The Inception and Evolution of India’s Nuclear Program

Post its emergence as a free nation in 1947, India had vowed to itself and its people to pursue the path of self-reliance in an era where the threat of nuclear war jeopardised the world order.

Illustration by The Geostrata

In a glorious effort to protect its toiled-for freedom, India’s leaders opted for the strategy of non-alignment with either bloc during the Cold war to create an environment wherein the brilliant minds of the country could practise freedom of thought and action.

However, a newly independent India had already been facing a dire threat to its foundations from the communal violence occurring due to the partition between India and Pakistan.

In the midst of this turmoil, the leaders of the nation took pivotal decisions that focused upon building the national strength through the use of indigenous resources and intellect, in order to make India a country with fortified pillars that could stand on its own against the other economic and technological powerhouses of the international community. Within these efforts, the most ambitious one was the decision to make India a formidable nuclear power.

Today, India stands as the only developing nation to have indigenously developed, demonstrated, and deployed a wide range of scientific capabilities and technologies in the civilian aspects of nuclear science and technology. However, the journey to this goal and today’s India had been marred by challenges with every step taken further into the den of nuclear industry development. 

THE INCEPTION OF A NUCLEAR IDEA

India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had been the foremost of the Indian leaders to believe in the need for a comprehensive nuclear plan for the country in order for it to create a place for itself within the tumultuous world order.

Nehru was of the belief that despite India being ravaged by its colonisers for over 2 centuries, the damages that it had accrued and was accruing due to the vehement violence of the partition, India could still recover by dedicating itself to science and technology.

Hence, with the advent of nuclear energy becoming global within the 1940’s, Nehru had understood the salience of nuclear energy and had dedicated himself to building prime capabilities for administering peaceful use of nuclear energy within the country.

Trusting the brilliant mind of Dr. Homi Bhabha within the 1948 atomic energy commission, Nehru helped establish the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1945, through a grant received from the Dorabji Tata Trust, to initiate research on nuclear and allied areas of physics.

In its initial stages, the nuclear program focused only upon the development of civilian nuclear energy, harnessing its power for use in areas of energy generation, agriculture, industry, and medicine.

Although Nehru had recognised the devastating military potential of nuclear energy and weapons, India’s Gandhian doctrine of non violence and his own personal aversion of addressing issues with violence, military research on nuclear weapons had been limited.

This had further been due to the fact that Nehruvian India’s foreign policy had been a strict voice of non violence, disarmament, and non-alignment, and naturally, its nuclear policy had to remain within a similar vein. Consequently, the primary focus of the plan at its inception had been the production of electricity within the country. 

Serious development within the nuclear program only began in 1954 along with the construction of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) at Trombay which served as the primary research facility for India’s nuclear program. This period had been marked with a tremendous increase in government spending on atomic research and heightened willingness for international collaboration on the same.

Bhabha and his team decided to employ a comprehensive three stage nuclear power program in an effort to harness the peaceful characteristics of nuclear energy.

Realising that the country lacked natural uranium but had thorium in abundance, Bhabha and his team adopted a strategy for electricity generation in the initial phase by establishing heavy water–moderated, natural uranium-fuelled pressurised heavy water reactors, which also resulted in the production of plutonium as a by-product.

Once this first step had taken place, the produced plutonium aligned with depleted uranium would then fuel fast breeder reactors to produce the Uranium-233 fissile isotope in their thorium-loaded blanket region.

Finally, the third-stage fast breeder reactors would be fuelled with thorium paired with the Uranium-233 produced in the second step, which would produce more fissile material than they would burn in the process, all the while providing electricity.

This brainchild of Bhabha and his team ensured the sustainability of nuclear power for future generations in India. 

STEPS FORWARD: THE FIRST NUCLEAR TEST AND RESULTANT CHALLENGES

Around this period, the developed West and the members of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) had been carefully observing India’s nuclear footsteps.

They had been wary of the potential that India exhibited within this domain and to curb the growth of such devastating power within the world, they had been pressuring the global community to become party to the many agreements that controlled nuclear weapon proliferation.

On a different spectrum, increased pressure from Pakistan had been motivating India to further develop its nuclear program. However, the final nail in the coffin that shifted India’s approach to nuclear energy had been the 1962 war with China which had resulted in its overwhelming victory and a massive humiliating loss for India. 

Help from both the United States and the Soviet Union had been denied during this war due to their preoccupation with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, hence stranding India against the military might of developing China.

Furthermore, China also conducted its first atomic bomb test in 1964, further heightening tensions within India for the need for a deterrent to prevent another version of the 1962 war from happening in the future. Jawaharlal Nehru’s death in 1964 also left a void in the leadership and paired with rising security concerns, the Indian leadership called for the overhaul of India’s nuclear stance.

Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, still adamant about not producing nuclear weapons, was convinced by Homi Bhabha to not develop nuclear weapons but produce peaceful nuclear explosions.

This marked a paradigm shift within India’s nuclear policy wherein Prime Minister Shastri announced that India would seek nuclear guarantees from the nuclear weapon states and simultaneously strengthen its conventional forces to defend itself against possible Chinese aggression.  

After the experience of not being provided any aid during the dire times of the 1962 Sino-Indian war, India finally decided to free itself of Western influence and rise to the heights of the global order through a ladder built by its own hands. Moreover, many of the treaties that the nuclear countries had pumped out fell short of addressing the issue of curbing the arms race.

The 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, for example, had curbed atmospheric nuclear testing. But by the time of the launch of the treaty, countries had already developed technologies for conducting underground nuclear tests, and hence, the testing had continued with no change in the pace of the nuclear arms race.

In a similar vein, India took the decision to not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 which established the P-5 as recognised nuclear weapons states, while its non-nuclear signatories pledged not to develop nuclear weapons programs.

Herein, India accused the nuclear powers of "atomic collusion" and specifically criticised the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) for not distinguishing between military and peaceful nuclear explosions.

More than that, India felt that the countries that it had turned to for support and understanding during a period of turmoil and chaos for the country, had been unable to give it the assurances that it had been pleading for. As a result, India had clarified its inability to sign the NPT.

By the 1970’s, India already had the abilities and technology to create nuclear weapons. In the background of the 1971 war between India and Pakistan and the resultant siding of the USA and China with Pakistan, tensions rose to an all time high regarding the safeguard of India’s future.

The confidence gained from achieving an overwhelming victory in the 1971 war, the assured partnership gained with the Soviet Union through the 1971 Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation, along with the perceived threat to security posed by the allied bloc of United States, China, and Pakistan, urged India to move forward with its nuclear agenda.

In an effort to prove India’s brilliance to the developed West and safeguarding its own security interests within the global hemisphere, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi officially approved a nuclear test in 1972. A team led by Bhabha’s successor, Raja Ramanna, built the bomb with much secrecy.

Finally, on May 18 of 1974, India’s first peaceful nuclear explosion took place at the Pokhran test site in Rajasthan. Codenamed “Operation Smiling Buddha” and officially deemed as “Pokhran I”, the peaceful nuclear explosion, as termed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, became a sign to all the members of the global community that India could defend itself if an extreme situation arose. 

The resultant backlash, although expected, hit India hard. Canada, which had initially helped India build its first nuclear reactor, froze all nuclear assistance within a few days and eventually terminated it in 1976. The USA also froze all of its assistance to the country and imposed heavy sanctions on India.

Reacting to India’s test and in an effort to prevent other countries from rising up similarly, The USA spearheaded the initiative to form the Nuclear Suppliers Group in the mid 1970s. Moreover, predominantly catalysed by India's 1974 nuclear weapon test, the United States Congress enacted the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act (NNPA) in 1978.

This legislation stipulates that the USA shall not export nuclear-related materials to any nation that does not consent to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards on all its nuclear activities, which India had not been a part of. Additionally, the NNPA prohibits exports to any non-nuclear-weapon state that has detonated a nuclear device, a provision that had explicitly targeted India.

India now found it incredibly difficult to procure any nuclear materials due to the unwillingness of the international community to help. As a result, the nation's nuclear program’s growth was severely stunted.

TOWARDS POKHRAN II AND BEYOND

Despite these inherent challenges, India pushed forward, even though its progress was very slow. Domestic political instability was also one of the factors that slowed down the progress, such as the 1975 Emergency which led to the collapse of the government.

However, the discovery of Pakistan's atomic bomb program in 1980 led India to believe that it would succeed in a few years, further elevating tensions. Although Morarji Desai’s term as Prime Minister did not see much progress, the reinstating of Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister and the induction of Ramanna into the Ministry of Defence put the program back on a steady track with momentum.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) was given increased funding in 1983 to expand its nuclear weapon capacity. In 1983, the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme was launched under the Indira Gandhi government. Furthermore, India’s test of its first anti-ballistic missile, the Agni, was successful and celebrated throughout the country in 1989. 

The beginning of the post-Cold War era and the disintegration of the USSR made a paradigm shift within India’s nuclear approach yet again. The loss of a trustworthy ally in a now unipolar world, especially in an atmosphere of rising tensions with China and Pakistan, motivated India to move towards a stance which would demonstrate its nuclear abilities to the world to safeguard its national interests and security.

Furthermore, in 1995, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was subject to its 25-year review. Under massive pressure from the United States, the treaty was extended unconditionally and indefinitely. Due to which, India faced hefty demands to either accede to the NPT or implement comprehensive safeguards on its nuclear power plants.

Under such circumstances, India felt that it needed to safeguard the nuclear program that it had been building across decades and not allow it to be damaged by imposing restrictions—which it did not agree with—on itself. The newly proposed Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) of 1996, which barred any future nuclear tests by all powers, also further threatened to shut down India’s nuclear program forever.

However, India believed that it did nothing regarding the difference between the countries who had already procured the nuclear weapons and those who had not.

Feeling that the treaty would gravely limit India’s nuclear potential at an unacceptably low level, all the while noticing that the treaty did nothing to further the process of disarmament, India refused to be party to the CTBT.

The 1998 general elections within India saw the formation of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, which was a strong advocate of nuclear weaponisation, marking the ending of a period of nuclear abstinence policies. Physicist Rajagopala Chidambaram, head of the BARC, was promptly granted authorization to conduct further nuclear tests. Preparations were meticulously camouflaged, with engineers labouring under the cover of night to evade detection by American satellites.

Finally, on 11 and 13 May, 1998, India carried out “Operation Shakti” or the Pokhran-II tests at the Pokhran Test Range in Rajasthan, detonating 5 nuclear devices, consisting of a thermonuclear device, a fission device, and a low-yield device.

As a result, having tested weaponised nuclear warheads, India became the sixth country to join the nuclear club, cementing its status as a nuclear power and further enhancing its deterrence capabilities. The same had been announced to the world by Prime Minister Vajpayee, on the same day that the tests had been conducted.

The Pokhran-II test met with direct condemnation by a myriad of countries and severe economic sanctions from the USA, according to the 1994 anti-proliferation law, along with imposing restrictions on lending on international finance bodies.

The domestic reaction, however, was overwhelmingly positive, with a majority of Indians believing that it was a step in the right direction to prove India’s mettle and assert its claim as a great power in the international order.

Pakistan responded with nuclear tests Chagai-I and Chagai-II on 28th May and 30th May respectively, often blaming India for instigating an arms race within the region. 

CONCLUSION

Soon after disclosing its nuclear capabilities, India formed the National Security Advisory Board, which developed a no-first-use policy for its nuclear weapons, along with the non-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, the suspension of nuclear tests, the non-export of nuclear technology and working towards universal nuclear disarmament.

This doctrine eventually underwent modification to consider a biological or chemical assault against India as adequate grounds for a nuclear response. The no first use policy helps create a responsible image of India that is engaged in working with the global community.

Furthermore, India adopted a policy of credible minimum deterrence, stating that it would maintain a sufficient nuclear arsenal for deterrence purposes but would not engage in an arms race. This policy ensured the second-strike capability of India in tandem with its no-first-use policy.

Today India maintains a nuclear triad, possessing the ability to deploy land-based ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers with nuclear bombs and missiles, solidifying its deterrence capabilities even further.

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BY SHEHAAN SAHNI

CENTRE FOR HISTORY AND CULTURE

TEAM GEOSTRATA

info@thegeostrata.com