Dubious achievements of BJP government
M V Ramana
The Daily Times
Thursday, May 9, 2002
On October
31, 2000, speaking on the banks of the Narmada river, Indian Home Minister
L K Advani listed the nuclear tests of May 1998 at Pokhran, the conflict
between India and Pakistan at Kargil in the summer of 1999 and to the
Indian Supreme Court’s judgement that allowed construction on the Sardar
Sarovar dam, as the biggest achievements of the first three years of BJP
rule in India. Today he could add the scandal that broke out in March
2001, when tehelka.com, an online newspaper revealed direct evidence of
several members of parties that are part of the ruling National Democratic
Alliance taking bribes for a defence deal, and the current pogrom in
Gujarat as the achievements of the next two years. This week being the
anniversary of the Pokharan nuclear tests, it is appropriate to examine
what was achieved by conducting those tests.
Broadly speaking
there were two kinds of benefits that were promised by pro-nuclear
advocates in India. The first was an improvement in India’s security. Once
again we turn to Advani who, soon after the tests, confidently proclaimed,
“India’s decisive step to become a nuclear weapon state has brought about
a qualitative new state in India-Pakistan relations, particularly in
finding a lasting solution to the Kashmir problem.” The irony in this
claim is that it is negated by Advani himself through one of the
achievements of the BJP government that he proudly claimed credit for -
the Kargil conflict.
The Kargil conflict was the largest direct
war between two nuclear weapon states ever. Earlier the most serious
episode was the clash between the Soviet Union and China in March 1969
along the banks of the Ussuri River, which led to about 300 casualties. In
contrast, Kargil led to a toll of somewhere between 1,300 (according to
the Indian government) and 1,750 (according to Pakistan) lives.
For the first time since 1971, India deployed its air force to
launch attacks. In response, Pakistani fighter planes were scrambled for
fear they might be hit on the ground. Voices in both countries, especially
India, called for a more aggressive war with the opening of other fronts
or the bombardment of Pakistani supply routes to Kargil. High-level
officials in both countries issued at least a dozen nuclear threats.
Thankfully these did not come to pass.
Rather than inducing
self-reflection - after all nuclear weapons were touted as deterrents that
would prevent war - Kargil only propelled the two countries to move
further towards deploying their nuclear weapons. Barely a few months after
Kargil, the Draft Nuclear Doctrine released by the Indian National
Security Advisory Board called for the development and early deployment of
a triad of “aircraft, mobile land-missiles and sea-based assets” to
deliver nuclear weapons, in a manner that allowed for “rapid punitive
response”. Pakistan, for its part, created the National Command Authority
a few months later to establish command and control mechanisms for
Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and missile systems, making it clear that it
too envisioned deploying its missiles loaded with nuclear
weapons.
None of this helped in stopping the recurrence of Kargil
like crises, especially to the accompaniment of nuclear sabre rattling.
The same scenario was repeated after the terrorist attack on the Indian
Parliament on December 13, 2001. Both countries have built up their troops
to their biggest levels ever and high-level leaders have come out with a
flurry of nuclear threats. It is still too early to express any gratitude
that this has not come to pass.
Despite all this, and worldwide
concern, no “lasting solution” has been found to the Kashmir dispute. On
the face of it, then, the tests of May 1998 did not lead to any increased
security. What instead they did was to actualize for South Asia Robert Jay
Lifton’s powerful observation: “The central existential fact of the
nuclear age is vulnerability.”
The second set of alleged benefits
included various claims about how the tests and the acquisition of nuclear
weapons would enhance India’s prestige in some fashion. This was
articulated in many ways. In the words of India’s Minister of Science and
Technology, the tests “reflected India’s endeavors to find a rightful
place among the World’s powers.” Several expressed the hope that the tests
would fetch India a position in an expanded Security Council of the United
Nations. Ashok Singhal, head of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, went to the
extent of even proclaiming that India had finally demonstrated its
“manhood” and that earlier the country had been “ruled by a bunch of
hijras (eunuchs).”
It is rather trivial to see that these make
little or no sense. The connection sought to be drawn between nuclear
weapons and manliness would be laughable if it were not a tragic reminder
of the patriarchal, male chauvinist nature of the Sangh Parivar that was
on display during the many crimes against women in Gujarat. A position in
the UN Security Council has simply not been forthcoming, tests or no
tests. (The existence of a special class of nations within the UN system
is itself an affront to visions of a democratic international polity, and
the principled response should be to do away with the Security Council -
but that is a different story.)
And finally to think that nuclear
weapons are the “due” of a billion people, but not adequate nutrition,
clean drinking water or gainful employment - none of which the BJP has
talked about addressing - is vulgar to say the least. In fact, as
economists like Rammanohar Reddy have argued, if India were to build up a
nuclear arsenal as envisioned by its planners, the costs would be equal to
the sum of all government expenditure on education - school and college -
for the next decade or more. Nuclear weapons, in other words, would steal
one-sixth of humanity what is really their due, the small probability that
they can live a life of dignity. And if the weapons were to go off, then
even this life of theirs may be lost.
M V Ramana is a physicist and
research staff member at Princeton University’s Program on Science and
Global Security. He is the author of “Bombing Bombay? Effects of Nuclear
Weapons and a Case Study of a Hypothetical Explosion” (Cambridge, USA:
International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War, 1999). Some of
his writings can be found at
http://www.geocities.com/m_v_ramana/nuclear.html