Three recent developments — the resurrection of the controversy over the yield of India’s sole hydrogen bomb test in 1998, the reports on the expansion of Pakistan’s atomic arsenal and the renewed apprehension about American pressures on various international arms control treaties — have seen a nervous New Delhi walk the well-trodden nuclear ground all over again. India’s obsession with debating the familiar prevents it from addressing new challenges.

In the late ’50s and early ’60s, when China was racing to become a nuclear weapon power, India devoted its energies to promoting global nuclear peace. One would have thought the border conflict with China in 1962 and China’s first nuclear test in October 1964 would have cured India of its nuclear non-sequiturs.

Instead, India embarked on a diplomatic campaign for a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. When India did respond finally in 1974 with a nuclear test of its own, it chose to call it a “peaceful” device and did nothing to launch a nuclear weapons programme.

Having broken up Pakistan in 1971 and conducted a nuclear test in 1974, India did not anticipate the response of Islamabad and Beijing, who had no reason to buy into New Delhi’s metaphysics on Pokharan-I. As New Delhi “stood up” to international pressures, Beijing decisively assisted Pakistan in acquiring nuclear weapons and missiles.

After Pokharan-I, India wasted nearly a quarter century posturing on universal disarmament and non-discriminatory non-proliferation, before testing again, declaring itself a nuclear weapon state and seeking nuclear reconciliation with the world.

When then-US President George W. Bush offered a sweetheart deal that would allow India to keep its nuclear weapons programme and regain access to the global nuclear market without signing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, India spent three years agonising if it was a “gift horse” or a “Trojan horse”.

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