Round The World

New Delhi, 28 March 2007

India’s Double-Speak

Changing Paradigm of  Nuclear Policy

By Dr. Chintamani Mahapatra

School of International Studies, JNU

India’s point of view is, however, not wrong, since Iran is a member of the NPT and New Delhi only advises Tehran to follow a Treaty it so willingly signed. This advice, if followed sincerely, would not lead to the emergence of a nuclear weapon capable Iran. Tehran claims that it is within the legal right under the NPT to establish a full-cycle civilian nuclear programme for power generation.

The international community, however, fears that exercise of this right by Iran would eventually enable it to develop nuclear weapons. Iran’s nuclear ambition is not hidden and it does not have clean behaviour in the international nuclear market place. While the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) often gave it a clean chit in the past, Iran’s intention has come to be suspected off late.

But the main question is whether India should be advising Iran something it did not follow. Some analysts believe that Indian position is guided by its consideration of the prospective civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States. But for this initiative since July 2005, India would perhaps not have voted against Iran twice in the IAEA. In a way India risked its proposed gas pipeline project with Iran and Pakistan by voting against Iran or more specifically by voting in favor of the US position.

There is little doubt that India wanted to impress upon the American legislators who were to debate the proposed Indo-US nuclear deal and take a decision in favour or against it. The Bush Administration was selling India to the legislators as a champion of non-proliferation and India’s vote in the IAEA could be showcased as good examples.

The question is whether a vote in the IAEA was enough of an evidence of India’s commitment to non-proliferation. India has had a very credible record of abiding by the rules and regulations of the NPT even without being a party to it. There is no instance of India promoting nuclear proliferation anywhere in the world. To the contrary, India’s immediate neighbour has had a grim record on this score. By the way, a top nuclear scientist of the neighboring country has been proven to be a black marketeer in nuclear materials and has known to have developed contacts with Iranians as well.

In any case, the US Administration did not find it sufficient to cite India’s past records on non-proliferation and indicated to India that the latter has had to show some recent activism in this field. Consequently, India chose to be critical of Iran’s nuclear programme and voted in a desired direction at the IAEA on the Iranian nuclear issue.

Significantly, this new activism over non-proliferation issues has altered India’s long standing position on the nuclear issue. India has for long believed in the establishment of nuclear weapon- free world. The first Indian Prime Minister led the movement for a world free of nuclear weapons by proposing a halt to nuclear test in early 1950s. He was not even in favour of developing nuclear weapons after Indian scientists informed him of their ability to do so.

When his daughter Prime Minister Indira Gandhi permitted the conduct of a nuclear test explosion in 1974, she described it as a peaceful nuclear explosion. The peace aspect of this test was demonstrated by the fact that India kept a nuclear option open, but refrained from conducting a second nuclear test until May 1998. Mrs. Gandhi’s illustrious son, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, went to the United Nations with a blueprint for establishing a nuclear free world.

The Narashimha Rao Government co-sponsored a resolution in the UN General Assembly with the Clinton Administration for working towards a comprehensive ban on nuclear testing. Throughout negotiations for a CTBT, India pressed for a truly comprehensive ban on nuclear tests, including computer simulation. As it happened during negotiations for the NPT, this time also the interested powers opposed India’s stand linking CTBT with comprehensive nuclear disarmament and total ban on nuclear testing.

As and when India came under the pressure of fast deteriorating international environment and conducted a series of nuclear explosions in May 1998, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee declared the new nuclear status of India, but simultaneously articulated India’s continuing interest in working towards complete nuclear disarmament.

However, in recent years the Government of India has been more vocal on non-proliferation than nuclear disarmament. During his recent trip to Japan, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee sought to convince the Japanese India’s commitment to non-proliferation. One does understand the logic behind this new commitment of India. The Ministry of External Affairs will perhaps repeat such feats in the capitals of other important members of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group.

The increasing demand for energy, the need for more nuclear power for its environmental benefits and the necessity of winning the hearts and minds of NSG members all have made it important for the Indian Government to sing Indian commitment to nuclear non-proliferation.

However, this signals a paradigm shift in Indian nuclear policy. India has stopped articulating the need for comprehensive nuclear disarmament. While many would cheer this new realism in Indian foreign policy and give credit for the Government to make Indian nuclear weapons acceptable to the major powers by inking a nuclear deal with the US in July 2005, it is worthwhile to examine whether silence on nuclear disarmament is a welcome development.

Critics would see in this a crude foreign policy, since India conducted nuclear tests, built nuclear weapons and now speaks of non-proliferation alone to the exclusion of nuclear disarmament. While nuclear non-proliferation is a good thing, nuclear disarmament is a better proposition. It may be idealistic, but the Indian foreign policy need not abandon this idealism in the aftermath of going nuclear.---INFA

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