ABSTRACT

India has been a consistent advocate of global nuclear disarmament since the inception of the
concept in the United Nations. India, faced with two nuclear neighbors with one of them
declaring its nuclear arsenal as India-specific, had to reluctantly become a nuclear weapon
state. However, India remains committed to the idea of negotiating a universal, non-
discriminatory and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of
fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, one that takes into
account India’s national security interests.

India and the NPT

The UN Security Council adopted unanimously resolution 1887 on nuclear non-proliferation

which among other actions called on states not party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to
join it. However, India responded to the resolution by declaring categorically that it will not join
the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state since nuclear weapons constitute an integral part of
India’s security. Till date, the NPT recognises only the five permanent members of the UN
Security Council (US, Russia, UK, France and China) as nuclear weapon powers and mandates
that other countries can be a party to the NPT only as a non-nuclear weapon state. This is not
acceptable to India and hence the issue of India joining the NPT does not arise. India’s stated
position on the NPT is that it “cannot accept externally prescribed norms or standards on
matters within the jurisdiction of its Parliament or which are not consistent with India's
constitutional provisions and procedures, or are contrary to India's national interests or infringe
on its sovereignty.”

India and the CTBT

India’s stand on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) too is a principled one.
India has declared that it would be unable to sign and ratify the CTBT in its present
discriminatory form. However, India has pledged to continue with its voluntary and unilateral
moratorium on further nuclear testing. India is the only nuclear weapon state to declare that it
believes its security would be enhanced, not diminished, in a world free of nuclear weapons.

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INTRODUCTION

As the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) turns 50 this summer, so will India’s refusal to
accede to the Treaty on grounds that it is a biased legal instrument that divided the world into
“nuclear haves” and “nuclear have-nots.” The year 2018 also commemorates 20 years since
India’s five nuclear tests in May 1998, and 10 years since the 2008 congressional approval of the
U.S.-India 123 agreement, also called the U.S.–India Civil Nuclear Agreement.

Much has been written on whether India “had it easy,” unlike other countries that developed
nuclear weapons outside the five nuclear weapon states under the NPT. For those who
remember, such arguments were plentiful and pervasive in the United States in 2008 when the
U.S.-India 123 agreement needed congressional approval and more recently, in opposition to the
India’s membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). It is an opportune moment,
therefore, to understand the significance of this Treaty in terms of India’s supposed “special
relationship” with it.

OBJECTIVES

The objective of the research project is to dwell into the dimension of the political and legal
aspects of the reasons as to why India is not a part of the non-proliferation treaty (NPT). The
project would focus on certain research questions and the researcher has tried to answer them
with utmost accuracy. The final objective would be to review a literary article related to NPT to
better clarify the topic.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The research methodology of the project is simple, with a focus on various books available in the
library that inform about the freedom struggle of India and various internet sources which
emphasize on part of revolutionaries in the freedom struggle against the British rule.

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The resources that have been referred to:

 Interpreting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1st Edition) by Daniel H. Joyner.

 2010 NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION NPT U. S. DELEGATION TO THE
TREATY REVIEW CONFERENCE.
 Other Internet Sources

MANUSCRIPT

 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Why did India not sign the NPT in 1968?

What immediate and subsequent impact did that have on the NPT?

What role did security interests, domestic politics and prestige play in India’s decision?

 BACKGROUND AND PRESENT SCENARIOL

First, India’s decision to not join the NPT needs to be understood in the context of decisions
taken by countries that chose to sign and ratify the NPT. Today, India is one of the only five
countries that either did not sign the NPT or signed but withdrew, thus becoming part of a list
that includes Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, and South Sudan. This might make New Delhi seem
like an outlier but persuading and/or coercing sovereign states to be part of the NPT was a
Herculean effort for U.S. policymakers with no clear guarantee of success. This is because the
“grand bargain” of the treaty — enshrined in Articles II and IV — requires countries to give up
any present or future plans to build nuclear weapons in return for access to peaceful uses of
nuclear energy.

For major powers like Japan and West Germany — the two key countries that both
superpowers wanted to accede to the Treaty — this was not easily accomplished. Domestic
political coalitions did not come out overwhelmingly in support of the NPT in Tokyo and Bonn.
Moreover, with the refusal of France to sign the Treaty, smaller West European countries

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like Italy and Switzerland exploited the opportunity to cause delays in reaching a final decision
on whether to be part of the NPT. In other words, between 1968 and 1975-76, the fate of the
NPT was far from certain: Would the key countries sign the Treaty? Would the signatories
actually ratify the Treaty? What could the superpowers do to persuade or possibly coerce
countries to accede to the Treaty? The situation was unpredictable. India’s decision to not sign
the Treaty stood out because the refusal came from a nonaligned developing country dependent
on superpowers for economic, technological, and military aid.

Second, it is worth exploring a counterfactual question: without India’s underground nuclear

explosion in May 1974, how likely is it that the Watergate-smeared Nixon administration and
subsequently the Ford administration would have done much to reinforce the NPT? The
Nixon/Ford administrations did that in two key ways: first, the formation of a nuclear exporters’
grouping irrespective of NPT membership (later known as the NSG), and second, persuading as
many countries as possible to sign and ratify the Treaty. The goal was to ensure that the 1975
NPT Review Conference saved face for the United States and the incipient nonproliferation
regime. Without the Indian explosion, it is improbable that a realpolitik-driven Nixon-Kissinger
team, which was preoccupied with redrawing the terrain of the Cold War international
system through a rapprochement with Beijing and détente with Moscow, would have spent much
diplomatic capital on the global ratification of the NPT. This is not to claim that the Nixon
administration was uncommitted to nonproliferation but instead it is to argue that without the
1974 Indian test, the administration might not have undertaken tangible actions toward
nonproliferation notwithstanding an overarching and general commitment. The 1974 Indian
nuclear explosion, therefore, inadvertently strengthened the NPT and the fledgling
nonproliferation regime — the global atomic marketplace needed to be regulated such that
“another India” could be prevented at all costs.

Third and finally, in order to understand India’s decision to not sign the NPT in 1968, the 1974
Indian nuclear explosion codenamed the “Smiling Buddha” needs to be foregrounded. The 1974
explosion is one of the most misunderstood and perhaps misrepresented events in India’s nuclear
history. New Delhi called it a “peaceful nuclear explosion” (PNE), indicating that it was an
experiment to investigate civilian uses of nuclear explosions, for example the construction of
harbors or oil exploration — even though PNEs are technically indistinguishable from a nuclear

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weapon test. More importantly, no crash program was launched to develop delivery vehicles,
thereby befuddling security experts in Washington and elsewhere, who were used to expecting a
swift linear movement from nuclear testing to further testing to the development of precise or
near-precise delivery systems. In the absence of an extensive resource allocation for nuclear
weapons delivery systems, security experts and scholars shied away (and still continue to do so)
from a security-based explanation to analyze the “Smiling Buddha.”

Perceived security threats from Pakistan and Pakistan’s ally China, on the one hand, and from
the United States, on the other (U.S. inaction in 1965 war and active support for Pakistan in the
1971 war are cases in point) provide a strong security-driven rationale for the 1974 PNE.
Security threats are not always existential necessitating an immediate response, like a crash
program on missiles, or a massive allocation of resources for military ends. This is more so in
resource-scarce democracies where non-military needs are more often pressing and public
support for high-cost military projects are low. Hence, policymakers need to prioritize effectively
and act accordingly.

The demonstration of a nuclear weapons capability in the 1974 explosion guaranteed New
Delhi’s ability to effectively hedge in an asymmetric international system, and a regional
strategic environment where New Delhi felt largely cornered. Moscow’s extension of
“friendship” was helpful for New Delhi to balance Washington and Beijing but the fear of a
Brezhnev doctrine for Asia loomed large in the background. In other words, Indian policymakers
grappled with how to effectively use Moscow’s support for New Delhi without losing its
autonomy and freedom of action. A nuclear explosion that was unforeseen by both the
superpowers was an effective means to accomplish this.

Maintaining a degree of political autonomy has driven independent India’s foreign policy
choices. Major decisions that New Delhi took in the nuclear realm are representative of that. The
grand bargain of NPT — Article II for Article IV — was certainly going to restrict India’s policy
options. Given the security environment at the international and regional levels, Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi and her advisers could not consent to it.

Domestic political imperatives dictated the timing and the rhetoric: the 1974 explosion amidst
plummeting popularity of Indira Gandhi, and the public claim of a “peaceful nuclear explosion.”

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Prestige explained how New Delhi’s actions were not a violation of pre-existing legal
instruments that the country was already party to. The multi-capital tour that Indian policymakers
conducted requesting nuclear security guarantees prior to the refusal to sign the NPT served the
purpose of generating public support for the government decision. But the quest for freedom of
action in an uncertain regional strategic environment and an asymmetric international system
dominated by superpowers and China drove India to not sign the NPT and hedge, and to conduct
the 1974 test.

LITERATURE REVIEW

THE NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION TREATY

Henry Sokolski, May 2010

The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the
official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S.
Government. Authors of Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) publications enjoy full academic
freedom, provided they do not disclose classified information, jeopardize operations security, or
misrepresent official U.S. policy. Such academic freedom empowers them to offer new and
sometimes controversial perspectives in the interest of furthering debate on key issues. This
report is cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

CONCLUSION

Non Proliferation Treaty in its current form is not fair to India. The treaty essentially states that
only 5 winning powers of World War II have the right to have nuclear weapons. There is no way
for India to sign a treaty considered as suicide. India's traditional position has always been either
those five too denuclearize or everyone has the same rights to have nuclear weapons.

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India shares 7500 km of borders with Pakistan and China. Both nations have nuclear weapons
and have fought wars with India. It is silly to ignore India's security threats and persist with the
fiction that India will someday give up its nuclear weapons.

With nuclear weapons in hand, India doesn't worry about other countries as much any more and
is able to confidently deal with both the first world (US-Europe) as well as second world (China-
Russia). This confidence and security has led to better economic policies, greater trade links and
further prosperity.

India would not give all this peace and prosperity up for some relic of post-WW2 that wants to
permanently freeze the strong positions of the five allies winning that war. Also, India has a
stellar record of not allowing nuclear weapons to proliferate.

One just hopes that eventually west will allow India, Pakistan and Israel as recognized nuclear
powers into the fold. There is not point in keeping up with the current farce of having only 5
recognized nuclear powers. Since these three counties have never signed the treaty before going
nuclear, there is less risk of compromising the basic tenets of NPT.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. "Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons". United Nations Office for

Disarmament Affairs. Retrieved 2017-05-13.
2. "UNODA - Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)". un.org. Retrieved 2016-02
20.
3. "Decisions Adopted at the 1995 NPT Review & Extension Conference - Acronym
Institute".
4. "Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)" (PDF). Defense Treaty Inspection Readiness
Program - United States Department of Defense. Defense Treaty Inspection Readiness
Program. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 March 2013. Retrieved 19 June 2013.
5. Graham, Jr., Thomas (November 2004). "Avoiding the Tipping Point". Arms Control
Association.

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 6. Benjamin K. Sovacool (2011). Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power: A Critical Global
Assessment of Atomic Energy, World Scientific, pp. 187–190.
7. Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman (2009). The Nuclear Express: A Political History
of the Bomb and its Proliferation, Zenith Press, p. 144.
8. Ambassador Sudjadnan Parnohadiningrat, 26 April 2004, United Nations, New York,
Third Session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2005 Review Conference of the
Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, furnished by the
Permanent Mission of the Republic of Indonesia to the United Nations
(indonesiamission-ny.org) Archived 20 November 2005 at the Wayback Machine.

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