A very Political Bomb
Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik, TNI Fellows
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July-August 1998
By conducting nuclear tests and launching a weapons-development program,
India has taken the same ignominious path as the Big Five, and has thereby
disgraced itself. India's decision was devoid of a strategic rationale,
and it violated the sensible principles New Delhi had itself advocated for
50 years-that is, opposition to nuclear deterrence and rejection of the
proposition that weapons of mass destruction generate security.
None of the reasons New Delhi proffered for the tests was tenable. There
had been no deterioration in India's security environment in recent years.
On the contrary, India had improved relations with its neighbors, especially
China. Nor had India been under serious pressure to sign unequal arms control
agreements, nor was it "protesting" against "nuclear apartheid"
and hegemonism-as distinct from joining the Nuclear Club, with its own hegemonic
ambitions.
Those who are serious about increasing the momentum toward global nuclear
disarmament condemn the Indian government. But the character of the condemnation
varies. Those who live in nuclear weapon states or in allied countries tend
to temper their anger with the reminder that the enduring hypocrisy and
deceit of the five nuclear powers does not entitle them to adopt sanctimonious
postures. This reminder is needed. But some Western-based nuclear abolitionists
have so softened their condemnation as to rationalize away India's culpability.
Deciding where we go from here is inextricably tied to how we understand
what happened. Three sets of arguments can be used to explain the Indian
decision. How the weight of overall explanation is distributed among them
is the crucial issue.
The first set of arguments involves security and threat considerations.
The second centers on the long, continuing record of hypocrisy and insufficient
concern for disarmament shown by the nuclear weapon states-above all, by
the United States. The claim here is that India was in a sense "driven"
to go nuclear. The third centers on domestic political forces that are changing
Indian elite self-perceptions.
India's strategic community, which overwhelmingly supported the tests
and is now baying for open nuclear deployment, cites the first two kinds
of explanations. The very nature of "realist" thinking-which is
the only kind of thinking Indian strategic "experts" indulge in
these days-precludes any serious reflection on domestic considerations as
the major source, through changed self-perceptions, of dramatic shifts in
security policies.
Ironically, many abolitionists converge with Indian hawks by explaining
the tests in essentially the same way. They are motivated by justifiable
anger with the Big Five-because these nations are responsible for the world's
nuclear mess, surely they can be blamed for "provoking" India.
The argument goes: "Condemnable though these tests be, they are a kind
of comeuppance for the nuclear hegemons." However, India's decision
was not the result of its rising impatience with an iniquitous nuclear order
but of a cynical determination to benefit from that order as a nuclear weapon
state.
A companion argument embraces the hope that the Indian action might have
a positive effect on the struggle for global disarmament-rather than the
more probable outcome, that it represents a serious setback.
Another common abolitionist argument: Just as perceived external threats
were the primary factors behind Russia's and China's decision to go nuclear,
India is following in the same tradition. India's chanting of the "China
factor," goes the argument, must be taken at face value.
Such lines of argument are also attractive because they obviate the need
to seriously understand India's internal politics, making a virtue, or at
least an inconsequential disadvantage, of this widely persisting but debilitating
lacunae.
Hindu fundamentalism
In fact, domestic considerations, not external threats or dissatisfaction
with the way the nuclear weapon states have acted, are paramount.
One cannot comprehend why India crossed the nuclear Rubicon without giving
decisive weight to the changing self-perceptions of the Indian elite and
the profound transformations the country has undergone in the last 10 years
with the rise of a viciously sectarian, fundamentally undemocratic, and
deeply belligerent political force, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and
its affiliates.
The BJP, a right-wing reactionary political party established in 1980,
propounds an ideology of aggressive anti-Muslim, anti-secular Hindu nationalism.
It has made dramatic gains in the past decade: In 1984 the BJP had only
two seats in the 543-member Lower House of Parliament; today it is the single
largest party with 180 seats, and it heads a coalition government.
Behind the BJP-and inseparable from it-is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
(National Volunteer Corps), which is the real head of an overall combine
called the Bajrang Dal, a huge anti-Muslim cultural force that operates
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council).
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has fascist characteristics. The
RSS does not contest parliamentary elections nor does it hold elections
to various organizational posts. It is a secret, all-male organization whose
objective is to establish a "Hindu state."
The rise of Hindu nationalism has completely altered the discourse of
Indian politics and it is beginning to transform the character of Indian
society. Nothing else so fully explains why India took the decision to shed
its nuclear ambiguity.
India's nuclearization reflects the belief of the BJP-RSS as well as
growing sections of the Indian elite that nuclear weapons constitute a shortcut
to establishing the country's stature as a major actor-in Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee's words, the nuclear tests "show our strength
and silence our enemies."
The near-hysterical adulation this act initially drew cannot be properly
understood without recognizing that the groundwork was laid through the
growing acceptance of the way in which the BJP has transformed the discourse
of Indian nationalism. Despite resistance from the left and the center,
it is the right's version of the "cultural" essence of India,
of national security, of national "greatness" that are setting
the direction of Indian politics, both external and internal.
For the BJP-and its previous avatar, the Jana Sangh-nuclear weapons are
an article of faith, part of the essential identity of a powerful, awe-inspiring,
militarist "Hindu India" that can boast of its "manliness"
and "virility" and thus prove to the world the superiority of
Hindu "civilization."
This Hindu-nationalist current has advocated nuclearization since 1951-
when India had the best of relations with China, and 13 years before China
went nuclear. This dogma is not even remotely related to security considerations
and India's external relations. The timing of the tests was determined solely
by the fact that the BJP-led coalition took power six weeks before the event.
The frighteningly irresponsible subsequent behavior of BJP leaders cannot
be comprehended without understanding this. In the first rush of a nuclear
fix, Vajpayee declared that India's nuclear might would be used only for
"defensive purposes"-a formulation terrifying not only in its
vagueness (because any act of aggression can be so rationalized) but for
making no distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear conflicts.
Domestically, the BJP and its affiliates are out to literally spiritualize
the issue, in keeping with their decades-long effort to politicize Hinduism
itself, and propel themselves to unrestrained power. Their supporters are
determined to build a temple dedicated to a new goddess of nuclear power
at Pokhran, and they are triumphantly celebrating India's "arrival"
on the world stage.
Part of the problem
Nuclear abolitionists make a profound mistake if they attempt to explain
India's tests in geopolitical terms separated from the forces that underlie
the general political trajectory of India today. That weapons tests were
considered in 1995 (but not carried out) under a Congress Party government
reflects how dominant the BJP's brand of belligerence, operating in a general
elite milieu of insecure and frustrated nationalism, has become in the 1990s
independent of the external environment.
The BJP-which did not confide in its own coalition partners when deciding
to nuclearize India, but whose decision the RSS was privy to-staged a political
coup that overnight destroyed what was for decades the "sober middle
ground"-the majority position favoring continued nuclear ambiguity.
This position has nearly vanished. The BJP was the only political party
whose official position favored exercising the nuclear option. It has done
exactly that, although it lacked a democratic mandate to do so.
The effects of this act are clear. Less than three weeks after the Indian
tests, Pakistan conducted "retaliatory" tests. In turn, this generated
enormous pressure in India to deploy nuclear weapons. If that occurs, Pakistan
will do likewise. South Asia is on the verge of a nuclear arms race that
Indian hawks will rationalize-in true deterrence fashion-as "stabilizing"
and "peace-enhancing," when its real and obvious consequences
are the opposite.
India-China relations, which had greatly improved in the 1990s with the
signing of two major peace and tranquility agreements in 1991 and 1996,
have received a decisive setback. China will now see India as a nuclear
rival and act accordingly. India has already declared that its missile development
program is meant to create a deterrent against China.
Such declarations are likely, in turn, to push China to develop even
closer political and nuclear relationships with Pakistan. The external security
repercussions are so destabilizing that unless one factors in the domestic
political considerations at work in India, it is impossible to understand
the reasons behind the Indian decision to nuclearize.
Finally, the blow to the global disarmament momentum is severe. The idea
that the other nuclear weapon states will somehow be "frightened"
into accelerating disarmament measures, as a few people have suggested,
goes against historical evidence. It is more likely that the nuclear weapon
states will continue their attempt to isolate India. But if that fails-partly
because of divisions in their own ranks-they will gradually move toward
acknowledging India's new nuclear status, perhaps partially and informally.
India's policy-makers banked on a relatively soft global response to
India's nuclearization. But they were-and are-cynical enough to impose hardships
upon the Indian people not only by exposing them to the heat of sanctions,
but by embarking on a nuclear arms race with Pakistan and, more important,
China, which could prove strategically disastrous and economically ruinous.
New Delhi already spends twice as much on the military as it does on
health, education, and social welfare. Nuclearization will further bloat
the military budget by 30 percent or more, leading to severe cuts in social-sector
spending, and setting back the economy by years.
India and Pakistan have now become part of the nuclear disarmament problem,
not part of the solution. The peace movement must try to persuade India
to maintain the still existing firebreak between a proven weapons capability
and actual manufacture and deployment.
If India does not make and deploy weapons, there is still a chance of
avoiding an arms race, as well as salvaging some credibility for India as
a supporter of disarmament.
But whether India does or does not deploy nuclear weapons, we must be
prepared for the worst in the now more difficult struggle for complete global
nuclear disarmament.
Copyright 1998 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
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