People who live in glass houses should not be throwing stones. Sections of our political class that are kicking up dust over the visit of the US nuclear powered aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, may not see the irony of it all. Outsiders looking in, however, ask, “Is India a nuclear weapon power or what?”

There was a time when the Indian government was part of that charming but self-righteous club of small states like Sweden, New Zealand and Ireland campaigning for many a lost cause. We would go before the International Court of Justice and insist that nuclear weapons must be declared “illegal”. Whatever that meant.

We prided ourselves on saying no to port calls from the naval vessels of the great powers. Although our activism had no impact on the real world, our diplomats were happy to win the disarmament beauty contests in Geneva. Our security establishment and our anti-nuclear activists seemed to be on the same page; both felt good about saying the honourable thing about disarmament.

One would have thought our atomic innocence ended when New Delhi defied the world and declared itself a nuclear weapon power in May 1998. While the Indian government is learning to forget some of the old propaganda, the word has not filtered down to the CPM, the Telugu Desam, the AIADMK and many other political parties.

Put simply, the outrage of these parties at the visit of the USS Nimitz can partly be attributed to an enduring national trait — nuclear hypocrisy. If the protesters are seriously opposed to nuclear weapons they should be asking the Indian government to undertake unilateral disarmament. (At least that is what the British movement for disarmament does. Try and practise what you preach to others.) If our anti-nuclear activists are concerned about nuclear powered warships, they should be pressuring New Delhi to scrap the plans to develop an atomic powered submarine.

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