginalization of people, towards denying them some influence over their rights and affairs as citizens. Noam Chomsky’s observed in a different but related context, “The Public are to be observers, not participants, to be consumers of ideology as well as products.” We are the uninformed, subject “citizenry”, the riffraff, flaunting an unexamined faith in the special interests and ambitions of the political, scientific and bureaucratic elite, cleverly camouflaged as the national interest. So much for our well thought-out and informed endorsement of nuclear and arms proliferation!

    One may argue that on an issue as vital and serious as national security, decisions should be left to “experts” alone and kept away from the public. In a deliberative democracy, voters are expected to participate and contemplate serious issues and not simply vote. Norms such as participation and accountability are indeed the bedrock of democracy. The examination of pros and cons of security issues may be conducted by experts, but they are then required to present their views and results for citizens and elected leaders to consider in the context of country’s overall social, economic and political objectives.

    To be sure, people do not speak in a single voice; neither can we assert that deliberation is always the only or the best way to arrive at a political decision. It is precisely because the weaponization issue at hand has wide-ranging ramifications for the public that citizens should have the opportunity for debating the question of its merits. Each accountable representative should justify their views and decisions by giving persuadable reasons. Such collective engagement in the underlying reasoning of divergent views is a vital source of the legitimacy of collective decisions. In the case of the nuclear question, it is precisely the denial of such a scope for public debate and dialogue that has rendered the country’s citizens as subjects and consumers rather than producers of ideas.

    Draft Nuclear Doctrine

    Admittedly, the recently published nuclear doctrine, prepared by the National Security Advisory Board, is a draft document aimed at generating wider public discussions. In principle there is some scope for citizens to deliberate on the country’ s future nuclear policy, practice and posture. Keeping in mind how rhetoric translates into reality, two important issues merit attention here. First, if there were “security” reasons that compelled the concerned authorities to be secretive about the nuclear tests, now there are political and electoral reasons to make the document public, that is to say, to tap into our “Kargil euphoria” for the vindication of a pro-nuclear posture. Second, moving beyond the logic of the timing of the publication and coming to the specifics of the doctrine, the document focuses on “effective credible minimum deterrence”.

    We have tolerated such abject human conditions for a full fifty years of our independent existence, despite pious policy rhetoric to do otherwise. More distressingly, no corrupt practices on the part of the elite, no pilferage of public funds, no flagrant violations of public duties (e.g., the Gaisal rail accident) have been “deterred” on account of their unacceptably deleterious consequences for the well-being of the poor and the unfavored.

    When persistent damages to the lives of “sovereign” people have been routinely and infinitely tolerated by the governing classes of our country as well as those of our neighboring nuclear “adversary”, is it reasonable to expect that jingoistic nuclear behavior of vested interests on either side of the LOC will be deterred by the human costs it entails? Do “We, the people” matter in the calculus of unacceptable damage? Our heritage of deprivation, our social policy failures and our citizenship records reveal quite the opposite.

    Recent debates on the notion of unacceptable damage concentrate mainly on strategic and geo-political considerations, which relatively neglect and threaten, both in times of war and peace, the lives of large segments of the population. In the face of such chronic insensitivity on the part of the political leadership to human security issues, we need to be wary as to whether “We, the people” and our day-to-day vulnerabilities will be factored into the damage assessment of the powers that exist.

    Informed Public and Responsive Governments

    Reclaiming our sovereignty as the people of a democratic nation is, however, not an impossible task. Indeed, when policy making is embedded in consultative and transparent processes, democracy offers a way of rescuing governments that have fallen under t he sway of vested interests. As Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.” Therefore, the real challenge is to encourage the initiatives of the citizens, to harness the power of public opinion and action so that governments become responsive and accountable to the will of the majority and make a real difference in the quality of people’s lives.

    Fortunately, informed public debates have been taking place during the last year in different corners of the country, critically reviewing the `merits’ of the decision to go nuclear. Out of the nuances and well-documented evidence that are being presented in these discourses, what echoes in resounding notes is the unmistakable and plain understanding that we have only one earth to live in and save. The destructive capacity of a nuclear conflict is so catastrophic, so complete and final that it cannot be measured on a scale of “more or less”. It is a judgment call of “either, or”, “preserve or perish”. There are no two ways about it. To take liberty with Gandhi, an eye for an eye, the so-called “mutually assured destruction” will indeed make the whole world blind and a radiated ruin. It is, therefore, futile to endorse a position of the limited use of low-yield nuclear weapons. There is no alternative to developing an absolute nuclear phobia, to admitting that it is an utter prejudice to take pride in nuclear possessions, low-yield or high-yield.

    Why is this prejudice still so prominent in our minds? I take a shorthand to address this profound issue by quoting economist Paul Krugman, “Bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups.” We, the people” are responsible to see through the deceit.

    I would like to conclude this note on a self-policing tone. While making a strong case for nuclear disarmament and abolition, I am willing to concede that many concerns vis-à-vis the de-weaponization path still endure. More concretely, the cautionary views and nagging doubts about the viability of the de-weaponization path now being expressed in light of the recent NATO bombings in Yugoslavia, cannot be left unacknowledged. To do so would be unconvincing to those with whom we disagree on the issue of weaponization. A realist would argue that in a uni-polar world with an overly militarized rogue superpower, it is a compulsion to arm and to even go nuclear in order to protect people’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Conversely, a proponent of disarmament and peace will have to address this issue squarely. She has to relentlessly search for an alternative to armament which at once engenders peace and protects sovereignty and the right to self-determination of the people in the developing world against the military aggrandizement of the nuclear-rich countries. This is not an easy task; but neither is it impenetrable.

    Sane voices for global peace must converge and raise a clamor for wholesale disarmament and abolition of nuclear weapons, both locally and globally, both in developed and in developing countries. The challenge that lays before us is to find a feasible way of resolving the alleged tension between ensuring global peace on the one hand and local freedom on the other in a highly militarized, geo-political situation. There is surely no magical solution.

    One may also point out that in this age of MNC-dominated globalization, countries — especially the resource poor countries — are vulnerable not just to military threats but more frequently to economic insecurities and predicaments. These political-economic arguments, highlighting the iniquitous nature of the present world economic order, must be factored to ensure a just treatment of the question of global peace.

    An Appeal for International Law

    To be sure, these concerns are not new. They have indeed continued to grip the imagination of nation-states since the Second World War. One thing, however, that has become transparent to peace proponents over time, is that the solution to these entrenched problems must be sought in political and not in military terms. A rule of International Law administered by a supra-national global government is the only viable tool to ensure peace on earth and to tame the extant military and economic hegemonies. To that end, debates, discussions and public action must occur in order to empower the currently atrophied United Nations, revive the moribund non-aligned movement and educate people worldwide about the misleading nature of the deterrence argument. This is an appeal to enact all of the standard democratic practices, debates, deliberations, organizations and protests in order to promote the emergence of a sane and collective wisdom.

    *Manabi Majumdar is a social scientist who works at the Madras Institute of Development Studies in Chennai, India, specializing in political economy. Her research interests include social exclusion, democratic decentralization, and child labor from the human security perspective. Manabi has studied at Presidency College, Calcutta University and University of Maryland. Manabi currently lives in Chennai with her husband.

  • From Pokharon to Kargil: The Nuclear Danger is No Fantasy

    However one looks at its genesis and its remarkably inept handling by New Delhi, the Kargil crisis highlights, as nothing else, the sub-continent’s strategic volatility and the fragility of the Lahore process. If the Indian army had to wait till May 6 to be informed of the unprecedentedly large-scale intrusion by a shepherd, and then took six days to report this to the defence ministry, and if the ministry two days later still said the infiltrators only occupied “remote and unheld areas”, then there is something deeply wrong with our security decision-making. The sudden switch from smugness and inaction to high-profile air strikes with their high-risk escalation potential testifies to the same flaws. One year after Pokharan-II, these put a huge question-mark over nuclearisation’s claimed gains. The Bomb has comprehensively failed to raise India’s stature, strengthen our claim to a Security Council seat, expand the room for independent policy-making, or enhance our security.

     

    India stands morally and politically diminished: a semi-pariah state to be equated with Pakistan, and periodically reminded of Security Council Resolution 1172. Most Third World countries see India as contradictory: a nation that for 50 years rightly criticised the hypocrisy of the Nuclear Club, only to join it; a country that cannot adequately feed its people, but has hegemonic global ambitions. Our neighbours, crucial to our security, see us as an aggressive, discontented state that violated its own long- standing doctrines without a security rationale.

     

    After prolonged talks with the U.S., in which we put our “non- negotiable” security up for discussion, India remains a minor, bothersome, factor in Washington’s game-plan as a non-nuclear weapons-state. South Asia’s nuclearisation has enabled Washington to grant Pakistan what Islamabad has always craved, and which New Delhi has always denied it, viz parity with India. Today, India and Pakistan act like America’s junior partners. Washington last August drafted both to smash the unity of the Non-Aligned in the Conference on Disarmament on linking FMCT talks with the five NWSs agreeing to discuss nuclear disarmament. If nuclearisation had enhanced our capacity for independent action, we would not have been mealy-mouthed on the U.S. bombing of Sudan and Iraq nor capitulated to unreasonable U.S. demands on patents. Nuclearisation has put India on the defensive in SAARC and ASEAN, in NAM and the World Bank. Damage control remains the main preoccupation of our diplomacy one year after the mythical “explosion of self-esteem”. Worse, nuclearisation has drawn India into dangerous rivalry with Pakistan and China. India has eight times more fissile material than Pakistan. But in nuclear, more isn’t better. The truth is, India has become for the first time vulnerable to nuclear attacks on a dozen cities, which could kill millions, against which we are wholly defenceless.

     

    By embracing the “abhorrent” doctrine of nuclear deterrence, we have committed what we ourselves used to describe as a “crime against humanity” This article of faith assumes that adversaries have symmetrical objectives and perceptions; they can inflict “unacceptable” damage on each other; and will behave rationally, 100 per cent of the time. These assumptions are dangerously wrong. India-Pakistan history is replete with asymmetrical perceptions, strategic miscalculation, and divergent definitions of “unacceptable”. For fanatics, even a few Hiroshimas are not “unacceptable”. Deterrence breaks down for a variety of reasons: misreading of moves, false alerts, panic, and technical failures. The U.S. and USSR spent over $900 billion (or three times our GDP) on sophisticated command and control systems to prevent accidental, unintended or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons. But the Cold War witnessed over 10,000 near-misses. Each could have caused devastation. Gen. Lee Butler, who long headed the U.S. Strategic Command, says it was not deterrence, but “God’s grace”, that prevented disaster.

     

    Generally disaster-prone India and Pakistan will have no reliable command and control systems for years. Their deterrence is ramshackle, if not ram-bharose. A nuclear disaster is substantially, qualitatively, more probable in South Asia than it ever was between the Cold War rivals. Kargil starkly highlights this. It would be suicidal for India and Pakistan to deploy nuclear weapons and then “manage” their rivalry. They must never manufacture, induct or deploy these weapons. India must not erase her own memory. For decades, she correctly argued that deterrence is illegal, irrational, strategically unworkable, unstable, and leads to an arms race. The “minimum deterrent” proposition does not weaken this argument’s force. Minimality is variable and subjective, determined not unilaterally, but in relation to adversaries. Embracing deterrence means entering a bottomless pit. That is why the NWSs’ “hard-nosed” realists ended up amassing overkill arsenals–enough to destroy the world 50 times. The danger that India could get drawn into an economically ruinous and strategically disastrous nuclear arms race, especially with China, is very real.

     

    Consider the larger truth. Nuclear weapons do not give security. Because of their awesome power, their use, even threat of use, is determined less by military, than by political, factors. That is why America cannot translate its enormous atomic prowess into real might. Nuclear weapons have never won wars or decisively tilted military balances. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Falklands, the Balkans, all expose their a-strategic nature. They are not even effective instruments of blackmail. State after state, from tiny Cuba to China, has defied nuclear blackmail attempts. Nuclear weapons are false symbols of prestige. But they are ruinously expensive. To build and maintain a tiny arsenal, about a fifth of China’s, will cost about Rs. 50,000 crores. This will further inflate our bloated military budget. Already, New Delhi spends twice as much on the military as on health, education and social security put together.

     

    With Pokharan-II, and now Kargil, Kashmir stands internationalised. It is widely seen as a potential flashpoint for a nuclear confrontation. Largely symbolic events like Lahore, while welcome, do not alter the causes or conditions of Indo- Pakistan rivalry. The Lahore agreements do not even commit the two to slow down nuclear and missile development, only to inform each other of their tests. Such limited confidence-building can easily collapse, as Kargil vividly demonstrates.

     

    Add to this debit side the enormous social costs of militarism, tub-thumping jingoism and male-supremacist nationalism; of further militarisation of our science; legitimisation of insensate violence; and psychological insecurity among the young. The Pokharan balance-sheet looks a deep, alarming, red. But there is good news too: nuclear weapons aren’t popular. According to recent polls, 73 per cent of Indians oppose making or using them. After November’s “Pokharan-vs-Pyaaz” state elections, politicians know that nukes don’t produce votes. And now, Kargil should induce sobriety. For sanity’s sake, the nuclear genie should be put back into the bottle. What human agency can do, it can also undo.

  • Joint Statement Against Nuclear Tests and Weapons by Retired Pakistani and Indian Armed Forces Personnel

    Recent developments in South Asia in the field of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery are a serious threat to the wellbeing of this region.

    The fact that India and Pakistan have fought wars in the recent past and do not as yet enjoy the best of relations, makes this development all the more ominous. The signatories of this statement are not theoreticians or arm-chair idealists; we have spent many long years in the profession of arms and have served our countries both in peacetime and in war.

    By virtue of our experience and the positions we have held, we have a fair understanding of the destructive parameters of conventional and nuclear weapons. We are of the considered view that nuclear weapons should be banished from the South Asian region, and indeed from the entire globe.

    We urge India and Pakistan to take the lead by doing away with nuclear weapons in a manifest and verifiable manner, and to confine nuclear research and development strictly to peaceful and beneficient spheres.

    We are convinced that the best way of resolving disputes is through peaceful means and not through war – least of all by the threat or use of nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan need to address their real problems of poverty and backwardness, not waste our scarce resources on acquiring means of greater and greater destruction.

    Signed

    Air Marshal Zafar A. Choudhry (Pakistan)
    Admiral L. Ramdas (India)
    Lt. Gen Gurbir Mansingh (India)

  • The End of Imagination

    “The desert shook,” the Government of India informed us (its people). “The whole mountain turned white,” the Government of Pakistan replied. By afternoon the wind had fallen silent over Pokhran. At 3.45pm, the timer detonated the three devices. Around 200 to 300m deep in the earth, the heat generated was equivalent to a million degrees centigrade – as hot as temperatures on the sun. Instantly, rocks weighing around a thousand tons, a mini mountain underground, vapourised… shockwaves from the blast began to lift a mound of earth the size of a football field by several metres. One scientist on seeing it said, “I can now believe stories of Lord Krishna lifting a hill.”

    India Today, May 1998.

    It’ll go down in history books, provided of course we have history books to go down in. Provided, of course, we have a future. There’s nothing new or original left to be said about nuclear weapons. There can be nothing more humiliating for a writer of fiction to have to do than restate a case that has, over the years, already been made by other people in other parts of the world, and made passionately, eloquently and knowledgeably.

    I am prepared to grovel. To humiliate myself abjectly, because, in the circumstances, silence would be indefensible. So those of you who are willing: let’s pick our parts, put on these discarded costumes and speak our second-hand lines in this sad second-hand play. But let’s not forget that the stakes we’re playing for are huge. Our fatigue and our shame could mean the end of us. The end of our children and our children’s children. Of everything we love. We have to reach within ourselves and find the strength to think. To fight.

    Once again we are pitifully behind the times – not just scientifically and technologically (ignore the hollow claims) but more pertinently in our ability to grasp the true nature of nuclear weapons. Our Comprehension of the Horror Department is hopelessly obsolete. Here we are, all of us in India and in Pakistan, discussing the finer points of politics and foreign policy, behaving for all the world as though our governments have just devised a newer, bigger bomb, a sort of immense hand grenade with which they will annihilate the enemy (each other) and protect us from all harm.

    How desperately we want to believe that. What wonderful, willing, well-behaved, gullible subjects we have turned out to be. The rest of humanity may not forgive us, but then the rest of the rest of humanity, depending on who fashions its views, may not know what a tired, dejected, heart-broken people we are. Perhaps it doesn’t realise how urgently we need a miracle. How deeply we yearn for magic. If only, if only nuclear war was just another kind of war. If only it was about the usual things – nations and territories, gods and histories. If only those of us who dread it are worthless moral cowards who are not prepared to die in defence of our beliefs. If only nuclear war was the kind of war in which countries battle countries, and men battle men. But it isn’t. If there is a nuclear war, our foes will not be China or America or even each other. Our foe will be the earth herself.

    Our cities and forests, our fields and villages will burn for days. Rivers will turn to poison. The air will become fire. The wind will spread the flames. When everything there is to burn has burned and the fires die, smoke will rise and shut out the sun. The earth will be enveloped in darkness. There will be no day – only interminable night. What shall we do then, those of us who are still alive? Burned and blind and bald and ill, carrying the cancerous carcasses of our children in our arms, where shall we go? What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we breathe?

    The Head of the Health, Environment and Safety Group of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Bombay has a plan. He declared that India could survive nuclear war. His advice is that in the event of nuclear war we take the same safety measures as the ones that scientists have recommended in the event of accidents at nuclear plants.

    Take iodine pills, he suggests. And other steps such as remaining indoors, consuming only stored water and food and avoiding milk. Infants should be given powdered milk. “People in the danger zone should immediately go to the ground floor and if possible to the basement.”

    What do you do with these levels of lunacy? What do you do if you’re trapped in an asylum and the doctors are all dangerously deranged? Ignore it, it’s just a novelist’s naiveté, they’ll tell you, Doomsday Prophet hyperbole. It’ll never come to that. There will be no war. Nuclear weapons are about peace, not war. “Deterrence” is the buzz word of the people who like to think of themselves as hawks. (Nice birds, those. Cool. Stylish. Predatory. Pity there won’t be many of them around after the war. Extinction is a word we must try to get used to.) Deterrence is an old thesis that has been resurrected and is being recycled with added local flavour. The Theory of Deterrence cornered the credit for having prevented the cold war from turning into a third world war. The only immutable fact about the third world war is that, if there’s going to be one, it will be fought after the second world war. In other words, there’s no fixed schedule. The Theory of Deterrence has some fundamental flaws. Flaw Number One is that it presumes a complete, sophisticated understanding of the psychology of your enemy. It assumes that what deters you (the fear of annihilation) will deter them. What about those who are not deterred by that? The suicide bomber psyche – the “We’ll take you with us” school – is that an outlandish thought?

    How did Rajiv Gandhi die? In any case who’s the “you” and who’s the “enemy”? Both are only governments. Governments change. They wear masks within masks. They moult and re-invent themselves all the time. The one we have at the moment, for instance, does not even have enough seats to last a full term in office, but demands that we trust it to do pirouettes and party tricks with nuclear bombs even as it scrabbles around for a foothold to maintain a simple majority in Parliament.

    Flaw Number Two is that deterrence is premised on fear. But fear is premised on knowledge. On an understanding of the true extent and scale of the devastation that nuclear war will wreak. It is not some inherent, mystical attribute of nuclear bombs that they automatically inspire thoughts of peace. On the contrary, it is the endless, tireless, confrontational work of people who have had the courage to openly denounce them, the marches, the demonstrations, the films, the outrage – that is what has averted, or perhaps only postponed, nuclear war. Deterrence will not and cannot work given the levels of ignorance and illiteracy that hang over our two countries like dense, impenetrable veils.

    India and Pakistan have nuclear bombs now and feel entirely justified in having them. Soon others will too. Israel, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Nepal (I’m trying to be eclectic here), Denmark, Germany, Bhutan, Mexico, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Burma, Bosnia, Singapore, North Korea, Sweden, South Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan… and why not? Every country in the world has a special case to make. Everybody has borders and beliefs.

    And when all our larders are bursting with shiny bombs and our bellies are empty (deterrence is an exorbitant beast), we can trade bombs for food. And when nuclear technology goes on the market, when it gets truly competitive and prices fall, not just governments but anybody who can afford it can have their own private arsenal – businessmen, terrorists, perhaps even the occasional rich writer (like me). Our planet will bristle with beautiful missiles. There will be a new world order. The dictatorship of the pro-nuke elite.

    But let us pause to give credit where it’s due. Who must we thank for all this? The men who made it happen. The Masters of the Universe. Ladies and gentlemen, the United States of America! Come on up here folks, stand up and take a bow. Thank you for doing this to the world. Thank you for making a difference. Thank you for showing us the way. Thank you for altering the very meaning of life. From now on it is not dying we must fear, but living.

    All I can say to every man, woman and sentient child in India, and over there, just a little way away in Pakistan, is: take it personally. Whoever you are – Hindu, Muslim, urban, agrarian – it doesn’t matter. The only good thing about nuclear war is that it is the single most egalitarian idea that man has ever had. On the day of reckoning, you will not be asked to present your credentials. The devastation will be indiscriminate. The bomb isn’t in your backyard. It’s in your body. And mine. Nobody, no nation, no government, no man, no god has the right to put it there. We’re radioactive already, and the war hasn’t even begun. So stand up and say something. Never mind if it’s been said before. Speak up on your own behalf. Take it very personally.

    In early May (before the bomb), I left home for three weeks. I thought I would return. I had every intention of returning. Of course things haven’t worked out quite the way I had planned.

    While I was away, I met a friend whom I have always loved for, among other things, her ability to combine deep affection with a frankness that borders on savagery. “I’ve been thinking about you,” she said, “about The God of Small Things – what’s in it, what’s over it, under it, around it, above it…”

    She fell silent for a while. I was uneasy and not at all sure that I wanted to hear the rest of what she had to say. She, however, was sure that she was going to say it. “In this last year – less than a year actually – you’ve had too much of everything – fame, money, prizes, adulation, criticism, condemnation, ridicule, love, hate, anger, envy, generosity – everything. In some ways it’s a perfect story. Perfectly baroque in its excess. The trouble is that it has, or can have, only one perfect ending.”

    Her eyes were on me, bright with a slanting, probing brilliance. She knew that I knew what she was going to say. She was insane. She was going to say that nothing that happened to me in the future could ever match the buzz of this. That the whole of the rest of my life was going to be vaguely unsatisfying. And, therefore, the only perfect ending to the story would be death. My death.

    The thought had occurred to me too. Of course it had. The fact that all this, this global dazzle – these lights in my eyes, the applause, the flowers, the photographers, the journalists feigning a deep interest in my life (yet struggling to get a single fact straight), the men in suits fawning over me, the shiny hotel bathrooms with endless towels – none of it was likely to happen again. Would I miss it? Had I grown to need it? Was I a fame-junkie? Would I have withdrawal symptoms?

    The more I thought about it, the clearer it became to me that if fame was going to be my permanent condition it would kill me. Club me to death with its good manners and hygiene. I’ll admit that I’ve enjoyed my own five minutes of it immensely, but primarily because it was just five minutes.

    Because I knew (or thought I knew) that I could go home when I was bored and giggle about it. Grow old and irresponsible. Eat mangoes in the moonlight. Maybe write a couple of failed books – worstsellers – to see what it felt like. For a whole year I’ve cartwheeled across the world, anchored always to thoughts of home and the life I would go back to.

    Contrary to all the enquiries and predictions about my impending emigration, that was the well I dipped into. That was my sustenance. My strength. I told my friend there was no such thing as a perfect story. I said that in any case hers was an external view of things, this assumption that the trajectory of a person’s happiness, or let’s say fulfilment, had peaked (and now must trough) because she had accidentally stumbled upon “success”. It was premised on the unimaginative belief that wealth and fame were the mandatory stuff of everybody’s dreams.

    You’ve lived too long in New York, I told her. There are other worlds. Other kinds of dreams. Dreams in which failure is feasible, honourable, sometimes even worth striving for. Worlds in which recognition is not the only barometer of brilliance or human worth. There are plenty of warriors I know and love, people far more valuable than myself, who go to war each day, knowing in advance that they will fail. True, they are less “successful” in the most vulgar sense of the word, but by no means less fulfilled.

    The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead. (Prescience? Perhaps.) “Which means exactly what?” (Arched eyebrows, a little annoyed.) I tried to explain, but didn’t do a very good job of it. Sometimes I need to write to think. So I wrote it down for her on a paper napkin. This is what I wrote: To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

    I’ve known her for many years, this friend of mine. She’s an architect too. She looked dubious, somewhat unconvinced by my paper napkin speech. I could tell that structurally, just in terms of the sleek, narrative symmetry of things, and because she loves me, her thrill at my “success” was so keen, so generous, that it weighed in evenly with her (anticipated) horror at the idea of my death. I understood that it was nothing personal… Just a design thing. Anyhow, two weeks after that conversation, I returned to India. To what I think/thought of as home. Something had died but it wasn’t me. It was infinitely more precious. It was a world that has been ailing for a while, and has finally breathed its last. It’s been cremated now. The air is thick with ugliness and there’s the unmistakable stench of fascism on the breeze.

    Day after day, in newspaper editorials, on the radio, on TV chat shows, on MTV for heaven’s sake, people whose instincts one thought one could trust – writers, painters, journalists – make the crossing. The chill seeps into my bones as it becomes painfully apparent from the lessons of everyday life that what you read in history books is true. That fascism is indeed as much about people as about governments. That it begins at home. In drawing rooms. In bedrooms. In beds.

    “Explosion of self-esteem”, “Road to Resurgence”, “A Moment of Pride”, these were headlines in the papers in the days following the nuclear tests. “We have proved that we are not eunuchs any more,” said Mr Thackeray of the Shiv Sena (Whoever said we were? True, a good number of us are women, but that, as far as I know, isn’t the same thing.) Reading the papers, it was often hard to tell when people were referring to Viagra (which was competing for second place on the front pages) and when they were talking about the bomb – “We have superior strength and potency.” (This was our Minister for Defence after Pakistan completed its tests.)

    “These are not just nuclear tests, they are nationalism tests,” we were repeatedly told.

    This has been hammered home, over and over again. The bomb is India. India is the bomb. Not just India, Hindu India. Therefore, be warned, any criticism of it is not just ant-national but anti-Hindu. (Of course in Pakistan the bomb is Islamic. Other than that, politically, the same physics applies.) This is one of the unexpected perks of having a nuclear bomb. Not only can the government use it to threaten the Enemy, they can use it to declare war on their own people. Us.

    When I told my friends that I was writing this piece, they cautioned me. “Go ahead,” they said, “but first make sure you’re not vulnerable. Make sure your papers are in order. Make sure your taxes are paid.”

    My papers are in order. My taxes are paid. But how can one not be vulnerable in a climate like this? Everyone is vulnerable. Accidents happen. There’s safety only in acquiescence. As I write, I am filled with foreboding. In this country, I have truly known what it means for a writer to feel loved (and, to some degree, hated too). Last year I was one of the items being paraded in the media’s end-of-the-year National Pride Parade. Among the others, much to my mortification, were a bomb-maker and an international beauty queen. Each time a beaming person stopped me on the street and said “You have made India proud” (referring to the prize I won, not the book I wrote), I felt a little uneasy. It frightened me then and it terrifies me now, because I know how easily that swell, that tide of emotion, can turn against me. Perhaps the time for that has come. I’m going to step out from under the fairy lights and say what’s on my mind. It’s this:

    If protesting against having a nuclear bomb implanted in my brain is anti-Hindu and anti-national, then I secede. I hereby declare myself an independent, mobile republic. I am a citizen of the earth. I own no territory. I have no flag. I’m female, but have nothing against eunuchs. My policies are simple. I’m willing to sign any nuclear non-proliferation treaty or nuclear test ban treaty that’s going. Immigrants are welcome. You can help me design our flag.

    My world has died. And I write to mourn its passing. India’s nuclear tests, the manner in which they were conducted, the euphoria with which they have been greeted (by us) is indefensible. To me, it signifies dreadful things. The end of imagination. On the 15th of August last year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of India’s independence. Next May we can mark our first anniversary in nuclear bondage.

    Why did they do it? Political expediency is the obvious, cynical answer, except that it only raises another, more basic question: Why should it have been politically expedient? The three Official Reasons given are: China, Pakistan and Exposing Western Hypocrisy.

    Taken at face value, and examined individually, they’re somewhat baffling. I’m not for a moment suggesting that these are not real issues. Merely that they aren’t new. The only new thing on the old horizon is the Indian government. In his appallingly cavalier letter to the US president our prime minister says India’s decision to go ahead with the nuclear tests was due to a “deteriorating security environment”. He goes on to mention the war with China in 1962 and the “three aggressions we have suffered in the last 50 years [from Pakistan]. And for the last 10 years we have been the victim of unremitting terrorism and militancy sponsored by it . . . especially in Jammu and Kashmir.”

    The war with China is 35 years old. Unless there’s some vital state secret that we don’t know about, it certainly seemed as though matters had improved slightly between us. The most recent war with Pakistan was fought 27 years ago. Admittedly Kashmir continues to be a deeply troubled region and no doubt Pakistan is gleefully fanning the flames. But surely there must be flames to fan in the first place?

    As for the third Official Reason: Exposing Western Hypocrisy – how much more exposed can they be? Which decent human being on earth harbours any illusions about it? These are people whose histories are spongy with the blood of others. Colonialism, apartheid, slavery, ethnic cleansing, germ warfare, chemical weapons, they virtually invented it all. They have plundered nations, snuffed out civilisations, exterminated entire populations. They stand on the world’s stage stark naked but entirely unembarrassed, because they know that they have more money, more food and bigger bombs than anybody else. They know they can wipe us out in the course of an ordinary working day. Personally, I’d say it is arrogance more than hypocrisy.

    We have less money, less food and smaller bombs. However, we have, or had, all kinds of other wealth. Delightful, unquantifiable. What we’ve done with it is the opposite of what we think we’ve done. We’ve pawned it all. We’ve traded it in. For what? In order to enter into a contract with the very people we claim to despise.

    All in all, I think it is fair to say that we’re the hypocrites. We’re the ones who’ve abandoned what was arguably a moral position – ie. We have the technology, we can make bombs if we want to, but we won’t. We don’t believe in them.

    We’re the ones who have now set up this craven clamouring to be admitted into the club of superpowers. For India to demand the status of a superpower is as ridiculous as demanding to play in the World Cup finals simply because we have a ball. Never mind that we haven’t qualified, or that we don’t play much soccer and haven’t got a team.

    We are a nation of nearly a billion people. In development terms we rank No 138 out of the 175 countries listed in the UNDP’s Human Development Index (even Ghana and Sri Lanka rank above us). More than 400 million of our people are illiterate and live in absolute poverty, more than 600 million lack even basic sanitation and more than 200 million have no safe drinking water.

    The nuclear bomb and the demolition of the Barbi Masjid in Ayodhya are both part of the same political process. They are hideous byproducts for a nation’s search for herself. Of India’s efforts to forge a national identity. The poorer the nation, the larger the numbers of illiterate people and the more morally bankrupt her leaders, the cruder and more dangerous the notion of what that identity is or should be.

    The jeering, hooting young men who battered down the Babri Masjid are the same ones whose pictures appeared in the papers in the days that followed the nuclear tests. They were on the streets, celebrating India’s nuclear bomb and simultaneously “condemning Western Culture” by emptying crates of Coke and Pepsi into public drains. I’m a little baffled by their logic: Coke is Western Culture, but the nuclear bomb is an old Indian tradition? Yes, I’ve heard – the bomb is in the Vedas [ancient Hindu scriptures]. It might be, but if you look hard enough you’ll find Coke in the Vedas too. That’s the great thing about all religious texts. You can find anything you want in them – as long as you know what you’re looking for.

    But returning to the subject of the non-vedic 1990s: we storm the heart of whiteness, we embrace the most diabolical creation of western science and call it our own. But we protest against their music, their food, their clothes, their cinema and their literature. That’s not hypocrisy. That’s humour.

    It’s funny enough to make a skull smile. We’re back on the old ship. The SS Authenticity & Indianness. If there is going to be a pro-authenticity/anti-national drive, perhaps the government ought to get its history straight and its facts right. If they’re going to do it, they may as well do it properly.

    First of all, the original inhabitants of this land were not Hindu. Ancient though it is, there were human beings on earth before there was Hinduism. India’s tribal people have a greater claim to being indigenous to this land than anybody else, and how are they treated by the state and its minions? Oppressed, cheated, robbed of their lands, shunted around like surplus goods. Perhaps a good place to start would be to restore to them the dignity that was once theirs. Perhaps the government could make a public undertaking that more dams of this kind will not be built, that more people will not be displaced.

    But of course that would be inconceivable, wouldn’t it? Why? Because it’s impractical. Because tribal people don’t really matter. Their histories, their customs, their deities are dispensable. They must learn to sacrifice these things for the greater good of the Nation (that has snatched from them everything they ever had).

    Okay, so that’s out.

    For the rest, I could compile a practical list of things to ban and buildings to break. It’ll need some research, but off the top of my head here are a few suggestions.

    They could begin by banning a number of ingredients from our cuisine: chillies (Mexico), tomatoes (Peru), potatoes (Bolivia), coffee (Morocco), tea, white sugar, cinnamon (China) . . . they could then move into recipes. Tea with milk and sugar, for instance (Britain).

    Smoking will be out of the question. Tobacco came from North America. Cricket, English and Democracy should be forbidden. Either kabaddi or kho-kho could replace cricket. I don’t want to start a riot, so I hesitate to suggest a replacement for English. (Italian? It has found its way to us via a kinder route: marriage, not imperialism.)

    All hospitals in which western medicine is practised or prescribed should be shut down. All national newspapers discontinued. The railways dismantled. Airports closed. And what about our newest toy – the mobile phone? Can we live without it, or shall I suggest that they make an exception there? They could put it down in the column marked “Universal”? (Only essential commodities will be included here. No music, art or literature.)

    Needless to say, sending your children to university in the US, and rushing there yourself to have your prostate operated upon will be a cognisable offence.

    It will be a long, long list. It would take years of work. I could not use a computer because that wouldn’t be very authentic of me, would it? I don’t mean to be facetious, merely to point out that this is surely the short cut to hell. There’s no such thing as an Authentic India or a Real Indian. There is no Divine Committee that has the right to sanction one single, authorised version of what India is or should be.

    Railing against the past will not heal us. History has happened. It’s over and done with. All we can do is to change its course by encouraging what we love instead of destroying what we don’t. There is beauty yet in this brutal, damaged world of ours. Hidden, fierce, immense. Beauty that is uniquely ours and beauty that we have received with grace from others, enhanced, re-invented and made our own. We have to seek it out, nurture it, love it. Making bombs will only destroy us. It doesn’t matter whether we use them or not. They will destroy us either way.

    India’s nuclear bomb is the final act of betrayal by a ruling class that has failed its people.

    However many garlands we heap on our scientists, however many medals we pin to their chests, the truth is that it’s far easier to make a bomb than to educate four hundred million people.

    According to opinion polls, we’re expected to believe that there’s a national consensus on the issue. It’s official now. Everybody loves the bomb. (Therefore the bomb is good.)

    Is it possible for a man who cannot write his own name to understand even the basic, elementary facts about the nature of nuclear weapons? Has anybody told him that nuclear war has nothing at all to do with his received notions of war? Nothing to do with honour, nothing to do with pride. Has anybody bothered to explain to him about thermal blasts, radioactive fallout and the nuclear winter? Are there even words in his language to describe the concepts of enriched uranium, fissile material and critical mass? Or has his language itself become obsolete? Is he trapped in a time capsule, watching the world pass him by, unable to understand or communicate with it because his language never took into account the horrors that the human race would dream up? Does he not matter at all, this man?

    I’m not talking about one man, of course, I’m talking about millions and millions of people who live in this country. This is their land too, you know. They have the right to make an informed decision about its fate and, as far as I can tell, nobody has informed them about anything. The tragedy is that nobody could, even if they wanted to. Truly, literally, there’s no language to do it in. This is the real horror of India. The orbits of the powerful and the powerless spinning further and further apart from each other, never intersecting, sharing nothing. Not a language. Not even a country.

    Who the hell conducted those opinion polls? Who the hell is the prime minister to decide whose finger will be on the nuclear button that could turn everything we love – our earth, our skies, our mountains, our plains, our rivers, our cities and villages – to ash in an instant? Who the hell is he to reassure us that there will be no accidents? How does he know? Why should we trust him? What has he ever done to make us trust him? What have any of them ever done to make us trust them?

    The nuclear bomb is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that man has ever made. If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is Man’s challenge to God. It’s worded quite simply: We have the power to destroy everything that You have created. If you’re not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is four thousand, six hundred million years old.

    It could end in an afternoon.

     

  • A Plea Not to Revive Nuclear Arms Race

    AS EARLY AS 1985, President Reagan and I, at our first summit, said that nuclear war can never be won, and must never be fought. Even then we knew something very important about the inadmissibility of nuclear war.

    Today, it is just as true that if nuclear war, on any scale, were ever to be unleashed, or were ever to become a reality, it would threaten the very existence of life on earth.

    It is particularly important to keep this in mind, in the wake of the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan. All must condemn those tests and the dangerous era which they rekindle.

    What is not being discussed by the established nuclear powers today is that the process of nuclear disarmament has been stalled for several years now; it is just marking time. I believe we have not been properly using the opportunities that were open since the end of the Cold War, the possibility to move toward a really new world order based on stability, democratic cooperation and equality, rather than on the hegemony of one country.

    Instead, the geopolitical games are continuing; we are seeing those old geopolitical games in places such as Bosnia, and we know the dangerous potential of such conflicts.

    During the Cold War, many of those wars in small places festered for decades and became worse because the two superpowers and the two military alliances were self-interestedly fueling the hostilities.

    During the years of the arms race, the United States and the Soviet Union spent $10 trillion each on weapons production. It is true that the danger of nuclear war has significantly diminished, but it has not disappeared for good. The so-called conventional wars and regional wars are still claiming thousands of lives and tremendous resources, as well as ravaging nature, the unique source of life on our planet.

    After the Cold War, instead of defense conversion, we are still seeing the continuation of defense production, of the arms trade and weapons-export policies.

    After the breakup of the Soviet Union, while Russia was immersed in its domestic problems, the United States captured 70 percent of the world weapons-trade market, while not doing much for defense conversion.

    The result is that Russia, too, has decided to step up the production and transfer of the most sophisticated weapons, and is pushing in the same direction and trying to capture that market.

    Behind this is the underlying assumption of defense and security planning in most countries: that all the time we should consider the possibility of war.

    Thus we see the arms race, weapons production and also the increasing sophistication of arms, including very exotic weapons.

    And at the same time we see poverty, backwardness and disease in territories that account for almost two-thirds of the population of the world. So, as we face the 21st century, let us think about what is happening.

    It is a trap to perpetuate those systems that existed during the Cold War — relaunching the arms race and planning on the supposition of a resumption of war.

    We must say very firmly to the United States and Russia that in dragging their feet on further nuclear disarmament, they are setting a bad example for others.

    We should also once again raise the issue of missiles, intermediate- and shorter-range missiles, because those are weapons of a particularly regional nature. We should do more not just to limit the nuclear-arms race, but to move even further, toward the elimination and abolition of nuclear arms.

    Certainly we should bear in mind, in cooperating with less-developed countries in the area of commercial nuclear power, that we should always be vigilant that this is not taken further, and does not stimulate the production of nuclear weapons.

    Finally, we should put an end to the myth that nuclear weapons guarantee peace. Everyone, for example, should understand that security on the Indian subcontinent has not improved because of recent developments; it has deteriorated sharply.

    We should do all we can to help Pakistan and India understand that they’re not gaining anything. They’re actually losing a lot by embarking on the nuclear path. In the context of the conflict that has been festering in that region, this is an ominous development. We should work hard to ensure that India and Pakistan sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty without delay. The 20th century has seen more bloodshed and cruelty than the whole rest of human history, and has left us a complex and challenging heritage. The tradition of resolving national and international problems by force, violence and arms is a political disease of our epoch.

    We must do away with it — which is the great and noble imperative of our time.

  • Chronology of the India-Pakistan Conflict

    NEW DELHI, July 26 (Reuters) – Following is a chronology of major events involving arch-rivals India and Pakistan, whose prime ministers meet in Colombo on the sidelines of a regional conference in Sri Lanka on Wednesday.

    October 27, 1947: War breaks out between India and Pakistan in disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir barely two months after their independence from Britain.

    January 1, 1949: Ceasefire, ordered by United Nations Security Council, takes effect in Kashmir.

    September 6-22, 1965: Full-scale India-Pakistan war over Kashmir, which ends after a U.N. call for ceasefire.

    January 3, 1966: Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pakistani President Ayub Khan sign Soviet-mediated peace pact.

    December 3-17, 1971: India-Pakistan War over East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) which ends when 90,000 Pakistani troops surrender.

    July 2, 1972: Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and counterpart Zulfikar Ali Bhutto sign peace accord in Shimla.

    Nov 1, 1982: Gandhi and Pakistani President Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq agree to begin talks on a non-aggression treaty.

    May 18, 1974: India detonates first nuclear device, but says it is for atomic research and not weapons.

    January 20, 1986: Talks between Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries end inconclusively in Islamabad. But both agree on “desirability” of a peace treaty and non-aggression pact.

    December 31, 1988: India and Pakistan sign agreement not to attack each other’s nuclear facilities.

    February 5, 1989: Pakistan army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg says Pakistan has successfully test-fired its first long-range surface-to-surface rockets, named Hatf-1 and Hatf-2.

    Feb 6, 1992: Pakistan says it has acquired knowledge to make a nuclear bomb but will not do so.

    January 1-3, 1994: Foreign secretaries of the two countries fail to narrow differences on Kashmir. Pakistan rules out more talks unless India stops alleged human rights violations in Kashmir.

    August 23, 1994: Then former premier Nawaz Sharif tells rally in Pakistan-ruled Azad (Free) Kashmir, forming a third of Jammu and Kashmir, that Pakistan has an atomic bomb. The government denies this.

    January 30, 1996: Pakistani and Indian military officers meet on ceasefire line dividing Kashmir to ease tension after clashes.

    June 4, 1996: Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto urges Indian counterpart H.D. Deve Gowda to resume dialogue. Deve Gowda responds positively, but Pakistan drops idea when India holds local elections in Jammu and Kashmir.

    March 28-31, 1997: Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries open the first round peace talks in New Delhi, agree to meet again in Islamabad.

    April 9: Indian Foreign Minister Inder Kumar Gujral and Pakistani counterpart Gohar Ayub Khan meet in New Delhi. India says several hundred fishermen held by each side will be freed.

    May 12: Prime Ministers Inder Kumar Gujral and Nawaz Sharif hold separate talks at SAARC summit in Maldives.

    June 19-23: After second round of talks in Islamabad, Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries announce eight-point agenda for peace talks, including Kashmir issue, and say they will set up mechanism to tackle it.

    August 14-15 : India and Pakistan mark 50 years of independence.

    Aug 26 – India rejects U.S. offer to mediate to end Kashmir border clashes, saying differences should be solved in bilateral talks.

    September 18 – Talks between foreign secretaries end in stalemate, but both sides say they will meet again.

    Sept 22 – In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif offers to open talks on a non-aggression pact with India, proposing that both nations strike a deal to restrain their nuclear and missile capabilities.

    Sept 23 – Sharif meets Gujral for talks in New York which end with no breakthrough.

    Oct 26 – Gujral says he is cautiously optimistic that personal friendship with Sharif will help ease tension over Kashmir, but their meet on the fringes of a Commonwealth summit achieves little.

    Feb 4, 1998 – Pakistan warns it might review its policy of nuclear restraint if India’s new Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government redeems election pledge to make nuclear weapons.

    April 6 – Pakistan tests its longest range, 1,500 km (932 mile) Ghauri missile.

    May 11 – India conducts three underground nuclear tests in the western desert state of Rajasthan near the border with Pakistan.

    May 13 – India conducts two more tests and says its series of tests is complete.

    May 14 – U.S. President Bill Clinton says the tests ae a “terrible” mistake and orders sanctions that put more than $20 billion of aid, loans and trade on ice. Japan orders a block on around $1 billion of aid loans, followed by a host of European nations.

    May 28 – Pakistan conducts five nuclear tests in response to the Indian blasts. President Clinton, his request to Sharif not to test rebuffed, vows sanctions.

    May 30 – Pakistan conducts one more nuclear test and says its series of tests is complete.

    June 6 – U.N. Security Council condemns India and Pakistan for carrying out nuclear tests and urges the two nations to stop all nuclear weapons programs.

    June 12 – India and Pakistan invite each other for talks, but fail to agree on the agenda.

    Group of Eight Nations (G-8) imposes a ban on non-humanitarian loans to India and Pakistan as punishment for their nuclear tests.

    June 23- India suggests talks between the two countries’ prime ministers at South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

    June 24 – Pakistan agrees to talks with India in Colombo.

    July 10 – Vajpayee offers Pakistan a no-first-use pact, economic cooperation, and appeals for its participation in joint efforts to achieve universal disarmament. Pakistan in turn says it is ready to sign a non-aggression treaty with India.

    July 25 – Vajpayee says in a magazine interview that India is committed to resolving differences with Pakistan through a bilateral dialogue. He also indicates that India could conduct further tests of its Agni intermediate-range missile.