Nuclear Option: The Indian Dilemma

V. K. NARASIMHAN
Deputy Editor, “The Hindu”, Madras

During the early months of this year the Indian Government conducted one of the most unusual and extensive diplomatic exercises it had ever undertaken since India became free. That this was done to determine India’s final position on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty shows the tremendous importance attached by India to the containment–and the ultimate elimination–of the nuclear menace.

Apart from other aspects of the treaty, two major issues which have worried India are: one, a guarantee from the nuclear super powers, Russia and the U. S. A., of protection in the event of a nuclear attack or threat from Communist China, who will included in the Nuclear Club; two, complete freedom to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes without discriminatory limitations.

There has been, ever since China set off her first atomic explosion in October 1964, a continuing debate in India whether we should develop our own independent nuclear deterrent or not. Pandit Nehru was committed, for humanitarian and other reasons, to the abjuring of nuclear weapons by India, but at that time China had not entered the nuclear race. The late Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, confronted with the Chinese threat, had to redefine India’s attitude to nuclear armament. With increasing pressure, particularly from the militant anti-Pakistan Jan Sangh party, Lal Bahadur tried to find a way out of the nuclear dilemma by seeking what he described as a nuclear shield or umbrella to be provided by the nuclear giants if India chose not to manufacture the bomb. British Premier Wilson was responsive to the proposal, but before it could be seriously discussed India was engulfed in the war with Pakistan, and other developments in the country, including the tragic death of Lal Bahadur at Tashkent, drove the issue to the ground.

The draft Russo-American non-proliferation treaty has made the issue of nuclear protection for India a live subject again. If India is to renounce the right to make a nuclear deterrent–as required under the non-proliferation treaty–how is she to be protected from an attack or a threat of attack from China, whose hostility to India has been manifest since 1962? Should a guarantee of automatic intervention by the nuclear superpowers be incorporated in the non-proliferation treaty or should it be provided by independent declarations by the two powers? How willing are they to give such guarantees and in what form should these be expressed so that they can be credible in a real emergency? It was to find out the answers to these questions that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sent her special envoy, L. K. Jha, to the capitals of the Big Powers in April. Mr. Jha is said to have got a sympathetic response to India’s case in Moscow, Washington and London. In Moscow, it appears, the Soviet leaders expressed a willingness to issue a declaration of intent to react appropriately in the event of a nuclear threat to India. The Soviet leaders felt that it was more important to prevent such a threat from materialising rather than mete out reprisals.

Whether Washington will fall in with the Soviet view and commit itself to a declaration, jointly or separately, is not clear. From India’s point of view, the precise wording of the declaration is very important. A vague assurance of intervention may not satisfy the Indian Government or its highly vocal critics, who have been considerably reinforced in the new Parliament, who are pleading vigorously for Indian self-reliance in defence and other spheres.

Whether a guarantee from the nuclear giants is forthcoming or not, some military experts in India are raising the question whether any such guarantee will prove effective in the event of an attack from China and, secondly, whether such a guarantee would be compatible with the continued maintenance of India’s non-alignment stance? The latter problem is not an academic question because if any nuclear protective guarantee is to be implemented, can it be done without India giving facilities to either the U. S. or the Soviet Union, or both to operate missiles from Indian bases? One Indian military expert has pointed out that the minimum requirement for making the guarantee effective would be the provision of new airfields, an extension of radar network and communication lines, and improvement of port facilities. India will have to bear the cost of all these. A joint guarantee, he urges will call for a joint strategy and the moment India agrees to this, there will be an end of non-alignment even in the modified form in which India has adhered to it since the Chinese attack.

The conclusion of this expert is that India should not sign the non-proliferation treaty and should go in for “a small nuclear deterrent of her own.”

More may be heard about India’s independent deterrent in the coming months, when the non-proliferation treaty is presented in its final form for signature. The pressure on the Indian Government is likely to increase, while the voices that have hitherto been firmly against India going nuclear may get weaker. Among the latter, the elder statesman, C. Rajagopalachari, has been the foremost. He has been unqualifiedly opposed to India’s manufacturing nuclear weapons for primarily humanitarian reasons. He is not, of course, unconcerned about Indian security, especially against China. His recipe, however, is simple. He wants India to have a clear defensive alliance with the West, led by the U. S. A, which, he feels, is the only barrier to the advancing tide of Communism in Asia.

There are, admittedly, large sections of Indian opinion, which for economic and other reasons, would agree with Rajagopaiachari’s solution and plump for an American alliance. At the moment they are in a minority. For the present Indian Government the shift to such a stand is unthinkable, unless a very real and compelling threat–as in 1962–makes it inevitable and acceptable to the people at large. The predominant Leftist opinion in the country continues to swear by non-alignment. The pro-Soviet group within the ruling Congress party is also a big factor to reckon with.

In the controversy over the choice between a Big Power nuclear guarantee and the development of an independent deterrent, it is doubtful whether so far all the relevant facts have been considered or even made known. First of all, an independent deterrent cannot be considered unless India is in a position technologically to make the bomb and economically afford the cost.

So far as technological capability is concerned, the remarkable progress made by the Indian Atomic Energy Establishment since 1954, thanks to the vision and dynamic genius of Dr. Homi Bhabha, has brought India within a group of eight or nine countries which are immediately capable of making the bomb within a year or eighteen months from the moment they take the decision. The others in this group are Canada, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Israel and Switzerland. Indian scientists designed and built the first Indian reactor of the swimming pool type in 1956. It was then the first reactor in Asia outside the Soviet Union and was in operation two years before China had its first reactor, designed and built by the Soviet Union. Since then India has built two other reactors–the Canada-India reactor and the Zerlina–and has embarked on the construction of two atomic power stations, one at Tarapur near Bombay (380 M. W. capacity) and the other in Rajasthan (200 M. W.). A third atomic power plant is to be constructed near Madras (400 M. W.). India’s AEC has now got establishments for the extraction of pure uranium metal (completed in 1957), a heavy water plant with a capacity of 14.5 tonnes per annum, a plutonium plant at Trombay, designed and built entirely by Indian engineers and scientists, for reprocessing irradiated uranium rods to extract plutonium and other fissionable materials (commissioned in 1965), an electronics division capable of developing and producing electronic computers, and several technical departments devoted to research on the peaceful uses of atomic energy in the spheres of health and agriculture.

If in spite of its lead in atomic technology over other Asian countries India chose to devote herself entirely to the peaceful uses of the atom, it was because of the deep internationalism of Mr. Nehru and the profound humanism of Dr. Bhabha. Dr. Bhabha realised, as long ago as 1944, before Hiroshima, that India’s future as an industrial nation depended on the development of atomic power. India has the largest reserves of thorium in the world and our long-term atomic power programme is based on the use of thorium in atomic reactors. At the same time the country’s known resources of uranium ore and monazite are being exploited in a big way.

India’s atomic power programme gives it a built-in nuclear capability which lends an edge to the present debate over non-proliferation. It has been estimated that when all the three atomic power plants are commissioned, India will have enough plutonium annually tomake 40-50 bombs. As it is, the plutonium available can enable India to make two bombs a year. If “a small deterrent” is adequate for Indian security against China, it would seem that India has the technical capability to make it.

But the economics of nuclear armament have not been properly examined at all. In October 1964, Dr. Homi Bhabha mentioned in a broadcast that in terms of destructive power atomic explosives could be considerably cheaper than corresponding explosives. He was quoting from an American report on the Engineering applications of Nuclear Explosives. “A 10 kiloton explosive, equivalent to 10,000 ton, of TNT, according to the report, would cost $350,000, while a two megaton explosion would cost $ 600,000 or Rs. 3 million. The cost of 2 million tons of TNT would be Rs. 1,500 million! These figures produced a deceptive impression in India that an atom bomb of the Hiroshima type would cost Rs. 1.7 million. Dr. Bhabha’s intention, however was to suggest that it might not be beyond the capacity of many countries to build up a small stockpile of atom bombs and that because of this possibility it was necessary to strive for non-proliferation and for nuclear disarmament before the widespread possession of nuclear weapons plunged the world into a nuclear holocaust. His broadcast, in fact, concluded with the warning:” The explosion of a nuclear device by China is a signal that there is no time to be lost….The great powers under the aegis of the United Nations may take concrete steps towards nuclear and general disarmament within the next couple of years that they may act more effectively in deterring a spread of nuclear weapons. We have to strengthen the United Nations in order to replace the law of forces by the law of reason in international relations, and so to build a safe and peaceful world.”

Dr. Bhabha’s two-year deadline has been passed and the debate on non-proliferation continues.

For India, with its formidable internal economic problems the inflationary pressures caused by the increase in defence expenditure since 1962, the challenging problems of food shortage and the low standard of living of the population, it would seem to be the height of unwisdom to join in a nuclear armaments race the end of which can only be universal destruction. The Chinese threat is not perhaps so menacing today as it was in 1962or even 1964. One waits to see what will be the outcome of the tremendous internal struggle for power between the Maoists and the anti-Maoists now going on in China. The Sino-Soviet rift has been widening instead of narrowing, as was expected after the exit of Khruschev. The cost of nuclear armament for India will not be limited to the cost of making the bombs but will extend to the outlay on building up a sophisticated delivery system. China’s capacity to practise nuclear blackmail may be greatly exaggerated. In any case, if the Soviet Union and the U.S.A. can offer credible guarantees, India should accept them and strive in concert with other non-nuclear nations for the building up of an effective nuclear shield under the aegis of the U. N.
It looks as if, however, that the Indian objection to the non-proliferation treaty will come not so much from the standpoint of adequate nuclear guarantees, but from the point of view of the freedom that the non-nuclear countries will have to develop atomic energy for peaceful purposes. The clauses of the draft treaty seem to envisage inspection and control over the atomic establishments in the countries outside the Nuclear Club (U. S. A., U.S.S.R., France, Britain and China) for determining whether they are observing the non-proliferation treaty and are not carrying out atomic tests which could be used for developing atomic weapons. Both Germany and Japan, which are well advanced in nuclear technology, have strongly objected to this clause and India also has made clear its opposition to a discriminatory provision aimed against the non-nuclear countries. India’s External Affairs Minister, Mahomed Currimbhoy Chagla, told Indian members of Parliament that India will not agree to any limitation on her right to develop atomic energy for peaceful purposes and will not accept inspection on a discriminatory basis. He condemned the one-sided character of the draft non-proliferation treaty, which placed all kinds of obligations on the non-nuclear countries, while there were no checks on the nuclear powers, either on their stockpiling of weapons or the tests they could carry out. The nuclear powers which wanted a monopoly (or oligopoly) of nuclear weapons could not also ask for a monopoly of nuclear technology. India is expected to propose amendments to the treaty which would remove this discrimination and make the treaty equitable and acceptable to the non-nuclear powers. One thing is clear: India will be in no hurry to sign the non-proliferation treaty. She is concerned about her security and as a country with an acknowledged nuclear capability, she will not denounce the option to make nuclear weapons without sufficient guarantees for her security and safeguards for her right to develop freely atomic technology for peaceful purposes.

The ultimate decision will naturally rest with the Indian Parliament in which considerations of national security as well as national prestige are likely to prevail over even economic considerations.

Parliament will doubtless be guided by the country’s defence and scientific experts. Perhaps the one person whose views may count more than any other’s is Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission, who heads the army of Indian scientists and engineers working in India’s atomic energy establishments. Son of a millionaire businessman of Ahmedabad, a brilliant scientist with an international reputation, 48-year old Vikram Sarabhai is the man on whom the responsibility for making the bomb may fall if India makes the fateful decision. As a member of the Indian AEC, Dr. Sarabhai was closely associated with Dr. Bhabha and kept in close touch with every aspect of India’s atomic energy development. Dr. Sarabbai’s own specialism has been in the field of Cosmic Ray Physics. He has been intimately associated with space research in India as the Chairman of the Indian National Committee for Space Research. He was primarily responsible for the setting up of the Equatorial Rocket-launching Station at Thumba on the Kerala coast He set up the Experimental Satellite Communication Earth Station at Ahmedabad which is the second of its kind in Asia. Dr. Sarabhai has been for many years interested in disarmament problems and has been the convener of the Indian Pugwash Committee.

Whatever the politicians or the Defence Chiefs may feel about the value of an independent nuclear deterrent, the public and Parliament cannot ignore the views of the scientists who will be most intimately involved. It may be relevant here to recall who Dr. Sarabhai said in June last year immediately after he became Chairman of the Indian AEC. Dr. Sarabhai stressed that if India wanted to embark on a nuclear bomb manufacturing programme it should have a big industrial base, particularly the electronic one, which was its principal hardware. To halt the internal economic development of the country, he said, would endanger internal security and this risk had to be reckoned with in assessing the burden of defence expenditure in terms of a nuclear programme. India’s main hope, in his view, lay in developing collective security. That assessment still remains the most realistic appraisal of the choice before India. Parliament would be well advised to listen to Dr. Sarabhai’s views before it takes a final decision on the renunciation or retention of the nuclear option.