Nehru prevented N-bomb in sixties

Nehru prevented N-bomb in sixties
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

NEW DELHI, MARCH 4: Ten years into independence, Indian scientists could have produced a nuclear bomb, had it not been for the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who had the nation-building higher on his priority list than bomb-making, says a recent book.

Nehru's reticence to a bomb was in keeping with his policy of working for total and complete global disarmament, writes the late T N Kaul in his collection of essays, India And The New World Order.

The Partial Test Ban Treaty had been a disarmingly partial success. China did not sign it and exploded its first devise next year, in 1964. India could have done so but it had signed the treaty.

``We waited till 1974 when we tested our first nuclear explosion underground Pokharan'', writes the former envoy to Washington and Moscow.

Kaul writes he had insisted in some of his communications to the late Indira Gandhi that India should go nuclear but was told that India's economic standing was far too weak to take the retaliatory sanctions of the West.

India's nuclear sojourn was still quarter of a century away. And Pokharan-II in 1998, when the bomb arrived to be there, saw India militarily and economically much stronger but also with expanded perception of security threat.

Supporting the bomb, Kaul writes, ``We shall have to depend on our own resources to show the West that India is not a country that will bow down to its pressure and threat - a visionary argument that proved itself in the course of events.''

If the 21st is going to be an Asian century, it is because of the continent's emerging significance in the post-Cold War order of World politics.

``India and China present an interesting example of the possibilities of bringing about a New World Order, especially in Asia and the Asia-Pacific region, in cooperation with other countries such as US, Russia and Japan,'' Kaul observes.

Asia itself is a bewildering maze of conflicting interests and past obsession like India-China relations, India-Pakistan relations, Sino-Russian relations, Sino-US conflict of interests and mutual suspicions between China and Japan.

Kaul suggests in his book that a resurgent Asia in a new world order is possible if Sino-Indian and Sino-US relations are normalised and confidence established. Equally important will be US efforts at reformulating their perception of India in place of a habitual, and often a not-so-reasoned, repulsion to India.

It should not be lost sight of that Kaul's scheme of things have been growingly reflecting on the obtaining trend of events.

For the student of the future times, the vagaries of Indo-US relations will read, for a long time, an example of how kindred societies could be detestful of each other.

The new trend, post-Pokharan and post-sanctions, point to a new route and it is possible that a proper US understanding of India and its potentials could bring the two closer for larger benefits of peace and prosperity.