South Asian Cultures of the Bomb: Atomic Publics and the State in India and Pakistan

10. Guardians of the Nuclear Myth: Politics, Ideology,and India’s Strategic Community

10 Guardians of the Nuclear Myth: Politics, Ideology, and India’s Strategic Community Karsten Frey In 1977 the then foreign minister Atal Behari Vajpayee stated that India “would never manufacture atomic weapons nor proliferate the technology of weapon development. It is our solemn resolve that whatever the rest of the world may do, we will never use the atomic energy for military purpose.”1 Two decades later, immediately after becoming India’s new prime minister, Vajpayee authorized the testing of nuclear devices and subsequently declared India a nuclear weapons power. Most major parties and segments of India’s society effectively welcomed the tests as a national achievement and a major source of national pride. What had happened in the country over the two decades after Vajpayee’s “solemn resolve”? The fundamental change of heart on the nuclear question cannot be convincingly explained through security analyses. India’s security-related incentives to nuclearize, in any case, had been reduced by the end of the Cold War, the reduction of global stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and the ongoing process of Sino-Indian rapprochement . Instead of assessing changes in the external threat environment, this chapter 196 · Guardians of the Nuclear Myth focuses on the fundamental change that took place in India’s domestic discourse on the nuclear question. Within India’s democratic setup, the interaction between the elected leaders and the public on nuclear issues is not direct, but occurs through the mediation of a small number of strategic thinkers. This strategic community has managed to monopolize the nuclear discourse and create a social reality of its own in which nuclear weapons have become the chosen symbols of what India stands for in the world. The strategic community sets the parameters of the nuclear discourse by exercising opinion leadership through extensive media presence and newspaper publishing. The main forums for the debate on the nuclear issue were India’s major Englishlanguage daily newspapers and weekly journals. To assess the dynamics behind India’s nuclear (dis-)course, this chapter summarizes the findings of a textual analysis of 705 nuclear-related editorials and opinion articles published in five of India’s major dailies: the Hindu, the Hindustan Times, the Indian Express, the Times of India, and the Statesman .2 The analysis shows that the strategic community’s success in linking the nuclear question to ideology was decisive in paving the way for India’s nuclearization. Reflections on Nuclear Myths In most countries today the development of nuclear weapons is considered morally prohibitive, incompatible with the country’s international outlook. In some states, however, these negative norms are overridden by other norms that lead to the glorification of nuclear weapons as either symbols of invulnerability, perceived threats, or the regalia of major power status. This phenomenon is termed the “nuclear myth.” The concept of nuclear myth is closely related to the idea of international prestige . States seeking this prestige have generally “lost the last major-power war and/ or have increased their power after the international order was established and the benefits were allocated.”3 Within the international nuclear order, established in 1968 through the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), an antiquated balance of power has been preserved in that five states are granted superior status. Those states that think of their status and power as having increased since then tend to oppose the regime. This opposition is, in most cases, limited to diplomatic gestures, but in other cases it may cause the state to seek system change by building up nuclear arms. The motives of nuclear arming behavior are thus bound to the socially constructed values attached to such weapons. According to Scott D. Sagan, “from this sociological perspective, military organizations and their weapons can therefore be envisioned as serving functions similar to those of flags, airlines, and Olympic teams; they are part of what modern states believe they have to possess to be legitimate, modern states.”4 The identity of a modern state translates into norms that determine behavioral patterns. Norms are defined as “a prescription or proscription for behaviour ‘for a given identity.’”5 In the process of norms creation, emotions such as pride and fear are attached to these symbols. Karsten Frey · 197 The overall number of states that consider the acquisition of nuclear weapons a prerequisite for being a modern state is rather low, as most states develop diametrically opposed norms. This process of glorification also is limited to nuclear weapons...