The
Indian case of nuclear proliferation derives its importance from the
ongoing political and academic discourse concerning Indian nuclear
decision-making and the factors that played a role in such a
process. Recently, this “puzzle” has been made more intriguing
due to the nuclear tests conducted by India in May 1998 and the
ongoing Indo-Pakistani crisis over Kashmir.
The
main problem in proliferation studies lies in the lack of analytical
appreciation of the complexity of nuclear politics, the reasons
behind key strategic decisions and the reasons why states choose to
go nuclear. More importantly, “the consensus view, focusing on
national security considerations as the cause of proliferation, is
dangerously inadequate because nuclear weapons programs also serve
other, more parochial and less obvious objectives.”2
This
article illustrates the range of reasons why India chose to go
nuclear. It will argue that threats from China, Pakistan, and
superpower meddling in South Asian affairs, definitely encouraged
India to proceed in its nuclear ambitions. However, the role that
the worldviews of key pro-bomb advocates inside the Indian
scientific and political leadership played had an even greater role
in shaping Indian nuclear politics. Had those leaders not been in
power at critical moments in India’s history, the country’s
nuclear program might never have been launched.
The
tendency among the political and scientific leadership to equate
nuclear weapons with scientific imminence, prestige and
post-colonial modernity greatly contributed to the development of
nuclear weapons in that country. Hence, a mixture of external
threats and domestic dynamics hurled India onto the nuclear plateau.
External
Threats
The
Chinese threat to India is considered the primary motivation for the
Indian nuclear program. More importantly, the framework of
Sino-Indian relations in the formative period of India’s nuclear
program was defined by China’s occupation of the Tibet, on
India’s northern border, in 1950. This greatly alarmed the Indian
leadership: “in classic geostrategic terms: the large neighbor had
extended its reach. Yet newly independent and poor India had few
means with which to deal with the changed circumstances.”3
Beneath
the surface lay the lingering dispute over three regions totaling
50,000 square miles of territory that Chinese maps recorded as
Chinese and Indian maps recorded as Indian.4
The territorial dispute became more apparent in January 1959 when
Chou En-lai wrote to Nehru to officially claim the disputed three
regions for China. This was coupled with the Tibetan rebellion
against Chinese rule, which resulted in the flight of the Dalai Lama
to India. Indo-Chinese tensions escalated and negotiations were
fruitless.
A
turning point in Indian strategic thinking came in the aftermath of
the Sino-Indian border war of October 1962. After invading India
along the Himalayan border, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army
routed the ill-equipped and ill-prepared Indian army and came to
occupy some 4,000 square miles of territory. The Chinese then
declared a unilateral cease-fire after achieving their territorial
objectives, thereby humiliating Nehru and the Indian political
leadership.5 The border
war “forced Nehru to reappraise his strategy and his most
cherished ideals.”6
Moreover, it resulted in a situation where “the country’s
military weakness was exposed, and the Himalayas no longer were
viewed as an impregnable barrier to invasion.”7
The
threat to India’s security became more pronounced with the first
Chinese nuclear test at Lop Nor on October 16, 1964. This lead to a
firestorm of controversy in India as segments of India’s political
and scientific establishments pushed for the acquisition of nuclear
weapons, since only “India’s nuclear capabilities could elevate
[it] to a position where it could not be subject to Chinese nuclear
coercion.”8
The
Kashmir dispute is generally considered the primary motivation
behind the Indo-Pakistani nuclear competition and hence
figures high in India’s strategic calculations.9
Nevertheless, neither India nor Pakistan initially decided to have
nuclear weapons because of the territorial conflict in
Kashmir. However, this does not mean that the overall Pakistani
threat to India did not play an important role in India’s
strategic calculations – a role that seemed to increase over time.
Pakistan
established its Atomic Energy Commission in 1956. In August 1960,
the United States gave Pakistan $350,000 to prepare for a first
research reactor. In 1962, Pakistan signed an agreement on nuclear
cooperation with France, which in the 1970s would seek to supply
Pakistan with a plutonium production reactor and separation plant.
This was coupled with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s appreciation of modern
science and technology, and particularly nuclear capability. He
began to speak of the need for Pakistani nuclear weapons in 1965 and
launched a program to acquire this capability in 1972.10
The
Pakistani factor in India’s nuclear calculations was made clear in
the aftermath of the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war in which India was
victorious. Many Indians considered the Tashkent Declaration of
January 10, 1966 a humiliating for it returned to Pakistan the
territorial gains made by India during the war. The Soviet-mediated
talks in Tashkent resulted in an agreement that “called for both
sides to withdraw their forces to positions held prior to August 5,
1965 and to repatriate prisoners of war. Both sides pledged not to
have recourse to force and to settle their disputes through peaceful
means.”11
However,
the Tashkent Declaration failed to resolve the fundamental problem
of Kashmir, stating merely “that Jammu and Kashmir was discussed,
and each of the two sides set forth its respective position.”12
George Perkovich writes: “Paradoxically, the victory over Pakistan
triggered renewed demands in India for nuclear weapons. The day
before the cease-fire took effect, nearly one hundred members of
Parliament from multiple parties, including Congress, issued a
letter urging the prime minister to decide immediately to develop
nuclear weapons.”13
Moreover,
the Chinese role in the 1965 war was also an important factor in the
Indo-Pakistani strategic equation. In fact, many suggest that the
Chinese ultimatum to India in 1965 and Pakistani-Chinese
collaboration alarmed the Indians more than the Pakistani threat in
its own right.14
The
role of the great powers, especially that of the United States,
concerning the enforcement of the non-proliferation treaty was seen
by many as being largely biased since India’s major security
concerns were ignored.15
Another watershed event in Indian-American relations was in 1971
when the United States attempted to pressure India through gunboat
diplomacy. The deployment of the USS Enterprise and nine
supporting warships to the Bay of Bengal during the war between
India and Pakistan is cited by some Indian polemicists as an example
of why India must have a nuclear arsenal of its own.16
Nehru
and Bhabha: Politician Meets Scientist
 |
| Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) |
The
contribution of both Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Homi
Bhabha, India’s famous nuclear scientist, is extremely important
in understanding India’s nuclear decision-making. Both individuals
laid the political and scientific base for the nuclear project to
materialize. In terms of nuclear decision-making, the worldviews of
the Prime Ministers, especially that of Nehru, and the Heads of the
Indian Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), especially that of Homi
Bhabha – the founder of India’s nuclear program – are
undoubtedly the most important. This is largely due to the fact that
India’s “nuclear policy and atomic energy program is controlled
by… a single man – the Chairman of the Atomic Energy
Commission, who is accountable only to the Prime Minister.”17
Ashok
Kapur wrote about India’s intragovernmental nuclear debate: “It
centered on the official relationship and personal friendship
between Indian Prime Minister Nehru and the distinguished scientist,
and subsequently first chief of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission,
Dr. Homi Bhabha. Up to 1964 these two personalities symbolized the
two facets of India’s disarmament and security policies.”18
Nehru
never took the view that the superpowers could perform better just
because of their superior strategic capabilities. However, at the
same time, he “did not regard influence-building activity as
simply a product of ‘talk’ – of expressing moral concerns –
unless this was accompanied by material strength.”19
In his far-ranging speech to the Indian Parliament on February 15,
1955, Nehru expressed the need for a “materially” strong India.20
Within
Nehru’s worldview, the atom occupied a preeminent position
as a sign of a new era of human civilization. Furthermore, India’s
weakness and its susceptibility to colonialism was, according to
him, a product of its lack of technological sophistication: “The
industrial age came in. India with all her many virtues did not
develop that source of power. It became a backward country because
of that… But an enormous new power came in. Now we are facing the
atomic age; we are on the verge of it. And this is something
infinitely more powerful than either steam or electricity.”21
In
this regard, one could see how, in Nehru’s worldview, nuclear
power became synonymous with prestige, technological advancement and
freedom from colonialism – part of the post-colonial project
intended to bring India back to the forefront. Nehru wrote to the
Cabinet as early as 1946: “If India has not got qualified
scientists and up-to-date scientific institutions in large numbers,
it must remain a weak country incapable of playing a primary part in
a war.”22
 |
| Homi Jehangir Bhabha (1906-1966) |
Bhabha,
like Nehru, whom he first met in 1937, “accepted the looming view
that mastery over the energy potential in the atomic nucleus
represented the apogee of science. The colonial British regime had
purposely retarded Indian industrial development, but Nehru and
Bhabha envisioned that Indian science would overcome this legacy and
achieve the highest symbols of modernity.”23
Bhabha
was known to have favored the nuclear option and firmly believed in
nuclear weapons and their essential role in achieving national
security. Bhabha maintained that “to achieve absolute
deterrence it was essential to have nuclear weapons; if one had
them, the other side’s overkill capacity did not matter. Second,
with conventional weapons, it was only possible to acquire a
position of relative deterrence.”24
Mitchell
Reiss argued that the responsibility “for India’s nuclear
development can be traced to one individual, Homi Bhabha.”25
From the initial acquisition of research reactors, to the initial
deployment of a Canadian-built reactor, to the development of a
plutonium processing plant in Trombay, Bhabha’s role was
manifested.26
Furthermore,
his well-timed interventions helped to produce the atomic bomb. He
is known to have persuaded Prime Minister Shastri to approve work on
a nuclear weapons option sometime during 1965. Immediately after
learning from the United States of the imminence of the Chinese
nuclear test in 1964, Bhabha called for a press conference to
announce “India’s ability to produce a nuclear bomb in eighteen
months” adding that China’s nuclear capability demanded a
commensurate Indian response.27
Days
later, he challenged the economic argument against the nuclear
bombs. Citing figures produced at the Third International Conference
on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, Bhabha claimed that a 10
kiloton bomb would cost $368,000 and a two megaton bomb would cost
$680,000, adding that “atomic explosives were some twenty times
cheaper than conventional explosives.”28
Nevertheless,
the critical period after the death of Nehru in 1964 was marred by a
great deal of ambiguity as to what the Indian nuclear and political
establishment was doing. Bhabha said that “we are still 18 months
away from exploding either a bomb or a device for peaceful purposes
and we are doing nothing to reduce that period.” Perkovich
interprets comments made by Bhabha as an affirmation that Bhabha had
been authorized to work on a nuclear explosion and that the delay in
producing it was “not due to policy but unmet technological
requirements.”29
Kapur also seems to reaffirm this view by suggesting that Bhabha
seemed to have won over anti-bomb advocates, L.K. Jha, Shastri’s
principle secretary, and Shastri himself.30
In
November 1965, Bhabha put forward a note on a need for a
subterranean nuclear explosion project (SNEP). In December, Shastri
approved the proposal, allowing research to be undertaken up to a
point “where, once the go-ahead signal was given, it would take
three months to have the explosion.”31
Shastri’s decision could be seen as a compromise with the pro-bomb
members of the Congress party and the IAEC leadership.32
Conclusions
India’s
case of nuclear proliferation illustrates the linkage between
external threats and domestic dynamics. In other words, for any
country to establish nuclear weapons, it must be facing external
threats to its national security, and also have prominent members of
its political and scientific leadership who equate nuclear weapons
with better security and are able to take critical and timely
decisions. Although the utility of nuclear weapons as the ultimate
guarantor of much-needed security has been questioned,33
many countries still see it as a symbol of prestige, modernity,
influence and ability to extend power in international affairs.
See
Also:
Useful
Links:
1-
“Embracing the Bomb,” Maclean’s June 10th,
2002: 40-42
2-
Scott Sagan. “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons? Three Models in
Search of a Bomb.” International Security 21 (Winter
1996/1997): 55.
3-
George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global
Proliferation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999),
42.
4-
Ibid., 43.
5-
Sumit Ganguly, “India’s Pathway to Pokhran II: The Prospects and
Sources of New Delhi’s Nuclear Weapons Program,” International
Security 32 (Spring 1999) http://www.wilsonweb.com
6-
Ibid.
7-
Bradley Thayer, “The Causes of Nuclear Proliferation and the
Utility of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime.” Security
Studies 4 (Spring 1995): 492.
8-
Ibid.
9-
Mario E. Carranza, “Rethinking Indo-Pakistani Nuclear
Relations.” Asian Survey 36 (June 1996): 567.
10-
Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, 48.
11-
Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, 110.
12-
Ibid.
13-
Ibid., 111.
14-
Ibid., 111 and Kotera M. Bhimaya, “Nuclear Deterrence in South
Asia: Civil Military Relations and Decision-Making,” Asian
Survey 34 (July 1994). On pp.653, Bhimaya writes: “Following
the Sino-Indian war of 1962, Pakistan developed very cordial
relations with the PRC. The latter changed its earlier pro-Indian
stance on Kashmir, and supported Pakistan’s plea in various
international fora for the right of self-determination for the
Kashmiri people. In the third week of the war in September 1965,
when India pulled out a division facing the Chinese and re-deployed
it along the Pakistani border, China presumably at the instance of
Pakistan, served an ultimatum to India to stop all war-like
activities along its border or face a full-scale war.”
15-
Stephen P. Cohen, Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia: The
Prospects of Arms Control (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press,
1991) cited in Bhimaya, “Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia,” 658.
U.S. attempts to enforce the non-proliferation treaty and deny India
entry to the nuclear club was seen by India as a further reason to
develop nuclear weapons.
16-
Sumit Ganguly, “Why India Joined The Nuclear Club,” The
Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists (April 1983): 32 ; Ganguly
cites K. Subrahmanyam: “had India possessed nuclear weapons the USS
Enterprise would not have steamed into the Bay of Bengal…
in what appeared from New Delhi to constitute atomic gunboat
diplomacy.” K. Subrahmanyam, “India: Keeping the Option Open,”
in Nuclear Proliferation: Phase II ed. Robert M. Lawrence and
Joel Larus (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1974), 122.
17-
Dhirendra Sharma, “India’s Nuclear Policy and the Arms Race in
the South-East Asian Region,” in On The Brink: Nuclear
Proliferation and the Third World ed. Peter Worsley and Kofi
Buenor Hadjor (London; Third World Communications, 1987), 223.
18-
Ashok Kapur, India’s Nuclear Option Atomic Diplomacy and
Decision-Making (New York: Praeger, 1976), 122.
19-
Ibid., 97.
20-
Ibid., 55.
21-
Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb (London
& New York: Zed Books, 1998), 28.
22-Ibid.,
49
23-
Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb , 17.
24-
Kapur, India’s Nuclear Option, 170-171.
25- Thayer, “The Causes of Nuclear Proliferation,” 477 – originally quoted from Mitchell Reiss,
Without the Bomb: The Politics of Nuclear Nonproliferation (New York: Columbia UP, 1988) , 217.
26- Ibid.
27- Peter Lavoy, “Nuclear Myths and the Causes of Nuclear Proliferation.”
Security Studies 2 (Spring/Summer 1993): 201.
28- Ibid., 210.
29- Perkovich, India’s Nuclear
Bomb, 112.
30- Kapur, India’s Nuclear Option, 194.
31- Ibid.
32- Sagan, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?” 66.
33- For a more thorough analysis on the limited value of nuclear weapons especially when nuclear states are facing low-intensity insurgencies such as those in Kashmir, Chechneya and Palestine, etc., see T.V. Paul, “Nuclear Taboo and War Initiation in Regional Conflicts,”
Journal of Conflict Resolution 39 (December 1995): 696-717.
