India has been in the forefront of the global struggle for disarmament since India became independent.

India proposed CTBT in 1954, balanced nonproliferation in the sixties, outlawing the nuclear weapons in the late ’70s (when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was foreign minister), no-first-use of nuclear weapons in the eighties and came up with the Comprehensive Rajiv Gandhi Disarmament Plan in 1988. Therefore, at this stage India cannot take a cynical indifferent attitude when the former American hawks are displaying interest in elimination of nuclear weapons and finally have come round to accept the logic of elimination of weapons of mass destruction.

One is familiar with the arguments that weapons, once invented, have always been used and there have always been wars among human beings. Such arguments were used in the past against abolition of slavery, against decolonisation, against gender justice and against elimination of other weapons of mass destruction such as chemical and biological ones. In fact, chemical weapons were used extensively in World War I. Thereafter came the Geneva Protocol outlawing it. Subsequently it was used only in asymmetric situations when the using side was confident that the victim could not retaliate. Then in 1993 the international community agreed to eliminate it under verification. So there is a precedent for elimination of a weapon of mass destruction which was used extensively.

Since a large number of US strategists have supported this move, India’s indifference would give the lobby that is campaigning against India on the 123 Agreement leverage vis-à-vis this country to portray India as a nation committed to the conventional ‘Strangelove’ type of nuclear deterrent strategy. Our foreign minister has declared in Parliament that nuclear disarmament was India’s goal. The Indian nuclear doctrine is against nuclear war-fighting, espouses no first use and asserts that India’s nuclear weapons are only for credible minimum deterrence.

... contd.