Scientists, Nuclear Weapons, and Peace in India
M.V. Ramana 
"[The] way in which technical experts make their services available to society can significantly affect the distribution of political power." [1]
In March 1998, about half way through the decade since INESAP was founded, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in India. As is well known, the BJP is characterised by a combination of violent domestic and anti-Muslim politics and a militaristic foreign policy. Within two months it conducted the nuclear tests that it had desired for decades. The Indian tests were followed three weeks later by Pakistan's tests, resulting in an enormously increased danger of nuclear weapons use in South Asia. This is illustrated by the war over Kargil in 1999, [2] and the tense stand-off lasting several months in 2002 following an attack by Islamic militants on the Indian Parliament. Both of these featured nuclear threats by high-level Pakistani and Indian officials.
Along with the nuclear tests and the possibility of a nuclear war has come a vibrant peace movement. Hundreds of groups in both countries have publicly opposed the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Both Pakistan and India now have national coalitions of citizens groups working for nuclear disarmament and peace. Scientists and engineers have been prominent in their activities. Indian scientists even formed a group called Indian Scientists Against Nuclear Weapons (ISANW). [3]
Nuclear insecurity is just one of the challenges that these groups face. Like right wing parties elsewhere, the BJP has a wide-ranging agenda that is inimical to peace and justice in many ways. The BJP has, for example, systematically altered textbooks in schools with the aim of inculcating anti-Muslim and anti-Christian sentiments. The 2002 pogrom in the state of Gujarat, which resulted in the death of over 2000 people, most of them Muslims, and destroyed communal harmony there, was largely the handwork of several groups linked with the BJP. Home Minister L. K. Advani listed the resumption of construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam, which would displace several hundred thousand people, as a major achievement of BJP rule in India. And finally within the realm of peace politics itself, goons belonging to the many violent groups linked to the BJP have physically attacked peace activists during talks and protest marches.
Global Impacts
There are also global changes from last decade that impact the activities of the peace movement. Of particular importance is the advancement of a dangerous and openly imperialist agenda in the US calling for the right to unilateral attacks on any part of the globe and gleeful proclamations of an American empire. One regrettable intellectual response to this development has been a new rationalisation of India's nuclear weapons programme. [4] The BJP government for its part has tried to make common cause with the US government, and more recently Israel as well, in the guise of fighting 'Islamic terrorism.' India was the first country to express unequivocal support for the US National Missile Defence programme. There is also burgeoning co-operation between the Indian and US militaries.
The 1998 tests also gave a new fillip to what Itty Abraham has termed the "strategic enclave," [5] namely laboratories and institutions involved in defence research and nuclear science and engineering, [6] as well as the bomb lobby, both of which had been long advocating nuclear weapons for India. They have used their current influence, and in the case of the strategic enclave increased funding as well, to push for an expanded nuclear arsenal. There is also a growing indigenous military-industrial complex involving defence laboratories, technical institutions, universities, and public and private sector firms. The BJP's militaristic tendencies coupled with the security crises of 1999 and 2002 have also resulted in increased budgets for the armed forces and major arms purchases.
Faced with these multifarious but related challenges, it is but natural that the anti-nuclear peace movement sees itself as part of a wide-ranging set of social movements. Likewise, groups involved in diverse progressive causes have seen nuclear disarmament and peace as crucial to their agendas. Just two days after the 1998 explosions, a large coalition of grassroots groups, the National Alliance of People's Movements, came out with a strong condemnation of the nuclear tests. The bulk of the groups that constitute the Indian Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace and the Pakistani Peace Coalition are primarily involved in social sector issues such as education and literacy, women's rights, health, labour, and so on. At an individual level too, it is often the same activists protesting against the violence in Gujarat, the plight of the displaced in the Narmada project, and calling upon the Indian government to withdraw troops from the border.
At the same time, with so many concerns that people have, nuclear weapons do not seem to be "a clear and present danger." Indeed, the majority is not even aware of them, as illustrated by an exit poll conducted during the 1999 national elections in India. Despite the massive official propaganda extolling the tests, 54% of those polled had not even heard of the nuclear tests conducted the previous year. [7]
Reaching out to this large populace presents both an obstacle and an opportunity for the peace movement. Even among those who are cognisant of nuclear issues, few feel they have adequate information about the nuclear programme. A 1996 poll found that only 13% thought that information on nuclear issues was easily available. [8] Therefore the primary task confronting the peace movement is to spread awareness about nuclear issues from a pro-disarmament perspective.
Technically trained people do have a role in this. Nuclear weapons and policy issues surrounding it do have technical aspects that have to be addressed through technical means. [9] Whether there can be early warning of nuclear attack, what kinds of events could trigger an accidental nuclear explosion, or what the health consequences of uranium mining and milling on surrounding populations are, are all questions that require detailed technical knowledge to answer. Similarly, technical knowledge is needed to put forward possible transparency and arms control measures that India and Pakistan could adopt to lower the danger of nuclear war.
Over and above these technical issues, there is the fact that within the existing structures of society, professional credentials play an important part in how a person's opinion is perceived. Thus, knowing how the bomb works, how many pounds per square inch of overpressure would be experienced 1.2 kilometres from the hypocentre, what level of radiation doses are fatal, and so on are seen as providing the authority to pronounce opinion on Indian nuclear policy. This is especially true of the media, which looks for professional credentials before quoting someone and which is a primary vehicle for spreading awareness of nuclear dangers.
But flashing professional credentials is a double edged sword. The establishment can and does field many more prominent scientists to support their policies. Their prominence and consequent credibility is why many people believe that nuclear weapons preserve peace; that the command and control of nuclear arsenals is an easy task; that nuclear reactors are very safe; that the electricity that these reactors generate is cheap; and that dealing with nuclear waste is not a problem. In countries where such official scientists represent the only scientists that most people ever hear about, [10] the position of anti-establishment scientists is a difficult one.
The way out of this dilemma is for pro-disarmament scientists to challenge the expertise of the establishment at all levels. This includes, for example, critiquing the nuclear energy programme and its failure to provide cheap and plentiful electricity as promised. The challenge to the establishment should deliberately transcend technical boundaries and include moral, ethical, economic, and environmental sustainability aspects.
A purely technical approach should also be avoided because it changes the character of the peace movement, to its detriment. In the US, by privileging the technical expertise of scientists, the peace movement became, in the words of Eqbal Ahmad, "...nuko-centric, phobo-centric (creating fear rather than understanding), techno-centric (concerned with the technology rather than causes)..." [11]
Routes to Influence Policy
What are the routes through which scientists can hope to influence policy? Indian nuclear policy making has generally been dominated by a small coterie of advisors surrounding the Prime Minister. Scientific input into this process has largely been limited to input from the heads of the Department of Atomic Energy and the Defence Research and Development Organization. As would be expected in this kind of a setup, advice has been a direct reflection of parochial interests.
The government also receives advice on security issues, including nuclear weapons issues, from the National Security Advisory Board, which has usually included one or more scientists or engineers. There seems to be no specific criterion in terms of expertise required to being inducted as a member of the board, but a high degree of agreement with the broad lineaments of official nuclear policy seems to be an implicit prerequisite. The Board's recommendations have typically been even more hawkish than official policy. For example, in early 2003, the Board recommended abandoning the No First Use commitment, usually touted as proof of the moderate nature of India's nuclear policy. [12]
In India and Pakistan, major national-level scientific societies have not taken part in discussions of nuclear policy. This is unlike their equivalents in the US, UK, France, and Russia, where such societies have mobilised the research and analytical capabilities of their members to inform either policy makers or the public about nuclear questions. [13]
Another element that has for all practical purposes been absent is Pugwash. [14] In both India and Pakistan, Pugwash has been dominated by official scientists and strategists and Pugwash meetings in South Asia have largely stayed at the level of platitudes about the dangers of nuclear weapons around the globe and the perfidy of nuclear weapon states in not pursuing nuclear disarmament, but carefully avoided criticising, even mildly, the nuclear activities of their own countries. Recently, an attempt by some newer Pugwash members to change direction somewhat resulted in the Indian government refusing visas to foreign invitees to a proposed meeting in Goa. [15]
All of this essentially leaves the grassroots peace movement as the main vehicle for organised involvement by independent scientists and engineers in addressing nuclear issues.
There are strong limits to what they can hope to achieve in the near future. Like many other places, anti-nuclear politics in South Asia has been essentially reactive in nature. Hence scientists, and the peace movement in general, have been unable to set the pace of the debate. Rather, they have been forced into a watchdog role, monitoring the slow but steady progress towards deployment of nuclear weapons, the consolidation of nuclear doctrines, and the enlargement of the nuclear infrastructure. At this point their main activity remains pointing out the negative consequences of these activities and questioning the logic of the chosen policies.
The Soft Embrace
Though vibrant and active, the peace movement is not strong enough to force policy change. If it does become strong enough, then one may see the government inviting the more moderate elements of the movement into advisory bodies and policy-making circles as a way of marginalising the more radical elements of the movement. This has been the case with respect to other social movements in other parts of the world as well. An example is the transformation of the environmental movement in the US into a much more mainstream direction by selective incorporation. [16] A similar strategy of 'the soft embrace' was adopted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the ruling classes to split the growing and militant labour movement and isolate the radical elements. [17] The purpose of the strategy is to maintain business as usual, with at best cosmetic changes, while marginalising the radical members of the movement that call for systemic and fundamental change.
As long as the peace movement is not strong enough, to offer oneself as an advisor by making the inevitable compromises is premature and unwise.
Working from the outside may also be more effective. As George Kistiakowsky, a senior Manhattan project scientist and Science Advisor to US President Eisenhower from 1959 to 1961, in other words someone who had tried the highest of the inside channels, was to forcefully state: "Forget the channels. There simply is not enough time left before the world explodes. Concentrate instead on organising, with so many others who are of like mind, a mass movement for peace such as there has not been before." [18] The levels of nuclear danger prevailing in South Asia make this task even more urgent.
To return to the epigraph, the point is not just that scientists should offer their expertise and services to society, but how – in what form, to who and with what presumptions – they offer it is crucial. The involvement of scientists and engineers in opposing nuclear weapons or energy must not be just that. It must be part of developing alternative sources of technical expertise, grounded in local realities and reflecting the aspirations of the vast majority of people. The emphasis then would be on a just peace, i.e. systemic change and not simply the control or elimination of nuclear weapons while leaving everything else unchanged. [19]
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