Author: Inder Malhotra
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: May 15, 2009
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/when-the-buddha-first-smiled/459656/0
Introduction: The story behind Indira Gandhi's
Pokhran- I decision
BY the start of May 1974, India was in the
grip of a scorching summer of discontent though worse was to follow a year
hence. The afterglow of Indira Gandhi's tremendous triumph in the 1971 general
election and the country's brilliant victory in the Bangladesh war the same
year had vanished. Monsoons had failed again. The economy was in a shambles.
However, it was the corruption and arrogance of her inner circle that had
fed popular anger. Gujarat's Nav Nirman, followed by the more formidable J.P.
movement (so named after its sponsor, the highly respected Gandhian, Jayaprakash
Narayan), was climaxed by a nationwide railway strike with the avowed objective
- in the words of its leader, maverick Socialist George Fernandes - of "starving
the country". Indira Gandhi decided to crush it ruthlessly.
It was in this sombre atmosphere that in the
city of Bombay (now Mumbai) on May 18 something startling happened. A huge,
restive crowd at a bus stop, vainly waiting for transport of any kind, suddenly
burst into cheers. News had just come in that India had conducted an underground
nuclear test that morning at a place called Pokhran in distant Rajasthan.
This reaction was symptomatic of the ecstatic welcome most Indians gave their
country's entry into the Nuclear Club.
The sensational news was a complete surprise
to everyone, including the peeved nuclear powers that had failed to detect
the underground explosion. India insisted that the event at Pokhran was a
peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE) - both the United States and the Soviet Union
had been conducting several of these - although there is no difference in
the PNE technology and that for exploding a nuclear weapon.
Two separate and interconnected reasons led
to Indira Gandhi's resolve to conduct the test although its roots really went
back to her father, Jawaharlal Nehru's time. It is difficult to think of another
person so thoroughly opposed to nuclear weapons as he. Yet all through his
life - since 1946 indeed - he also held steadfastly to the policy that India
must develop the technology to build these weapons, should the need arise,
especially if others refused to abjure them. (With the solitary exception
of Morarji Desai in 1977, all Nehru's successors have broadly shared this
approach.).
Against this backdrop, the first reason for
Pokhran-I burst into the open within five months of Nehru's death. On October
16, 1964 China's first nuclear bomb went up at Lop Nor. Coincidentally, Nikita
Khrushchev, who had denied China a nuclear weapon design, went down in Moscow
on the same day. In New Delhi, K. Subrahmanyam, the country's premier security
analyst, then a deputy secretary in the defence ministry, sent a top-secret
note to the defence secretary suggesting that a committee, headed by the legendary
Homi Bhabha, should devise India's response to the Chinese challenge. In the
ministry of external affairs, K. R. Narayanan, then director, China (later
President) also advised the government to "exercise the nuclear option".
If a personal note is permissible, a week ahead of them, in The Statesman
(October 9) I had pleaded for an Indian nuclear weapons programme because
the "mushroom cloud was about to appear on the Himalayas."
For his part, Bhabha made no secret of his
conviction that India could produce a nuclear bomb in 18 months at no more
than Rs. 30 lakhs each. Nehru's successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri, and other
political leaders were not yet prepared to go that far even though pressure
within the Congress party to go nuclear was on the increase. K. C. Pant, later
defence minister, and Krishan Kant, later vice-president, were principal advocates
of nuclear weapons.
What Shastri did authorise, however, was a
Subterranean Nuclear Exploration Project (SNEP). It did not make headway because
of deaths in quick succession of both Shastri and Bhabha. Like Shastri, Indira
Gandhi also wasted some time in the meaningless search for a "nuclear
security umbrella" by the two superpowers.
Profound foreign policy and security developments
during 1971 - Henry Kissinger's secret visit to China and his subsequent warning
that in case China became involved in the crisis in Bangladesh, India should
not expect American support; the signing of the Indo-Soviet treaty Indira
Gandhi wasn't enthusiastic about until then; and above all, America's dispatch
of the Enterprise-led nuclear task force to the Bay of Bengal during the Bangladesh
War - became the second and clinching reason for taking the plunge. Indira
Gandhi's numerous critics have roundly blamed her for conducting the test
for purely political reasons. Nothing cam be farther from the truth. At the
time of Pokhran-I she was doubtless beleaguered. But she had authorised the
test in September 1972 when her popularity was at its peak.
As the news of detonation spread, in distant
Washington, Denis Kux, officer in change of the India desk at the state department,
prepared a scathing draft criticising the "Indian test". But Kissinger,
then in the Middle East, toned it down, arguing that the Indian explosion
was an "accomplished fact" and "public scolding" would
only "add to US-India bilateral problems". However, this did not
prevent the US from imposing the harshest sanctions on this country.
Details of the long and secret decision-making
process cannot be discussed in available space. But a crucial meeting just
before the PNE deserves a mention. The issue was whether to go ahead and "push
the button". According to an account by Raja Ramanna, the mastermind
of the venture, two of Indira Gandhi's top advisers, P. N. Haksar and P. N.
Dhar, were opposed to it, and wanted it postponed. Homi Sethna, chairman of
the Atomic Energy Commission, offered no opinion. D. Nag Chaudhuri, Scientific
Adviser to the Defence Minister started weighing pros and cons but was cut
short by the prime minister. "Dr. Ramanna," she said. turning to
him, "please go ahead. It would be good for the country". The next
morning "the Buddha smiled".
Her critics have a point when they say that,
faced with furious international reaction, especially from the US and Canada
(the latter had provided the Cirus reactor at Trombay), she "developed
cold feet" and did not follow up on Pokhran-I. Consequently, there was
a gap of 24 years between Pokhran-I and Pokhran-II. But that's a different
story.
- The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator
