Opinion The Chinese bomb

By the time the test did take place on October 16,Indian concern had reached a crescendo. For this country,that day proved to be a double whammy because,as the Chinese bomb went up in the Lop Nor desert in Moscow,India-friendly Nikita Khrushchev went down.

Shastri duly denounced the Chinese test as a “danger to world peace” and a “menace to mankind”. Beyond that he gave no indication of what he proposed to do. Defence Minister Y.B. Chavan’s reaction was also muted. He asserted that the bomb would not “significantly add to China’s military strength”,and that,for the near future,the threat remained “China’s conventional forces”.

There were several reasons for the Shastri government’s inability to come up with a coherent and reassuring approach. Like Nehru,the new prime minister was also minister for the atomic energy department. But he had no great knowledge of the sophisticated policy of not going in for production of nuclear weapons until it became absolutely necessary for national defence,but never letting up on developing all the requisite technologies that Nehru and Homi Bhabha,the legendary founder-chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission,had fashioned during their incomparable partnership.

Second,as a disciple of the Mahatma,Shastri felt that India could not make,for the present at any rate,the atomic bomb. Its task was to persuade others to abjure it rather than join them. Somehow,he had also convinced himself that this was in keeping with Nehru’s legacy,too. That this was a firmly held belief was to become obvious a few weeks later when he successfully used it at a meeting of the AICC at Durgapur,where he was under intense pressure to answer China’s bomb with an Indian one.

There was a third reason that people have forgotten but which did constrict Shastri in devising a sturdy response to a nuclear China. In the first fortnight of October,the second summit of the Non-Aligned Movement took place in Cairo. It was the first international forum he was attending. He therefore wanted to put his best foot forward. More importantly,he hoped to persuade the NAM summit to take a stand against the impending Chinese explosion of a “nuclear device”. He therefore proposed that the summit conference should send a mission to China to ask it to “stop making atomic weapons”.

According to G.H. Jansen,then in the ministry of external affairs but soon to leave it to return to journalism,this idea was “inserted into his (Shastri’s) speech at the last minute,and other delegations were not sounded beforehand. However,it was not for want of preparation that the idea fell flat”. Egyptian President Nasser quietly told Shastri that such a mission was “unnecessary”. Other heads of state,though privately liking the idea,were simply unwilling to annoy China. The only exception was President Makarios of Cyprus.

In the final communiqué,a single sentence urged countries without nuclear weapons to “refrain from making them”. Additionally and inexplicably,the communiqué added that the 47 signatories to it should “renounce any idea of making atomic weapons”. Ironically,of them,as many as 46 had no need or capacity to produce these weapons,India alone did.

Back home,eight days after the Chinese test,Bhabha,with his formidable prestige and authority,weighed in powerfully in support of making the bomb. In a famous broadcast over All India Radio,he categorically stated: “Atomic weapons give a state possessing them in adequate numbers a deterrent power against attack from a much stronger state.” He also rubbished the argument that these weapons were so hugely costly that this country could not afford them. He claimed instead that a kiloton bomb could be made in 18 months at Rs 18 lakh. These were clearly underestimates but his basic point was sound,as our later experience has shown.

Bhabha ended his radio address,however,by urging the United Nations and the “great powers” to pursue nuclear disarmament in order to “create a climate favourable to countries which have the capability of making atomic weapons,but have voluntarily refrained from doing so.”

Meanwhile,US President Lyndon Johnson had gone to town to reassure India and other countries that nations that do not make nuclear weapons “can be sure that if they need our strong support against some threat of nuclear blackmail,then they will have it”.

Significantly,by this time Shastri had neither held any detailed discussion with Bhabha (only Krishna Menon,though holding no office,had rebuked him) nor taken the nuclear issue to the cabinet. From all accounts,he wanted to do so only after he had made up his mind on what his policy should be.

Bhabha’s concluding remark in his radio address and the US president’s reassuring speeches seem to have made him decide that India should not produce nuclear weapons but rely on the support and nuclear guarantees of the two superpowers to protect itself from the Chinese nuclear threat. It was at this stage that a cabinet meeting was held at which Bhabha was present. Obviously,no clear-cut decision was taken. For,Shastri wanted the matter thrashed out at the AICC first.

At the LBJ library in Austin,Texas,there is a complete record of conversations between Bhabha and Spurgeon Keeny,science adviser to the US president. Other serious matters apart,Bhabha volunteered the information that at the cabinet meeting “more than half its members seemed not to know what I was talking about.”

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator