DEVELOPMENTS

On March 19, 1998 Atal Bihari Vajpayee, leader of the Hindu-backed BJP parliamentary party was sworn in for the second time as India’s Prime Minister. Though elected on a narrow confidence vote, just six weeks into his tenure the Indian government announced before the surprised nation and the international community that it had conducted three underground nuclear explosions in Pokhran, which would be followed by two more tests two days later.

Amidst ecstatic bravado within the party and country, and many denunciations worldwide, India declared itself a nuclear weapon state, and thus, further kicked dirt on the 1970 UN Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which it refused to sign. “Our nuclear weapons are meant purely as a deterrent against nuclear adventure by an adversary,” Vajpayee said of the occasion. The rebuke of Vajpayee’s declaration lagged not too far behind: Pakistan followed India’s lead a fortnight later with tests of its own.

Since then, India has come dangerously close to engagement with Pakistan over Kashmir four different times. The country has declared its weapons program “responsible,” despite leading the way for South Asia’s development into a “nuclear flashpoint,” according to P.K. Sundaram, a researcher at the Indian Pugwash Society which studies the conflicts between science and world policy. India brokered a deal with the US two years ago to enable the country to have ’civilian’ nuclear trade - in terms of nuclear fuel, technology, and reactors – primarily with the US, though the country has also invited others to the table. It also managed to skirt inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which applies only to the “civilian” reactors and not the “strategic” (bomb-making) ones. This nuclear option in South Asia has engendered a very real regional push-and-pull, as neighboring powers attempt to respond with their own capabilities, and treaties to balance each other and the U.S.