India has always remained a peace-loving country and at no point of time in the recent history, ever since India gained her freedom, has India shown aggressive designs against any other country.
India was the first to Pronounce the principles of ‘Panchsheel’ while dealing with China and ‘Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai’ was the slogan raised for the first time during the period of our first Prime Minster Jawahar Lai Nehru when the Chinese Minister, Chon-en-lai came on a visit to India.
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It was the Chinese who stabbed India in the back in the year 1%2 when they launched their aggressive designs against India. Similarly Pakistan has been playing its sinister game of aggression and terrorism and India had to resort to force in the year 1965 and 1971 and then again in the very recent past — during summers of 1999.The Kargil war is fresh in our minds.
Both China and Pakistan possess nuclear power and one can never be sure when these neighbours of India might grow aggressive towards our country.
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Pakistan, Inspire of the rebuff it has sustained in Kargil misadventure, still has been sending terrorists and promoting terrorism on our Kashmir borders. In such a situation if has become incumbent and necessary for India to go nuclear.
India have experimented the nuclear explosions not once but five times and has developed the potential of being a nuclear power. She has to do so under such political and military compulsions as described above.
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Military preparedness in this form has been forced upon our country. If we want peace, be prepared for war — this has been the long accepted dictum in the political terminology.
India now can claim to belong to the ‘nuclear club’ and that can be deterrent for any of our neighbours or for that matter for any of the nuclear powers of the world to adopt aggressive or threatening designs against us. What is wrong then if India has developed her nuclear potential, when not a single instance can be quote when India has taken any initiative in launching even what to say of a war?
The enemy should always own that it would be a potential danger to awaken a sleeping lion. That has been India’s policy regarding her nuclear programme.
But on all occasions in all forms and on all platforms India has been loud in pronouncing that she never would make the first use of her nuclear power. Hers shall never be an aggressive design.
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Even in the recent pronouncements of our Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister at the forum of the General Assembly of the United Nations or with talks with China or Japan it has been made very clear that India was prepared to sign the CTBT if all other nuclear powers of the world were prepared to call it a day on their nuclear programmes. That has been possible to be said only from a position of strength that India now has.
Going nuclear in this manner, does not go against the ever-established image of India being a peace-loving nation. Deterrence is not aggression.
The question of going nuclear is of course a very costly proposition for a country like India. It is at the cost of major development schemes that such a nuclear power has to be developed.
Vast economic resources have to be diverted to launch a nuclear experiment. But for India there is no choice. We cannot stake our freedom and our national integrity. We have to remain prepared for all eventualities and exigencies. But India’s declared policies in this direction have been —to have the giant’s strength but to use it like Gods’.