Achin Vanaik - After the Bomb: Reflections on India’s Nuclear Journey

AFTER THE BOMB

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AFTER
THE BOMB

AFTER
THE BOMB

REFLECTIONS ON INDIAS NUCLEAR JOURNEY

ACHIN VANAIK

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Contents

Dangers Old and New

1 Unravelling the Self-image of the Nuclear Elite
of India

2 Deterrence Dilemmas and the Problem
of Stability in South Asia

Two Nuclear Strategists from the US and India

The Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan Updated

Going beyond the NPT

Pursuing Restraint and Disarmament

Acknowledgements

This work is the product of an adult lifetime of pre-occupation with the issue of nuclear disarmament stretching from the 1970s. As a one-time assistant editor in The Times of India between 1978 and 1990, I wrote many opinion pieces and editorials on the nuclear issue. This was before Pokharan II, and there was leeway then to warn people of the dangers of both vertical and horizontal proliferation. During this period, many of us in Bombay (as it was then known) formed a group called GROUND or Group for Nuclear Disarmament to disseminate a wider understanding of the horror of nuclear weapons among the youth of that city intervening in schools and colleges through the help of sympathetic teachers and principals as well as carrying out the occasional demonstration. It was an obsession that left neither me nor others. When I left journalism and shifted to New Delhi in 1991, this remained a pre-occupation and writing on the subject continued, courtesy mainly though not solely, of the remarkable Economic and Political Weekly (EPW). Here, apart from special articles contributed, I along with colleagues Praful Bidwai and M. V. Ramana, maintained a column called Nuclear Notebook that appeared from time to time in the pages of the EPW for several years. Praful and I also collaborated to write two books, first on the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) debate in India and abroad during the years 1994 to 1996, and then another one after the 1998 tests. Those tests also sparked the creation first of MIND or the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament and then of CNDP or the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. In Pakistan, our counterparts formed the Pakistan Peace Coalition to argue for the de-nuclearisation of that country.
This book puts together revised and updated pieces written over the post-Pokharan II years as well as never before published pieces. Earlier versions of Chapters 1, 3, 6 and a very small part of Chapter 4 appeared in the EPW whose generous attitude to the dissemination of knowledge precludes them from demanding any restrictions on reproduction, amended or otherwise. For that reason alone I wish to give acknowledgements to them. Thanks are also due to Little Magazine where I first explored in a more systematic fashion what has been presented here as the Ten Dilemmas of Nuclear Deterrence. No work of this kind is ever the fruit of solitary splendour even if the actual writing takes place in lonelier circumstances. It is my engagement with the writings of, and conversations with many people, including like-minded activists in several countries, that has equipped me with whatever degree of merit or otherwise to write as I have. There are many people therefore that I have to thank. Within CNDP, I owe many debts to Anil Chaudhury, Wilfred DCosta, Itty Abraham, Kamal Mitra Chenoy, Praful Bidwai, Amarjit Kaur, S. P. Uday Kumar, N. D. Jayprakash, Kumar Sundaram, Suvrat Raju, Admiral Ramdas, Lolly Ramdas, Sukla Sen, Vivek Sundara, Ilina Sen, Jean Dreze, Ramesh Sharma, Dahlia Kar, Anuradha Sen, Kavita Srivastava, Prakash Meghe, Utkarsh Sinha, Satyajit Rath, Vinita Bal, Anna George. I am particularly grateful to M. V. Ramana for drawing my attention to valuable reference sources which I would have otherwise neglected. To my friends from Pakistan, Karamat Ali, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Zia Mian, Abdul Nayyar, B. N. Kutty go my grateful thanks and appreciation for their ongoing commitments and writings which have informed and inspired. Special thanks must go to the anonymous reviewer who highlighted deficiencies that I have then sought to rectify. I am, of course, solely responsible for those remaining.
I have, over the years, learnt much from Masa Takubo, Akira Kawasaki, Keiji Fujiwara, Hiro Umebayashi, Kazuya Nakamizo and Chiharu Takenaka in Japan; from Rebecca Johnson, Kate Hudson, Bruce Kent in the UK; from Xanthie Hall, John Burroughs, Joseph Gerson, Arjun Makhijani, Alice Slater, Jackie Cabasso, Andrew Lichterman in the US; from Alyn Ware, Kate Dewes and Robert Green in New Zealand. Closer home there is Pamela, Anish, Samar, Suresh and Bali.
But special mention must be made of Mike Marqusee whom I first met some 25 years ago and only wish I had known for decades before. Through him I met Liz Davies, his remarkable companion who has done outstanding work in the field of housing rights in Britain and who brings honour more generally to the legal profession through her determination to provide whatever legal help she can to the poor and downtrodden. Both Liz and Mike have been staunch advocates for Britains unilateral nuclear disarmament. Mike has been a special influence on me and my family through his wonderful writings, the many conversations during times spent together as well as in the occasional struggles collectively waged despite his being based in England and myself in India. His writings have spanned a whole range of concerns from popular culture to radical politics and history to public health to poetry, aesthetics and sport. For his courage in adversity and sickness, his deep political commitment, his innate sensitivity and goodness and for his abiding friendship, I dedicate this book to him in love and admiration.

Achin Vanaik
Delhi

June 2014

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