17
Defencen
In Complete opposition to Gandhi’s ahimsa-based pacifism,1 and Nehru’s aversion to any form of militarization,2 the Hindu nationalist movement has always promoted an aggressive defence of Hindus and India. ‘Aggressive defence’ is not a contradiction in terms for Hindu nationalists since their aggressiveness is all the more vehement as their feeling of vulnerability runs high. Hindu nationalism itself stems from the idea that Hindus may be stabbed in the back by others—Muslims, Christians—and that Hindus must equip themselves to cope with these threatening others, at home and abroad.
As early as the 1920s the Hindu Sangathan programme included the promotion of a martial ethos: the RSS shakhas were immediately intended to endow swayamsevaks with fighting techniques (including plying the lathi), allegedly to resist Muslims during riots. When the Second World War broke out the Hindu Mahasabha offered support to the British, hoping that the government would recruit Hindus and teach them the art of war. Savarkar’s motto at the time was ‘Militarise Hindudom!’3
Besides the hereditary foe, Pakistan, the arch-enemy of Hindu nationalism has always been China, and as early as the 1950s, the JanaSangh was worried about the growing influence of Peking in Tibet. In 1959 its Working Committee reacted to the Chinese incursions along the Indo-Tibetan border by demanding from Nehru’s government ‘that national security be accorded total priority’ and that the territories that had been occupied be liberated.4 When the first signs of the Chinese invasion appeared in May 1962 with the capture of two Indian frontier posts, the Jana Sangh called for massive reprisals and the breakingoff of diplomatic relations.5 When the Chinese operation gained momentum, the party could pride itself on having always given warning of a Chinese threat to a prime minister whose idealism had led him to underestimate it.6
The Jana Sangh continued in that vein in the domain of internal security, but it could not derive much dividend from the 1965 war against Pakistan, when Prime Minister Shastri reacted exactly the way the party would have had it been in office.7 Similarly, Indira Gandhi’s rescue of East Pakistan forced them to praise her during the 1971 crisis. Vajpayee then described her as Durga, the female divinity embodying Shakti or cosmic energy. In 1965 and 1971 RSS volunteers offered their services to maintain law and order in Delhi and to donate blood.
National security remained a focal point of the BJP’s discourse in the 1980s and 1990s, when the party leaders arraigned the Congress regime for letting defence expenditures decline (as a percentage of GDP) and for abstaining from the nuclear tests that many experts considered absolutely necessary to upgrade India’s arsenal. When A.B. Vajpayee became prime minister in 1998, nuclear testing was the first significant decision he made a few weeks after taking office. This gesture was greatly appreciated by the RSS. In his yearly report before the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha in March 1999, H.V. Seshadri, theRSS joint general secretary, highlighted the achievement of Vajpayee’s government in the field of security issues:
The series of 5 nuclear blasts at Pokharan on May 11th and 13th of last year, carried out on the strength of entirely indigenous input by way of materials and also of sheer scientific and technological excellence placing Bharat at the top of nuclear world on par with any of the giants in that field, the absolute secrecy maintained all through until it was broadcast on the TV by our Prime Minister, the political grit and courage displayed by the central leadership in taking that historic decision in the light of our national security requirements, and the way it has acted as a great morale booster not only to our army but to all our patriotic countrymen—all this has proved to be the one greatest moment of all-round national jubilation and celebration during the Golden Jubilee Year of our Independence.8
In August 1999 the 27-member National Security Advisory Board that had been appointed by the Vajpayee government spelt out a ‘nuclear doctrine’ that was not formally endorsed by Vajpayee but made public by his National Security Adviser, Brajesh Mishra. This doctrine pointed out that India would develop a credible minimum nuclear deterrent by weaponizing a triad of aircraft, mobile land-based missiles and seabased assets. Simultaneously, Vajpayee’s government decided to speed up the missile programme by developing Agni II and to strengthen the army on the front of conventional forces. About 20 Agni ballistic missiles with a range of more than 2000 km were to be manufactured by 2001 and the Prithvi missile was to be upgraded from 150 km to 350 km.
National security remained the BJP trademark during the Kargil war which broke out in Spring 1999 after Indian troops discovered infiltrations of Pakistani regular soldiers and Islamist paramilitary. The blitzkrieg which followed was commented on in the press as testimony of A.B. Vajpayee’s coolheadedness, determination, andmoderation. This military victory was one of the reasons for the BJP’s electoral success a few months later.
In February 2000 the first budget of the second Vajpayee government took one step further by increasing the share of defence expenditures by 28 per cent. The man who played a major role in the Prime Minister’s team, as far as defence and foreign affairs were concerned, was Jaswant Singh. A retired army major with an aristocratic background—he be-longs to a Rajput family related to the dynasty of Jodhpur in Rajasthan—Singh had resigned his commission to enter public life. He was one of the first ex-army men to join the BJP. Many more were to follow. He was given a party ticket for the Rajya Sabha election in 1980 and remained a member of the upper house till 1989, when he contested a Lok Sabha seat and won the first of his six terms. Vajpayee appointed him first Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission—he had wanted to include him in his governmental team but had to bow to RSS opposition—and then as Minister of External Affairs, and finally Finance Minister. As Minister of External Affairs Jaswant Singh played a major role in the Indo-American rapprochement, via almost a dozen rounds of discussion with Strobe Talbot, Assistant Secretary of State in the Clinton administration, who, eventually, became convinced that India should become a strategic partner of the United States in Asia.
Extract from Jaswant Singh, Defending India9
The May Tests and After
The end of the Cold War marks a watershed in the history of the 20th century. While it transformed the political landscape of Europe it did little to ameliorate India’s security concerns. Early and mid 1980s, and the period roughly upto 1995 was, in fact, a greatly troubling period for India. The relative order and absence of conflict that arrived in the Americas and Europe was also not replicated in other parts of the globe. At the global level there is no evidence yet on the part of the nuclear weapon states about taking decisive and irreversible steps and moving towards a nuclear-weapon-free world. Instead, the NPT, in 1995, was extended indefinitely unconditionally, perpetuating the existence of nuclear weapons in the hands of five countries who are also engaged in programmes for modernisation of their nuclear arsenals. At this juncture, and after over 2000 tests had been conducted, a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was opened for signature in 1996, following two and a half years of negotiations in which India had participated actively. This treaty was neither comprehensive nor was it related to disarmament.
The range of options for India had, by then, narrowed critically. India had to take necessary steps to ensure that the country’s nuclear option, developed and safeguarded over decades, was not permitted to erode by a self-imposed restraint. Indeed, such an erosion would have resulted in an irremediably adverse impact on national security. The Government of India was thus faced with a difficult decision. The only touchstone that could determine its decision remained national security. The tests conducted on 11 and 13 May had by then not only become inevitable, they were, in actuality a continuation of the policies set into motion, from almost the earliest years of independence.
An examination of the first fifty years of Indian independence reveals that the country’s moralistic nuclear policy and restraint did not really pay any measurable dividends. Consequently, this resulted in resentment within the country; a feeling grew that India was being discriminated against. In the political market place of India, nuclear weaponisation gained currency, and the plank of disarmament began to be argued that if the Permanent Five’s possession of nuclear weapons is good, and confers security to their respective countries, then how is the possession of nuclear weapons by India not good, or how does the equation reverse simply in this instance? There is also the factor of the currency in the form of nuclear weapons: as an international communicator of force then how is India to voluntarily devalue its own state power, which it has to, after all, employ for its own national security? It is this reasoning that lies behind the evolution of Indian nuclear thought in the past fifty years. India has also learnt from the experience of the West, their approach to, attitudes about and application of nuclear policy. Deterrence works in the West, or elsewhere, as it so obviously appears to otherwise why should these nations continue to possess nuclear weapons at all. Then by what reasoning is it to be asserted that it will not work or cannot work in India? To admonitorily argue, thereafter, that India has to now ‘fall in line’ because there is now a new international agenda of discriminatory non-proliferation,pursued more on account of the demands of the political market place of some of these countries, as an extension also of their own internal agendas or political debates, is to assert the unimplementable. The rationale behind nuclear weapon powers continuing to have, and preaching to those that do not have, to have even less, leaves a gross imbalance between the rights of and obligations of nation states of the world community. Either India counters by suggesting global, non-discriminatory disarmament by all; or, equal and legitimate security for the entire world.
That alone is why, and it bears repetition, India since independence has been a consistent advocate of global nuclear disarmament, participating actively in all such efforts, convinced that a world without nuclear weapons will enhance both national and global security. India was the first to call for a ban on nuclear testing in 1954, for a non-discriminatory treaty on non-proliferation in 1965, for a treaty on non-use of nuclear weapons in 1978, for a nuclear freeze in 1982, and for a phased programme for complete elimination in 1988. Unfortunately, most of these initiatives were not accepted by the nuclear weapon states who still consider these weapons essential for their own security. What emerged, in consequence, has been a discriminatory and flawed non-Proliferation regime which affects India’s security adversely. For many years India conveyed its apprehensions to other countries but this did not lead to any improvement in its security environment. This disharmony and disjunction between global thought and the movement of India’s thought is, unfortunately, the objective reality of the world. In the totality of state power, nuclear weapons as a currency of it is still operational. Since this currency is operational in large parts of the globe, therefore, India was left with no choice but to update and revalidate the capability that had been demonstrated 24 years ago in the PNE of 1974.
In undertaking these tests, India has not violated any international treaty obligations. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, to which India does not subscribe, also contains provisions permitting states parties to withdraw if they consider their supreme national interests being jeopardised. In any event, in the evolution of the present South Asian situation 1995 was a watershed year. By forcing an unconditional and indefinite extension of the Non-proliferation Treaty on the internationalcommunity, India was left with no option but to go in for overt nuclear weaponisation. The Sino-Pakistan nuclear weapons collaboration, continued with in violation of the NPT, made it obvious that the NPT regime had collapsed, and critically in India’s neighbourhood. Since it is now argued that NPT is unamendable, it is obvious that the legitimization of nuclear weapons, implicit in the unconditional and indefinite extension of the NPT, is also irreversible. While India could have lived with a nuclear option but without overt weaponization in a world where nuclear weapons had not been formally legitimised, that course was no longer viable in a world of legitimised nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the full implications of the legitimisation of nuclear weapons were not debated either in India or abroad. This fatal setback to nuclear disarmament and progress towards delegitimisation of nuclear weapons was hailed by most of the peace movements abroad as a great victory.
In negotiations on the CTBT, for the first time the Indian Ambassador’s statement of 20 June 1996 in the Conference of Disarmament stated ‘that the nuclear issue is a national security concern for India and advanced [that] as one of the reasons why India was unable to accede to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty’. Presumably this persuaded the nuclear hegemons to introduce a clause at the last minute, ‘that India along with 43 other nations should sign the treaty to bring it into force. This clause was coercive and a violation of the Vienna Convention on Treaties which stipulates that a nation not willing to be a party to a treaty cannot be imposed obligations arising out of the treaty. It should be remembered that this clause was [introduced] at the insistence of China—the nuclear proliferator to Pakistan. The international community approved that coercive CTBT.’ That was a major deterioration in India’s security environment.
As the decade of the nineties advanced the situation for India became more pressing. In 1997 more evidence surfaced on China-Pakistan proliferation linkage and about US permissiveness. The very fact that the US administration insisted on a separate agreement with China, during President Jiang Zemin’s visit to Washington, on its proliferation to Iran and Pakistan, and that the Chinese signed such an agreement, instead of protesting their innocence establishes that Chinese proliferation was a reality affecting India’s security. After all these assurances,according to a testimony given by the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Non-proliferation to the House of Representatives on 4 February 1998, it had to be asserted that though China did not proliferate MTCR class missiles it was continuing to proliferate missile technology and components to Pakistan. Despite this, US Administration continued to express willingness to certify that China was not proliferating, or, for India, worse, that the US was either unable or unwilling to restrain China. As the range of options for India narrowed so, too, did the difficulties of taking corrective action.
Today, India is a nuclear weapon state. This adds to its sense of responsibility as a nation that is committed to the principles of the UN Charter and to promoting regional peace and stability. Efforts for closer engagement will, of course, have to be intensified covering the entire range of issues which require collective consideration. During the past 50 years there have been a number of decisive moments. 1968 was one such moment in India’s nuclear chapter; as was 1974, and now 1998. At each of these moments, India took the decision guided only by national interest, and supported by a national consensus. The May tests of 1998 were born in the crucible of earlier decisions and made possible only because those decisions had been taken correctly, and in time.
Let it be repeated that India’s nuclear policy remains firmly committed to a basic tenet: that the country’s national security, in a world of nuclear proliferation lies either in global disarmament or in exercise of the principle of equal and legitimate security for all. The earliest Indian articulations on the question of nuclear disarmament were admittedly more moralistic than realistic. The current disharmony, therefore, between India’s position and the position that the rest of the globe has seemingly adopted is that whereas India has moved from the totally moralistic to a little more realistic, the rest of the nuclear world has arrived at all of its nuclear conclusions entirely realistically. They now have a surplus of nuclear weapons, also the technology for fourth generation weapons, and are now thus beginning to move towards a moralistic position. It is of this that is born lack of understanding about the Indian stand. The first and perhaps the principal obstacle in understanding India’s position lies in an absence of due and proper recognition of the country’s security needs; also in this nuclearised world for a balance between the rights and obligations of all nations;of restraint in acquisition of nuclear weaponry; of ending this unequal division between nuclear haves and have-nots. No other country in the world has demonstrated the kind of restraint that India has for near about a quarter of a century after the first Pokhran test of 1974. In the years preceding that PNE and in subsequent decades, consistently, India continued to advocate the basic tenet of its nuclear strategy.
Now, in the nineties, and as the century turns, the country was faced by critical choices. India had been witness to decades of international unconcern and incomprehension even as the overall security environment of the country, both globally and in Asia, deteriorated. The end of the cold war resulted in the collapse of the then existing bipolarity, it created the appearance of unipolarity but it also led to the rise of additional power centres. The fulcrum of international balance of power shifted from Europe to Asia; Asian nations began their process of economic resurgence. Asia-Pacific as a trade and security rim became a geo-political reality. In 1995, the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, essentially a cold war arms control treaty, with a fixed duration of 25 years, was extended indefinitely and unconditionally. This legitimised, in perpetuity, the existing nuclear arsenals; in effect an unequal nuclear regime. Even as nations of the world acceded to the treaty, the five nuclear weapon powers states were also unable to subscribe. Meanwhile, in the intervening decades had persisted reports of the transfer of nuclear weapon powers technology from declared nuclear weapon powers to preferred states. Neither the world nor the nuclear weapon powers succeeded in halting this process. NPT notwithstanding, proliferation in the region spread.
Since nuclear weapon powers that assist proliferation, or even condone it are not subject to any penalty, the entire non-proliferation regime became flawed. Nuclear technologies became, at their worst, commodities of international commerce, at best lubricants of diplomatic fidelity. Such proliferation in India’s neighbourhood has been enumerated in strategic literature and cited in numerous Congressional testimonies. India noted with concern that not only did the CIA refer to them, indeed, from the early nineties onward the required presidential certification in this regard could not be provided. India is the only country in the world to be situated between two nuclear weapon powers.
Today most nations of the world are also the beneficiaries of anuclear security paradigm. From Vancouver to Vladivostok stretches a club: that of a security framework with four nuclear weapon powers as partners in peace providing extended deterrent protection. The Americas progress under the US nuclear deterrent protection as members of Organisation of American States. South Korea, Japan and Australasia also have the benefit of US extended deterrence. By itself, China is a major nuclear weapon power. Only Africa and southern Asia remain outside the exclusivity of this new international nuclear paradigm, where nuclear weapons and their currency in international conduct is, paradoxically, legitimised. How to accept these differentiated standards of national security or a regime of international nuclear apartheid is a challenge not simply to India but to the inequality of the entire non-proliferation regime.
In the aftermath of the cold war a new Asian balance of power is emerging. Developments in this region create new alignments, new vacuums. India, in exercise of its supreme national interests, has acted, and timely, to correct this imbalance, to fill a potential vacuum. Its endeavour is to contribute to a stable balance of power in Asia, which it holds will contribute meaningfully to a furtherance of the democratic process.
On India’s western flank lies the Gulf region, one of the most critical sources of the world’s energy States, a yet to be fully developed reservoir. With both these regions India has ancient linkages. It also has extensive energy import requirements. The Gulf provides employment to Indian labour and talent. However, this region too, and its adjoining countries have been targets of missile and nuclear proliferation. Long range missiles of 2500 km range were proliferated to this area in the mid-1980s. Unfortunately, from 1987 onwards nuclear proliferation, with extra-regional assistance, has continued unchecked.
Faced as India was, with a legitimisation of nuclear weapons by the haves, by a global nuclear security paradigm from which it was excluded, trends towards disequilibrium in the balance of power in Asia, and a neighbourhood of two nuclear weapon countries acting in concert, India had to protect its future by exercising its nuclear option. By doing this India has brought into the open the nuclear reality which had remained clandestine for at least the last eleven years. India could not accept a flawed non-proliferation regime, as the international norm, when all objective realities asserted conclusively to the contrary.
India’s policies towards its neighbours and other countries have not changed. The country remains fully committed to the promotion of peace, stability, and resolution of all outstanding issues through bilateral dialogue and negotiations. The tests of May 11 and 13, 1998 were not directed against any country; these were intended to reassure the people of India about their own security. Confidence building is a continuous process, with India remaining committed to it.
India is now a nuclear weapon state; as is Pakistan. That is a reality that can neither be denied, nor wished away. This category of a Nuclear Weapon State is not, in actuality, a conferment; nor is it a status for others to grant, it is an objective reality. This strengthened capability adds to India’s sense of responsibility; the responsibility and obligation of power. India, mindful of its international obligations, is committed to not using these weapons to commit aggression or to mount threats against any country; these are weapons of self-defence, to ensure that India, too, is not subjected to nuclear threats or coercion.
India has reiterated its undertaking of a ‘no-first-use’ agreement with any country, bilaterally or in a collective forum. India shall not engage in an arms race; of course, it shall also neither subscribe to nor reinvent the sterile doctrines of the cold war. India remains committed to the basic tenet of its foreign policy—a conviction that global elimination of nuclear weapons will enhance its security as well as that of the rest of the world. It will continue to urge countries, particularly other nuclear weapon states to adopt measures that would contribute meaningfully to such an objective. This is the defining difference; it is also the cornerstone of India’s nuclear doctrine.
That is why India will continue to support such initiatives, taken individually or collectively, by the Non-Aligned Movement which has continued to attach the highest priority to nuclear disarmament. This was reaffirmed most recently at the NAM Ministerial meeting held at Cartagena soon after India had conducted its present series of underground tests. The NAM ministers ‘reiterated their call on the Conference on Disarmament to establish, as the highest priority, an ad hoc committee to start in 1998 negotiations on a phased programme for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons with a specified framework of time, including a Nuclear Weapons Convention’. This collective voice of 113 NAM countries reflects an approach to global nuclear disarmament to which India has remained committed. One of the NAM member initiatives, to which great importance is attached, was the reference to the International Court of Justice resulting in the unanimous declaration as part of the Advisory Opinion handed down on 8 July 1996, that ‘there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control’. India was one of the countries that appealed to the ICJ on this issue. No other nuclear weapon state has supported this judgment; in fact, they have sought to decry its value. India has been and will continue to be in the forefront of the calls for opening negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, so that this challenge can be dealt with in the manner used in the scourge of other weapons of mass destruction—the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention. In keeping with its commitment to comprehensive, universal and non-discriminatory approaches to disarmament India is an original State party to both these conventions. In recent years, in keeping with these new challenges, India has actively promoted regional cooperation—in SAARC, in the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation and as a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum. This engagement will also continue. The policies of economic liberalisation introduced in recent years have increased India’s regional and global linkages and India shall deepen and strengthen these ties.
India’s nuclear policy has been marked by restraint and openness. It has not violated any international agreements either in 1974 or now, in 1998. This restraint exercised for 24 years, after having demonstrated a capability in 1974, is in itself an unique example. Restraint, however, has to arise from strength. It cannot be based upon indecision or doubt. Restraint is valid only when doubts are removed. The series of tests undertaken by India have led to the removal of doubts. The action involved was balanced, in that it was the minimum necessary to maintain what is an irreducible component of the country’s national security calculus.
Subsequent to the tests the Government of India has already stated that it will now observe a voluntary moratorium and refrain from conducting underground nuclear test explosions. It has also indicated willingness to move towards a dejure formalisation of this declaration. The basic obligation of the CTBT is thus met: to refrain from under-taking nuclear tests.
India has also expressed readiness to participate in negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament, in Geneva, on a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. The basic objective of this treaty is to prohibit future production of fissile materials for use in nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices. India’s approach in these negotiations will be to ensure that this treaty emerges as a universal and non-discriminatory treaty, backed by an effective verification mechanism.
India has maintained effective export controls on nuclear materials as well as related technologies even though it is neither a party to the NPT nor a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Nonetheless, India is committed to non-proliferation and to the maintaining of stringent export controls to ensure that there is no leakage of its indigenously developed know-how and technologies. In fact, India’s conduct in this regard has been better than some countries party to the NPT.
India has in the past conveyed its concerns on the inadequacies of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime. It has explained that the country was not in a position to join because the regime did not address the country’s security concerns. These could have been addressed by moving towards global nuclear disarmament, India’s preferred approach. As this did not take place, India was obliged to stand aside from the emerging regime so that its freedom of action was not constrained. This is precisely the path that it has continued to follow, unwaveringly, for the last three decades. That same constructive approach will underlie India’s dialogue with countries that need to be persuaded of India’s serious intent and willingness to engage so that mutual concerns are satisfactorily addressed. The challenge to Indian statecraft remains that of reconciling India’s security imperatives with valid international concerns in regard to nuclear weapons.
What collapsed prior to the Pressler Amendment cannot now be reinvented. Let the world move towards finding more realistic solutions: to evolving a universal common security paradigm for the entire globe. Since nuclear weapons are not really usable, paradoxically the dilemma lies in their continuing deterrent value; and this paradox further deepens the concerns of public men having the responsibility of governance: how to employ state power in service of national security and simultaneously address international concerns. How, thereafter, to evolve to an order that ensures a peaceful present and an orderly future. How then to reconcile with an objective global reality that as these weapons do have a deterrent value, some are the owners of this value, others not; yet a lasting balance has to be found even then. For, though humanity is indivisible, national security interests, as sovereign expressions, have not the same attribute.
1 Mahatma Gandhi once said that if a pilot flew over India to launch a nuclear bomb, he would change the pilot’s heart from a distance and dissuade him.
2 Nehru called this approach into question after the 1962 attack on China which showed that India had foolishly neglected its military establishment.
3 C. Jaffrelot, ‘Opposing Gandhi: Hindu Nationalism and Political Violence’, in D. Vidal, G. Tarabout, and E. Meyer, eds, Violence/Non-Violence. Some Hindu Perspectives (Delhi: Manohar, 2003), pp. 299–324.
4 Resolution of 20 September 1959, in Party Documents, vol. 3 (New Delhi: Bharatiya Jana Sangh, 1973), pp. 66–8.
5 Resolution of 24 May 1962, in ibid., p. 86.
6 S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru—A Biography, vol. 3, pp. 212 and 224.
7 The Jana Sangh Working Committee admitted that ‘never before in these 18 years of independence, have the government policies and actions been so completely in accord with the people’s will as they have been during these past few weeks’ (Resolution of 27 September 1965, in Party Documents, vol. 3, pp. 128–9).
8 The Organiser, 4 April 1999, p. 12. The RSS has always favoured the development of nuclear weapons. In the early 1990s Rajendra Singh—himself a nuclear physicist—had declared that: ‘The day Pakistan comes to know that we also have a nuclear bomb, there would be an end to the possibility of a Pakistan nuclear bomb being dropped here.’ R. Singh, Ever-Vigilant We Have to Be (New Delhi: Suruchi Prakashan, n.d.), p. 9.
9 Jaswant Singh, Defending India (London: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 326–37.