Indian Nuclear Policy

by Harsh V Pant

  Against this background, it was highly doubtful that the established nuclear powers would offer any positive security guarantees. New Delhi’s diplomatic strategy to counter the Chinese nuclear weapons therefore shifted to the NPT. The Chinese nuclear test had put the issue of proliferation of nuclear weapons at the forefront of international security. In May 1965, the 114-member UNDC debated the issue of the NPT. India saw in it a method to restrict further advancement of the Chinese nuclear capability as well as a way to secure the nuclear guarantees from the nuclear weapon states. In its submission to the UNDC, India laid down five conditions for New Delhi to join the treaty (Perkovich 1999: 103):

  1. Nuclear powers should not transfer nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons technology to others.

  2. Nuclear powers should agree not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.

  3. United Nations must guarantee the security of those countries which are threatened by ‘nuclear weapons or states near to possessing nuclear weapons’.

  4. Tangible progress on nuclear disarmament should be made, including a CTBT, freeze on production of nuclear weapons and their means of delivery, as well as substantial reduction on existing stockpiles.

  5. Non-nuclear powers should not acquire nuclear weapons.

  These conditions, if incorporated in the treaty, could have allayed India’s concerns as it would have stopped the development of Chinese nuclear programme in its tracks. Also, if China declined to be a part of such a treaty, security guarantees recommended under the treaty would have created a deterrent against any Chinese aggression or nuclear blackmail. More importantly, it was a policy to escape criticism at home both from those who were lobbying for an indigenous nuclear programme and those who saw in India’s quest for security guarantees a dilution of non-alignment. Multilateral nuclear security guarantees under the UN would have allowed India to maintain the policy of equidistance from the superpowers while enjoying a deterrent against China.

  Indian hopes met stiff resistance from the established nuclear powers. In June 1965, the UNDC passed a US-moved resolution to discuss the NPT at the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee (ENDC) in Geneva. When discussion started at the ENDC in early 1966, nuclear powers were ready to offer only negative security guarantee: to agree not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states (Noorani 1967: 495). In other words, nuclear powers were disinclined to positively secure the interests of non-nuclear states by extending their nuclear deterrence to them. Through the NPT, India sought a multilateral nuclear guarantee under the UN, as bilateral guarantees would have amounted to a military pact and seriously punctured its policy of non-alignment. Multilateral guarantees, in other words, were just not available.

  Even when the quest for security guarantees was discarded by the nuclear haves, India still went ahead with negotiating the NPT at the ENDC. India decoupled its participation in the NPT process with the positive security guarantees it had asked in May 1964. Rather India now focused on nuclear disarmament. It, therefore, asked nuclear powers to make concrete promises on the elimination of nuclear weapons under the NPT. For one, even when China had conducted another nuclear test in the summer of 1965, India still believed that concrete commitments on nuclear disarmament could arrest China’s march towards a sophisticated nuclear arsenal with advanced delivery systems. There were also other reasons to support the NPT. First, the NPT process allowed India to isolate China internationally. If the Chinese nuclear bomb had led to China’s considerable influence among the Third World, India was to regain its leadership role through its quest for nuclear disarmament. Second, the NPT process, insofar it represented the process of détente between the great powers, helped India’s cause. A sense of stability in the superpower relations could deter China from exploiting tense relations between the US and the Soviet Union for its own ends in Asia. Lastly, continued participation in the NPT negotiations dispelled global fears that India was mulling a nuclear deterrent of its own. Yet, India was adamant in keeping its option open by supporting peaceful uses of nuclear energy, including PNEs.

  As the NPT negotiations unfolded in 1966, the divergence between India and the other nuclear powers continued to grow. The nuclear powers did not pay heed to any of India’s concerns: elimination of further production of nuclear weapons and delivery systems; commitments on nuclear disarmament; on providing security guarantees; and on right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. They rather focused exclusively on the proliferation side: preventing nuclear weapon states from transferring nuclear weapons and technology to non-nuclear states and make the non-nuclear states give up the right to pursue nuclear weapons. India was not ready to accept such one-sided commitments because it both violated the principles of equity and hardly addressed its security concerns.

  India, however, did make one last effort to synchronize its concerns with the NPT. In spring of 1967, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi dispatched a special envoy, L.K. Jha, to Moscow, London, and Washington, DC, to seek clarifications on how the established nuclear powers could protect non-nuclear states from blackmail or use of nuclear weapons. The conclusion of Jha’s mission, now available in the form of top-secret memos in the Indian archives, was categorical: even though the nuclear powers such as the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union were sympathetic to India’s concerns and would intervene in the event of hostilities with China, no formal nuclear guarantee would be available.6 As Jha wrote to Prime Minister Gandhi in May 1967, ‘a political guarantee is possible, but a legal guarantee is impossible.’ For Jha, ‘since neither the USA nor the USSR can afford to let India go under Chinese domination,’ their ‘political compulsions’ offered a political guarantee against any Chinese nuclear threat or blackmail.

  The nuclear powers, however, would not agree to a formal treaty with ‘commitments to help any country at any time irrespective of the circumstances’. Therefore, he argued that India should not let go the option of developing nuclear weapons entirely. Jha recommended to the prime minister that NPT should only be seen in terms of a temporary arrangement towards the ultimate goal of nuclear disarmament. The ‘objection in principle’, as L.K. Jha put it, was whether ‘we and, therefore, other nations too, should continue to have the right to make nuclear weapons as long as any country in the world has the right to do so’. The objective was clear: if the need arises for an indigenous nuclear capability, India should not be tied down by the requirements of the NPT. Therefore, when in August 1967 the US and USSR submitted a joint draft of the NPT to the ENDC, India ‘deemed the draft inadequate’ (Perkovich 1999: 139). In October 1967, Indian Defence Minister Swaran Singh told the UNGA that India will not sign the NPT.

  By early 1968, as the draft treaty was debated and discussed in the ENDC, the Indian PMO took a final cognizance of the matter. Top-secret assessments made in the PMO reveal that India’s decision not to be a party to the treaty was by now a firm policy decision. The fact that China had declined to be a part of the treaty was the final nail in the coffin of India being a signatory to the NPT. Yet, India did not intend to scuttle the NPT since it could have angered both the US and the USSR. India required both these superpowers to come to her aid in case of a Chinese nuclear threat. However, in India’s security policy, even when the superpowers had refused to provide explicit security guarantees, the unspoken assumption was that India was too important to be left to its own devices if push came to shove against China (Babu 1968). The NPT was also a manifestation of the process of détente. Stability in US–USSR relations was important for India as tensions between the two could have been exploited by China to further its revisionist interests in Asia, as was the case after the Cuban missile crisis. Instructions to India’s representative to the ENDC from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s office were reflective of this balanced approach: ‘avoid polemical tone against the nuclear powers’; mention the Chinese threat but ‘we should neither overplay that threat nor underplay it’; ‘should not mention Pakistan’; ‘mention that our policy as hitherto continues to be
to refrain from doing anything which would escalate the nuclear arms race’; and ‘on the question of the time table for conclusion of the Non-proliferation treaty, we should not spearhead any move for delay and postponement’.7 India’s final act on the NPT was guided by both the need to keep its nuclear option open and the need to maintain an international political environment where China could be isolated.

  By 1968, India’s diplomatic crusade against China’s nuclear capability had come to naught. India’s quest for nuclear security guarantees was compromised by its policy of non-alignment on one hand, and the reluctance of the established nuclear powers to offer formal security guarantees to the non-aligned on the other. India had entered the NPT negotiations with a view that the treaty would help in arresting China’s nuclear trajectory. However, towards the end, India became a prime target of the treaty with China being recognized as a nuclear weapon power with a right to possess a nuclear weapons programme. As the NPT offered no firm security benefits to New Delhi and created an unequal division between nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear states, India rejected the treaty both on grounds of security and equity. The failure of India’s diplomatic enterprise also heralded the first foray into exercising its ‘nuclear option’.

  Developing India’s ‘Nuclear Option’

  On 4 October 1964, even before the Chinese nuclear test, Homi Bhabha, the architect of India’s nuclear programme, had publicly declared that ‘India could explode the bomb within 18 months of a decision to do so’ (National Herald 1964). Though Bhabha acknowledged that ‘no such decision’ had yet been taken, few would have doubted his words. In the early 1960s, India was the most advanced state in Asia with a huge nuclear science and technology infrastructure, mostly because of Nehru’s emphasis on developing nuclear energy. India’s extensive nuclear profile was responsible for a global perception that it was one of the front runners in the race towards a nuclear weapons capability, if the Indian decision-makers decided to have one.

  Yet, as we have seen in the previous section, Prime Minister Shastri opted for a diplomatic strategy to counter the Chinese threat. Shastri, however, was under pressure from the pro-bomb lobby in the Parliament, as well as Homi Bhabha, to initiate a nuclear explosive programme. In the aftermath of the Chinese test, Bhabha was actively lobbying for a nuclear weapons programme.8 He also took on those who criticized an indigenous nuclear capability on the pretext that it was a highly costly affair. For Bhabha, a 10 kiloton nuclear device would have led to an expenditure of merely Rs 17.5 lakh (1.75 million); an inventory of 50 atomic bombs could be managed only at Rs 10 crore (100 million).9 Bhabha’s public sponsorship of the bomb, however, did not sit comfortably with Prime Minister Shastri. For one, Shastri was not ready to sanction a nuclear weapons programme because this would have been a major change in India’s traditional position. Being a Gandhian, Shastri also exhibited a moral aversion to the bomb. Also, as prime minister, Shastri knew far better the dire economic health of the Indian state. After the 1962 Indo-China war, the cost of conventional defence had skyrocketed: by 1965, India’s defence expenditure amounted to around 4.2 per cent of the gross national product (United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency 1968). Internally, the country was suffering the worst food crisis in history. These pressures notwithstanding, Shastri was also doubtful of Bhabha’s claims. He not only disputed them openly in the All India Congress Committee meeting in early November 1964 but also sought British assistance in providing what he considered to be a more objective assessment of the costs involved in developing a nuclear deterrent.10

  This tussle between the prime minister and India’s most acclaimed nuclear scientist led to a necessary compromise by the end of November 1964 (Perkovich 1999: 82). Under this arrangement, Shastri agreed to Bhabha’s demands to explore the possibilities of a nuclear explosion; yet it had to only be a theoretical enterprise. Given the government’s public disavowal of a nuclear weapons programme and the global concerns over proliferation, Shastri declared in the Parliament that India will explore nuclear explosion technology only for peaceful purposes. Thus was born India’s policy of developing a ‘nuclear option’ (Rajan 1975: 300).

  If Bhabha was emphatic in declaring India’s nuclear capabilities in public, in private he acknowledged India’s constraints. By early 1965, as a top-secret correspondence now available in the Indian archives suggests, Bhabha had revised his earlier estimate of the time period to produce a nuclear explosion from 18 months to at least ‘five years’.11 Major problem for India’s scientific community was the issue of fissile material. In January 1965, the Phoenix plutonium separation plant was commissioned. Yet, it faced enormous operational problems. Bhabha, therefore, first explored the possibility of acquiring a nuclear device from the US. In early 1965, the USAEC was keen on exporting nuclear explosive capability for peaceful purposes under what was called the Plowshare programme. Between late 1964 and mid-1965, Bhabha explored this option during his multiple meetings with USAEC officials, especially regarding transfer of plutonium. However, this was also the time when the US non-proliferation policy was taking a concrete shape. As the Johnson administration rallied behind the NPT, the option of acquiring the necessary technology from the US gradually closed. India’s nuclear scientists also lacked other necessary expertise for developing a plutonium-based nuclear device.

  By early 1966, the ‘nuclear option’ strategy was hit by the sudden death of both Prime Minister Shastri and Bhabha. Within a span of a month in January 1966, India had lost both its political as well as scientific leadership. If Indira Gandhi was busy consolidating her position in the fractious Congress party during her first year in power, Vikram Sarabhai—Bhabha’s replacement at the DAE—openly argued against a nuclear weapons programme and was unsympathetic to the idea of a PNE.12 Unlike Bhabha, Sarabhai argued that a nuclear weapons programme would seriously jeopardize India’s economic development as it adversely impacted the ‘utilization of national resources for productive and social welfare against the burden of defence expenditure’. Moreover, the problem of India’s security as nuclear deterrence could not be achieved by merely ‘exploding a bomb’. For Sarabhai, it required a ‘total defence system, a means of delivery … long range missile … radars … high state of electronic and a high state of metallurgical and industrial base.’ The enormity of this enterprise would have required a ‘total commitment of national resources of a most stupendous magnitude’ and would have seriously impacted India’s economic and social development. Sarabhai, therefore, put an end to the theoretical enterprise of developing PNE technology within Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), at least formally.

  However, as India met with diplomatic disappointments in securing nuclear guarantees and the NPT declined to address India’s security concerns, the scientists at BARC began working on the nuclear device in early 1968. It is not clear whether this was expressly permitted by the prime minister but, according to a top-secret document, Homi Sethna, who was heading BARC during this time, had expressly asked for the prime minister’s permission to finish the work undertaken under the Shastri–Bhabha compromise in July 1967.13 Given that the scientists were suffering from ‘extreme uncertainty’ on this question, P.N. Haksar, secretary to the prime minister, advised Gandhi to take a decision on whether the preparations should continue or not. Diplomatic disappointments and pressure from the nuclear scientists may have led Gandhi to allow the ‘most concerted effort yet to develop nuclear explosives’ in the Indian case’ (Perkovich 1999: 139).’14 If the availability of fissile material was a problem during 1965, by 1968 the reprocessing plant in Trombay had started producing weapon-grade plutonium (Chengappa 2002: 111–12). A dedicated team of scientists under Rajagopal Chidambaram was earmarked to work on the ‘equation of state’ of plutonium necessary to determine its behaviour under impact of conventional explosives.15 This was one of the most difficult scientific and technical problems in implosion devices. Also, in 1970, the DAE began the construction of a fast reactor called PURNIMA
(Sundaram et al. 1998). PURNIMA was vital for India’s nuclear explosion programme as without it Indian scientists could not study the chain reactions produced by irradiation of plutonium. PURNIMA could be completed only in 1972 and it was only then that all technical necessities for a nuclear explosive device could be achieved by India’s nuclear scientists.

  However, even in 1968, when BARC seriously started preparing for nuclear explosive capability, no decision had yet been taken to actually conduct a nuclear explosion. The endeavour must be understood in light of the decision taken initially by Prime Minister Shastri, and later confirmed by Indira Gandhi, to fully achieve a ‘nuclear option’. This did not translate into a decision to conduct a nuclear test. In fact, both in public and in private, the Indira Gandhi government adhered to a line that India would not produce nuclear weapons. India’s nuclear energy programme was heavily dependent upon foreign assistance. In 1969, India completed its first power reactor in Tarapur with American assistance. In Rajasthan, with the help of Canada, India was building a series of power reactors. Any nuclear detonation would have jeopardized these extremely costly yet vital elements in India’s nuclear energy development. Moreover, by the end of the 1960s, the threat of China had considerably reduced (Mukerjee 1968). For more than eight years since 1962, no major confrontation had occurred on the border.16 India’s conventional military capability had also increased after years of sustained defence modernization and development. If the principal lesson of the 1962 war with China was that Beijing will exercise ‘military prudence’ until and unless there is a ‘certainty of military victory’, India had achieved it by the late 1960s (Mehta 2010: 150). In fact, by 1968, the Indian military considered Chinese nuclear weapons a threat only in the ‘long term’ (Ministry of Defence [MoD] 1968: 1). Moreover, China itself was considerably weakened due to the Cultural Revolution, and also because of its conflict with the Soviet Union. The Indian decision-makers also remained convinced that a single nuclear detonation would not serve the purpose of India’s security; a nuclear deterrent would require a vast wherewithal, including a large nuclear arsenal and multiple delivery systems. As a top-secret note prepared by Sarabhai and Haksar for Indira Gandhi in April 1970 stated: ensuring India’s security through a nuclear deterrent requires a ‘total defensive system’ involving a ‘total commitment of national resources of a most stupendous magnitude’.17 The Indian economy was just not prepared to incur such massive expenditures. Finally, the unspoken assumption in India’s strategic thinking was that until and unless both the Soviet Union and the US had adversarial relations with China and continue to enjoy a favourable deterrence equation over her, the ‘uncertainty’ of their response in case of a Chinese nuclear threat against India would be an ‘adequate deterrence’ (Doctor 1971: 352).