HISTORY'S ROLE REVERSAL

President Barack Obama is quite firm that all those non-signatory countries to Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) should fall in line and sign the NPT that came into effect on July 1968. He ensured that the United Nations Security Council adopted a US-sponsored resolution committing to work towards a world without nuclear weapons. The meeting was chaired by Obama himself and the resolution authorises the Security Council with the responsibility to determine and respond as necessary when violations of the Treaty threaten international peace and security. What does this mean is to state the obvious. Obama made a very pious statement that the resolution shared the US commitment to a goal of a world without nuclear weapons.

Since 1968, 189 countries signed the Treaty, five of which are declared Nuclear Weapon States (NWS). Only four sovereign countries have consistently refused to sign the treaty and they are India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea. Interestingly, expansionist China, emerging nuclear power nation Iran and rogue nation Libya were signatories. North Korea did sign initially and then backed out. Basically, the present resolution targets India and Pakistan. Israel has not made any open declaration about its nuclear status and North Korea, any way, is a pariah among the international community.

Therefore, India was very quick to respond with a firm “no” to the UNSC resolution. India’s argument is that the NPT creates a club of “nuclear haves” and a larger group of “nuclear have-nots” by restricting the legal use of nuclear weapons to those states that tested them before 1967, but the Treaty never explains on what ethical grounds such a distinction is valid.

India is also of the view that nuclear weapons are an integral part of India’s national security and will remain so, pending non-discriminatory and global nuclear disarmament. Non-proliferation and disarmament are complementary to each other. India maintains that without tangible progress in disarmament, the current emphasis on non-proliferation cannot be sustained.

In fact, Abdel Nasser of Egypt, one of the architects of Non-aligned Movement, once said “basically they did whatever they wanted to do before the introduction of NPT and then devised it to prevent others from doing what they had themselves been doing before.

India also feels that the NPT is flawed because of violations by the five Nuclear Weapon States (NWS). Art 1 of the Treaty prevents transfer of nuclear weapons or the nuclear explosive devices by the five NWS and also not to assist, encourage or induce a non-nuclear weapon state to acquire nuclear weapons. If we go by the nuclear proliferator of Pakistan, AQ Khan’s letter to his wife, China has been doing exactly what the NPT prohibited. What could the signatories to NPT do to restrain China from nuclear proliferation?

NWS are also prevented from using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states except in response to nuclear attack or conventional attack in alliance with a NWS. How did the US follow this provision of the Treaty? It had nuclear war heads targeted at North Korea for decades. US also invoked the possibility of using it against rogue states. France was no exception either. What could the NWS do to the signatory Iran when it is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons?

So, India may not be totally wrong in resisting the attempts by world powers to make India sign the NPT. But one cannot miss the 360 degree turnaround in the world scenario between Fifties and Sixties and the 21st century. There was a time during the Cold War when both America and the Soviet Union, in complete disregard of the world opinion, were indulging in nuclear arms race. It was India which first raised a moral rebellion against nuclear weapons and it was C Rajagopalachari, at the age of 84, who undertook his first foreign visit to meet John F Kennedy to prevail upon him the need to give up the arms race keeping in view the interests of humanity and posterity.

It will be worthwhile to take a peep into history to know how it was left to the first Indian to voice the country’s protest against the nuclear proliferation much before the NPT whereas it may now appear that India is obsessed with the need for n-weapons for its security because of the changed geo-political equations when it says “no” to UNSC resolution.

Soviet Union’s 50-megaton nuclear bang made Rajaji to demand that India ostracise the USSR and Nehru was unwilling to take such a drastic step. Later when America scheduled retaliatory blasts, Bertrand Russell wanted an Indian ship to be sent to the Pacific Zone. Nehru was reluctant even to this proposal. After series of exchange of letters between Nehru and Rajaji, it was agreed to send the latter by the Gandhi Peace Foundation to the US and USRR to prevail upon both the Heads of States to call off the nuclear arms race.

It was on September 28, 1962 (exactly 47 years ago) Rajaji accompanied by RR Diwakar of the Gandhi Peace Foundation and journalist Shiv Rao, met John F Kennedy in the White House. Recalling the visit, Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of Rajaji goes into the details of the meeting in his book “The Rjaji Story 1937-1972” (pp 311)
“Kennedy sat in his rocking chair, with Diwakar and Shiv Rao on his right and Rajaji and BK Nehru on his left. Rajaji began disarmingly. He was not pleading, he said, for American disarmament: how could he, when his own government had a policy of armed defence? But the immediate cessation of nuclear tests stood on a different footing. Delicately he introduced the argument that the world as a whole had a right to say to the nuclear powers that they could not, in the name of testing, poison the atmosphere and endanger humanity, now and in the future”.

Was the talk fruitful? Rajaji was asked by a reporter. It was “flowerful” was the reply.

What an irony and quirk of world scenario. Nearly half-a-century ago, India was pleading with the major world powers for cessation of nuclear tests which endangered humanity. Now, India is being asked to sign the non-proliferation treaty by the very same powers and India says “nuclear weapons are an integral part of India’s national security".