[sacw] India's National Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace

[Harsh Kapoor]

FYI
(South Asians Against Nukes)
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The "National Convention for Nuclear Disarmament and
Peace", which was held in Delhi, the Indian capital,
from 11th to 13th November brought into being a
"National Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and
Peace".

About 600 delegates registered for the convention.
Apart from India, about 50 solidarity delegates,
composed of both men and women, came from Pakistan.
Six came from Bangladesh, at least two from Sri Lanka.
Delegates came in good numbers also from outside South
Asia from various corners of the globe including
Malayasia, New Zealand, Australia, UK, USA, Canada,
Netherlands, France.

The convention declared at the end of detailed,
informed and spirited discussions that "India's
self-declared entry into the nuclear weapons club in
May 1998 .... is ethically reprehensible, socially,
politically and economically ruinous, and deserves
unequivocal condemnation."
The demand and struggle to halt and roll back India's
nuclear weapons-related preparations was recognised as
the primary basis of the national coalition.
Demands were made that Pakistan, Israel and all the
N-5 countries (USA, Russia, China, Britain, France)
must also move ahead towards the creation of a nuclear
weapons-free world.

A separate resolution was passed strongly condemning
American move for initiating National Missile Defence
(NMD) and Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) systems. It
was noted that such moves are not only totally
uncalled for but also likely to seriously upset and
reverse the global efforts to move towards universal
nuclear disarmament. The government of India was urged
to take up the issue at the highest level with the US
administration.

The high point of the convention was the realisation
that the peace activists all over South Asia, across
the territorial boundaries, share the the same spirit,
concern, values and enthusiasm, faced with the same
set of state-sponsored hurdles.

Reproduced below is an editorial piece carried by The
Times of India on Thursday, 23 11 00. Despite
deliberate distortions, it is noted with some
satisfaction, that the premier Indian daily had to
take note of the event, even though after a
considerable time lag.

http://www.timesofindia.com/today/23edit2.htm

Peace by Piece

All democratic nuclear powers must, by definition,
necessarily have an anti-nuclear peace movement. In
India, our political class as a whole has so far been
as indifferent to national security as to
international peace. As such, it is very salutary that
a National Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament has been
set up in the country after a three-day national
convention. As in similar organisations elsewhere in
the world, a former chief of staff is to head it. And
yet, experience shows that while any number of retired
chiefs of staff and former defence secretaries
willingly enlist themselves in the anti-nuclear cause,
no serving chief of staff, defence minister or prime
minister would publicly renounce nuclear weapons. It
might be a worthwhile task for the anti-nuclear peace
movement to study why the logic of nuclear futility so
evident to those who have retired, makes no sense to
those in office. These days anti-nuclear peace
movements in the West have lost much of their momentum
and therefore the push given by the Indian organisers
is to be welcomed. Indeed, one among the foreign
participants congratulated the Indian organisers for
initiating an exchange of views on nuclear
disarmament. Even the Green Party in Germany has been
forced to go along with NATO's nuclear doctrine which
envisages first use of nuclear weapons. Peace
movements in the West did not protest too much when
nuclear weapons were legitimised through the
indefinite and unconditional extension of the
non-proliferation treaty. The fervour that marked the
movements when the Pershing II and SS-21 missiles were
to be installed is hardly to be seen in the post-Cold
War era.

The convention urged the Big Five immediately to
de-alert their nuclear weapons systems, pledge
no-first-use, stop further research into advanced
nuclear weapons and proceed systematically and
continuously to reduce their arsenal to zero level
through unilateral, bilateral and multilateral
commitments and pacts. This is what the Indian
government, many other non-aligned countries, and of
late even some of the allies of the nuclear weapon
powers have been demanding without success. It is to
be hoped that in future conventions there would be
some objective analysis of why the pleas of all these
governments over all these years have not succeeded.
The convention appears to have recommended one agenda
for India and another for the five nuclear weapon
powers on the assumption that India and Pakistan have
not weaponised. Evidently, they have not chosen to
take note of the writings in Pakistan which imply that
weaponisation there started as far back as 1987 and
1990. Over the long history of western peace
movements, it has been clear that no government is
willing to risk unilateral nuclear disarmament - that
too without verification. Nuclear peace of sorts came
to Europe with the acceptance of the territorial
status quo following World War II in the Helsinki
process. The Indian and Pakistani peace movements may
find it useful to borrow that lesson. The search for
peace and nuclear disarmament is a long and arduous
journey that humanity cannot afford to give up. Peace
researchers all over the world are in a learning
process.