Why the Buddha smiled

I recall the story today since some thought it ironic that the Enlightened One’s name was linked to weaponry. He himself, being a supreme realist, never preached unilateral disarmament. Incidentally, it is relevant to note that much the same point was made in the wake of Pokharan II by the representatives of two leading Buddhist nations the Dalai Lama and the Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka.

It is no less relevantto recall the Buddha’s advice to the Licchavis. He prophesied that even the mightiest king could not bend Vaisali to his will if the traditions of “holding frequent and free assemblies”, of maintaining concord in administration, and of “honouring the wise” were kept up.

Are we any wiser than our Licchavi ancestors? Depressingly, party politics seems to take precedence over national unity. Look at Mulayam Singh Yadav’s reaction. He offered cursory congratulations to the scientists followed by ferocious attacks on the BJP. Yadav also told anyone willing to listen that he himself had proposed such tests, and was prevented only by untimely polls.

Surely elections weren’t looming in the entire period Yadav spent in the Defence Ministry. If a decision could be enforced by the current ministry in just forty days, why couldn’t Yadav push his through in his eighteen-month tenure?

Well, perhaps the Samajwadi Party chief was an early victim of the same torpor that descended upon Congress headquarters in thewake of the tests. It took three days before we heard the official views of India’s oldest party. Predictably, it reacted by damning with faint praise.

In the interim there was a confused medley of comments. To my mind, the most interesting reaction was Natwar Singh’s. “Why now?” he queried belligerently.

Precisely, why is it that India had to wait so long before entering the nuclear club? The constant harping of some foreign powers on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) isn’t made sweeter by knowing it could have been avoided altogether.

The Indo-American tussles over nuclear policy began in Nehru’s day. India could have made an atomic bomb as far back as 1956, an option disowned by the then Congress government. This sacrifice didn’t, however, assuage the suspicions of the US. The first American sanctions on India were in place by 1957.

Unfortunately, even the Indo-Chinese War and the border conflict with Pakistan in 1965 didn’t change the Congressmindset. The whole mess over the NPT needn’t have come up had the Congress listened to the pleas of the scientific community and the defence establishment. Because the NPT uses a cut-off date of 1968 to establish who is or isn’t a nuclear weapons state.

True, Indira Gandhi took the plunge in 1974. But it was a decision made in a vacuum, an empty gesture without any reference to India’s ultimate security needs. All it achieved was to halt Canadian supplies of heavy water.

Given such a history of ignoring professional advice, it was amusing to listen to Sharad Pawar’s off-the-cuff remarks when he was informed of Porkharan II. He generously gave the credit in its entirety to Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

While taking nothing away from the latest winner of the Bharat Ratna, it should be pointed out that his field of expertise is missile development. Pawar, a former Defence Minister, should have known of Dr Chidambaram and his team.

Speaking of the Bharat Ratna, a more accurate picture of the Congress attitude tothe scientific community comes from Dr Raja Ramanna. He recalls that Indira Gandhi’s ministry refused outright to confer the nation’s supreme civilian honour upon Dr Homi Bhabha. The insulting rebuff was that the father of India’s atomic energy programme wasn’t “big enough”.

Such snubs were fairly common through the 1980s and early 1990s. Every prime minister informed the world that Pakistan was ready to beg, borrow, or steal nuclear weapons technology. But not one bothered to take decisive action. In 1995, when the Narasimha Rao ministry was in power, the merest hint of American disapproval was enough to stop all talk of a second test.

Having missed the bus on the NPT deadline, India was all set to repeat its laggardly effort on the CTBT issue when the first Vajpayee ministry took over in 1996. But when the Prime Minister wanted to go ahead and arm, the scientists warned him that they required at least four weeks to prepare themselves.

This time wasn’t available. So Vajpayee did the next best thing.He asked his successors in the United Front to conduct a test and then sign the CTBT. Instead, we went through the ritual of not signing the treaty but not moving to weaponise either.

This proved to be as empty a gesture as the first Pokharan blast. It annoyed everybody abroad, without doing a whit to answer India’s security concerns.There may never be a definite answer as to why the UF shrank from the nuclear option. But the attitude of the Left to Pokharan II offers a clue. The CPI and the CPI(M) seemed shell-shocked for a while before acidly demanding that the government explain the reasons for conducting the blasts.

Pakistan’s boast of conducting tests within the week should provide the answer. The Forward Bloc, less reticent, came up with the supremely ungenerous reaction, “It was a waste intended to divert the country’s attention!”

Perhaps the Forward Bloc should have listened to Pawar and Mulayam Singh Yadav. Both were claiming credit for stockpiling the raw material, ensuring India was theproverbial screwdriver’s turn away from assembling a weapon. All that was lacking was political courage — which the Vajpayee ministry provided.

The Congress holds Pokharan II to be the result of forty years of nurturing Indian science. Then it is equally true that for forty years no political party had the guts to take the process to its logical conclusion. So give the scientists their due, but spare a crumb of credit for the current ministry too.