[Reuters]

Published date: 12th May 1998

12 May 1998

Reuters News

English

(c) 1998 Reuters Limited

NEW DELHI, May 12 (Reuters) – India was engulfed by waves of international anger and revulsion on Tuesday, but its leaders dug in their heels and appeared ready to pay the price for audaciously stepping over the nuclear threshold.

Monday’s stunning trio of underground nuclear tests came in a tumultuous 50th year of independence for a nation quick to preach Gandhian peace and non-alignment and now suddenly cast in the role of a global pariah.

Analysts said Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who was described by a senior colleague earlier this week as appearing to be weak and indecisive, had struck a blow for his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

The “why now” question gnawed at a world caught by surprise by the tests, but the BJP’s election plank spelt it out: “A nation as large and capable as ourselves must make its impact felt on the world arena.”

A senior government official told Reuters the nuclear option was the one clause in the BJP’s election manifesto that did not call for consultation with any of Vajpayee’s fractious allies on grounds of national security.

“The gun was primed and ready,” the official said, “The BJP only had to pull the trigger – and the sooner the better.”

Vajpayee’s predecessor Inder Kumar Gujral said as much, saying in an interview with Reuters Television that he had been aware of, and approved, preparations for nuclear tests after scientists perfected computer simulations.

Indeed, the BJP’s national security goals have survived, and been burnished even in the “National Agenda” hammered out with its coalition partners, while its more divisive Hindutva or Hindu-ness cultural goals have been quietly jettisoned.

Analysts said Monday’s tests, which ended 24 years of protestations that its nuclear programme was a peaceful one after the May 1974 blast, seemed designed to enable India to sup at the same table as the world’s five biggest nuclear powers.

“Let the world know of India’s capability and that we are in a position right now to become a nuclear weapons state any time,” Science and Technology Minister Murli Manohar Joshi said.

By stopping just short of being called a nuclear weapons nation, the senior government official said, India now had a powerful bargaining tool in global disarmament negotiations.

Following in the footsteps of France and China, the official said, India could agree to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty – but not “in a vacuum” as a government statement said on Monday. New Delhi would demand that Pakistan, too, follow suit.

Despite Pakistan’s vigorous sabre-rattling since India’s Monday announcement, New Delhi appeared to be moving away from a half-century-old fixation on its neighbour as arch-foe.

Gujral said that “India’s security cannot be and need not be Pakistan-centric” and argued that nuclear deterrence would, in effect, eliminate the need for war on the troubled sub-continent.

Krishna Chandra Pant, who heads a task force that will prepare the ground for a National Security Council, echoed Gujral but took his view a step further, saying the tests were not even meant to counter a perceived threat from China.

“I don’t think it is a question of parity. I think one of the approaches is to develop a deterrent,” Pant said, adding: “An option which is kept open (forever) is no option.”

Pant was referring to successive Indian governments’ pledges since the only other nuclear test in 1974 that they would keep open the option to test and build nuclear arms.

Indian scientists were confident New Delhi would ride out any sanctions, which the government official said had been carefully evaluated and were expected to be “minimal, not vigorous”,

Nuclear sanctions imposed after India’s 1974 underground blast did not deter the country from pursuing an Indigenous nuclear-energy programme.

Space technology sanctions slapped on by the United States after a 1991 cryogenic engine deal with Russia only spurred greater efforts in India’s home-grown space programme, and a similar clampdown on supercomputer sales led to the development of “Param”, a locally manufactured version.

Satish Dhawan, a member of India’s Space Commission and a nuclear scientist, put it succinctly when asked how Indians would react to economic sanctions.

“They will stop drinking Coke and Pepsi,” he said. ((New Delhi Newsroom +91-11-301-2024 Fax +91-11-301- 4043, delhi.newsroom@reuters.com)).