India has rightly been called the ‘reluctant nuclear power’. No other country in the world allowed twenty-four years to lapse between its first nuclear test and declaring itself a nuclear-weapons state. The Indian Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) officially published the first study on the effects of nuclear explosions in the ’50s and it became a textbook for campaigners for the test ban treaty. No country campaigned as vigorously for nuclear disarmament as India, which was finally compelled to declare itself a nuclear weapons state because of the extremely delicate security situation in which it found itself. Two of its neighbours, with active disputes with India and who have fought wars with this country, are nuclear-weapons states with an ongoing proliferation relationship. Both of them have breached international norms on proliferation. Placed in this situation, India had to safeguard its security and yet found no reason to abandon its commitment to campaign for nuclear disarmament. India also had before it, the lessons of the irrational pursuit of a nuclear theology by major powers who built obscenely large arsenals at great cost ( subsequently were compelled to dismantle them at equally great cost). India has taken note of the joint declaration of President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev that a nuclear war cannot be won. After its first use in a situation of asymmetry, when it was dropped on a nation attempting to negotiate its surrender, nuclear weapons have not been used in the last sixty four years.

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