- South Asians Against
Nukes
- Movement in India for
Nuclear Disarmament
- Trinity Atomic Web Site (Nuclear Weapons: History, Technology, and Consequences)
Trinity Atomic Test
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This page and its companions contain my response to India's announcements of nuclear explosions carried out at the Pokhran site in May, 1998. After these announcements one was subjected to much gloating about how we had become a "super-power" and had successfully defied the hypocritical West. The explosions were justified on the grounds of necessity. Our neighbours, it appears, were all set to dismember and gobble us up; but now they must desist.
Across the border, in Pakistan, it was the same story. There too, patriots united in joy at the prospect of gaining the power to annihilate millions in an instant. That they may themselves be part of these millions bothered them not a whit.
It will be apparent by now that my sentiments are not at all with those who built the bombs, or with those who now control its use, or with those who find a feeling of empowerment through these tests. There are some who deplore the Indian government's handling of the diplomacy involved, or the fact that the tests were used by a political party to shore up its tottering coalition, yet support the tests themselves as necessitated by "geo-strategical realities". I am not one of them. However I look at it, the tests were a blunder, and that is putting it too mildly. They were a betrayal of what India has stood for in this century. Further, it is not an accident that they were such a betrayal, but part of a deliberate attempt to weaken the ideals that we have held in front of us from the days of the independence struggle.
Much is written nowadays on this topic, from one viewpoint or the other. Here I consider a broad range of opinions and attempt to justify, in the end, the claims I have made above.
[Pages marked with a * are in an unfinished state]
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