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This year, as India marked the 50th anniversary of the
assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the 'Father of the Nation' has finally
been liquidated. In 1974, less than three years after concluding a
victorious war with Pakistan, India exploded what was called a "peaceful
nuclear device", as though even its nuclear explosions had to carry some of
the burden of Gandhi's non-violence. For the subsequent 24 years, India
exercised virtuous restraint, but it has now broken the self-imposed
moratorium with a series of five nuclear tests over the last few days.
Writing to Clinton and other political leaders, the Indian Prime Minister,
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, pointed to the "deteriorating security environment"
in South Asia, and the aggressive designs of its two principal neighbors,
China and Pakistan, as providing India with a sufficient warrant for
seeking to acquire nuclear deterrence. The political party over which
Vajpayee presides, which draws some of its membership from other political
associations that were implicated in the assassination of Gandhi fifty
years ago and which have ever been the ardent champions of Hindu
ascendancy, has finally removed the specter of Gandhi which has been
haunting India's modernizing elites. The Indian nation-state will no longer
live in consummate fear of Gandhi's critiques of modernity, big science,
instrumental rationality, development, war, and masculinity.
While economists, foreign policy experts, and defense specialists
will continue to debate the reasons that led India to assume nuclear
testing at this particular juncture, the cost to India of economic
sanctions, the possible escalation of an arms race, the palpable failures
of American foreign policy and intelligence gathering, and the geopolitical
consequences of South Asia's nuclearization, there are other, more
interesting and poignant, considerations to which we should be attentive.
During the height of the Cold War, Nehru attempted to place India in a
'third camp' and place it at the helm of the leadership of the non-aligned
movement. This was even, in some measure, a continuation of Gandhi's
policy of repudiating realpolitik. The non-aligned movement, however,
would become increasingly irrelevant, until the fall of the Soviet Union
rendered it obsolete, and some commentators have consequently interpreted
the nuclear tests as India's cry for attention. Clinton appeared to have
echoed this view when he noted that India, perhaps lacking in self-esteem,
thought itself "underappreciated" as a "world power".
The history of India's nuclear tests extends back, in a manner of
speaking, to the early days of India under colonial rule. The British were
apt to describe Indians as an "effeminate" people, leading lives of
indolence and womanly softness; following the rebellion of 1857-58, the
entire country was divided between "martial" and "non-martial" races. One
response was to embrace a certain kind of hyper-masculinity, which would
enable Indians to be construed as a people just as "manly" as the British.
Indians have never been able to live down the taunt of "effeminacy", and
those who know of the cultural nuances of South Asian history are aware
that some Indians imagine Pakistani Muslims as a meat-eating, virile,
robust, and militaristic people. It is a telling fact that the first
comment of Balasaheb K. Thackeray, the chauvinist leader of the militantly
Hindu Shiv Sena party who is an open admirer of Hitler, upon hearing of the
tests was, "We have to prove that we are not eunuchs."
By signaling its departure from the body of world opinion, India
has sought to arrive on the world stage. It is the one resounding cruelty
of our times that no nation-state which refuses to partake in realpolitik
and the brutal zero-sum politics of our times can receive much of a
hearing. The recent nuclear tests may represent the shallow triumph of
India as a nation-state, but they signify the saddening defeat of India as
a civilization, an irony made all the more bitter by the posturing in which
Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party engages as the vanguard of "Hindu
civilization". True bravery and courage consist, not in an empty
renunciation of what is not possible, but in forsaking the military force
that one has at one's command. Thus might what Gandhi called "non-violence
of the weak", which is no non-violence at all, be transformed into
"non-violence of the strong", and from India's descent into nuclear madness
might some good emerge.
Vinay Lal, Assistant Professor
405 Hilgard Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1473, U.S.A.