Opinion Moving on in New York

India join the NPT. But there is no question of India signing the NPT,since in its present form the treaty cannot accommodate Delhi as a nuclear weapon state. Any revision of the treaty is also virtually impossible given the complexity of the process involved.

The issue is not really about India signing the NPT. What matters is Delhi’s approach to the non-proliferation regime. Is India a partner of the NPT or a permanent outsider and protestor?

As one of the world’s nuclear weapon powers and a nation with plans to build a large commercial atomic energy programme,it is indeed India’s obligation to boost the NPT. Any suggestion that India should endorse and support the NPT,however,generates considerable unease in Delhi,which has long denounced the treaty as “discriminatory”.

To speak the unpalatable truth,the Indian strategic community is a victim of its own propaganda about the NPT over the last four decades. Whatever might have been the original reasons for Indian opposition to the NPT,those do not apply in the changed international context marked by India’s own status as an emerging great power and the civil nuclear initiative that Delhi negotiated with the Nuclear Suppliers Group at the end of 2008.

India’s rhetoric on the NPT’s discriminatory character was never a compelling argument. After all,Delhi had accepted other unequal arrangements including the United Nations and the Bretton Woods system. Discrimination is a natural feature of international politics; so long as states are differently endowed and there is no world government,discrimination will remain an integral part of international life. “Matsya Nyaya” — big fish eating small — was central to the ancient Indian understanding of how sovereign entities relate to each other under conditions of anarchy.

No wonder states do not complain all the time about discrimination,but learn to cope with it. Some choose to rely on alliances with big powers; others strive to establish a minimum set of rules that bring some predictability to a world based on power politics; rising powers defy the system only to find an eventual accommodation on acceptable terms.

Those who protest against the NPT in India should ask themselves why the rest of the world has accepted it in such large numbers and stuck with it for four decades. Practically every nation in the world is now part of the NPT,except India,Pakistan,Israel and North Korea. Discrimination was not the central reason for India’s opposition to the NPT,which was negotiated in the mid-1960s and came into force in 1970. It was about the unacceptable nuclear imbalance with China.

Once China tested its first atomic weapon in October 1964,barely two years after the Sino-Indian border conflict,India had no choice but to search for a measure of nuclear security. India first tried getting nuclear security guarantees from the major powers — Great Britain,the United States,and Soviet Russia. When it could not,Delhi went to the United Nations seeking a multilateral treaty to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. When the NPT that came out of this process was not satisfactory,Delhi chose to stay out citing reasons of inequity.

But once it declared itself a nuclear weapon power and initiated reconciliation with the international order,there is no reason at all for Delhi to use ideological arguments against the NPT. In New York last week,the word “discrimination” was in fact being thrown at Delhi. The complaint was about the exception that had been granted to Delhi by the Nuclear Suppliers Group in 2008 as part of the implementation of the Indo-US civil nuclear initiative.

Delhi will not be the first to adapt its nuclear policy to changed circumstances. China,for example,had decried the nuclear order as it emerged in the 1960s as reflecting the political collusion and hegemony of the superpowers America and Russia. Once it normalised relations with Washington and was given the permanent seat at the UN Security Council,Beijing dropped its rhetoric against the NPT and eventually joined the treaty in the early 1990s. Now China is a champion of non-proliferation!

India began a similar journey since in May 1998 when it conducted nuclear tests. Two previous foreign ministers representing different governments — Jaswant Singh of the NDA and Natwar Singh of the UPA-I — declared that India had no quarrel with the NPT. In identical statements made in May 2000 and April 2005,respectively,in connection with the NPT review conferences,the two ministers said,“India may not be a party to the NPT,but our conduct has always been consistent with the key provisions of the treaty as they apply to nuclear weapon states.”

Much has happened since then — including the successful negotiation of India’s global civil nuclear initiative and the consequent transformation of India’s nuclear status. India must now end its defensiveness on the NPT. It needs to articulate a clear vision about India’s role in the management of the global nuclear order and its three pillars that are being examined in New York: non-proliferation,disarmament,and the expanded use of civilian nuclear energy.

Great powers have the burden of maintaining order in world politics even at the expense of equity and justice. As a rising power India must demonstrate that it is ready to undertake that responsibility and sustain the “discriminatory” global nuclear order built around the NPT.

raja.mohan@expressindia.com