India's nuclear strategy has been a policy of universal peace from the very beginning.
It has persistently denounced the use of nuclear weapons ever since the holocaust at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. However, these weapons have dominated
India s strategic planning and perceptions, which take into account the possibility of
a nuclear misadventure by its adversaries. Quite a few nations have been expanding
their nuclear arsenals under false pretexts or against dictates of reason. Quite
contrary to this, India, keeping in view the interests of humanity at large, was in the
forefront for the test ban negotiations right from the 1950s. Jawaharlal Nehru had
asked for assurance that the nuclear limitation treaties would be non-discriminatory
and for the common good of the world populace.

India's sincerity to the proclamation is established by the fact that the very first
international conference on the Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy held in Geneva in
1955 was presided over by none other than Homi Jehangir Bhaba, an eminent Indian
physicist and visionary. Dr Bhabha had enunciated the economic benefits of using
plutonium explosives in place of conventional ones for engineering projects, etc.

Taking a cue from this, the Americans and Russians commenced gainfully their
projects for the peaceful use of nuclear explosions. However, the Indian leadership
decided to stagger this endeavour lest others should see a hidden agenda or design.
The Indian intelligentsia has not been able to free itself from what others may think or
say and some of them even see an agenda in the straight forward efforts of the
Government to assert the country s autonomy.

However much India's democratic values allow for their anxieties, it is sad. As a
people, we need to understand that the mighty in world history have always been a
more exalted figure than the weaklings. Both the world wars had erupted because of
the power struggle in the West and the developing countries had to bear its brunt
alongside the industrially and technologically advanced countries. Since then the
Western countries have been expanding their arsenals with more and more deadly
weaponry in the race for a superpower status.

After the First World War there was an awakening among the Asians and they too
took to industrial developments. There was envy amongst the White races and it
would not be wrong to construe the Second World War as one goaded by racial bias in its content. It is doubtful if the Americans could have chosen to use the atomic
bombs on the cities of Germany even if the Germans had not ended the war in May
1945. The technological progress and material expansions of the Japanese had
troubled the Western powers for too long and, in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, the whole Western world, as it were, joined hands to ensure the
humbling of Japan.

It is a different matter that now it has been proved beyond doubt that the fire bombs
and atomic bombs could not end the Second World War and finally the Americans
had to hurriedly accept the conditions set forth by the Japanese. The war ended on
the call of the Japanese emperor, weeks after the atom bombs had been tested on
innocent civilian populace. The horrendous impact of American atomic bombs on
Japanese human beings did not deter the British, the French and the Russians in their
resolve to have the atomic weapons.

When China embarked upon the bomb project years after the end of the Second World War, it was malafidely termed as the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the
Americans were very keen to bomb the Chinese nuclear sites in 1963 provided the
Soviets cooperated with them. But the Soviets (Russians) have as many Asians as
European-origin people amongst them; they rightly did not agree. This also shows
the kind of containment the Western powers wanted in the proliferation of nuclear
weapons. American bomb in 1945, Russian bomb in 1949, British bomb in 1952, and uptil the French bomb in 1960 there was no talk about stemming the tide of nuclear proliferation.

On the other hand, there were myriad efforts amongst the Western countries to gain
nuclear superiority and train others covertly to gain nuclear allies so that nuclear
battlefields be away from their homelands. India could have converted the know-how and ability to use the atoms for peace in to the one for warring; yet it chose not to enter the mad hawk-race because it believed that atomic weapons are no weapons of war; these are the instruments of wrecking havoc upon the sentient life on the globe.

It was the Chinese aggression of 1962 that shattered India s faith in the self denials
and goaded it to produce weapon-grade plutonium; later it was the projected threat
of American Fifth Fleet in the Bay of Bengal in 1971 that forced India to tell the world in 1974 that it knew well how to balance the imbalance in the nuclear order.

The nuclear explosion of India was for peaceful purposes and the test was conducted underground and not in atmosphere unlike others. The unique features of India's nuclear programme have been its totally indigenous research and development and civilian-nuclear-technology and a non-compromise on nuclear autonomy that may keep our option open. Between 1974 and 98 the P-5 managed to throttle India's nuclear programme.

But there started, at the instigation of extra-subcontinental powers, trouble in
Kashmir, which witnessed an armed conflict at Kargil just a year ago. It was a long
war that resulted in hundreds of Indian casualties. However, even before the lessons
of Kargil could sink in with the side that perpetrated it, there was a military coup in
Pakistan. Democracy has, for all practical purposes, been shown the door.

In such an environment it is unfair of the Western powers to cry foul about India s
nuclear stance. Strategically, it needed the nuclear tests and it is within India s
sovereign right to do so. The threat perception is not from Pakistan alone; the
Chinese too have to be factored in. True, India is committed to the banishment of
nuclear weapons from the world and would willingly subscribe to the international
agreements like in the case of biological and chemical weapons, which have been
outlawed by international treaties. But, it is against the legitimisation of nuclear
weapons in the hands of a selective few and America should see reason in our
response so far.

India is in favour of total nuclear disarmament. The United States seems partially
reconciled to a peaceful nuclear India and its President Bill Clinton has
comprehended the threats that engulf the nation. But, ultimately, it is India which has
to shed its inhibitions and assert: That it has the right to choose its friends and
identify its traditional foes on the basis of past experience. The psychology of
philosophical calculations, keeping in mind who could finally come to our rescue and
who would at the eleventh hour back out in the future, has to be given up for
pragmatism.

A farsighted foreign policy based upon idealism invariably turns out to be
shortsighted in the technologically fast changing world and a shrinking globe. India
has no nuclear weapons even now but has the nuclear weapon know-how. None
should, therefore, grudge it if it is forced to turn its extended hand for a shake into a
fist for India s security and integrity. India s nuclear strategy shall continue to be
focussed on sub-continental self-defence and not for intra-war feuds.