Indian Nuclear Policy

by Harsh V Pant

  Till the time the IAEA came into being in 1957, all of India’s nuclear agreements with foreign countries such as the UK, Canada, and the US followed strictly bilateral safeguards mechanisms (Greenberg 1962). Bhabha was able to get generous treatment from these foreign collaborators for a number of reasons. First was their willingness to provide nuclear technology and materials because non-proliferation had not emerged as a major concern till then. There was also a competition among advanced nuclear technology states to sell their nuclear know-how and establish themselves as major nuclear exporters. Second factor was Bhabha’s interpersonal relationships with scientists from these countries, as was the case with John Cockcroft of the UKAEC and W.B. Lewis of the Canadian Atomic Energy Agency. Lastly, Bhabha’s scientific stature and a global perception of India’s stature in nuclear research and being a leading Third World country further helped its cause. However, India’s discomfiture with international controls over nuclear technology and materials was evident from the time the US had proposed the Baruch Plan in the late 1940s. India’s objective of maintaining its strategic autonomy on the development of its nuclear programme often collided with the urge among major nuclear powers to restrict proliferation of nuclear weapons by insisting on tougher safeguards.

  India’s Diplomatic Leadership in Nuclear Disarmament

  If India’s nuclear pioneers were adamant in preserving the country’s atomic sovereignty from international efforts to control nuclear know-how, they were equally emphatic in propagating India’s diplomatic leadership in preserving international peace from the fallouts of an unmitigated nuclear arms race. There was an element of moral repugnance towards nuclear weapons which was prevalent in Indian political thought. Nehru’s enthusiasm for nuclear disarmament was also driven by pragmatic considerations. For one, emphasizing nuclear disarmament to both power blocs increased India’s credibility as a genuine non-aligned state. Second, it allowed India to play a much more significant role in global nuclear diplomacy than was warranted by its low material power. Third, it also helped increase India’s credibility and stature among the developing countries. Lastly, unlike the issue of international control of atomic energy, India had no direct stakes involved in nuclear disarmament since it was far away from having a nuclear weapons capability. Its leadership, therefore, came with no obligation.

  These considerations explain India’s disarmament diplomacy under Nehru’s prime ministership. It was underlined by three principles (Sharma 2013). First was India’s insistence that international bodies, such as the United Nations Disarmament Commission (UNDC), discussing arms control and disarmament must not exclude non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS). Left to their own devices, nuclear weapon states had little incentive to disarm. Multilateralism in disarmament negotiations, therefore, became one of the cornerstones of India’s disarmament diplomacy. Second, even when India sought greater representation, it strictly maintained a position that the primary obligation for nuclear disarmament was of the great powers. Third, the complexity of nuclear disarmament required a step-by-step approach. Radical solutions to nuclear disarmament were highly impractical because nuclear weapons had now become integral to the national security of nuclear weapon states.

  India’s first major disarmament initiative in 1954 was a combination of these principles. The Soviet nuclear test in 1949 had unfurled a test race between the US and the Soviet Union. This race was not only focused on the number of tests but on their increasing destructive firepower, helping the two sides build nuclear weapons of higher and higher yields. By 1952, the US had introduced hydrogen bomb into the Cold War nuclear dynamics. With the Soviet Union’s thermonuclear weapon tests in 1954, both sides now mastered the ultimate weapon in human history. Nuclear tests not only fuelled an intense arms race but were also deleterious for earth’s environment. It was therefore that, in April 1954, Nehru proposed in the Indian Parliament a cessation of further nuclear tests by the US and the Soviet Union calling for a ‘standstill agreement’ (Jayaprakash 2000). This was India’s first major disarmament plan.

  The ‘standstill agreement’ Nehru proposed was, however, just one part of his disarmament initiative. Other parts included making the world aware of the destructive potential of the hydrogen weapons so as to generate global public opinion against these weapons; immediate consultations in the UNDC to negotiate the cessation of further testing; and rallying non-nuclear states to bring their influence to bear upon the US and the Soviet Union to stop further development of their nuclear arsenals. Nehru’s 1954 appeal encapsulated all three principles of India’s nuclear disarmament diplomacy. By involving non-nuclear states in negotiations of the ‘standstill agreement’, it sought to pursue disarmament multilaterally. Yet, the obligation to cease nuclear testing was primarily of the US and the Soviet Union. Lastly, it was in consonance with a step-by-step approach to nuclear disarmament and did not intend to eliminate nuclear weapons in their entirety at one go.

  The ‘standstill agreement’ became the lynchpin of India’s disarmament diplomacy in the 1950s.11 Even when it was largely ignored by the superpowers, it did earn India considerable diplomatic clout in the UN and among the Third World nations. It established India’s moral and diplomatic leadership in the field of global nuclear disarmament. Its major achievement, however, was that it put the need for a nuclear test ban firmly on the global disarmament agenda. The quest for ban on nuclear tests gained traction in 1958 when Soviet Union announced a unilateral moratorium. The first major global disarmament treaty that came into effect in 1963 was the Limited Test Ban Treaty, proscribing nuclear tests on land, sea, and air, except those carried underground. India’s role in this breakthrough was, first, ideational. It was Nehru who was both the originator of the idea behind a test ban and also its most emphatic public face. Second, even when it was rejected by the superpowers, India maintained a diplomatic crusade in the UN and other forums for the need to stop nuclear tests.

  India’s first major engagement on nuclear disarmament thus happened in a period when it had no major stakes in nuclear disarmament. Even when rapidly advancing in its atomic energy capabilities, it was still a non-nuclear weapons power. Moreover, during this period, it also had no major motivation to go nuclear as it remained unthreatened by a hostile nuclear power even though, as we saw earlier, Nehru had adopted a strategy of nuclear hedging. With the Chinese nuclear test in October 1964, India’s national security requirements altered substantially. Henceforth, national security, not moral or diplomatic influence, would become the benchmark for its engagement with nuclear disarmament and arms control. Yet, the rhetoric of nuclear disarmament would also be the pretext on which India would reject participation in any arms control measures. In later decades, disarmament helped India practice realism under the cloak of idealism.

  * * *

  India’s nuclear pioneers, from the very beginning, understood the significance of atomic energy. This appreciation grew out of their technological vision for modern India and also because of the promise inherent in the atom. On the one hand, atomic science promised a rapid march towards economic and social development when used for harnessing energy. On the other hand, it also provided a destructive power of immense consequences in the form of nuclear weapons. Atomic energy was also a source of international prestige as Nehru sought India’s leadership of the non-aligned and the developing world. These beliefs principally shaped the evolution of atomic energy research in India. In the process, Nehru and Bhabha not only laid the foundations of India’s atomic energy programme but also ensured that it received the maximum patronage among all other scientific endeavours in independent India. If, for Nehru, science and technology had to create the ‘temples of modern India’, atomic energy became the holiest of these shrines. The atomic energy establishment therefore grew and by 1964, India was one of the most advanced states in nuclear technology in the entire Third World. For all the emphasis on self-reliance, however, easy access to foreign nuclear technology and materials, especially from the UK
, the US, and Canada, was critical to India’s nuclear progress. Yet, India doggedly preserved its strategic autonomy and declined to accept any international controls on its atomic energy programme. Nehru’s disarmament diplomacy only expanded India’s influence and its leadership on nuclear issues. In all, the direction and momentum provided by India’s nuclear pioneers to its atomic energy programme allowed India to become the loadstar of atomic research in Asia and among the Third World.

  1 On Nehru’s ideas of power in inter-state politics, see Raghavan (2010).

  2 See Nehru’s note on ‘Defence Policy and National Development’ of 3 February 1947, reproduced in Singh (1988: 45–6).

  3 In November 1954, Bhabha presented this plan in a scientific conference organized in New Delhi and presided over by Prime Minister Nehru. For his presentation, see Bhabha (1956).

  4 For details on Atoms for Peace programme, see Bader (1968).

  5 A good account of competition among developed countries to supply nuclear technology and materials after the Atoms for Peace programme is available in Walker and Lonnroth (1988).

  6 Hecht (1998) provides an excellent account of the French nuclear programme. For Canadian nuclear programme, see Pedeo (1976).

  7 An alternate account of India–Canada peaceful nuclear cooperation is available in Srinivasan (2003).

  8 For a history of international controls over nuclear energy, see Goldschmidt (1982).

  9 For a historical account of Soviet nuclear weapons programme, see Holloway (1994).

  10 A good summary of India’s attitude towards international controls on atomic energy can be found in Sullivan III (1970).

  11 For India’s efforts on nuclear disarmament in the UN during the 1950s and 1960s, see Reddy and Damodaran (1994).

  2

  Perils of a Nuclear Neighbour

  Till 16 December 1964, when China exploded a nuclear device at Lop Nor, India had not yet faced a direct nuclear threat. Nuclear weapons did pose a problem for Indian foreign policy but in an oblique sense. First, given the idealist non-violent underpinnings of India’s struggle for independence and its post-independence foreign policy, there was a moral abhorrence to such weapons of mass destruction.1 Such moralistic considerations notwithstanding, the nuclear arms race between the two superpowers was harmful insofar it led to intense security competition and destabilized the international system. A stable international system was important for India’s internal development, and it was equally critical for the policy of non-alignment as tensions between the two superpowers made it difficult for India to chart a middle course in its foreign policy. Nuclear arms races were also a principal source of international tension as was the case during the Cuban crisis of 1962. However, as New Delhi had learnt during the Sino-Indian war in late 1962, the spectre of superpower confrontation allowed countries like China to pursue their revisionist aims against their smaller neighbours (Raghavan 2013).

  China’s nuclear test was, however, a radical departure. For the first time in independent India’s history, a hostile neighbour, with which it had fought and lost a brief but intense border war in 1962, had acquired a nuclear capability. The conflict remained alive with China claiming huge swathe of Indian territory along the Himalayan frontier. Second, if India’s territorial integrity was threatened, so was its international prestige. China’s bomb, as an Indian diplomat had argued then, was a crisis in ‘India’s manifest destiny’ to be a major global power: if nuclear technology represented a domain of technological progress, China had left India behind.2 This threatened New Delhi’s purported leadership of Asia and of the Global South. If becoming a global power was always a major goal in India’s post-independence foreign policy, China had taken a great leap forward over India in the struggle for global status. Third, nuclear weapons in the hands of a Maoist China allowed her to aggressively export its revolutionary ideology to India’s body politic; Beijing had hailed it as a moral boost to wars of national liberation (Halperin 1965). The nascent Indian democracy was struggling with communist revolutions, such as the Naxalbari movement, and revanchist insurgencies in its north-east. Chinese bomb was both an exemplar and enabler to such anti-state ideologies (Doctor 1971). Finally, this was also the period of internal flux in India. Prime Minister Nehru’s death in May 1964 had not only left a void in internal leadership of the Congress but had also resulted in the loss of India’s most important source of international influence. The question staring at India’s post-Nehru leadership, as one commentator argued then, was whether ‘India should exercise the option of becoming a nuclear power, a path which many other countries have insisted leads to national unity, national security and international prestige’ (Buchan 1965: 210).

  The events of October 1964, for the first time, brought the issue of nuclear weapons to the forefront of India’s security policy. This chapter charts the course of India’s nuclear behaviour and policy in the crucial decade following China’s nuclear test. It parses the debate within, India’s responses, and the failure and success of its nuclear policies between 1964 and 1974. Rather than undertaking a full-fledged nuclear weapons programme, India primarily depended upon diplomacy to counter the challenge posed by China’s nuclear capability. These diplomatic strategies included seeking nuclear security guarantees from established nuclear powers, such as the US, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and the UK. The NPT was equally an instrument in India’s diplomatic arsenal. However, New Delhi also hedged towards a ‘nuclear option’ by initiating technical and scientific development towards a nuclear explosion capability. Yet, India consistently maintained a public aversion to nuclear weapons, often shrouding its nascent nuclear capabilities under the rubric of ‘peaceful nuclear activities’. Even when China had given India a reason to go nuclear, New Delhi’s nuclear policy remained highly ambivalent.

  India’s Quest for a Diplomatic Deterrent

  In the aftermath of the Chinese tests, the central question for the Indian leadership was to think of a response to the threat posed to Indian security by China’s possession of the bomb. Notwithstanding the cacophony of the public debate on exercising India’s nuclear option, the political leadership headed by Prime Minister Shastri chose a diplomatic strategy to deter China (Kennedy 2011). Shastri sought security guarantees from the dominant nuclear powers: the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union. Extended deterrence where dominant nuclear powers provided the cover of their nuclear arsenals to protect their allies from nuclear threats was by then a norm in Cold War dynamics. The problem, however, remained one of credibility: would established nuclear powers risk self-destruction for the sake of their lesser allies (Coffey 1971). The problem was compounded by the fact that India was a non-aligned country rather than an ally of any of the superpowers and maintained a policy of non-alignment. These contradictions eventually proved too difficult for India to surmount and led to the failure of this diplomatic strategy. India wanted a nuclear umbrella but one ‘without a handle’ (Noorani 1967: 500).

  India’s quest for security guarantees was first inspired by US President Lyndon Johnson’s speech just two days after the Chinese test. On 18 October, Johnson had publicly offered ‘to respond to requests from the Asian nations to help in dealing with Communist China’s aggression’ (cited in Gavin 2012: 93). Though the promise was vague, it did outline a possibility where states threatened by Chinese nuclear bomb could chalk out the specifics of a US nuclear guarantee. The initial Indian response was lukewarm but as the domestic pressure for an indigenous nuclear weapons programme mounted, Prime Minister Shastri saw in it a way out from the difficult decision to undertake a full-fledged nuclear weapons programme. He, therefore, appealed for a nuclear umbrella during a meeting with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson in December 1964 (Schrafstetter 2002). Furthermore, his decision was also reflective of his inexperience with nuclear policy. Under Nehru, India’s nuclear decision-making was highly concentrated in the PMO and none of the other leaders in the Indian National Congress were conversant with
the issue. Prime Minister Shastri did not really consult anyone in the Indian cabinet, or in the civilian bureaucracy, on the issue of nuclear guarantees (Brecher 1966: 127).

  Notwithstanding the reasons behind Shastri’s appeal, his framing of a security guarantee balanced a number of competing interests. India needed some kind of protection from a nuclear blackmail or use of nuclear weapons against it. Yet, any India-specific proposal would have been an acceptance of weakness on the part of the political leadership. Moreover, asking all ‘nuclear powers’ to guarantee protection allowed Shastri to avoid being criticized for abandoning the basic precepts of non-alignment. These competing interests refused to be reconciled, however. For one, the nuclear guarantors—the US and the UK—found it difficult to credibly associate themselves with guaranteeing India’s security, especially when it was not a treaty ally, even though India’s security may have been ‘vital for the security of the [Asian] region as a whole’ (Coffey 1971: 839). Soviet reluctance, on the other hand, was engendered due to China being a fellow communist power, and also in the hope that a muted reaction would lead to a rapprochement in Sino-Soviet relations.3 Domestically, the Indian government was attacked by both the votaries of non-alignment and the advocates of the indigenous nuclear weapons programme. The former saw in the request for nuclear guarantees a backdoor entry into the power politics of the Cold War.4 The latter decried it as a policy of escapism.5 Soon after, the Indian government clarified that any such guarantee had to be jointly managed by the two superpowers: the US and the Soviet Union. Doing so allowed India to cover its request for superpower intervention under a ‘non-aligned cloak’ (Edwardes 1965: 57). However, the response from the nuclear powers remained ambivalent. For the West, Johnson’s vague promise made in October 1964 sufficed. Any further refinement of the promise had to be requested by India, which given the long-held Congress party’s position against military pacts was difficult to come by. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, had different considerations. On the one hand, it did not seek to further rattle the Chinese and on the other, Moscow was wary of the security guarantees because it would have allowed the West to station its nuclear assets, especially its ballistic nuclear submarines, in the Indian Ocean.