[sacw] INDIA AND THE BOMB by Amartya Sen

[Harsh Kapoor]

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South Asians Against Nukes Post
16 September 2000
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Frontline
Volume 17 - Issue 19, Sep. 16 - 29, 2000
ESSAY

INDIA AND THE BOMB 1 

AMARTYA SEN

WEAPONS of mass destruction have a peculiar fascination.
They can generate a warm glow of
strength and power carefully divorced from the brutality
and genocide on which the potency of the
weapons depend. The great epics - from Iliad and Ramayana
to Kalev ala and Nibelungenlied -
provide thrilling accounts of the might of special
weapons, which not only are powerful in
themselves, but also greatly empower their possessors. As
India, along with Pakistan, goes down
the route of cultivating nuclear weapons, the imagined
radiance of perceived power is hard to miss. 

PTV/AP
The site of the nuclear test in Pokhran on May 11, 1998. 

The Moral and the Prudential 

Perceptions can deceive. It has to be asked whether powerful
weapons in general and nuclear armament in particular can be
expected - invariably or even typically - to strengthen and
empower their possessor. An important prudential issue is
involved here. There is, of course, also the question of
ethics, and in particular the rightness or
wrongness of a nuclear policy. That important issue can be
distinguished from the question of
practical benefit or loss of a nation from a particular
policy. We have go od grounds to be interested
in both the questions - the prudential and the ethical -
but also reason enough not to see the two
issues as disparate and totally delinked from each other.
Our behaviour towards each other cannot
be divorced from what we make of the ethics of one
another's pursuits, and the reasons of morality
have, as a result, prudential importance as well.2 It is
in this light that I want to examine the
challenges of nuclear policy in the subcontinent in
general and in India in particular. 

Whether, or to what extent, powerful weapons empower a
nation is not a new question. Indeed,
well before the age of nuclear armament began,
Rabindranath Tagore had expressed a general
doubt about the fortifying effects of military strength,
If "in his ea gerness for power", Tagore had
argued in 1917, a nation "multiplies his weapons at the
cost of his soul, then it is he who is in much
greater danger than his enemies."3 Tagore was not as
uncompromisingly a pacifist as Mahatma
Gandhi was, and h is warning against the dangers of
alleged strength through more and bigger
weapons related to the need for ethically scrutinising the
functions of these weapons and the exact
uses to which they are to be put as well as the practical
importance of the rea ctions and
counteractions of others. The "soul" to which Tagore
referred includes, as he explained, the need for
humanity and understanding in international relations. 

Tagore was not merely making a moral point, but also one
of pragmatic importance, taking into
account the responses from others that would be generated
by one's pursuit of military might. His
immediate concern in the quoted statement was with Japan
befor e the Second World War. Tagore
was a great admirer of Japan and the Japanese, but felt
very disturbed by its shift from economic
and social development to aggressive militarisation. The
heavy sacrifices that were forced on Japan
later on, through militar y defeat and nuclear
devastation, Tagore did not live to see (he died in
1941), but they would have only added to Tagore's intense
sorrow. But the conundrum that he
invoked, about the weakening effects of military power,
has remained active in the writin gs of
contemporary Japanese writers, perhaps most notably
Kenzaburo Oe.4 

Science, Politics and Nationalism 

The leading architect of India's ballistic missile
programme and a key figure in the development of
nuclear weapons is Dr. Abdul Kalam. He comes from a Muslim
family, is a scientist of great
distinction, and has a very strong commitment to Indian
nationa lism. Abdul Kalam is also a very
amiable person (as I had discovered when I had been
closeted with him at an honorary degree
ceremony in Calcutta in 1990, many years before the
blasts). Kalam's philanthropic concerns are
strong, and he has a record of he lping in welfare-related
causes, such as charitable work for
mentally impaired children in India. 

Kalam recorded his proud reaction as he watched the Indian
nuclear explosions in Pokhran, on the
edge of the Thar desert in Rajasthan, in May 1998: "I
heard the earth thundering below our feet and
rising ahead of us in terror. It was a beautiful sight."<
sup>5 It is rather remarkable that the
admiration for sheer power should be so strong in the
reactions of even so kind-hearted a person,
but perhaps the force of nationalism played a role here,
along with the general fascination that
powerful weapo ns seem to generate. The intensity of
Kalam's nationalism may be well concealed
by the mildness of his manners, but it was evident enough
in his statements after the blasts ("for
2,500 years India has never invaded anybody"), no less
than his joy at Indi a's achievement ("a
triumph of Indian science and technology"). 

This was, in fact, the second round of nuclear explosions
in the same site, in Pokhran; the first was
under Indira Gandhi's prime ministership in 1974. But at
that time the whole event was kept under a
shroud of secrecy, partly in line with the Governmen t's
ambiguity about the correctness of the
nuclear weaponisation of India. While China's
nuclearisation clearly had a strong influence in the
decision of the (Indira) Gandhi government to develop its
own nuclear potential (between 1964 and
1974 China had conducted 15 nuclear explosions), the
official government position was that the
1974 explosion in Pokhran was strictly for "peaceful
purposes", and that India remained committed
to doing without nuclear weapons. The first Pokhran tests
were, thus, follo wed by numerous
affirmations of India's rejection of the nuclear path,
rather than any explicit savouring of the
destructive power of nuclear energy. 

PTV/AP
"The whole mountain turned
white," was the Pakistan
government's description of its
nuclear test on May 28,
1998 at Chagai in Baluchistan. 

It was very different in the
summer of 1998 following the events
that have come to be called
Pokhran-II. By then there was strong
support from various quarters.
This included, of course, the
Bharatiya Janata Party, or the
BJP, which had included the deve
lopment of nuclear weapons in its electoral manifesto, and
led the political coalition that came to
office after the February elections in 1998. While
previous Indian governments had considered
following up the 1974 blast by new ones, they had stopped
sh ort of doing it, but with the new -
more intensely nationalist - government the lid was
lifted, and the blasts of Pokhran-II occurred
within three months of its coming to power. The BJP, which
has built up its base in recent years by
capturing and to a g reat extent fanning Hindu
nationalism, received in the elections only a minority of
Hindu votes, and a fortiori a minority of total votes in
the multireligious country. (India has nearly as
many Muslims as Pakistan and many more Muslims than in
Banglades h, and also of course Sikhs,
Christians, Jains, Parsees, and other communities.) But
even with a minority of parliamentary seats
(182 out of 545), the BJP could head an alliance - a
fairly ad hoc alliance - of many different
political factions, varying f rom strictly regional
parties (such as the AIADMK, the DMK and the
MDMK of Tamil Nadu, the Haryana Lok Dal and the Haryana
Vikas Party of Haryana, the Biju
Janata Dal of Orissa, the Trinamul Congress of West
Bengal) to specific community-based parties (i
ncluding the Akali Dal, the party of Sikh nationalism),
and some breakaway factions of other parties.
As the largest group within the coalition, the BJP was the
dominant force in the 1998 Indian
government (as it is in the present coalition government
si nce the new elections that had to be called
in late 1999), which gives it much more authority than a
minority party could otherwise expect to get
in Indian politics. 

The BJP's interest in following up the 1974 blast by
further tests and by actually developing nuclear
weapons received strong support from an active pro-nuclear
lobby, which includes many Indian
scientists.6 The advocacy by scientists and defe nce
experts was quite important in making the idea
of a nuclear India at least plausible to many, if not
quite fully acceptable yet as a part of a reflective
equilibrium of Indian thinking. As Praful Bidwai and Achin
Vanaik put it in their well-researche d
and well-argued book, "The most ardent advocates of
nuclear weapons have constantly sought to
invest these weapons with a religious-like authority and
importance - to emphasise the awe and
wonder rather than the revulsion and horror - to give them
an a ccepted and respectable place in the
mass popular culture of our times."7 

The Thrill of Power 

Kalam's excitement at the power of nuclear explosions was
not, of course, unusual as a reaction to
the might of weapons. The excitement generated by
destructive power, dissociated from any hint of
potential genocide, has been a well-observed psychologica
l state in the history of the world. Even
the normally unruffled J.Robert Oppenheimer, the principal
architect of the world's first nuclear
explosion, was moved to quote the two-millennia-old
Bhagavad Gita (Oppenheimer knew
Sanskrit well enough to get his Gita right) as he watched
the atmospheric explosion of the first atom
bomb in a U.S. desert near the village of Oscuro on July
16, 1945: "the radiance of a thousand
suns... burst into the sky."8 

PIB
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Defence Minister
George Fernandes, Scientific Adviser to the Prime
Minister A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, and others at Pokhran on
May 20. 

Oppenheimer went on to quote further from the Bhagavad Gita:
"I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds." That image of
death would show its naked and ruthless face next month in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki (what Kenzaburo Oe has called "the
most terr ifying monster lurking in the darkness of
Hiroshima"9).
But in the experimental station in the U.S. desert,
code-named
"Jornala del Muerto" (translatable as "Death Tract"),
there was
only sanitised abstractness firmly detached from any actual
killing.10 

The thousand suns have now come home to the subcontinent
to roost. The five Indian nuclear
explosions in Pokhran on May 11 and May 13, 1998 were
quickly followed by six Pakistani blasts
in the Chagai hills. "The whole mountain turned white,"
was the Paki stan government's charmed
response. The subcontinent was by now caught in an overt
nuclear confrontation, masquerading as
further empowerment of each country. 

These developments have received fairly uniform
condemnation abroad, but also considerable
favour inside India and Pakistan, though we must be
careful not to exaggerate the actual extent of
domestic support. Pankaj Mishra did have reason enough to
conclu de, two weeks after the blasts,
that "the nuclear tests have been extremely popular,
particularly among the urban middle class."11
But that was too soon to see the long-run effects on
Indian public opinion. Furthermore, the
enthusiasm of the c elebrators is more easily pictured on
the television than the deep doubts of the
sceptics. Indeed, the euphoria that the television
pictures captured on the Indian streets immediately
following the blasts concentrated on the reaction of those
who did cel ebrate and chose to come out
and rejoice. It was accompanied by doubts and reproach of
a great many people who took no part
in the festivities, who did not figure in the early
television pictures, and whose doubts and opposition
found increasingly vocal expression over time. As Amitav
Ghosh, the novelist, noted in his extensive
review of Indian public reactions to the bomb for The New
Yorker, "the tests have divided the
country more deeply than ever".12 

It is also clear that the main political party that chose
to escalate India's nuclear adventure, namely
the BJP, did not get any substantial electoral benefit
from the Pokhran blasts. In fact quite the
contrary, as the analyses of local voting since the 1998
blasts tend to show. By the time India went
to the polls again, in September 1999, the BJP had learned
the lesson sufficiently to barely mention
the nuclear tests in their campaign with the voters. And
yet, as N. Ram (the political commentator
and t he Editor of Frontline) has cogently argued in his
anti-nuclear book Riding the Nuclear
Tiger, we "must not make the mistake of assuming that
since the Hindu Right has done badly out of
Pokhran-II, the issue has been decisively won".13 

ERIC BRISSAUD/GAMMA
J. Robert Oppenheimer, the principal
architect of the world's first
nuclear explosion. He described the
July 16, 1945 test in a U.S.
desert as "the radiance of a thousand
suns". 

Indian attitudes towards nuclear
weaponisation are characterised not
only by ambiguity and moral doubts,
but also by some uncertainty as to
what is involved in making gainful use
of these weapons. It may be the
case, as several opinion polls have
indicat ed, that public opinion in India
has a much smaller inclination,
compared with Pakistani public opinion,
to assume that nuclear weapons will
ever be actually used in a
subcontinental war.14 But since the
effectiveness of these weapons
depends ultimately on the willingness
to use them in some situations, there
is an issue of coherence of thought
that has to be addressed here.
Implicitly or explicitly an
eventuality of actual use has to be a part of the
possible alternative scenarios that must be contemplated,
if some benefit is to be obtained from the
possession and deployment of nuclear weapons. To hold the
belief that nuclear weapons are useful
but must never be used lacks cogency and can indeed be
seen to be a result of the odd
phenomenon that Arundhati Roy (the author of the wonderful
novel The God of Small Things) has
called "the end of imagination".15 

As Roy has also brought out with much clarity, the nature
and results of an actual all-out nuclear war
are almost impossible to imagine in a really informed way.
Arundhati Roy describes a likely scenario
thus: 

Our cities and forests, our fields and villages will burn
for days. Rivers will turn to poison. The air
will become fire. The wind will spread the flames. When
everything there is to burn has burned and
the fires die, smoke will rise and shut out the sun .16 

It is hard to think that the possibility of such an
eventuality can be a part of a wise policy of national
self-defence. 

Established Nuclear Powers and Subcontinental Grumbles 

One of the problems in getting things right arises from a
perceived sense of inadequacy, prevalent in
India, of any alternative policy that would be entirely
satisfactory and would thus help to firm up a
rejection of nuclear weapons through the transpare nt
virtues of a resolutely non-nuclear path (as
opposed to the horrors of the nuclear route). This is
perhaps where the gap in perceptions is
strongest between the discontent and disgust with which
the subcontinental nuclear adventures are
viewed in the West and the ambiguity that exists on this
subject within India (not to mention the
support of the nuclear route that comes from the
government, the BJP, and India's pro-nuclear
lobby). It is difficult to understand what is going on in
the subcontinent w ithout placing it solidly in a
global context. 

Nuclear strategists in South Asia tend to resent deeply
the international condemnation of Indian and
Pakistani policies and decisions that does not take note
of the nuclear situation in the world as a
whole. They are surely justified in this resentment, and
also right to question the censoriousness of
Western critics of subcontinental nuclear adventures
without adequately examining the ethics of their
own nuclear policies, including the preservation of an
established and deeply unequal nuclear
hegemony, with very little attempt to achieve global
denuclearisation. The Defence Minister of India,
George Fernandes, told Amitav Ghosh: "Why should the five
nations that have nuclear weapons tell
us how to behave and what weapons we should have?" This
was matc hed by the remark of Qazi
Hussain Ahmed, the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami (Pakistan's
principal religious party), to Ghosh: "...
we don't accept that five nations should have nuclear
weapons and others shouldn't. We say, 'Let
the five also disarm'."17< /sup> 

The inquiry into the global context is indeed justified,
but what we have to examine is whether the placing of the
subcontinental substory within a general frame of a bigger
global story really changes the assessment that we
can reasonably make of what i s going on in India and
Pakistan. In particular, to argue that their nuclear policies
are deeply mistaken does not require us to dismiss the
widespread resentment in the subcontinent of the
smugness of the dominant global order. These complaints,
even if entirely justified and extremely momentous, do
not establish the sagacity of a nuclear policy that
dramatically increases uncertainties within the subcontinent
without achieving anything to make each country more
secure. Indeed, Bangladesh is now probab ly the safest
country in the subcontinent to live in. 

Moral Resentment and Prudential Blunder 

There are, I think, two distinct issues, which need to be
carefully separated. First, the world nuclear order is
extremely unbalanced and there are excellent reasons to
complain about the military policies of the major powers,
particularly the five that have a monopoly over official
nuclear status as well as over permanent membership in
the Security Council of the United Nations. The second
issue concerns the choices that other countries - other
than the Big Five - face, and this has to be proper ly
scrutinised, rather than being hijacked by resentment of the
oligopoly of the power to terrorise. The fact that other
countries, including India and Pakistan, have ground
enough for grumbling about the nature of the world order,
sponsored and supporte d by the established nuclear
powers without any serious commitment to denuclearisation,
does not give them any reason to pursue a nuclear
policy that worsens their own security and adds to the
possibility of a dreadful holocaust. Moral resentment
cannot justify a prudential blunder. 

ANTI-NUCLEAR
PHOTOGRAPHERS MOVEMENT/GAMMA
Victims of the first nuclear attack wait for treatment
at the first-aid
station near the Miyuki-bashi bridge in Hiroshima, about
2 km from the
hypocentre of the explosion, at 11 a.m. on August 6,
1945. The Japanese
city was bombed at 8-15 a.m. the sam e
day. 

I have so far not commented on the economic and social
costs of
nuclearisation and the general problem of allocation of
resources. That
issue is, of course, important, even though it is hard to
find out exactly
what the costs of the nuclear programmes ar e. The
expenses on this are
carefully hidden in both the countries. Even though it is
perhaps easier to
estimate the necessary information in India (given a
greater need for disclosure in the Indian polity), the
estimates are bound to be quite rough. 

Recently, C. Rammanohar Reddy, a distinguished journalist
at the major daily The Hindu, has estimated that the
cost of nuclearisation is something around half a
percentage of the gross domestic product per year.18 This
might not sound l ike much, but it is large enough if we
consider the alternative uses of these resources. For
example, it has been estimated that the additional costs
of providing elementary education for every child with
neighbourhood schools at every location in the co untry
would cost roughly the same amount of money.19 The
proportion of illiteracy in the Indian adult population is
still about 40 per cent, and it is about 55 per cent in
Pakistan. Furthermore, there are other costs and losses as
well, such a s the deflection of India's scientific talents
to military-related research away from more productive
lines of research, and also from actual economic
production. The prevalence of secretive military
activities also restrains open discussions in Parliame nt and
tends to subvert traditions of democracy and free speech. 

However, ultimately the argument against nuclearisation is
not primarily an economic one. It is rather the
increased insecurity of human lives that constitutes the
biggest penalty of the subcontinental nuclear
adventures. That issue needs further scrutin y. 

Does Nuclear Deterrence Work? 

What of the argument that nuclear deterrence makes war
between India and Pakistan less likely? Why would not
the allegedly proven ability of nuclear balance, which is
supposed to have kept peace in the world, be effective
also in the subcontinent? I beli eve that this question
can be answered from four different perspectives. 

First, even if it were the case that the nuclearisation of
India and Pakistan reduces the probability of war between
the two, there would be a trade-off here between a lower
chance of conventional war against some chance of a
nuclear holocaust. No sensib le decision-making can
concentrate only on the probability of war without taking
note of the size of the penalties of war should it occur.
Indeed, any significant probability of the scenario
captured by Arundhati Roy's description of "the end of
imaginat ion" can hardly fail to outweigh the greater
probability, if any, of the comparatively milder penalties
of conventional war. 

Second, there is nothing to indicate that the likelihood
of conventional war is, in fact, reduced by the
nuclearisation of India and Pakistan. Indeed, hot on the
heels of the nuclear blasts, the two countries did
undergo a major military confrontation in the Kargil
district in Kashmir. The Kargil conflict, which occurred within
a year of the nuclear blasts of India and Pakistan, was in
fact the first military conflict between the two in nearly
30 years. Many Indian commentators have argued that the
conf rontation, which was provoked by separatist
guerillas coming across the Line of Control from Pakistan
(in their view, joined by Army regulars), was helped by
Pakistan's understanding that India would not be able to
use its massive superiority in conventi onal forces to
launch a bigger war in retaliation, precisely because it
would fear a nuclear holocaust. Whether or not this
analysis is right, there is clearly substance in the
general reasoning that the enemy's fear of nuclear annihilation
can be an arg ument in favour of military adventurism
without expectation of a fuller retaliation from the enemy.
Be that as it may, the proof of the pudding is in the
eating, and no matter what the explanation, nuclearisation
evidently has not prevented non-nuclear c onflicts between
India and Pakistan. 

Third, the danger of accidental nuclear war is much
greater in the subcontinent than it was in the Cold War itself.
This is not only because the checks and controls are much
looser, but also because the distances involved are
so small between India and P akistan - that there is
little time for any conversation when a crisis might occur and
a first strike were feared. Also, the much-discussed hold
of fundamentalist jehadists within the Pakistan military
and the absence of democratic control add to the fear of a
sudden flashpoint. 

Fourth, there is a need also to assess whether the peace
that the world enjoyed with nuclear deterrence during
the global Cold War was, in fact, predictable and causally
robust. The argument for the balance of terror has
been clear enough for a long time , and was most
eloquently put by Winston Churchill in his last speech to the
House of Commons on March 1, 1955. His ringing words on
this ("safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and
survival the twin brother of annihilation") has a
mesmerising effec t, but Churchill himself did make exceptions to
his rule, when he said that the logic of deterrence "does
not cover the case of lunatics or dictators in the mood of
Hitler when he found himself in his final dug-out".20 

Dictators are not unknown in the world (even in the
subcontinent), and at least part-lunatics can be found with
some frequency in both the countries, judging by what some
eloquent commentators seem to be able to write on
the nuclear issue itself. But per haps more importantly,
we have reason to note that risks have been taken also by
people with impeccable credentials on sanity and lucidity.
To give just one example (a rather prominent one), in
choosing the path of confrontation in what has come to be
ca lled the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy
evidently took some significant risks of annihilation on
behalf of humanity. Indeed, Theodore C. Sorenson,
Special Counsel to President Kennedy, put the facts thus
(in a generally admiring passage): 

THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
Rabindranath Tagore. His warning
against the dangers of alleged
strength through more and bigger
weapons related to the need for
ethically scrutinising the
functions of these weapons and the exact uses
to which they are to be put as
well as the practi cal importance of the
reactions and counteractions of
others. 

John Kennedy never lost sight of
what either war or surrender would do
to the whole human race. His
U.N. Mission was preparing for a negotiated
peace and his Joint Chiefs of
Staff were preparing for war, and he
intended to keep both on
rein.... He could not afford to be hasty or
hesitant, reckless or afraid. The odds that the Soviets
would go all the way to war, he later said, seemed to him
then "somewhere between one out of three and even."21 

Well, a chance of annihilation between one-third and
one-half is not an easy decision to be taken on behalf of
the human race. 

I think we have to recognise that the peace of nuclear
confrontation in the Cold War partly resulted from luck,
and may not have been pre-ordained. To take post hoc to be
propter hoc is a luxury that can be quite costly for
charting out future policies i n nuclear - or indeed any
other - field. We have to take account not only of the fact
that circumstances are rather different in the
subcontinent compared with what obtained during the nuclear
confrontation in the global Cold War, but also the world
was actually rather fortunate to escape annihilation
even in the Cold War itself. And the dangers of
extermination did not come only from lunatics or dictators. 

So, to conclude this section, the nuclearisation of the
subcontinental confrontations need not reduce the risk of
war (either in theory or in practice), and it escalates
the penalty of war in a dramatic way. The unjust nature of
world military balance do es not change this crucial
prudential recognition. 

Were the Indian Government's Goals Well Served? 

I come now to a question of rather limited interest, but
which is asked often enough, addressed particularly to
India. Even if it is accepted that the subcontinent is
less secure as a result of the tit-for-tat nuclear tests, it could
be the case that Ind ia's own self-interest has been well
served by the BJP-led government's nuclear policy. India
has reason to grumble, it is argued, for not being taken
as seriously as one of the largest countries in the world
should be. There is unhappiness also in the a ttempt by
some countries, certainly the United States in the past,
to achieve some kind of a "balance" between India and
Pakistan, whereas India is nearly seven times as large as
Pakistan and must not be taken to be at par with it.
Rather the comparison should be with China, and for this -
along with other causes such as getting India a permanent
seat in the Security Council - India's nuclear might
could be expected to make a contribution. The subcontinent
may be less secure as a result of the nuclear d
evelopments, but, it is argued, India did get some
benefit. How sound is this line of argument? 

I have some difficulty in pursuing this exercise. Even
though I am a citizen of India, I don't really think I can
legitimately inquire only into the advantages that India
alone may have received from a certain policy, excluding
the interests of others wh ose interests were also
affected. However, it is possible to scrutinise the effects of a
certain policy in terms of the given goals of the Indian
government (including strategic advantages over Pakistan
as well as enhancement of India's international sta
nding), and ask the rather coldly "scientific" question whether
those goals have been well served by India's recent
nuclear policy. We do not have to endorse these goals to
examine whether they have actually been better promoted. 

There are good reasons to doubt that these goals have
indeed been better served by the sequence of events at
Pokhran and Chagai. First, India had - and has - massive
superiority over Pakistan in conventional military
strength. That strategic advantage ha s become far less
significant as a result of the new nuclear balance. Indeed,
since Pakistan has explicitly refused to accept a "no
first use" agreement, India's ability to count on conventional
superiority is now, to a great extent, less effective
(alon g with increasing the level of insecurity in both
countries). 

In the Kargil confrontation, India could not even make use
of its ability to cross into the Pakistani administered
Kashmir to attack the intruders from the rear, which
military tacticians seem to think would have made much more
sense than trying to encou nter the intruders by climbing
steeply up a high mountain from the Indian side to
battle the occupants at the top. This not only made the
Indian response less effective and rapid, it also led to
more loss of Indian soldiers (1,300 lives according to the
Government of India's estimate and 1,750 according to
Pakistan's estimate) and added greatly to the expenses of
the war conducted from an unfavoured position ($2.5
billion in direct expenses).22 With the danger of a
nuclear outburst, the India n government's decision not to
countercross the Line of Control in retaliation was
clearly right, but it had no real option in this respect, given the
strategic bind which it had itself helped to create. 

Second, the fact that India can make nuclear weapons was
well established before the present tit-for-tat nuclear
tests were conducted. Pokhran-I in 1974 had already
established the point, even though the Indian official
statements tried to play down the military uses of that
blast a quarter of a century ago. After the recent set of
tests, India's and Pakistan's position seem to be much
more even, at least in international public perception. As it
happens, Pakistan was quite modest in its response. I rem
ember thinking in the middle of May 1998, following
the Indian tests, that surely Pakistan would now blast a
larger number of bombs than India's five. I was agreeably
impressed by Pakistan's moderation in blasting only six,
which is the smallest whole nu mber larger than five. The
Government of India may deeply dislike any perception of
parity with Pakistan, but did its best, in effect, to alter a
situation of acknowledged asymmetry into one of perceived
parity. 

Third, aside from perceptions, in terms of the scientific
requirement for testing, Pakistan clearly had a greater case
for testing, never having conducted a nuclear test before
1998. This contrasted with India's experience of
Pokhran-I in 1974. Also, wit h a much smaller community of
nuclear scientists and a less extensive development
of the possibilities of computerised simulation, the
scientific need for an actual test may be much greater in
Pakistan than in India. While Pakistan was concerned about
th e condemnation of the world community by
testing on its own, the Indian blasts in May 1998 created
a situation in which Pakistan could go in that direction
without being blamed for starting any nuclear adventure.
Eric Arnett puts the issue thus: 

"In contrast to its Indian counterparts, Pakistan's
political elite is less abashed about the need for nuclear
deterrence. Military fears that the Pakistani nuclear
capability was not taken seriously in India combined with a
feeling of growing military i nferiority after being
abandoned by the USA after the cold war create an imperative
to test that was resisted before May 1998 only because of
the threat of sanctions. The Indian tests created a
situation in which the Pakistani leadership saw an even
grea ter need to test and a possible opening to justify the
test as a response that was both politically and
strategically understandable."23 

The thesis, often articulated by India's pro-nuclear
lobby, that India was in greater danger of a first strike from
Pakistan before the summer of 1998 lacks scientific as
well as political credibility. 

Fourth, nor was there much success in getting recognition
for India as being in the same league as China, or for
its grumble that inadequate attention is internationally
paid to the dangers India is supposed to face from China.
Spokesmen of the Indian go vernment were vocal on these
issues. A week before the Pokhran tests in 1998,
Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes said in a
much-quoted television interview, "China is potential threat
number one....The potential threat from China is greater
than th at from Pakistan."24 In between the tests on May
11 and May 13, Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee wrote to
President Clinton to point to China as being related to
the motivation for the tests. This letter, which was
published in The New York T imes (after being leaked) on May
13, did not name China, but referred to it in very
explicit terms: 

We have an overt nuclear weapon state on our borders, a
state which committed armed aggression against India
in 1962. Although our relations with that country have
improved in the last decade or so, an atmosphere of
distrust persists mainly due to the un resolved border
problem. To add to the distrust that country has materially
helped another neighbour of ours to become a covert
nuclear weapons state.25 

However, as a result of the tit-for-tat nuclear tests by
India and Pakistan, China could stand well above India's
little grumbles, gently admonishing it for its criticism
of China, and placing itself in the position of being a
subcontinental peace-maker. When President Clinton visited
China in June 1998, China and the United States
released a joint statement declaring that the two
countries would cooperate in non-proliferation efforts in the
subcontinent. 

Mark Frazier's assessment of the gap between Government of
India's attempts and its achievement in this field
captures the essence of this policy failure. 

Had it been India's intention to alert the world to its
security concerns about China as a dangerous rising power,
the tests managed to do just the opposite - they gave the
Chinese officials the opportunity to present China as a
cooperative member of the international community seeking
to curb nuclear weapons proliferation. Far from
looking like a revisionist state, China played the role of
a status quo power, and a rather assertive one at that.26 

Fifth, nor did the blasts advance the cause of India's
putative elevation to a permanent membership of the
Security Council. If a country could blast its way into
the Security Council, this would give an incentive to other
countries to do the same. Furth ermore, the new parity
established between India and Pakistan after Pokhran-II
and Chagai Hills also militates against the plausibility
of that route to permanency in the Security Council, and
this too could have been well predicted. I personally
don't s ee why it is so important for India to be permanently
on the Security Council (it may be in the interest of
others for this to happen, given India's size and growing
economic strength, but that is a different issue
altogether). However, for the Governmen t of India which clearly
attaches importance to this possibility, it would surely
have been wiser to emphasise its restraint in not
developing nuclear weapons despite its proven ability to
do so since 1974, and also use the pre-1998 asymmetry
with Pakist an, in contrast with the symmetry that
developed - following the Indian Government's own initiative -
after Pokhran-II and Chagai. 

One of the interesting sidelights that emerge from a
scrutiny of Indian official perceptions is the extent to which
the government underestimates India's importance as a
major country, a democratic polity, a rich multireligious
civilisation, with a well- established tradition in
science and technology (including the cutting edge of
information technology), and with a fast-growing economy
that could grow, with a little effort, even faster. The
overestimation of the persuasive power of the bomb goes
with a n underestimation of the political, cultural,
scientific and economic strengths of the country. There
may be pleasure in the official circles at the success of
President Clinton's visit to India and the asymmetrically
favoured treatment it got in that vi sit vis-a-vis Pakistan,
but the tendency to attribute that asymmetry to Indian
nuclear adventure, rather than to India's large size,
democratic politics, and its growing economy and
technology is difficult to understand. 

On Separating the Issues 

To conclude, it is extremely important to distinguish the
two distinct problems, both of which have a bearing on
subcontinental nuclear policies. First, the world order on
weapons needs a change and in particular requires an
effective and rapid disarmame nt, particularly in the
nuclear arsenal. Second, the nuclear adventures of India and
Pakistan cannot be justified on the ground of the
unjustness of the world order, since the people whose lives are
made insecure as a result of these adventures are prima
rily the residents of the subcontinent themselves.
Resenting the obtuseness of others is not a good ground
for shooting oneself in the foot. 

This does not, of course, imply that India or Pakistan has
reason to feel happy about the international balance of
power that the world establishment seems keen on
maintaining, with or without further developments, such as an
attempted "nuclear shield" f or the United States. Indeed,
it must also be said that there is an inadequate
appreciation in the West of the extent to which the role
of the Big Five arouses suspicion and resentment in the
Third World, including the subcontinent. This applies not
only to the monopoly over nuclear armament, but also,
on the other side, to the "pushing" of conventional,
non-nuclear armaments in the world market for weapons. 

For example, as the Human Development Report 1994,
prepared under the leadership of that visionary Pakistani
economist Mahbub ul Haq, pointed out, not only were the
top five arms-exporting countries in the world
precisely the five permanent member s of the Security
Council of the United Nations, but also they were,
together, responsible for 86 per cent of all the
conventional weapons exported during 1988-92.27 Not surprisingly,
the Security Council has not been able to take any serious
initiative that would really restrain the merchants of
death. It is not hard to understand the scepticism in
India and Pakistan - and elsewhere - about the responsibility
and leadership of the established nuclear powers. 

As far as India is concerned, the two policies - of
nuclear abstinence and demanding a change of world order -
can be pursued simultaneously. Nuclear restraint
strengthens rather than weakens India's voice. To demand that
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treat y be redefined to include
a dated programme of denuclearisation may well be
among the discussable alternatives. But making nuclear
bombs, not to mention deploying them, and spending
scarce resource on missiles and what is euphemistically
called "delivery ", can hardly be seen as sensible policy.
The claim that subcontinental nuclearisation would somehow
help to bring about world nuclear disarmament is a
wild dream that can only precede a nightmare. The moral
folly in these policies is substantial, but wh at is also
clear and decisive is the prudential mistake that has been
committed. The moral and the prudential are, in fact,
rather close in a world of interrelated interactions, for
reasons that Rabindranath Tagore had discussed nearly a
hundred years ag o. 

M. LAKSHMANAN
Finally, on a more specific point, no country has as
much stake as India in having a
prosperous and civilian democracy in Pakistan. Even
though the Nawaz Sharif
government was clearly corrupt in specific ways, India
had no particular advantage in
undermi ning civilian rule in Pakistan, to be replaced by
activist military leaders. Also,
the encouragement of across-border terrorism, which
India accuses Pakistan of, is
likely to be dampened rather than encouraged by
Pakistan's economic prosperity and
civili an politics. It is particularly important
in this context to point to the
dangerousness of the argument, often heard in India,
that the burden of public
expenditure would be more unbearable for Pakistan,
given its smaller size and
relatively stagnant eco nomy, than it is for India.
This may well be the case, but the
penalty that can visit India from an impoverished and
desperate Pakistan in the
present situation of increased insecurity is hard to
contemplate. Enhancement of
Pakistan's stability and well- being has prudential
importance for India, in addition to
its obvious ethical significance. That central
connection - between the moral and the

prudential - is important to seize. 

(c) Amartya Sen, 2000 

Amartya Sen is Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and
Lamont University Professor Emeritus at Harvard
University. 
The text of the first Dorothy Hodgkin
Lecture at the Annual Pugwash
Conference In Cambridge, United Kingdom,
on August 8, 2000.