Indian Nuclear Policy

by Harsh V Pant

  Just a week after the PNE, Canada suspended all nuclear cooperation with India. Ottawa demanded that New Delhi place its nuclear facilities under the IAEA safeguards, accede to the NPT, and publicly declare that it will not transfer nuclear technology to other states (Keeley 1980). The US, however, was much more circumspect. Its principle interest, as Henry Kissinger explained to the Indian ambassador in Washington, DC, was in export controls.1 India’s response was guided by two contradictory factors. On the one hand were its long-held principles, such as the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy (including PNEs) and the right to nuclear technology cooperation for peaceful purposes, to which India had to remain committed. On the other hand were practical considerations of its nuclear energy programme which was dependent upon foreign technology transfers. In this contest between principles and necessities, India choose the later. With Canada, India entered protracted negotiations during the course of which New Delhi accepted enhanced safeguards on nuclear technology and material provided by Canada (Kapur 1978). Both Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (RAPS) reactors were put under life-long safeguards monitored by the IAEA. In private, New Delhi also promised not to transfer nuclear explosive technology to other countries and observe stringent export controls on nuclear technology. Indira Gandhi also promised that India will not conduct further PNEs till the time the data from the first test was fully studied, but this was just an excuse. After the PNE, Gandhi had made up her mind against further nuclear testing.2

  However, India’s private cooperation brought her no major dividends. The objective of the non-proliferation lobby was not to seek India’s compliance but to make the non-proliferation regime foolproof. In April 1975, a group of 20 advanced nuclear states met in London to formulate stricter rules for nuclear technology transfers. Called the London Group, which later resulted in the NSG, these states issued a private trigger list of nuclear technology and materials. It was also decided to observe tougher supply conditions for their exports. India was its primary target. By May 1976, India’s negotiations with Canada also failed. Ottawa terminated all its peaceful nuclear cooperation agreements with India.

  The implications were severe for India’s nuclear energy programme. Operation of Canadian-supplied RAPS-1 reactor suffered and RAPS-2, which was under construction with Canadian assistance, was severely delayed. Most importantly, India’s entire indigenous reactor programme, which was largely based on the Canadian CANDU-type reactor technology, was threatened. The problem was India’s material capability. Even after a massive R&D programme pertaining to nuclear energy, India had no industrial base to produce nuclear components. Its heavy water programme, even after years of R&D investment, was yet to deliver. In fissile material, India was yet to master uranium enrichment needed for Tarapur-type light water reactors. Restrictions imposed after the PNE, therefore, crippled India’s nuclear energy programme. It also led to a massive effort towards creating an indigenous industrial base for producing nuclear components, largely by reverse engineering the material and technology procured from foreign vendors in the past.

  This friction with the emerging non-proliferation regime continued even after the ouster of Prime Minister Gandhi and the coming of the Morarji Desai government in 1977 (Noorani 1978). Desai, while in opposition, had criticized Indira Gandhi’s nuclear policy and was adamantly against a nuclear weapons programme, even an ambivalent one.3 He was also not convinced of Gandhi’s adversarial approach towards the West and her rather sympathetic attitude towards the Soviet Union.4 In fact, Desai had promised to make India genuinely non-aligned, by which he meant retracting India’s special relationship with the Soviet Union and focusing upon improving India’s relations with the Western countries. Soon after becoming the prime minister, Desai declared that India will not conduct any more PNEs, a commitment Indira Gandhi was not ready to give, at least in public. Desai’s policies also endeared him to President Carter, who not only wanted to improve India–US relations but also extract India’s support for his policy on non-proliferation. During the first year of Desai and Carter’s term in power, India and the US initiated a serious dialogue on reconciling their nuclear differences, including full-scope safeguards on India’s nuclear facilities.

  This brief bonhomie between India and the US, however, fell prey to domestic politics in the two countries. In mid-1977, the US Congress had enacted the Nuclear Non-proliferation Act (NNPA) which directed the administration to stop supplies of nuclear material and technology without full-scope safeguards (Chari 1978). This directly affected the operations of the Tarapur nuclear power plant because under the 1963 agreement, the US had promised to supply highly enriched uranium fuel for the lifetime of the reactors. For India, the implementation of NNPA was a direct violation of a bilateral treaty which had been signed much before. It was also seen as a blackmail: the US was using its supplier status to coerce India into accepting full-scope safeguards (Kapur 1979). Even when Desai publicly articulated an aversion to nuclear weapons and tried to reconcile differences with the US, it was politically difficult for him to relent to the new conditions as the political opposition accused him of relinquishing India’s strategic autonomy. By 1978, delayed shipments of nuclear fuel from the US became a constant rallying point for the opposition. As the date of implementation of the NNPA neared in 1979, the brief bonhomie in India–US relations also fell apart. Desai’s position in the Janata coalition had by then weakened considerably, further denting his credentials to take any policy decisions on India’s nuclear future. If Desai’s hands were tied domestically, one external factor with far-reaching consequences for India’s nuclear policy was fast developing in her immediate neighbourhood. By 1979, Indian intelligence confirmed Pakistan’s successful mastering of uranium enrichment technology. The spectre of a Pakistani nuclear programme was the final nail in the coffin of Desai’s brief agreement with the non-proliferation regime.

  The Rise of a Nuclear Pakistan

  In May 1965, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in an interview to the Manchester Guardian, had argued that if India got a nuclear bomb, ‘we [Pakistan] will eat grass, even go hungry but we will get one of our own [nuclear bomb]’ (cited in Khan 2014: 59). The context was the growing clamour in New Delhi to go nuclear after China’s October 1964 nuclear test. As was argued in the previous chapter, for ten long years until May 1974, India refused to satisfy the necessary condition for Pakistan’s nuclearization laid down by Bhutto in 1965. However, as Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark (2007: 18–19) have argued, Pakistan had found a reason to go nuclear after 1971: the war in Bangladesh had left Pakistan bifurcated. The beginning of the Pakistani nuclear weapons programme in the early 1970s was a result of Islamabad’s conventional insecurity. Where it fell short in conventional power, nuclear weapons were deemed necessary to fill the void: the existence of nuclear weapons could have allowed Pakistan to avoid another 1971-type military defeat. It was for this reason that Prime Minister Bhutto decided to give the go-ahead for a Pakistani nuclear programme in 1972. New archival research indicates that India was oblivious of Pakistan’s nuclear efforts before the 1974 PNE (Joshi 2015). In India’s defence planning, the Pakistani threat remained purely conventional. To allay Islamabad’s concern after the PNE, Prime Minister Gandhi had assured Prime Minister Bhutto that New Delhi will remain committed to its ‘traditional policy of developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes’.5 However, India’s 1974 PNE provided Pakistan a rationale to legitimize its nuclear aspirations. As Prime Minister Bhutto argued in December 1974, ‘If Pakistan is not able to acquire weapons (conventional), which can act as a deterrent, it must forgo spending on conventional weapons and make a big jump forward concentrating all its energies on acquiring the nuclear capability’ (Jayagopal 1978: 190).

  Pakistan initially chose the more difficult route of developing plutonium-based weapons. For this, Islamabad had to develop a reprocessing capability. Given the complexity of this technology and Pakistan’s nascent nuclear programme, it was only possible through external
assistance. Pakistan signed a deal with a French firm to construct a reprocessing plant at Chasma in October 1974. Bhutto explained these developments as a part of Pakistan’s nuclear energy programme. During his visit to the US in early 1975, the Pakistani prime minister promised Americans that it will remain committed to a peaceful nuclear programme. However, Bhutto also used the threat of India’s nuclear programme as an excuse to extract further military assistance from the US, which Washington agreed to. Pakistani efforts to develop plutonium fuel cycle came under the scrutiny of the emerging non-proliferation regime, which specifically targeted transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technologies to non-nuclear states. As the US pressure on France increased after the formation of the London Group in April 1975, the French demanded more stringent safeguards. Pakistan had no choice but to accept the French demands. However, in 1975, a new element radically changed Pakistan’s nuclear fortunes: A.Q. Khan, who was arguing that Pakistan should undertake the uranium enrichment route for a nuclear weapons programme. In 1976, A.Q. Khan returned to Pakistan to work on its nuclear weapons programme with stolen designs of the centrifuge-based uranium enrichment technology from the European nuclear consortium, URENCO. Khan thereupon took charge of the Pakistani weapons programme and established a worldwide proliferation network to source material for Pakistan’s uranium enrichment plant at Kahuta.

  After the French reprocessing deal, India’s intelligence services began scrutinizing the progress of Pakistan’s nuclear programme more closely. The first assessment of Pakistani nuclear progra mme was made by India’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in March 1975.6 This intelligence estimate made little of Pakistani nuclear capability and concluded that it will take Islamabad decades to develop nuclear weapons. By 1976, the Indian intelligence was convinced that Pakistan’s quest for a reprocessing plant was being severely undermined by the emerging non-proliferation regime.7 Ironically, the non-proliferation regime which was triggered by India’s PNE was now targeting its main adversary. Even when India was fighting its own battles with non-proliferation cartels like the NSG, it also saw in them a means for restricting Pakistani nuclear programme. However, these intelligence estimates were flawed to the extent that they exclusively focused on Pakistan’s quest for plutonium reprocessing technology.8 Till at least early 1978, India remained unaware of the A.Q. Khan network.9 India was, however, worried about China’s assistance to Pakistan, and rightly so. Not only was China a close ally of Islamabad but was also unencumbered by the NPT; it had no stake in restricting nuclear proliferation. Moreover, a Pakistani nuclear programme could have seriously undermined India’s national security and challenged its pre-eminence in South Asia. As the JIC report stated, ‘If Pakistan at all succeeds in exploding a nuclear device within the next five years or so, it will probably be with the help of China which is the only nuclear power that is not the member of the IAEA and is known to oppose nuclear hegemony.’ These concerns were borne out in June 1976 when Bhutto was able to finally get Chinese assistance in the design of a nuclear device. As Bhutto later described in his autobiography, securing Chinese assistance for Pakistani nuclear programme was the ‘greatest achievement’ of his entire political career (Bhutto 1979: 223).

  New Delhi had failed to accurately assess the progress of the Pakistani nuclear programme in the mid-1970s. The coming of the Carter administration in Washington, DC, and its non-proliferation policy, which specifically targeted plutonium reprocessing further strengthened a perception that nuclear proliferation would henceforth become exceedingly difficult. By mid-1977, the Pakistani–French reprocessing deal appeared to be dithering under the collective impact of the US non-proliferation policy and domestic political changes in both France and Pakistan.10 Other Western countries like Canada also tied their nuclear cooperation with Pakistan on nuclear safeguards and revising its reprocessing plans.11 Between 1976 and 1978, India was willing to amend its relations with Pakistan with a hope of addressing the latter’s insecurity. In March 1976, the Indian government, with an aim to achieve a ‘comprehensive normalization’ of its relationship with Pakistan, approved restoration of full diplomatic relations severed after the 1971 Bangladesh War (Mehta 2010: 163). When in early 1977 Indira Gandhi lost the elections and Morarji Desai became prime minister, the process of reconciliation with Pakistan continued. In fact, Desai had even offered Pakistan assistance in the development of peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Such diplomatic overtures notwithstanding, it was also the period when Pakistani efforts in uranium enrichment and nuclear weapons design made the most progress.

  In the post-PNE period, therefore, India had reposed its faith in the emerging non-proliferation regime to arrest the Pakistani drive towards a nuclear weapons programme. In public, India maintained its opposition to it; yet, for its own security imperatives, India was banking on the ‘lesser evil’ of a discriminatory non-proliferation regime (Mehta 2008: 425). And it was the weakness of the same that helped Pakistan make steady progress. Even when the mandarins in India’s intelligence community had clearly identified the China angle, they fell short in fully comprehending the A.Q. Khan factor. By 1979, however, India was in for a major surprise. Though Indian intelligence got wind of the A.Q. Khan network by 1978, it was only in April 1979 that the JIC revised its earlier views on Pakistani nuclear capabilities and argued that Pakistan would be able to explode a nuclear device in a year or two (Subrahmanyam 1998a: 36). This was the most dramatic development in India’s security environment after the 1964 Chinese nuclear weapons test. Indian decision-makers were, in fact, completely taken by surprise.

  Within five years of the PNE, Pakistan was on the verge of a nuclear weapons capability. India, however, had deliberately eschewed developing a full-fledged nuclear weapons programme even after proving its technological capability. On the one hand, New Delhi tried to allay Pakistan’s insecurity through diplomatic means. Both Indira Gandhi and Morarji Desai believed that negotiations would help stabilize India–Pakistan relations. India’s moral aversion to nuclear weapons also played a role, though to a lesser degree in the case of Indira Gandhi. On the other hand, India also believed that the emerging non-proliferation regime would arrest Pakistani nuclear programme. As India’s Foreign Minister Vajpayee complained to the US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance in April 1979, ‘how it was that inspite to laws and safeguards, Pakistan had managed to move ahead in acquiring a nuclear weapon capability’. The answer was simple: the safeguards regime was far from foolproof. India had placed its bets on the wrong horse.

  Whither Nuclear Restraint

  Indira’s return to power in December 1979 coincided with some of the most portentous developments in India’s security environment, creating pressures on its nuclear policy (Gupta 1983). Pakistan’s march towards a nuclear weapons capability was now only a matter of time; its intentions and trajectory were set. In December 1979, Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to support the pro-communist regime of Babrak Karmal. India had always opposed great power conflicts the world over and now, for the first time, a great power had intervened in India’s immediate neighbourhood.12 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan threatened America’s interests in the Persian Gulf. It also provided the US an opportunity to repay the favours it had received during the Vietnam War by inciting an armed insurgency in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s readiness to be the face of the US resistance to Soviet occupation made South Asia the hotbed of Soviet–American animosity. In return, Pakistan extracted military and economic aid from Washington. This event also created hardships for India’s policy of non-alignment. Soviet Union was India’s principal military and economic partner. The expectation of India’s diplomatic, if not material, support was therefore obvious. Yet, India’s silence on Soviet intervention would have been perceived as duplicitous by the West.

  Indira’s approach was defined by India’s national interests. To America’s dismay, India declined to condemn Soviet occupation of Afghanistan at the UN. India’s dependence on Soviet military hardware was a major consideration.
It acquired further importance as Pakistan started receiving military and economic aid from the US to fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan during Carter administration’s last year in power. This threatened the conventional military balance in South Asia, which had traditionally been to India’s advantage. With the coming of President Reagan in 1981, the US policy in Afghanistan pivoted completely around Islamabad. Reagan’s rabid anti-communism threw the semblance of balance which the Carter administration had tried to achieve in balancing India’s concerns vis-à-vis its support for Islamabad in the fight against Soviets. In April 1981, the US announced a $3.2 billion military and economic aid for Pakistan (Kux 2001: 258). This included top-of-the-line F-16 fighter jets, which were capable of delivering nuclear weapons. As a secret note prepared by the MEA observed, this arms build-up was a ‘serious aggravation in its [India’s] security environment’.13 This blatant disregard for Indian security concerns underlined a change in America’s non-proliferation policy. The Reagan administration had reached a tacit bargain with Pakistan on the latter’s nuclear weapons policy: sans nuclear test, America would turn a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme. These developments occurred at a time when India considered a Pakistani nuclear test imminent. A secret assessment of Pakistani nuclear capability made by Indian intelligence in early 1981 estimated that Pakistan had amassed enough uranium to undertake a nuclear test within a year and it was also possible that it had mastered the technology of nuclear triggers.14 This led to a conclusion that all ‘main technical elements of conducting a nuclear test are already available in Pakistan’. Equally disconcerting for India was Chinese collusion: as the memo argued, ‘the Chinese connection to Pakistani programme was less in the realm of speculation than in the realm of reality’. It also stated that Pakistan may conduct its first nuclear explosion at Lop Nor as ‘it would appear to be just one more nuclear test by PRC’ and help her avoid ‘the range instrumentation problems’. These developments engendered a serious debate within to resuscitate India’s dormant nuclear explosive programme. For the first time, the Indian military also openly started debating the consequences of South Asia’s nuclearization and its impact on India’s conventional military deterrent.