Indian Nuclear Policy
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OXFORD
INDIA SHORT
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INDIAN NUCLEAR
POLICY
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OXFORD INDIA SHORT INTRODUCTIONS
INDIAN NUCLEAR POLICY
HARSH V. PANT
YOGESH JOSHI
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Contents
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Promise of the Atomic Age
2. Perils of a Nuclear Neighbour
3. The Failed Policy of Nuclear Refrain
4. Pathway to a Nuclear Weapon State
5. A Major Nuclear Power
Bibliography
Index
About the Authors
Preface
India has travelled a long distance from being a nuclear pariah to a de facto member of the nuclear club. As India continues to search for its complete integration into the global nuclear order, this book explores the trajectory of Indian nuclear policy from the early days since Independence to the present. In so doing, it hopes to underline key debates, both policy and conceptual, that have shaped this trajectory.
This is a huge subject but the constraints of Oxford India Short Introductions (OISI) series forced us to be more focused and disciplined in our approach. We would like to thank the editors at Oxford University Press for patiently working with us on the project till completion. Thanks to Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, where both of us were based during the conception and completion of the project. We are especially thankful to Gaurav Sharma who generously shared his PhD dissertation on India and nuclear disarmament with us, as well as to Akshay Ranade and Ketan Mehta for their help in preparing the bibliography. This book would not have been possible without the time so many members of the Indian scientific, defence, and foreign policy establishment gave us, sharing their views and ideas. Finally, we owe a deep debt of gratitude to our respective families whose support has kept us afloat in more ways than one.
This book is dedicated to our teachers who have shaped our intellectual trajectories. Nothing would have been possible without them.
Abbreviations
AEC Atomic Energy Commission
BARC Bhabha Atomic Research Centre
BJP Bharatiya Janata Party
CBM Confidence-Building Measure
CIRUS Canada India Reactor Utility Service
CMD Credible Minimum Deterrence
CTBT Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
DAE Department of Atomic Energy
DRDO Defence Research and Development Organisation
ENDC Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee
FMCT Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty
GE General Electric
IADA International Atomic Development Authority
IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency
IAF Indian Air Force
IGMDP Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme
IMF International Monetary Fund
JIC Joint Intelligence Committee
kg Kilogram
km Kilometre
MEA Ministry of External Affairs
MIRV Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle
MoD Ministry of Defence
MoF Ministry of Finance
MTCR Missile Technology Control Regime
MWT Megawatt Thermal
NAI National Archives of India
NCA Nuclear Command Authority
NDA National Democratic Alliance
NFU No First Use
NMML Nehru Memorial Museum Library
NNPA Nuclear Non-proliferation Act
NNWS Non-nuclear Weapon States
NPT Non-Proliferation Treaty
NSAB National Security Advisory Board
NSG Nuclear Suppliers Group
PMO Prime Minister’s Office
PNE Peaceful Nuclear Explosion
R&D Research and Development
RAPS Rajasthan Atomic Power Station
RAW Research and Analysis Wing
SFC Strategic Forces Command
SLBMs Sea-Launched Ballistic Missiles
TAPS Tarapur Atomic Power Stations
TIFR Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
TNWs Tactical Nuclear Weapons
UK United Kingdom
UKAEC United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
UN United Nations
UNDC United Nations Disarmament Commission
UNGA United Nations General Assembly
US United States
USAEC US Atomic Energy Commission
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Introduction
India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, laid the foundations o
f an elaborate atomic energy programme in April 1948, less than a year after India’s independence. Yet, it took Indian decision-makers more than 50 years to declare the country a nuclear weapon state in May 1998. For the first five decades of India’s independence, its nuclear policy remained highly ambivalent. On the one hand, it continuously strived to develop all aspects of atomic energy, including an explosive nuclear capability. On the other, it maintained a moral and political commitment to peaceful uses of nuclear energy and vouched vehemently for nuclear disarmament. This ambivalence was partly situated in the duality of the atom: it could be used for peaceful as well as destructive purposes. It was also a result of the ideological dimension of Indian foreign policy and India’s relative lack of material power. In fact, this ambivalence continued despite changes in India’s security environment and transitions in domestic politics and individual leadership. Yet, over the years, the weight of all these factors shifted continuously towards a point where ambiguity could not be sustained further. Therefore, rather than consciously choosing a nuclear weapons path, India was almost forced into being a nuclear weapons state. And once India crossed the nuclear rubicon in May 1998, it managed to transform itself into a major nuclear power. Also, within two decades of this event, India is not only making rapid technological advancement in its nuclear capability but has also managed to get accommodated in the global nuclear order. It is the only nuclear weapon state apart from the five established nuclear powers which is legally allowed to have both a nuclear weapons programme and a civilian nuclear energy programme. India is determined towards full integration in the global nuclear order, evident in its bid to become a member of technology control regimes such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). This transition in India’s nuclear identity has been accompanied by its transformation into a major economic power and underlines a pragmatic turn in its foreign policy thinking since the end of the Cold War.
This book argues that India’s engagement with the atom is unique in international nuclear history and politics. This uniqueness emanates from three distinct features of India’s nuclear policy. First of all, India’s nuclear weapons programme has been an offshoot of its atomic energy programme. All other nuclear weapon states first pursued nuclear weapons before they turned their gaze to peaceful uses of atomic energy. This unique path also makes India the only country to have debated the decision to pursue or not to pursue the nuclear weapons path extensively, nearly for five decades: ‘no nation has debated more democratically than India whether to acquire or give-up nuclear weapons’ (Perkovich 1999: 447). Second, India’s nuclear history disproves the linear model of nuclear weapons proliferation where insecurity vis-à-vis a bigger and hostile nuclear power is the principal source of a state’s motivation to pursue nuclear weapons, as was the case with the Soviet Union, China, and, to a certain extent, both the United Kingdom (UK) and France. The Indian case, interpreted correctly, disproves the linear model of nuclear proliferation as it was Pakistan, rather than China, that was the most important reason for India to go nuclear (Joshi 2017a). It took India 10 years to respond to the Chinese nuclear test in October 1964; and when India first tested a nuclear device in 1974, it called it a peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE) and followed a policy of ‘nuclear refrain’. It deliberately eschewed converting its nuclear explosive capability into an active nuclear weapons programme for at least another decade, till the time Pakistani nuclear weapons programme matured into a full-blown threat to the Indian state by the mid-1980s. Finally, more than any other major nuclear weapons power, India has exhibited a strong moral and political revulsion to nuclear weapons. This aversion to nuclear weapons emanated out of the ideological underpinnings of India’s freedom struggle and inclinations of its post-independence political leadership. Even when it mastered all aspects of atomic energy, including an explosive capability, the quest for disarmament remained potent. A strong belief existed among Indian decision-makers that a nuclear-free world would be more advantageous to India’s security than a world teeming with nuclear weapon states. This reason also explains India’s continuous commitment to non-proliferation even when, in the past, it became one of the biggest targets of the international non-proliferation regime. Even today, India remains committed to the idea that nuclear weapons are political tools rather than instruments of warfighting. Yet, its decision to ultimately become a nuclear weapon state attests to the fact that it cannot remain ‘immune’ from the application of power on the pretext that the power principle in international politics is ‘uncivilised’ (Krishna 1984: 286).
To explain India’s nuclear policy and practice, this book follows a linear historical narrative beginning in 1947. It has been divided into five major chapters. Chapter 1 underlines the early phase of India’s engagement with atomic energy. It delves into how India’s nuclear pioneers—Prime Minister Nehru along with Homi Bhabha—laid the foundations of atomic energy research, created important scientific institutions, and formulated India’s response to global nuclear debates of the time. Chapter 2 focuses on India’s nuclear policy in the aftermath of the Chinese nuclear test in October 1964 till India’s PNE in May 1974. Chapter 3 delineates India’s nuclear behaviour in the post-PNE era. Between 1974 and 1984, India’s nuclear policy faced great complexity, especially that of the emerging non-proliferation regime and the threat of a nuclear Pakistan. Chapter 4 traces the final years of India’s journey into becoming a full-fledged nuclear weapon state. Between 1984 and 1998, as the threat from Pakistani nuclear weapons became more and more apparent and the non-proliferation regime strengthened, India’s nuclear ambivalence became unsustainable. The then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, ended this five-decade-old policy with the May 1998 nuclear weapon tests. The last chapter, Chapter 5, traces India’s transformation into a major nuclear power in the last two decades. It explains major continuities and changes accompanying India’s nuclear policy in the aftermath of the 1998 tests.
This historical narrative, however, is situated in a theoretical framework which focuses on four major factors as guiding India’s nuclear policy and practice: status, security, domestic politics, and the role of individuals. The book underlines how all these factors, sometimes solely and mostly in interaction with each other, shaped India’s nuclear trajectory, its policy choices, and also their consequences, both negative and positive. It uses not only the existing secondary literature available on India’s nuclear policy but also makes extensive use of primary documentation, including the recently declassified archival documents, to illustrate some important aspects of India’s nuclear policy.
Debating the Causal Variables
The aforementioned four factors have played a key role in shaping India’s nuclear policies. India’s quest for major power status is a dominating theme in India’s nuclear journey. The advent of nuclear weapons transformed great power politics and bestowed upon its masters the ultimate military capability. In the post-Hiroshima period, nuclear weapons increasingly became the benchmark for states to attain great power status. As the Cold War unfolded, this was further formalized with all nuclear weapon states being the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. For Indian decision-makers, starting with Prime Minister Nehru, making India a major global power was a fundamental foreign policy goal. India’s dogged pursuance of atomic energy was, therefore, one of the means to attain this foreign policy objective. At least, the attempt was to make India capable of mastering the atom both peacefully and to reach the threshold where it can also unleash its destructive potential. Yet, India’s national identity as a major power also exhibited certain exceptionalism. This exceptionalism was built upon an idea of ‘moral superiority’ stemming from India’s non-violent freedom struggle, differentiating it from other major powers whose primary claim to status lay in their military might. Such exceptionalism allowed India, especially under Prime Minister Nehru, to be the moral policeman of the world, even when materially it remained confined to the backwaters of international politics. India’s na
tional identity as a major power was therefore a combination of classical great power politics on the one hand, and its moral exceptionalism on the other. These two notions of status, however, pulled India’s nuclear policy in two opposite directions: one pushing it towards a nuclear weapons capability and the other forcing it to be the leading voice on nuclear disarmament.
If status was a driving factor especially during the early years of India’s nuclear journey, its security requirements provided her the most potent motivation to pursue a nuclear weapons programme. Nehru’s interest in developing atomic energy research provided India a hedge against future uncertainties where it may have to face a nuclear-armed adversary. When China conducted its first nuclear test in 1964, India was one of the most advanced nuclear technology states in the Third World. In the wake of the Chinese tests, India began developing a nuclear explosive capability under the guise of PNEs. This process of developing the ‘nuclear option’ was a result of insecurity engendered by the Chinese tests and the domestic pressure upon the Indian decision-makers to counter it. Even while developing the ‘nuclear option’, Indian decision-makers pursued diplomatic strategies to contain the fallout of the Chinese bomb. Between 1964 and 1974, Indian security improved due to indigenous development of its conventional military capability, the Sino-Soviet rift, and the domestic political chaos in Mao’s China. In fact, when India conducted its peaceful nuclear explosion in 1974, the nuclear threat from China was considered by Indian decision-makers to be negligible. China, however, was a long-term threat and therefore remained a factor in India’s ambivalent attitude towards nuclear weapons. By the late 1970s, emergence of a Pakistani nuclear programme became the major concern of Indian decision-makers. Unlike China whose nuclear decisions were motivated by Cold War politics and the quest to deter the Soviet Union and the United States (US), Pakistani nuclear programme had no other motive but to blackmail India and to pursue its revisionist agenda in Kashmir and beyond. The fact that it was technologically supported by Beijing also created an impression of a nuclear siege by two hostile adversaries. India’s reaction to the Pakistani nuclear programme was, therefore, drastically different than was the case with the Chinese nuclear programme. In the late 1980s, as Pakistan acquired a nuclear weapon capability, India raced towards operationalization of its own nuclear deterrent. By 1998, when India finally declared itself to be a nuclear weapon state, security had become the most dominant factor in India’s nuclear calculus.