a desert site in the Indian state of Rajisthan, groups of local
Bishnoi herders--whose customs forbid killing animals or cutting
trees--heard a huge explosion, and watched in amazement as an enormous
dust cloud floated in the sky. What the Indian farmers did not realize,
but the diplomats in Washington and around the world soon grasped, was
the fact that India had just joined the United States, Russia, England,
France and China as the newest member of the nuclear club. On that warm
May afternoon, Indian nuclear scientists successfully exploded three
atomic devices amounting to about six times the destructive power of the
American bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The next day, as the world
tried to absorb the frightening news, India ignited two more nuclear
explosions.
Even as ninety percent of Indians applauded then-Prime Minister
Vajpayee's decision to go nuclear, then-U.S. President Clinton
immediately reacted to the explosions with shock and criticized India's
nuclear testing. The American President argued that India’s actions
violated the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty endorsed by 149 nations and
the 1970 non-proliferation treaty signed by 185 nations. Despite the
fact that neither India nor Pakistan has signed the treaties, the
President, citing the 1994 Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act,
immediately called for economic sanctions against India including
cutting off $40 million in economic and military aid, and all American
bank loans. The President also asked the International Monetary Fund and
World Bank to cancel all new loans which could cost India around $14.5
billion worth of public projects, including a major modernization of
India's often failing electrical system. Moreover, Japan and other
industrial nations soon followed the U.S. example and froze on-going
projects in India worth over a billion dollars in aid.
Pakistan Responds
As the five nuclear powers, all permanent members of the United Nations
Security Council, discussed ways to punish India as well as ways to
prevent Pakistan from testing its own nuclear devices, the leaders of
Pakistan were busily moving forward with their own nuclear plans.
On May 28th, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister at that time,
announced that following India's lead, Pakistan had successfully
exploded five "nuclear devices." Not content to equal India's five
tests, Pakistan proceeded on May 30th to explode yet a sixth device and
at the same time the Prime Minister announced that his government would
soon be able to launch nuclear war heads on missiles.
Both President Clinton and a majority of the world community condemned
Pakistan's nuclear testing, although China was much less harsh in its
criticism of Pakistan, its close ally. Following the sanctions policy
after India's tests, the United States, Japan, Britain, Canada and
Germany ended their aid to Pakistan and asked the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and World Bank to place a moratorium on loans to Pakistan.
However, despite President Clinton's wish to impose a world-wide system
of economic sanctions on India and Pakistan, a vast majority of western
nations have refused to join the effort.
The Story Behind the Headlines
Despite the seeming suddenness of India's and Pakistan's decisions to
test nuclear devices and in so doing seek to join the other five world
nuclear nations, the headlines following the explosions "heard round the
world," had a fifty-year history.
Since their independence as new nations in 1947, India and Pakistan
have followed a path of mutual animosity. Pakistan was created as a
national homeland for the Muslim-majority areas of the subcontinent,
while India proposed to become a secular nation that included about 85
percent Hindus, but also more than ten percent Muslims as well as large
numbers of Sikhs, Christians and members of other religions.
Soon after the partition of the sub-continent into the two nations,
about 17 million people fled their homes and journeyed to either
Pakistan or India. In one of the largest exchanges of populations in
history, violence soon broke out with Muslims on one side and Sikhs and
Hindus on the other. The resulting blood shed in the Punjab and West
Bengal regions left more than one million people dead in its wake.
In the midst of this refugee movement and open violence, the
governments of India and Pakistan hastily tried to divide the assets of
British India between the two new countries. From weapons and money,
down to paper clips and archaeological treasures, all had to be divided.
The British had left behind, besides about half of the subcontinent
that it directly governed, some 562 independent or "princely" states.
The provision was that each state could remain independent, join
Pakistan or accede to India. A violent competition soon resulted as the
two new nations sought to win to their own nations the largest and most
strategically located states, such as Hyderabad and Kashmir. Because
Kashmir was more than 70% Muslim, Pakistan insisted that a vote be taken
in the state. However, India argued, since the Maharaja of Kashmir was
Hindu, he had right to take the state into India. Even as independence
was being celebrated, India and Pakistan began a covert war in Kashmir
and the struggle for that state still goes on today.
In 1947, 1965 and 1971 India and Pakistan fought wars that did not
change the status of Kashmir, but did result in the 1971 further
partition of West and East Pakistan into the two nations of Pakistan and
Bangladesh.
Not only did the architects of Indian foreign policy fear Pakistan, but
in 1962, after China's sudden invasion of northeast India, they
suddenly realized the ancient protection of the Himalayan Mountains had
vanished. India now would have to build sufficient military power to
protect itself from both Pakistan and China, the largest country in the
world and a major military power armed with nuclear weapons.
Soon after the China war of 1962, Indian scientists began developing
its nuclear capability. Under Indira Gandhi's Prime Ministership in
1974, India successfully exploded a nuclear device, announcing to the
world its scientific capacity to develop nuclear bombs.
Because of the strong world opinion against nuclear testing, India did
not undertake additional nuclear testing until May, 1998. However, this
fourteen-year moratorium on nuclear testing did not mean Indian
scientists and political leaders were not planning to join the nuclear
club.
