by Harsh V Pant
By the early 1970s, India was moving closer to fully realizing the second leg of its response to the threat posed by the Chinese nuclear test in 1964: one of developing a ‘nuclear option’. Slowly but surely, the scientific enclave was on the verge of mastering all relevant technological expertise required for a nuclear explosive capability. However, the decision to exercise the ‘nuclear option’ was not in the offing; at least not yet. The decision to conduct a nuclear test was also put off by events in India’s neighbourhood. The war of Bangladesh’s liberation overshadowed all other strategic considerations. After the war, India emerged as South Asia’s military hegemon. It is also after the war that Prime Minister Gandhi finally gave her go-ahead for India’s first nuclear test.
The Peaceful Nuclear Explosion of 1974
If by the early 1970s, India was inching closer to realizing its nuclear option, the war in December 1971 provided it a security rationale to exercise it. The Bangladesh Liberation War significantly altered India’s strategic environment. Following the 1971 war, India emerged as a regional power in South Asia. Yet, this war had left an impression of vulnerability on India’s strategic mindset. For one, if after 1964 India had relied upon the US political guarantees, though implicit, to thwart the threat from China, under President Nixon the erstwhile arch-enemies had colluded against India during the 1971 war. In fact, the US had categorically told the Indian government in early 1970s that it would not be able to intervene to help India in case of a confrontation with China. This was part of the US policy to wean China away from the Soviet Union but left India deeply sceptical of President Nixon’s foreign policy. If the US–China collusion was a dramatic shift in India’s threat environment, Indo-US relations too reached their nadir when President Nixon dispatched the Seventh Fleet to the Indian Ocean in order to militarily coerce India from pursuing the war in East Pakistan (Nayyar 1977). In the post-war period, therefore, the triumphant assertion of India’s regional supremacy sat uncomfortably with a sense of vulnerability vis-à-vis extra-regional interventions. It was this feeling of vulnerability at the hands of the US and the changing strategic scenario with the US–China collusion that may have led Indira Gandhi to finally give the go-ahead for India’s first nuclear test in May 1972. At the least, a test would have signalled India’s determination to be the leading South Asian power and increased its international status. It would have also increased Indira’s grip on India.
The design of the nuclear device was ready by late 1971 (Perkovich 1999: 156). With the commissioning of the PURNIMA reactor in 1972, the Indian scientists now had the wherewithal to verify the design and enhance it further. Simultaneously, with the decision having been taken at the level of the prime minister, frantic activity was carried out by BARC scientists to prepare for the test. Pokhran, a sleepy town in the Thar Desert, was chosen as the test site. By September 1973, physical preparations at the test site had begun which included digging of shafts for placement of the device. Yet, the exact timing of the test was still being contested at the PMO. For one, Indira Gandhi’s principal secretary, Prithvi Narain Dhar, an economist by profession, argued against explosion due to likely negative consequences for the Indian economy. Another confidant of the prime minister—P.N. Haksar—took the position that the test should be postponed until the next elections in order to reap political dividends. However, in 1974, scientists won the debate and the PNE went ahead in May. Yet, the exact date of the explosion provided Gandhi political mileage. This was precisely the time when the government was facing huge labour protests. Whether the explosion was motivated by reasons of security or by compulsions of domestic politics continues to generate extensive debate among India’s nuclear historians.
Publicly, the government explained India’s nuclear test as a PNE. It steadfastly refused to label the 1974 test as a nuclear weapon. The scientific community went to great lengths to explain how the test would help India’s economic development (Ramanna 1978). The PNEs were considered to be useful for major infrastructural projects such as building dams, excavations for minerals, and even drilling of oil wells. The post-explosion rationalization of India’s PNE therefore defied the main logic on which the ‘nuclear option’ strategy was accepted and supported by previous Indian decision-makers: as a hedge against insecurity created by China’s nuclear weapons programme.
Whatever may be the real motivations for India’s PNE, the device used in the May 1974 explosion was not weaponized. As Gaurav Kampani (2014b) has elaborated elsewhere, there is a fundamental difference between exploding a nuclear device and the process of weaponization. India’s PNE involved a nuclear device which, by definition, can only be considered as an ‘apparatus that presents proof of scientific principle that explosion will occur’. By contrast, weaponization entails a ‘rugged and miniaturized version of the device’. It also involves a ‘process of integrating the nuclear weapon with delivery systems’ and its ‘operationalization’ with the ‘development of soft institutional and organizational routines’ for deployment and use. The 1974 explosion fit none of these criteria.
Revelations from archival research indicate, as noted, that the 1974 PNE was not a weapon and that India’s leaders did not follow it up with concerted efforts to weaponize India’s nuclear capability or develop the necessary delivery systems. This is most evident in a top-secret communication between India’s MoD and Ministry of Finance (MoF) in January 1975.18 The MoF claimed that the 1974 test provided India a rudimentary nuclear capability and therefore argued that the MoD should not seek more funds for defense purposes.19 The MoD was simply aghast. It complained about the MoF’s misguided views to India’s highest decision-making body, the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, which functioned directly under the prime minister. India’s defence mandarins argued that it was ‘unfortunate’ for the MoF to have even made a ‘mention of the nuclear blast’ as it ‘plays no part in our defence preparedness which is based entirely on conventional weapons’.20
For the MoD, the problem of associating the 1974 test with a nuclear capability was extremely disconcerting for three reasons. First, India’s nuclear policy was focused exclusively on energy for peaceful purposes. Second, any use of nuclear weapons would bring India international opprobrium. Last, and the most important, was the fact that India had no demonstrated capability in nuclear warheads or delivery vehicles. The MoD noted: ‘[W]e cannot take into account the impact of our nuclear explosion on the [conventional] threat from Pakistan in the absence of [a] tactical nuclear weapon and a delivery system for it.’ One can look at it as a bureaucratic struggle for scarce resources but the weight of the evidence suggests that the MoD was more accurate in its assessments of India’s nuclear capability. New research indicates that no delivery system was being pursued by India in the 1970s which could have delivered a nuclear payload (Joshi 2015). Through the mid-1970s, India lacked a strategic air arm capable of delivering nuclear weapons. The Indian Air Force (IAF) neither envisaged such a strategic role for itself nor was it preparing to develop one. This must be seen in light of the fact that even the MoD was unsure of the strategic implications of the PNE. Some work on developing missiles was being carried out by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), but none of the missiles envisaged at this stage were ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear payload. At the end, the PNE could have provided India only an ‘imagined arsenal’.
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China’s nuclear test of October 1964 forced India to seriously debate the threat posed by nuclear weapons to its national security. India’s response to the Chinese nuclear threat, however, did not translate into full-blown indigenous nuclear weapons programme. India first relied upon a diplomatic strategy where it sought nuclear security guarantees from established nuclear powers. This strategy was dovetailed with India’s championing of the NPT, at least during the early years of treaty. However, India’s diplomatic crusade against Chinese nuclear threat failed as the NPT could not satisfy India’s security concerns. India, th
erefore, opted to keep its nuclear option open. The ‘nuclear option’ entailed creating the necessary infrastructure to undertake a nuclear explosion in case India required to showcase its nuclear capability. In 1974, the nuclear option was finally exercised by New Delhi. However, India labelled it as a PNE. Its nuclear capability remained non-weaponized.
1 The idealist streak in Indian foreign policy is best explained in Brecher (1968).
2 In November 1964, K.R. Narayanan was the Director of the China Division in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). As a response to the Chinese nuclear test, he wrote a 10-page policy note calling for an Indian nuclear weapons programme, see NAI (1964).
3 A good account of Soviet nuclear policy between the Chinese nuclear test and the NPT is available in Larson (1969).
4 These views were most emphatically argued by Krishna Menon. See Brecher (1968).
5 These were largely made by the pro-bomb lobby represented by the right-wing political forces. A good summary of their views is available in Erdman (1967) and Kishore (1969).
6 Jha wrote two policy memos upon his return: ‘Nuclear Policy’ and ‘Nuclear Security’. See NMML (1967a, b). For a detailed explanation on L.K. Jha’s memos, see Joshi (2015).
7 NMML (1968).
8 For the domestic clamour for the bomb and slow drift towards proliferation, see Sarkar (2015).
9 Bhabha’s estimates can be found in a study compiled by the Department of Atomic Energy on various estimates of the costs associated in acquisition of nuclear weapons by India. This study also provides figures calculated by experts such as Alastair Buchan, Leonard Baton, James Schlesinger, Subramanian Swamy, and Ralph E. Lapp. See Department of Atomic Energy (1970: 64–5).
10 In December 1964, Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri had requested the Wilson government to offer an analysis of the cost of the bomb in case India decides to develop it. This resulted in a report prepared by British Ministry of Defence titled, Indications of the Cost of an Indian Defence Capability in the Light of British Experience. The report suggested that financial implications of the bomb and acquisition of a bomber force to deliver it would be exorbitant: something to the tune of $350 million, with a running cost of $50 million per annum. However, as Schrafstetter (2002: 93–4) has argued, these figures were highly inflated. In a confidential report which was not shared with the Indian government, the actual costs were assumed to be significantly less.
11 NAI (1965).
12 Sarabhai first articulated his ideas on nuclear weapons in a press conference on 1 June 1966. Excerpts of this conference are available in DAE (1970).
13 NMML (1967c).
14 Abraham (1998) provides an excellent account on the role of the scientists in pushing India’s nuclear explosion programme.
15 This information is available in an interview of Dr R. Chidambaram, conducted by C.V. Sundaram, in September 1996. The interview is available in Sundaram et al. (1998).
16 Except a skirmish on the border at Nathu La in September 1967 where Indian forces repulsed Chinese probes, with the People’s Liberation Army suffering heavy casualties. The lesson of the Nathu la crisis, as the Indian Charge D’ Affairs in Beijing reported to the Foreign office, was encouraging for New Delhi: ‘The firmness shown by the Indian side in the skirmishes which occurred in the Sino-Sikkim border in September proved that those in charge of the cultural revolution had not lost all sense of proportion and respected force….China [now] shows considerable respect for India’s growing military strength (NAI 1968)’.
17 NAI (1970).
18 For a detailed explanation, see Joshi (2015).
19 NMML (1974a).
20 NMML (1975).
3
The Failed Policy of Nuclear Refrain*
India’s PNE in May 1974 had proved its technical and scientific capability. Though it had finally broken the monopoly over explosive nuclear technology which the NPT had enshrined upon the five nuclear weapons powers, India did not initiate a full-fledged nuclear weapons programme for another decade. In the history of nuclear weapons worldwide, this was unprecedented. In the aftermath of the PNE, India became the primary target of the non-proliferation regime, spearheaded by the advanced nuclear technology states in the West. As a consequence, its nuclear energy programme suffered greatly. This was also the period when Pakistan initiated an intense quest for nuclear weapons. A Pakistani nuclear programme was the worst nightmare for Indian decision-makers because, unlike China, Islamabad suffered not only from a chronic insecurity vis-à-vis India but also pursued a revisionist design in South Asia. It had by now initiated and lost three major conventional wars. Nuclear weapons provided a major boost to Pakistan’s revanchist agenda in Kashmir and beyond. It was also the most serious challenge to India’s hegemony in South Asia. Even though New Delhi had proved its technical capability in 1974 and had conscientiously restrained from developing nuclear weapons, progress made by Pakistan in its quest for a nuclear capability forced India’s hands. Also, more so because the non-proliferation regime and its votaries in the West not only ignored Pakistan’s nuclear march but also provided her with enormous military assistance to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. All these developments portended a grim future for India’s national security. Early 1980s, therefore, saw a renewal of India’s nuclear weapons programme. Thus began the nuclearization of the subcontinent.
This chapter traces these trends and their impact on India’s nuclear policy between 1974 and 1984. It focuses on three major developments which confronted India’s nuclear policy during this period. First of these developments was the strengthening of global non-proliferation regime. India’s PNE provided the advanced nuclear technology countries a rallying point to tighten the gaps in the NPT through selective use of sanctions and safeguards. Their monopoly on advanced nuclear technology provided them with a stick to hammer the non-nuclear states to submit to their non-proliferation diktats. India was its first victim. This is the focus of the first section. Second was the initiation and progress of the Pakistani nuclear programme. If the defeat in the 1971 war had provided Islamabad a motivation to pursue nuclear weapons, India’s PNE provided it a public alibi for its nuclear programme and further intensified its quest for nuclear weapons. China’s assistance to Pakistan only confirmed India’s worst fears: of a double encirclement by its two hostile neighbours. This is dealt with in the second section. Third, as the security scenario in the subcontinent underwent major transformation with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the US support to Pakistan in containing communism, India earnestly began thinking of how to counter the Pakistani nuclear threat. The policy choices ranged from denuclearization of the subcontinent to pre-empting Pakistani nuclear programme through the use of military force. In the end, India resorted to develop its own nuclear deterrent. It veered towards a second series of nuclear tests and initiated a weaponization programme, including development of nuclear delivery systems. This is the focus of the third section.
Non-proliferation Regime’s Favourite Target
India’s PNE of May 1974 evoked both hope and despair. The non-aligned world welcomed India’s scientific and technological achievement—a Third World country had finally broken into the club of nuclear elites. If the Chinese nuclear test had dented India’s prestige, the PNE had helped restore it. This was evident in the fact that a dozen countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Turkey, Libya, and South Korea sought India’s cooperation in peaceful uses of nuclear energy after the PNE. India’s insistence on using nuclear technology for peaceful purposes even after the test allowed her to sustain her moral leadership on nuclear disarmament. Unlike other nuclear powers, India could claim a moral high ground by eschewing the option of nuclear weapons.
The advanced nuclear technology states, however, saw in India’s actions a challenge to the NPT and the principle of non-proliferation (Halsted 1974). Under the NPT, there was no distinction between a nuclear weapons explosion and peaceful nuclear test; but India did not ac
cept this formulation for a number of reasons (Subramanian 1975). First, rather than capability, what mattered most in proliferation was a state’s intention. Second, if India’s intentions were peaceful, it was vital for a developing country like India to exploit all avenues of peaceful uses of nuclear energy for its long-term economic progress. Third, pursuing the PNE was a challenge to the inequitable world order established by the NPT where only a select few had the right to nuclear explosive technology. Such nuclear apartheid was unacceptable to India.
Notwithstanding New Delhi’s reasoning, India’s example was a bad precedent for non-proliferation and the NPT, especially as India’s nuclear programme was assisted by technology transfers from the West. In the 1950s and 1960s, the UK, the US, and Canada had helped India’s nuclear programme. The PNE, at least for the West, proved that India had misused the technology received for peaceful uses of nuclear energy. For non-proliferation, such pilferage had to be stopped. If the misuse of technology transfers was one major concern, another was the export of nuclear technology. Proponents of the NPT also wondered whether India would export explosive nuclear technology to other countries, defeating the purpose of non-proliferation. Therefore, the PNE was seen as a diplomatic challenge to the NPT. The first NPT review conference was due in 1975 and any more tests by New Delhi would have seriously jeopardized the treaty’s future. These concerns guided the behaviour of advanced technology states towards India after the PNE.