The Paradoxes of Pokhran Strategy

1. Objectives prevail over processes in shaping a developing country’s nuclear policy. These objectives when linked with the security and economic foundations of a nuclear programme are considered to be mutually dependent. While political concerns of a country are central, economic concerns cannot be ignored. These concerns take a long time to mature. Bureaucratic steps involved in shaping of these policies, cabinet minutes and other internal memoranda, which unambiguously could show how policies developed are and probably will remain inaccessible, fortunately, a comprehensive study can be built upon other sources. Here the history of the Indian nuclear policy has been pieced together from official statements, documents, and books, reports that have been collected from different sources and quoted. From the analysis below it seems that India has superseded her economic and political concerns to over come its dream of Mahabharta (The Greater India), making it clear to the reader the so-called Peaceful Nuclear Strategy of India. It seems that India has placed the foundations of its nuclear programme far beyond its legitimate defence and security requirements. It is evident that the Indians have aggressive national aims. Indian perception of threat emerges from its own past and present policies. Viewing itself as a potential global power, which has used military force against all its neighbours including China, has in the process inherited the mantle of a local bully. Keeping in view the Indian nuclear stockpile, future and past defence expenditure, plus the shielding policies adopted by her leaders, an amateur bird and beetle watcher can pick up evidence of Indian future designs.

Developing countries may desire to acquire nuclear technology for several reasons. They may wish to use nuclear power stations to increase their electrical generating capacity, to achieve the capability to build nuclear weapons or simply to create the option to pursue either energy or military routes, basing on their designed and drafted policy requirements for future. It is also possible that nuclear policies are driven less by rational choice than by domestic political considerations. Enormous pressures from foreign governments and corporations may encourage nuclear programmes where otherwise these would be little interest in fission. At the same time any of these considerations, which are based on energy or military objectives, domestic policies and foreign influences can discourage interest in nuclear power in any country. The purpose of this article is to provide an analytical insight to the reader in order to study manifestation of Indian hegemonic designs reflected in its nuclear programme in past present and future subjected to virtue of unilateral role played by the western media, resultantly ending to generate in subcontinent, much more interest in fission for the seekers. For this we must be thankful to them.

2. India’s nuclear energy programme, from which the first bomb and its several descendants evolved, started in 1945 almost two years before the partition. It started with the creation of the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research in Bombay. The ‘Tata Institute for Fundamental Research was headed by an ambitious and enthusiastic Cambridge educated physicist Dr J Bhabha, who is credited to shape Indian Nuclear research for war and peace. Dr Bhabha in the next nine years successfully managed to form a new and multidisciplinary research and development centre comprising 130 scientists. The centre is located near Trombay, now known as The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). BARC has become the foremost research institution in India with a staff of around 15,000, of who nearly one third are scientists. BARC School founded in 1957 provides max engineers to nuclear institutions in India.

3. Indian leaders were explicit about the possible military uses of their nuclear weapons, even before the weapons were available. In a speech in Bombay i.e. almost a year earlier to the partition of India, in the spring of 1946 Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru said.

‘I hope Indian scientists will use the atomic force for constructive purposes. But if India is threatened she will inevitably try to defend herself by all means at, her disposal’.

4. India’s nuclear decision making is directly influenced by specific developments in the nuclear field. The Indians are, were and have been too good in propaganda campaign against Pakistan. In the cover of the same propaganda the Indians have continued with their clandestine nuclear programme. Their nuclear policy has been based upon centuries old Hindu Muslim antagonism and accomplishment of Maha Bharata's dream of dominion on the subcontinent. India has, thus built a nuclear empire, whereas India has no apparent threat from its neighbours and the inaccessible Himalayan ranges separate it from China, through which no major military operations can be conducted. In any case China is not an expansionist power as is evident from its policies over the decades. Indian leadership’s manipulation with British their behaviour in the process of demarcation during Independence, a clash with Pakistan over Kashmir in 1948 and two wars have left a legacy of distrust between two nations from the very start of affairs.

5. In retrospect it appears that groundwork for an Indian nuclear weapons programme was laid in 1950. It was the time when India had a clash with China over Tibet. Four years later in 1954 India established its Department of Atomic Energy (IDEA).

6. French authorities signed a nuclear co-operation agreement with India in 1951. French scientists not only taught Indian scientists, how to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel (a process which is fundamental to plutonium fuelled bombs) but also trained Indian technicians in the then arcane realm of nuclear energy. Dr Bertrand Goldschmidt, Head of French Atomic Energy Commissions International Relations Division recalled many years that ‘Dr Homi J Bhabha's plans had certainly included nuclear weapons. He always wanted the bomb’ What ever moral problems there may have been in ingratiating themselves with the Indian Nuclear science community, it made very good business sense for the French. Getting a foot in the door, they knew could mean Lucrative reactor sales later. India did not fail to meet their requirements.

7. The USA out did its cohort in generosity to India. It subsidised loans and research grants for 1,300 Indian scientists and technicians to study at nuclear facilities in the United States, It provided two complete light water power reactors (built by General Electric for 118 million and largely paid for by the Agency for International Development). Specially where the development of bomb was concerned it helped to build a small reprocessing plant at Trombay with which the Indians could learn how to extract plutonium that grew fuel rods of CIRUS (Canadian Indian-US Research Reactor a heavy water/natural-uranium, 40MWt, an unsafe guarded Indian facility located at Trombay BARC Bombay. The facility was built from declassified plans of the Purex Solvent Extraction Process developed by the United States at Hanford, Washington. At least 24 Indians were trained to operate the plant. In this joint project US was also attributed to supply heavy water to India whereas fuel source had to stay with Canada. In 1962 National Committee for Space Research was founded and placed under India's Atomic Energy Commission. The committee was headed by Dr Homi J Bhaba, who of course was working on atomic bomb. Scientific space research was to be undertaken by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). In 1963 and 1964 an Indian Avul Fakir Zainul Abidin Abdul Kalam spent four months in becoming acquainted with the details of missile development and the series of lesser rockets in USA at NASA’s Langlay Research Centre and Wallop Islands Launch Facility in Virginia. At that time the Americans were working on Scout a four stage, solid propellant rocket designed in the 1950 with its advanced versions launched in 1960. Americans were using it as a low cost way of getting small research satellites into orbit. In 1965 India asked NASA for financial and technical assistance about acquiring Scouts of its own. Under Kalams and Homi J Bhaba's BARC the Scout became SLV3 Space Launch Vehicle 3 the first Satellite Launcher of India. It was seventy feet high; it used four solid fuel stages, and was capable of putting a ninety-pound satellite into orbit. In 1980 the SLV-3 rocket launched India into space age, based on SCOUT Mr. Kalam helped India to design Agni. That derived its first stage Ron SCOUT the second stage consisted of two rockets derived from the Soviets standard surface-to-air missile the SA-2 or Guideline as it was called by NATO. The French gave India the liquid fuel technology in the form of Viking engine used to propel the European Space Agency" Ariane Launch Vehicle. Indian version of Viking is used in Prithivi (Scud like missile) based on the Agni's first stage, rewired and topped with a warhead. India never forgot the services of Mr Kalam. He was moved from the Civilian Space Research Organisation to work as Head of DRDO and designated as The Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister

8. Indian leaders convinced Canada, France and the United States to prime India’s nuclear capability. The Canadians contributed CIRUS. It was a large and sophisticated heavy water research reactor fuelled by natural uranium. The plant was installed as a part of Colombo Plan to aid former British Colonies in South Asia. It had an important aspect for Indians, CIRUS fission process produced an important by-product ‘Bomb Grade Plutonium’. Canada also helped India to start a heavy water plant and a nuclear fuel complex. The water facility was as critical as the reactor. Although the reactor used plentiful natural uranium it needed the heavy water to moderate the heavy neutron flux as chain reaction took place. Canadians co-operated to every extent in this state to the art technology.

9. Until the 1960's Indian public nuclear stance was one of unequivocally, rejecting the development of nuclear arms. But under hand the work continued. In 1962 India suffered a humiliating defeat from China, but when the Chinese conducted their first nuclear test in 1964, Dr Homi J Bhaba bragged that India could produce a nuclear weapon in 18 months, and that she has already started a Subterranean Nuclear Explosion Project. Dr Homi J Bhabha did not live longer to see the achievement of this project and one and half a year later died in a plane crash. For Pakistan the immediate impetus for acquiring nuclear technology was of course to counter Indian threat and to this effect Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Pakistan's Foreign Minister stated the following remarks in 1965. `

‘If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass but will get one of our own. We have no alternative’

The Indians gave an extensive publicity to this statement according to their propaganda policy drafted to distract focus from their business. In 1965 India attacked Pakistan and received a befitting response.

10. It is on the record that Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri who publicly opposed the nuclear weapons option was the official sanctioning authority to allow and enhance the Indian Nuclear Weapons Projects. Initially when Indira Gandhi took office as Prime Minister in 1966, she on one hand down played the nuclear weapons issue whereas on the other hand when the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was opened for signatures in 1968 refused to sign and thereby retained the option to build nuclear weapons. In late 1969 she openly authorised the development of ‘Peaceful Nuclear Explosives Programmed’. On these footsteps India started to build an extensive uranium mining industry, fuel fabrication facilities, heavy water plants and even two small research reactors at Bombay. These were named as Trombay and Dhruva (Trombay and Dhruva are names of dramatic manifestations of Maha Bharata, the Hindu nationalists, persistent dream of a greater India in which Muslims have finally been vanquished into sea, leaving the entire subcontinent and the ocean into which it protrudes ruled by Hindus.

11. After the death of Dr Homi J Bhabha India had various scientists trained in the West. Raja Ramanna was a young and promising nuclear scientist who took lead in the methods taught by the West. His team managed to obtain enough plutonium from spent fuel, irradiated inside research reactor CIRUS, located at Trombay. Out of this weapon grade plutonium they used almost 8kg plutonium to detonate a nuclear device at the bottom of 107-meter shaft at Pokhran in the Rajasthan Desert (550 km south of west Delhi and barely 150 km from Pakistan border) on 18 May 1974. Indians coded this operation as Smiling Buddha. This was named as PNE (Peaceful Nuclear Explosion). Raja Ramnna was crowned as The Father of India’s Nuclear Bomb. He rose to become the Chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission. The Government of Prime Minister Vishwa Nath Partap Singh appointed Raja Ramnna as the Minister of State for Defence. Nevertheless the 1974 Indian nuclear test called as PNE fatally undermined the Atom for Peace policy. Finally Washington helped India go nuclear, in a negative way. After assisting India to the teeth Washington said that it was amazed about Indian nuclear tests. Although by virtue of Indian policies in public and its nuclear stance otherway, did not tally and belied the extent of its colossal arsenal.

12. After explosions there was rejoicing in India. With the remaining weapon grade plutonium of CIRUS more bombs could be made. They knew that their clandestine act would make a headline world-wide. It may end in imposing of sanctions. They also knew that sanctions will equally effect the Colombo Plan and will seal the Pakistan's quest for bomb, thereby placing international checks on KANUPP (Karachi Nuclear Power Plant a heavy water/natural-uranium, 125 MWs project installed in Karachi by Canadian General Electric in 1972). When the Pakistan’s nuclear effort took obvious turn to the quest for unsafe guarded nuclear fuel cycle facilities, the North Americans terminated all nuclear assistance to Pakistan. KANUPP hobbled, lacking adequate spare parts and fuel. Things went accordingly to India’s desire. KANUPP’s function came down to 15.6% and finally to 5%.

13. All other members of the nuclear club except US and France i.e. UK, China and USSR followed with their fears that other developing countries would follow the Indian cue in abusing nuclear technology obtained through foreign assistance. What one group saw as supplementing of system was circumventing for the other. Following a Kissinger idea a NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group) with 110 member states began meeting in London in 1975. The nuclear suppliers particularly the US faced a dilemma; having promoted the creation of NSG how could they significantly increase its restrictions on nuclear exports without either offering a corresponding increase in promotional nuclear exports, or angering the vast majority of IAEA members which were nuclear technology importers,. The deep difference of opinion slightly disturbed the Washington plans to make India the Policeman of subcontinent. Upon this indifference President Carter had to change the policy and discourage entry into plutonium economy. It was announced, that India would have to pay a heavy price for Pokhran. The United States response was to hold back shipments of enriched uranium fuel for Tarapur Station.

14. The 1974 test and India’s subsequent conventional military build-up were no doubt partly an effort to establish India’s credentials as a major regional power that would be less vulnerable to such external pressures in future. Indira Gandhi, who was returned to office at the beginning of 1980, quietly began to enlarge India’s actual capability to produce nuclear arms and, despite strong pressures from USA refused to place the key installations involved under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. These installations were

On 8th of August 1985 India announced the start of Dhruva research reactor, it was one of the world’s largest civilian non-power reactors which was capable of providing India the ability to produce plutonium from domestic technology and fuel. Thus giving India a new source of nuclear weapons material free from all non-proliferation controls.

15. In the second half of 1985, India began to separate plutonium at the Tarapur reprocessing plant from unsafeguarded Madras I spent fuel. Thus India obtained for the first time plutonium that was indisputably free from any external non-proliferation controls. One should not be blinded by the rhetorical flourish of these independent atomic efforts. Indian boasts concealed a great deal of inefficiency and delay, while their impressive appearances depend upon the obfuscation of many failures. In the Indian case every power reactor apart from Tarapur (constructed by US General Electric on a turn-key basis) been delayed four to six years, as have Tarapur and Kalpakkam reprocessing plants. Heavy water plant construction schedules have slipped two to four years. In 1990 India was continuing to expand its ability to produce plutonium, free from IAEA safeguards or other non-proliferation restrictions. The most important new addition to its roster of unsafeguarded facilities was the 235-megawatt (electric) Narora I nuclear power reactor, which began operating in mid-1989. The plant, in theory can produce approximately 132 pounds (60 kilograms) of plutonium annually in it spent fuel, possibly for 12 weapons assuming 11 pounds (5 kilograms) of plutonium per device. Each of India’s two previously commissioned unsafeguarded power reactors, Madras II, and I could also produce enough unsafeguarded plutonium for 12 weapons annually. Two Indian research reactors, located at BARC, are additional important potential sources of plutonium: the CIRUS reactor, which produced plutonium for the 1974 test device and the Dhruva. The former can produce about 20 pounds (9 kilograms) of plutonium annually, and the later 55 pounds (25 kilograms) plutonium which altogether would be almost enough for 7 devices per year. India is also known to be undertaking projects relevant to the production of thermonuclear weapons at BARC. India is also known to be producing precursor materials specifically needed to make Tritium, a material used to manufacture certain type of advanced nuclear weapons at BARC, adding to suspicions as to its purpose. So during the decade, India designed and built five power reactors each larger than 200 megawatts and each a potential plutonium producer. It constructed uranium purification and conversion plant and a laboratory needed to enrich the metal to bomb grade. It also set up three heavy water facilities, a fuel fabrication plant, and three separate research reactors. At 100 megawatts, one of the research reactors was the largest such plant in the world. The Indians even set up their own small fast-breeder reactor in preparation for, a much larger one they ordered from the Russians. But even beyond the immense indigenous infrastructure that produced all of that, there was a substratum of foreign equipment that made India the largest arms importer in the Third World.

16. What all the Indians could neither develop nor import legally, they smuggled. Throughout the 1970 and into 1980, India smuggled hundreds of tons of heavy water from Europe the Soviet Union. Most of the biggest Western firms claimed to have been deceived. Siemens sold India a Teleperm Computerised Fluid Mixing System for the heavy water manufacturing process. Much of the illicit heavy water was to end up at (BARC), whereas while purchasing nuclear material India had made vague references to an ammonia plant. The Madras I and II, Dhruva, and Narora reactors, which began operation between 1983 and 1989, required heavy water to function. However, India had experienced severe shortfalls in its domestic heavy water production. Despite this shortage. India was able to place these units in service between 1983 and 1985. How India obtained the necessary heavy water for the reactors, which required some 500 metric tons in all remained a mystery until India was accused of smuggling the material in 1986. New Delhi openly denied the accusations. Yet by mid-1990, a number of facts had surfaced which belie this claim.

a. In late 1988, Norway announced that it had traced an illicit 1983 transfer of 15 tons of Norwegian-origin heavy water to India.

b. In April 1990, the government of Romanian President lon lliescu announced that in 1986 the country’s former government, led by Nicolai Ceausescu, had diverted 12.5 tons of heavy water in its possession to India.

c. In late 1988, however, West German investigators determined that India obtained more than metric tons (A metric ton equals 1,000 kilograms) of the material with the assistance of a West German nuclear material broker, Alferd Hempel. German investigators unearthed an August 1, 1983 agreement between Hempel and the Indian Department of Atomic Energy’s ‘Directorate of Purchases and Stores’ for the long-term delivery of heavy water from Europe to Bombay. Although shipments of the material apparently began at least a year earlier. Hempel’s usual modus operandi was to obtain the material under false pretences from supplier countries, which also included Norway and the Soviet Union, by claiming that it was destined for end-users acceptable to the seller, typically in Western Europe. The material, however, would be shipped to Sharjah or Dubai in the Persian Gulf and then quietly re-routed to India. For Norwegian and Soviet heavy water, Hempel's declared end-users were usually West Germans, but he typically re-routed the material first to Basel or Zurich and then, to disguise its ultimate destination further, transhipped it to Sharjah or Dubai, before sending it on to Bombay. Norway has traced one shipment of its material to an Indian Department of Atomic Energy Office in Bombay, Many Specifics concerning Hempel’s deals were revealed later. In the early 1980s, Hempel purchased substantial quantities of heavy water from two Chinese concerns, The Chinese National Chemicals Importing and Exporting Co and Sinochem. However, Chinese authorities apparently took no steps to verify the, ultimate destination of the heavy water exports, nor was the requirement for safeguards applied, since this was not the Chinese government policy at that time. By 1984 US and IAEA representation to Beijing led China to begin restricting their exports by insisting on end-user documentation. Alferd Hempel, however, was able to continue obtaining heavy water lesser quantities from his Chinese sources throughout 1987, probably by using falsified end-user certificates. At this point Chinese authorities apparently realised that the shipments were going to a potential adversary! India, and put an end to them. In the meantime, Hempel had developed Norway and the Soviet Union as additional sources of the material for India in smaller quantities using false end-user certificates and fraudulently obtained West German Import licences. In December 1983, he assembled 15 metric tons of Norwegian and 4.7 metric tons of Soviet heavy water at Basel Airport which were shipped to Bombay via Dubai. Thereafter, Hempel repeatedly took advantage of loopholes in IAEA regulations to obtain small quantities of material from the Soviet Union for transhipment to India in quantities of 970 or 990 kilograms — just below the IAEA limits. To avoid obvious violations of West German export laws Hempel pursued his activities outside of the country, often working through a subsidiary based in Switzerland, ORDA AG. Hempel died in 1989 before any legal action could be initiated against him. These sales again illustrate the crucial role of clandestine Indian nuclear trade.

A 1988 report by the Indian Controller and Auditor General had concluded that between 1978 and 1986, India’s indigenous heavy water facilities had produced less than a third of the heavy water needed to start Dhurva and the reactors. In the face of this evidence, and the stockpile of reactors possessed by, India, if India and the west says that we never knew of clandestine trafficking of India, so somewhere lies the considerable scepticism.

India also imported 210 pounds of high purity beryllium, used in nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors under questionable circumstances. India apparently could not produce beryllium of this quality at that time. Indeed it is fair to ask whether a country speaking of peaceful use of nuclear energy would engage in such an extensive clandestine nuclear dealings except for the purpose of supporting a nuclear weapons programme.

Year	Indian Spending	Pakistan's Spending
1974	1.5	0.3
1975	1.6	0.4
1976	1.7	0.5
1977	1.9	0.6
1978	2.1	0.7
1979	2.2	0.8
1980	2.6	0.9
1981	2.1	0.9
1982	3.2	1.0
1983	3.5	1.0

1984	3.9	1.0
1985	4.3	1.1
1986	4.7	1.2
1988	5.3	1.2
1989	5.9	1.5
1990	6.3	1.5
1991	6.7	1.6
1992	7.5	1.9
1993	8.6	2.0
1994	9.5	2.2

1995	11.5	2.5
1996	12.5	2.9
1997	13.5	3.1
1998	14	3.5
1999	-----	-----

It has always been dictated in the past that India's nuclear decision making takes against the backdrop of broader strategic, foreign policy, domestic, political and economic considerations and is directly influenced by specific developments in the nuclear programmes of India's potential adversaries specifically Pakistan. The data given below provides a bird’s eyeview of Indian nuclear arsenal is sufficient for the layman to fathom the Indian expansionist designs to become policeman of South Asia.

Research Reactors Apsara, Trombay/B.A.R.C(light-water/medium-enriched-uranium, I MWt)

Diverse strategic policies and hypocritical behaviour of super powers have diminished their role in world affairs. Countries never fit neatly into categories and the world canvas is no more as was in 1939 to 1945. Ironically in order to dissuade the most worrisome non-NPT Parties from developing nuclear weapons (and in order to make profits), the governments and vendors have sought to tie them into alternative non-proliferation obligations through continued or expanded nuclear exports. Under international safeguards IAEA knew very well about all that were working in clandestine fashion but few have been an exception. For example when India detonated a nuclear device, American official, continued to countenance sales of enriched Uranium there (albeit with delays) believing that to cut off nuclear co-operation with India entirely (as Canada had) would eliminate all remaining leverage which the US might otherwise continue to exercise in India. In 1989 Rajiv Gandhi was reported by the Indian Press to have categorically suggested that Indian intelligence believe that there are no Chinese nuclear missiles targeted on Indian territory, one may question then! why was Agni required. There has never been any ambiguity in India’s objective of developing a nuclear weapons capability to pursue its hegemonistic ambitions. The Bharitya Janata Party Government has become a captive of its own unclear rhetoric and big power ambitions by visiting Pokhran after 24 years. According to a Washington date lined Reuters report in the May 14, 1998 newspapers, however, ‘US officials may have inadvertently shown India how to fool CIA into missing clues that nuclear tests were on their way. Why Washington never knew designs of India at Pokhran is another paradox visible to the blind in the table given below. Why Pakistan went nuclear remains a mystery for the West and will remain a mystery in the light of paradoxes of Western and Pokhran strategy, because the only facility visible to the West was the Pakistan's nuclear facility. History repeats itself, Glory to Almighty, the three hundred and thirteen out numbered the thousands.

It is amazing that in June 1988 the West published the pictures of the only facility that Pakistan possessed.

The text read "More recently satellite pictures have become available showing the nuclear facilities in Pakistan, which are widely believed to involve the development of nuclear weapons technology. Figure 5 shows a picture of the region east of Islamabad, which has several of the facilities of importance for the weapon project, the airport Kahuta, Sihala and Pinstech.

The KAHUTA plant is shown in figure 6, with the main enrichment installations, consisting of two centrifuge blocks each containing 7,000 centrifuges. This was completed during the early 1980, and enriched uranium, suitable for making several nuclear bombs, is likely to have