When India conducted the tests in Pokhran, it signaled a dramatic shift in India’s nuclear post It brought India’s nuclear capability from the realm of a quiet and covert military program to a public known status.

India’s nuclear tests set off a sanctimonious furor in Washington, London, Tokyo and Bo But in conducting it’s tests it had broken no laws as was acknowledged by Andrew Mack in Australian Financial Review (May 19, 1998) when he wrote: “India’s tests didn’t legally violate the 19% Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) because India is not a signatory to it”.

Although India was the first country to propose a ban on nuclear testing, it has been unwilling to sign global treaties that were discriminatory because they allowed a few countries to hold nuclear arms indefinitely. In spite of nearly 100 resolutions of the UN General Assembly reflecting the will of most nations against this nuclear monopoly held by a few powerful nations, decisive steps for creating a nuclear weapon free world have still not been taken. We can discuss the India’s nuclear policy with the following:

India’s Security Concerns in a post-Soviet World :

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India’s security analysts are also perturbed by how after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the world’ sole super power has along with its military allies decimated small and vulnerable nations. The aggressive manner in which the US and its NATO allies targeted Iraq and Yugoslavia has undoubtedly played on the minds of India’s national security analysts.

Dilip Lahiri, Additional Secretary (UN) hinted as much when he explicitly brought up the US bombardment of Yugoslavia at the United Nations Disarmament Commission on April 13, 1999, in New York.

He stated that: ‘Apart from the impact which it has already had on regional peace, the implications of NATO action in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia are far- reaching. If a group of countries or a regional arrangement take it upon themselves to act outside the UN Charter, in violation of its provisions, using violence against another sovereign state without the authorization of the Security Council, the legal foundations on which international relations have been built up since the end of the Second World War are gravely undermined.

So too is the confidence of states in agreeing to disarmament measures, because if countries can be attacked without sanction, because its opponents are militarily more powerful, none would be prepared to lower its guard. Events in the Balkans therefore will inevitably have repercussions on the international disarmament agenda”.

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It should be noted that it was the threatening and coercive presence in the Bay of Bengal of the US Seventh Fleet, during the 1971 Bangladesh war of independence that had triggered India’s first nuclear test.

Support for the Indian Position :

It is little wonder that India’s nuclear tests drew overwhelming support from Indians both within India and abroad. An opinion poll published in the Times of India showed that 91 per cent of urban Indians approved of the tests and 82 per cent believed the country should now build nuclear arms. On the BBC web-site, as many as 86% per cent of site visitors endorsed the Indian action and wrote passionately about the hypocrisy of the US and its allies in defending a one-sided and highly discriminatory nuclear policy.

Yet, in spite of this understanding for the Indian position in the developing world, internal critics of India’s program have not been assuaged. Like many in the Western press, some Indian journalists espouse the position that India provoked Pakistan into conducting its nuclear tests, thereby contributing to the “tensions” and “instability” in the region. More extreme critics of India have laid virtually all the blame on the Indian side for its myriad problems with Pakistan. But nothing could be further from the truth.