New Context for India's Struggle against Nukes
By J. Sri Raman
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 03 December 2004
Rajasthan is a colorful State of India - colorful in its turbans, saris and history. It is known for its desert landscape and its many tourist attractions, including medieval fortresses and palaces. Today, it is also known for Pokharan, a rural area turned into a nuclear test site.
The sandy site witnessed Pokharan I or the PNE ('peaceful nuclear explosion') in 1974 and, more infamously, Pokharan II, the five tests that shook South Asia in May 1998 and led to the proclamation of India as a nuclear-weapon state. The tests also led, within days, to the Chagai tests in neighboring Pakistan and its identical proclamation.
Jaipur, capital of Rajasthan and not far from Pokharan, thus made a fitting venue for the second national convention of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP), an informal apex for India's peace movement. Hundreds of peace organizations and activists (including this writer) came together in the hugely successful convention of November 26-28. Notably, they did so in a new context for the country's struggle against nuclear weapons and for peace, particularly in South Asia.
The issues remain the same but the political context has changed. And the change has brought a new challenge. The convention left activists and organizations, free from official links and lobbies, in no doubt about the challenge.
Before proceeding to this challenge, a word about the specific issue of Pokharan, of special concern and symbolic importance to every Indian peace activist. Village Khetaloi, close to the site, has been a victim of the tests. Many villagers have been suffering from throat cancer and some strange disorders since the tests. A study of the matter was officially ordered, but the conclusions remain a closely guarded secret. The CNDP, along with the local activists, has demanded not only a better deal for the victims, but also a permanent closure of the test site.
Asked about the villagers' sufferings, former Prime Minister (and father of Pokharan II) Atal Bihari Vajpayee famously observed: "Some people have to make sacrifices." They had to do so, presumably, for the patriotic cause. Identification of nuclear militarism with nationalism, indeed, was a prominent part of the ideology that Vajpayee and his regime in New Delhi proudly represented.
Ever since its founding in its first national convention in New Delhi in November 2000, the CNDP has combated this ideology combined with religious 'fundamentalism' and revanchism. It was this ideology that inspired Pokharan II, which in turn provided the excuse for Pakistan's Chagai. It was this ideology, along with 'jihadi' extremism in Pakistan, that took South Asia to the brink of a nuclear war in 2002. The coexistence of the two countries in the US-headed alliance for 'global war against terror' made the confrontation even more deadly and dangerous.
The wise Indian voter firmly rejected the ideology and politics of the far right earlier this year. A United Progressive Alliance (UPA), headed by the Congress party and backed by the left, came to power under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The new rulers were officially opposed to the ultra-nationalism of the Vajpayee camp. Did the change end or enfeeble the challenge before the peace movement? Did the new context spell new hope for the anti-nuclear weapon activists?
Certainly not, as developments since the change in New Delhi in May 2004 have demonstrated. The feebleness of the centrist Congress opposition helped the far right, more than anything else, over the past few years. The Congress in power has not shed any of its political shyness about espousing the cause of South Asian peace explicitly.
Not without reason does the Jaipur Declaration adopted at the convention call upon India and Pakistan to "seriously and sincerely engage in a dialogue." The call represents the consensus in the movement on the India-Pakistan "peace moves." The consensus includes the concern in a significant section about the prospects of the moves. The concern stems from the main motive force of the "peace initiatives": the pressure from the USA, keen to keep within controllable limits the contradiction and conflict within the South Asian segment of the "anti-terror alliance."
The "peace moves" are even less promising on the nuclear front. The mountain of pretended official labor on the issue (in the form of a series of talks) has produced only a mouse (in the shape of a decision to set up a 'hotline' between the military commands of the two countries). New Delhi has dismissed with contempt the CNDP demand for the closure of the Pokharan site and, along with Islamabad, for de-deployment of nuclear-capable missiles.
Worse, as Pakistani peace campaigner Karamat Ali pointed out at the convention and as many Indian activists would agree, the rulers of the two countries are using these talks actually to "legitimize" the nuclear weapons of each other. Not to recognize this objective of the talks on "confidence-building measures" would be to welcome nuclear militarism in a new form.
The worst outcome of the talks was a resolve by official India and Pakistan to seek "parity" with "nuclear powers" (P5) and "consultations" with them on "issues of common concern" as well as to attempt working out "a common nuclear doctrine." This was nothing but a loud and clear knock by both India and Pakistan on the door of the 'nuclear club.'
Strangely and very sadly, an even more unacceptable version of the same proposal, calling upon India to convene a meeting of all "nuclear-capable" states (P5 plus Ariel Sharon's Israel and North Korea) for the same objectives, found its way into the convention. The political change in New Delhi does not give such proposals any pro-peace legitimacy.
The peace movement cannot let such proposals be peddled as initiatives for nuclear sanity in South Asia. The movement must prepare to meet the new challenge posed by the new political situation.
A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.
-------
Jump to TO Features for Friday December 3, 2004
Print This Story
E-mail This Story