India's desperate need to generate electricity for development projects and for its vast population has led the government to commit itself strongly to the use of nuclear power plants, which are under the direction of the government through the Nuclear Power Corporation of India. This corporation is under the authority of the Ministry of Atomic Energy. Policy is formulated by the Atomic Energy Commission.
By 1995 nine nuclear power plants were operating, with seven more being constructed and many more in the initial planning stages. Canada provided India with much-needed nuclear technology during the 1950's, and India bought Canadian reactors during the 1960's. In 1968 the Soviet Union and India agreed to cooperate on a project to further the peaceful uses of atomic energy.
In May, 1974, India became the sixth nation in the world to explode a nuclear device. Canada terminated sales of nuclear technology, expertise, and products to India. Canadian nuclear assistance to Pakistan ended two years later when it was revealed that Pakistan was working toward establishing itself as a nuclear-capable state. The government of Pakistan created a uranium enrichment plant at the Kahuta Research Laboratory in 1976 and declared its ability to manufacture its own nuclear fuel four years later. In December, 1988, India and Pakistan signed an agreement not to attack each other's nuclear facilities.
In February, 1988, India successfully tested its own design of a surface-to-surface missile, becoming the fifth nation in the world with the capacity to manufacture such weapons. In November, 1989, it was reported that Pakistan had reached a nuclear agreement with China for the establishment of a 300-megawatt nuclear power plant.
The following year, while France expressed its willingness to provide Pakistan with a nuclear power plant, the United States stopped all military and new economic aid to Pakistan because of fears that Pakistan's nuclear projects, assisted by China, were weapons oriented. Meanwhile, India and Pakistan refused to sign international agreements on nuclear nonproliferation and the banning of tests. India argued that such treaties discriminated against nuclear-threshold states. By 1996 India had developed the Prithvi II missile, which could carry nuclear warheads.
In March, 1998, Pakistan tested an intermediate-range missile (Ghauri), developed with Chinese and North Korean assistance. Ghauri is capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Responding to a perceived security threat from Pakistan, on May 11 and 13, 1998, India exploded five underground devices and became a hydrogen-bomb power.
The United States and Canada immediately announced a ban on nonhumanitarian aid and economic sanctions against India. U. S. president Bill Clinton called the explosions a "terrible mistake." Japan, India's largest aid donor, suspended $30 million in grants. European nations condemned the Indian nuclear tests as being contrary to the principles of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty but would not support sanctions.
Defending India's action, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee pointed out that India was surrounded by nuclear weaponry (meaning China and Pakistan) but indicated that India would not use its weapons aggressively. The BJP ruling party committed itself to making India a prominent Asian nuclear power because of its apprehension about the existence of a Chinese nuclear ring around India through Tibet, Myanmar (Burma), and Pakistan.
China, which conducted final tests of its nuclear devices in 1996 prior to signing the Test Ban Treaty, urged the world community to stop India from becoming a nuclear power. Pakistan feared the escalation of a nuclear arms race in Asia and on May 28,1998, claimed to have set off five nuclear blasts. (U. S. sources counted only two blasts.) Pakistan also declared a state of emergency and suspended the constitution, the legal system, and civil rights. On May 30, Pakistan exploded another nuclear device.
The governments of the United States and Canada immediately announced sanctions against Pakistan, which in 1998 had a per capita income of only US$480. Sanctions against Pakistan would reportedly be more detrimental than on the more developed and independent economy of India. The government of China, which had severely criticized India's tests, expressed deep regret over Pakistan's nuclear explosions. News reports indicated that Pakistan had informed China in advance about its nuclear tests.
The United States ended its economic embargoes against India and Pakistan at the end of 2001. After Islamic terrorists hijacked airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York on September 11,2001, the forces of the United States participated in an invasion of Afghanistan to overthrow the government of that nation, which had been harboring and supporting the terrorists. Needing the support of India and Pakistan, the United States sought to strengthen its ties to the two nations.
In the subcontinent there were positive signs in the late 1990's. The Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee declared a moratorium on future nuclear testing and expressed a desire to negotiate a nuclear treaty with Pakistan that would bar both nations from the first use of the weapons. The Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif proposed talks with India to resolve outstanding issues, but later his government withdrew the offer.
After Nawaz Sharif was overthrown by Pakistani general Pervez Musharraf in 1999, efforts at improving relations between the two nations continued. In July, 2001, President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee held their first summit at Agra but were unable to resolve differences. Relations between the two countries took a turn for the worse over the course of the following year.
The rhetoric of nuclear threat and retaliation continued simultaneously with the positive indicators of possible negotiations. The world's five nuclear nations—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China—decided to meet in emergency session in Geneva, Switzerland, in June, 1998, to curb the nuclear arms race in South Asia and to encourage India and Pakistan to resolve their differences peacefully.
The South Asian nuclear competition of 1998 caused serious alarm among the hitherto five acknowledged nuclear powers, not just because of the obvious dangers of nuclear proliferation but also because the new players in the deadly game had serious political and boundary disputes with each other. Internationally, India has favored total elimination of nuclear weapons by all powers by a definite date.
A series of crises and confrontations led Pakistan and India to the apparent brink of nuclear war by early summer of 2002. In the middle of 1999, Indian authorities learned that infiltrators from Pakistan, including Pakistani army troops, had been crossing over the line separating areas controlled by the two countries in the Kargil region of Jammu and Kashmir. In August, 1999, the Indian air force shot down a Pakistani spy plane flying over the Indian state of Gujarat.
On December 13, 2001, five armed terrorists attempted to make their way into India's Parliament House in New Delhi, killing nine other people before being killed themselves. According to India, the terrorists were Kashmiri militants backed by groups in Pakistan. In January, 2002, President Musharraf of Pakistan banned two of the groups blamed by India for the violence, but Indian and Pakistani troops continued to mass along the borders in Kashmir and threats of nuclear exchanges grew.
In June, 2002, the U. S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that if the two nations engaged in mutual nuclear attacks, as many as 17 million people would be killed during the first few weeks, and more would die from radiation, starvation, and other aftereffects over a period of years. Although tension eased somewhat in the late summer of 2002, the conflict pointed out the continuing danger posed by Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons.
The fact that both India and Pakistan are nuclear states could act as a mutual deterrent and possibly curb the incessant military skirmishes across their borders. On the other hand, there is a global apprehension that the Kashmir dispute could become the "cause" to set off a first strike by one or the other of these South Asian neighbors.
World History
