Should India Use The Nuclear Power?
India has always remained a peace-loving country and at no point of time in the recent history, even since India gained her freedom, has India shown aggressive designs against any other country. India was the first to pronounce the principles of ‘Panchsheer while dealing with China and ‘Hindu Chini Bhai Bhai’ was the slogan raised for the first time during the period of our first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru when the Chinese Prime Minister, Chou-en-lai came on a visit to India. It were Chinese who stabbed India in the back in the year 1962 when they launched their aggressive designs against India. Similarly Pakistan has been playing its sinister game of aggression and terrorism and India had to resort to force in the year 1965 or 1971 and then again. In the very recent past-during summers of 1999, the Kargil war is fresh in our minds.
Both China and Pakistan possess nuclear power and one can never be sure when these neighbours of India might grow aggressive towards our country. Pakistan, inspite of the rebuff it has sustained in Kargil misadventure, still has been sending terrorists and promoting terrorism on our Kashmir borders. In such a situation it has became incumbent and necessary for India to go nuclear. India has experimented the nuclear explosion not once but five times and has developed the potential of being a nuclear power. She has to do so under such political and military compulsions as described above.
Military preparedness in this forms has been forced upon our country. If we want peace, be prepared for war—this has been the long accepted dictums in the political terminology. India now can claim to belong to the ‘nuclear club’ and that can be deterrent for any of our neighbours or for that matter for any of the nuclear powers of the world to adopt aggressive or threatening designs against us. What is wrong then if India has developed her nuclear potential, when not a single instance can be quoted when India has taken any initiative in launching even a battle, what to say of a war.
The enemy should always known that it would be a potential danger to awaken a sleeping lion. That has been India’s policy regarding her nuclear programme.
But on all occasion in all forms, and on all platforms India has been loud in pronouncing that she never would make the first use of her nuclear power. Hers shall never be an aggressive even in the recent pronouncements of our Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister at the forum of the General Assembly of the Unite Nations or with talks with China and Japan. It has been made very apparent that India was prepared to sign the CTBT if all other nuclear powers of the world were prepared to call it a day on their nuclear programmes. That has been possible to be said only from a position of strength that India now has.
Going nuclear in this manner, does not go against the ever-established image of India being a peace-loving nation. Deterrence is not aggression. The ‘question of going nuclear, is of course a very costly proposition for a country a3 in India. It is at the cost of major development schemes that such a nuclear power has to be developed. Vast economic resources have to be diverted to start a nuclear experiment. But for India there is no choice. We cannot stake our freedom and our national integrity We have to remain prepared forall eventualities and exigencies. But India’s declared policy in this direction has been — ‘To have the giants strength but to use it like Gods.’
