Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in South Asia after the Test Ban

AFTER THE TEST BAN 3
behaviour, but his grandson Rajiv Gandhi’s 1988 initiative for complete
nuclear disarmament in a more cynical era is less commonly
appreciated. While the heady idealism of the first decade after Independence
faded in the 1960s, the 1988 initiative demonstrated that
India remained committed—at least rhetorically—to disarmament and
the creation of a non-violent international order. 1 As envisioned by
Rajiv Gandhi, the CTBT was one of the first steps towards complete
nuclear disarmament, one that he hoped could be achieved by 1994.
He was not far wrong.
Rajiv Gandhi was also the heir to the political dynasty of his
mother, Indira Gandhi. The Congress Party as she reinvented it—it
became the Congress (Indira) Party in her name—was as committed
to India’s nuclear programme as it was to the ideals embodied in the
1988 initiative. Indira Gandhi was responsible for India’s single
nuclear test and the preparations and threats to conduct others, and for
India’s acquisition of strike aircraft to deliver weapons anywhere in
Pakistan, creating the fear of attacks on nuclear installations. As a
result, the Congress (I) Party wore rhetorical and bureaucratic ruts in
Indian nuclear and defence policies from which it later became difficult
for the party or the country to choose an alternate course.
In 1996, when Congress’s domination of Indian politics finally
came to its unequivocal end, an opportunity might have emerged to
free the wagon of state from those ruts, but, as Giri Deshingkar describes
in chapter 2, this was not to be. The Congress dynasty allowed
for leadership strong enough to make controversial decisions and
reconcile the contradictions evident in Indian nuclear policies. It has
been replaced by weak coalition governments that appear incapable of
challenging entrenched interests. The particular interests of the
nuclear and defence establishment are especially powerful, since they
have a monopoly on relevant expertise and have been unusually
successful in discrediting critical opinion, in part by appealing to
national sovereignty and the special status of security issues.
While this does not bode well for Indian participation in nuclear
arms control, there are positive signs with respect to other areas of
governance. As Deshingkar notes, the government of I. K. Gujral has
adopted a doctrine of good relations with its neighbours that empha-
1 Gandhi, R., World Free of Nuclear Arms, Address to the Third Special Session on
Disarmament of the UN General Assembly in New York, 9 June 1988, reprinted in Gandhi,
R., Statements on Foreign Policy April–June 1988 (Ministry of External Affairs: New Delhi,
1988), pp. 60–92.