Jayita Sarkar is Albert Gallatin Fellow at Yale University’s Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies, and PhD candidate in the Department of International History at the Graduate Institute Geneva.
India's relationship with the nuclear non-proliferation regime deteriorated sharply after its 1974 underground nuclear test which, according to India, was a peaceful nuclear explosion, but which was not accepted as such by the regime. That it did not follow up with immediate weaponisation challenged the core logic of the non-proliferation regime which operates on a Murphy's Law of ‘nuclear fatalism’, i.e. if a country has the know-how to produce nuclear weapons, it will certainly produce them.
Although PNEs were surrounded by ambiguity of intent from the very onset, retroactive measures after May 1974 have ensured that an underground nuclear test could be ‘peaceful’ only when conducted by or with the assistance of the superpowers.
Normative credibility bestows on the Indian and French quest for foreign policy independence the uniqueness not granted to any other bilateral nuclear relationship operating in opposition to the non-proliferation regime.
Science and the Baconian spirit of scientific rationality have long inspired Indians, many of whom, including the country's first prime minister, regarded the superiority of Western science as the root cause of the subcontinent's subjection to foreign rule.
An anti-nuclear movement in India would remain largely a marginal movement with sporadic spurts depending on the issue at hand, the site in question and the political parties involved.
Why underground nuclear tests can no longer be peaceful
Although PNEs were surrounded by ambiguity of intent from the very onset, retroactive measures after May 1974 have ensured that an underground nuclear test could be ‘peaceful’ only when conducted by or with the assistance of the superpowers.