The big bang

The anniversary of Hiroshima, where the first nuclear bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, has invited progressively less attention worldwide...

The anniversary of Hiroshima, where the first nuclear bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, has invited progressively less attention worldwide. It is possible that we are all becoming more cynical, or at least less sensitive, to the death and destruction symbolised by Hiroshima where in one moment life stood still, and death took over, killing and seriously wounding 160,000 innocent people. That a single bomb dropped from the air, thousands of miles away from home, could wreck so much havoc then became the foundation for doctrines of Mutually Assured Destruction by civilised countries for decades to follow. On the other side, hope rested on the release of thousands of white doves into the sky from Hiroshima yesterday to symbolise the struggle for the global abolition of nuclear weapons.

The international community see-ms to have given up the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons in recent years. Even the lip service of earlier years was absent on Hiroshima Day. Global attention and pressure for nuclear disarmament by peace movements has all but disappeared. It is indeed ironic that the United States launched a war on the grounds that Iraq was building nuclear weapons; but wants to recommence testing to make newer, more accurate and usable nuclear bombs in spite of its international obligations. During the past year one more country has broken into the group of nuclear weapon states showing no reservations about threatening others. All trends point toward the salience of nuclear weapons increasing in the coming years.

India had stood firmly on the side of global nuclear disarmament since 1945. But the focus on disarmament seems to be getting diffused in recent years in spite of global disarmament being defined as one of the fundamental principles of the official nuclear doctrine. This may be the after-effect of the overt declaration of nuclear weapon status in May 1998. But it is necessary to remember that nuclear weapons became necessary for our security primarily because there are nuclear weapons impinging on our security calculus. Elimination of the threat itself by disarmament would improve our security environment. Abolition of nuclear weapons may take a long time to fructify; but without serious efforts toward that end, it would never happen and we would continue to live under the shadow of the mushroom cloud.