Indefensible
Acts:
South Asian Dissenters Speak Out Despite the Risks
John Loretz Abstract Vocal and increasingly
organized opponents to the development of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan
are making their views known despite the intimidation of the governments and nationalistic
pro-bomb groups. Polls show that large majorities of South Asians support possession
of nuclear weapons, but prominent individuals, including scientists, physicians,
military officers, and writers have condemned the recent nuclear tests and subsequent
posturing. [M&GS 1998;5:86-91]
A group of academics opposed to the nuclear tests conducted by India on May
11 and 13, 1998 convened a meeting in Bangalore on May 19 to discuss the reasons
for their opposition. The meeting was disrupted by members of a Hindu nationalist
group, who shouted down the speakers and branded them as traitors until the police
arrived to restore order. An editorial in the Deccan Herald the next day
called the actions of the pro-nuclear Hindu Jagarana Vedike a “shameful”
attempt to suppress democratic debate [1]. On June
3, 1998, while Pakistani law students rallied against nuclear weapons in Lahore,
the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy held a press conference
at the Holiday Inn in Islamabad to protest the nuclear tests that had been conducted
by the governments of the two countries during the previous three weeks. The coalition
of peace activists and human rights groups stated that “no justification
exists on earth for either the initial tests by India or the retaliatory tests
by Pakistan.” Twenty minutes into the press conference, as the participants
tried to respond to hostile questions and epithets from local journalists, members
of an extreme pro-government Islamic group stormed into the room, throwing chairs
and punching the speakers. A few days later, on the afternoon of June 10,
more than 200 people assembled in a public square in Mumbai (Bombay) to protest
the Indian government’s nuclear weapons tests at a desert site near Pokhran.
This was the second demonstration by a group calling itself Anubam Virodhi Andolan
(Movement Against Nuclear Weapons), but on this occasion the protesters were unable
even to unfurl their banners or begin distributing leaflets before they were stopped
by police, who arrested a dozen people and confiscated their signs and antinuclear
literature. Challenges to the pro-nuclear weapons
policies of either India or Pakistan, in the wake of the nuclear tests this spring,
have been called unpatriotic by both Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Pakistani government led by Prime Minister
Mohammed Nawaz Sharif. The governments of both countries have claimed overwhelming
popular support for their abrupt reversals of nuclear policy, and the media, both
local and international, have obliged with stories, photos, and video of euphoric
Indian and Pakistani citizens celebrating national entry into the nuclear club
(1). In the weeks and months since the tests, however,
a number of vocal, influential, and angry voices have emerged in opposition to
the development of nuclear weapons in South Asia. They are making their case at
universities and on street corners, in newspaper and magazine columns and on the
Internet, at home and in expatriate communities, and in cross-border coalitions.
Their goal is to persuade the majority of their countrymen to reconsider their
new-found enthusiasm for the “nuclear option.” Condemnation
With an Indian Voice One of the most visible dissenters from the BJP’s
reversal of the decades-long moratorium on nuclear tests (India had not exploded
a nuclear device since 1974 -- its first and only nuclear test prior to the series
in May 1998) is Arundhati Roy. Roy’s award-winning novel, The God of Small
Things, has made her a celebrity throughout India, and she is recognized as
having brought respect to a country that conducted nuclear tests, at least in
part, to gain the respect of the world. When Roy published an essay called “The
End of Imagination” in the magazine Frontline in July, therefore,
her withering condemnation of the pursuit of nuclear weapons was broadcast around
the world. “India’s nuclear bomb is the
final act of betrayal by a ruling class that has failed its people,” Roy
wrote. If only nuclear war was the kind of war in which countries
battle countries, and men battle men. But it isn’t. If there is a nuclear
war, our foes will not be China or America or even each other. Our foe will be
the earth herself [2]. According
to Praful Bidwai, an Indian journalist who has written extensively on nuclear
issues for Frontline, a cross section of India’s population has begun to
respond negatively to the BJP government’s nuclear policies. “The Left
has taken a principled stand opposing nuclearization. Large chunks of the political
center have demarcated themselves from the BJP. At least three former Prime Ministers
have questioned the decision, or expressed reservations about it,” Bidwai
wrote in June [3]. “There have been over 30 demonstrations
and meetings in at least eight Indian cities, involving diverse groups of people
such as scholars, scientists, social activists, human rights campaigners, feminists,
trade unionists and environmentalists, besides political activists. Highly regarded
former generals and admirals have joined this growing mobilization,” Bidwai
reported. A new Indian organization, the Movement
in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND), emerged following the tests, with
participation by journalists, academics, doctors, scientists, and other professionals.
The English-language daily newspapers reflected a shift in opinion not long after
the tests, with political parties on the left and a growing number of academics,
professionals, and even officers in the Indian military expressing opposition
to the BJP’s nuclear policies. Most of the organized opposition to the tests
has taken place in larger cities such as Delhi and Mumbai (Bombay), and has not
been so visible in rural areas characterized by poverty, illiteracy, and lack
of information. According to journalist Achin Vanaik,
“the general democratic character of the Indian political system makes it
both easier and less risky to voice opposition, unlike in Pakistan where we hear...that
matters are much more difficult” [4]. “The
presence of prominent citizens voicing opposition, including ‘establishment
figures,’ provides a measure of protection,” Vanaik told M&GS.
This greater openness, however, has not prevented the government from harrassing
dissenters or questioning their patriotism. Kamal
Mitra Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi said there is a consensus
around the view that the CTBT and the NPT are discriminatory, supporting the nuclear
weapons regime of the US and its allies at the expense of South Asia and all other
countries that do not possess nuclear weapons. But he believes there is “considerable
opposition” both to the BJP’s nuclear tests and to the government’s
declaration that it will deploy nuclear weapons. “The polls that are cited
to show overwhelming public support have an urban\upper class bias,” Chenoy
told M&GS, “as many of the respondents are polled over the phone.
A significant number of scientists particularly in Bombay, Chennai (Madras), Bangalore,
Delhi, and Calcutta have come out against the tests.... Prominent ex-military
personnel...have opposed the weaponization program” [5].
Among those military leaders is retired Admiral L. Ramdas,
the former Chief of the Indian Navy. In a speech delivered at a convention against
nuclear weapons held in New Delhi on June 9 [see sidebar “So
many things can fail...”], Admiral Ramdas, who is also vice-president
of the India-Pakistan Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy, said: The
public must get to know the stark realities of the indefensible nature of arguments
for possessing nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are no longer a deterrence. The
time and space that we are confronted with --whether its China, Pakistan, or ourselves
in the triad -- is in minutes or in some cases, even less. A tactical nuclear
missile takes...only seconds. Who will have the time to react, who will have the
time to fire an anti-missile missile [6]?
A number of protests took place in India after the tests, providing platforms
for dissenting voices: - On May 14 the National Alliance of Peoples
Movements (NAPM, India) condemned India’s nuclear tests.
- On May 16
nearly 400 people participated in a peace march in Delhi.
- At a conference
on May 22 sponsored by students from the Hyderabad Central University, academics,
human rights activists, journalists, and others condemned the tests and the fact
that they had been conducted without a national debate.
- At a convention
on June 9 in New Delhi, more than 400 participants, including professionals, military
leaders, and politicians, raised the specter of a hate-fueled nuclear arms race
on the subcontinent.
- The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, though
it represents a very small minority in the mostly Hindu and Muslim country, reiterated
a stand that the Catholic church has taken consistently since the height of the
arms race between the US and the Soviet Union. In a statement released on June
11 in New Delhi, the governing body of the bishops made “a fervent plea for
urgent and universal disarmament.” They called on both countries to deescalate
tensions and to avoid diverting resources needed for “combating poverty,
for waging war on hunger and disease, and for empowering the people through education,
shelter and a respect for their human rights,” into a costly and dangerous
nuclear arms race.
- Prominent Indian environmentalists
reacted immediately to the news of the country’s nuclear blasts. “An
eye for an eye winds up making the whole world blind,” Bombay environmentalist
Bittu Sehgal told the Pakistani newspaper The Dawn [7].
Dr Vandana Shiva, a winner of the “Right Livelihood” award (a kind of
alternative Nobel prize), said: “This is not an appropriate response in any
ecological sense” [7]. She said that India’s real national security
was being eroded by damage to the country’s biodiversity and the undermining
of its food security.
Resisting the Pressures to Remain
Silent in Pakistan Despite the imposition of a state of emergency, during
which no political gatherings or political activity were to be allowed, more than
300 people attended a rally in Lahore on June 19 condemning nuclear arms and a
South Asian nuclear arms race. Participants included representatives of trade
unions, human rights and womens rights organizations, teachers, economists, lawyers,
theater groups and children’s rights organisations. “There
are people who accuse dissenters of being traitors,” wrote Pakistani journalist
Beena Sarwar soon after the tests were conducted, “not just to the nation
but to its ideology--Islam, which makes [dissent] very dangerous” [8].
The pressures to remain silent, however, have not prevented opponents
of nuclear weapons in Pakistan from speaking out against the tests and against
the prospects of a South Asian nuclear arms race. Dissenters are in a minority,
but they expect their position to gain ground as people in both India and Pakistan
come to understand the true military, social, and environmental costs of the nuclear
status they have embraced. Following the Indian tests, but prior to the
Pakistani tests, according to Sarwar, most English language newspapers in Pakistan
provided roughly equal space to those arguing for and against nuclear testing,
while opinions expressed in the Urdu press, for the most part, were pro-testing.
The news editor of The Friday Times, Ejaz
Haider, wrote in his paper, “As a recognised threshold nuclear power state
with demonstrated missile capabilities, Pakistan’s security can be reasonably
assured without testing a nuclear device” [9]. A sampling
of opinion among readers of The News (Lahore) and published on May 18 indicated
“an overwhelming concern for Pakistan not to retaliate to India’s nuclear
tests by conducting one of its own,” the editors reported [10].
Among the respondents were 18 retired army officers, all of whom opposed a Pakistani
test. While Pakistani nationalists were urging one
course of action in response to the Indian tests, those opposed to the pursuit
of nuclear arms drew a different kind of lesson from what had occured at Pokhran.
Defense analyst Eqbal Ahmad wrote that the leaders of the BJP government: view
nuclear weapons as a permit to the club in which India does not belong, and should
not enter with a population of half a billion illiterate and four hundred million
undernourished citizens....That in 1998 India’s leaders still view the possession
of nuclear weapons as a necessary element to gain recognition as a world power,
speaks volumes about their intellectual poverty and mediocre, bureaucratic outlook
[11]. Ahmad advised Pakistan “do not
panic, and do not behave reactively.” “Pakistan...must resist falling
into the trap of seeking strategic equivalence with India.” “The
people of Pakistan will survive if a nuclear weapon is not tested,” said
phyicist Zia Mian in an op-ed article published by The News just before the Pakistani
tests. “The alternative for them is stark. It is they who will go hungry
when there is no money to pay for the massive yearly imports of wheat” [12].
Former finance minister Dr Mubashir Hasan, issued a press
statement in which he argued that “a bomb that cannot be used should not
be made” [13]. The post-test euphoria seen in
the media following the Pakistani tests on May 28 covered over the dissenting
voices in that country, but only temporarily. Most supporters of the small antinuclear
movement, sensing that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan was now a real
concern, seemed to shift their attention to efforts to defuse the tensions created
by the tests, rather than issuing direct challenges to the testing itself. A number
of events took place soon after the tests. - More than 200 Pak-istani
intellectuals and activists signed a declaration rejecting the rationalizations
offered by the governments of both countries. “We believe there can be no
justification for any state to engage in activities that allow it to design, develop,
test, and maintain nuclear weapons since these are fundamentally weapons of terror
and mass destruction. These weapons are repugnant to civilized society,”
they stated. “The only acceptable solution to the threats posed by existing
nuclear weapons is not more nuclear weapons but the abolition of all such weapons.”
- On
June 11 in Lahore, a “joint action committee” comprising some 20 NGOs
and more than 200 Pakistani trade unionists, representatives of human rights and
womens rights organizations, former government officials, teachers, economists,
and lawyers condemned nuclear arms and the emerging nuclear arms race in the region,
calling the actions of both the Indian and the Pakistani governments “fanatical.”
The committee expressed concern about the lack of awareness regarding the horrors
of a nuclear war and the environmental impacts of nuclear tests.
- On July
20 a newly formed Pakistani Coalition for Non-Proliferation (CNFP) called on the
Sharif government to sign the CTBT immediately, to pledge that it would not deploy
nuclear weapons, to join talks on a fissile material cut off treaty (FMCT), and
to take other steps to prevent either a nuclear or a conventional arms race in
South Asia.
Having failed to persuade the government
to refrain from testing, Eqbal Ahmed wrote a plaintive commentary following the
announcement of the Pakistani tests: “The leaders of India
and Pakistan have now appropriated to themselves, as others had done before, the
power that was God’s alone to kill mountains, make the earth quake, bring
the sea to boil, and destroy humanity. I hope that when the muscle flexing and
cheering is over they will go on a retreat, and reflect on how they should bear
this awesome responsibility” [14]. The
Familiar Face of Antinuclear Protest What forms will opposition to nuclear
weapons take in the region in the future? Given the fact that large majorities
in both countries have expressed support for their governments’ hot pursuit
of nuclear capabilities, public education about the risks and consequences of
nuclear weapons may be as essential in South Asia now as it was in the US and
the Soviet Union in the early 1980s. Any demands that India and Pakistan stand
down from a nuclear arms race, however, will be embedded in equally vocal demands
that the existing nuclear weapons states take their own disarmament obligations
seriously. Plans discussed at a meeting of the Joint Action Committee for
Peoples Rights in Lahore on 26 August suggest that an organized education effort,
despite cultural variances, may look very familiar to those in the west who have
been engaged in similar work for nearly two decades. The minutes of that meeting
included the following ideas: It was decided to continue the peace
offensive through film showings...videos could be shown at public forums...putting
up posters in shops was discussed...car stickers designed...gas balloons with
messages attached could be released...it could be effective to organise several
groups of 5-6 people to stand at several street corners with leaflet[s] and target
passers-by...JAC could organise a peace art competition. Footnote
1. The Times of India published an opinion poll shortly
after the announcement of the nuclear tests, in which 91% of the respondents (more
than 1,000 adults questioned in six of the country’s largest cities, including
Bombay, Calcutta and New Delhi) approved of the tests. The poll also showed that
82% supported the deployment of nuclear weapons. [Return
to text] References 1.
Editorial. Discussions on n-tests disrupted by Hindu Jagarana Vedike. Deccan Herald,
May 20, 1998. [Return to text]
2.
Roy A. The End of Imagination. Frontline and Outlook, July 27, 1998. [Return
to text]
3. Bidwai P. For a citizens’ movement.
(South Asians
Against Nukes website.) [Return to text]
4.
Vanaik A. E-mail correspondence. June 12, 1998. [Return to text]
5. Chenoy KM. E-mail correspondence. June 11, 1998. [Return
to text]
6. Ramdas L. Speech to convention on nuclear
weapons in South Asia. New Delhi, June 9, 1998 (South
Asians Against Nukes website.) [Return to text]
7. The Dawn. Internet
Edition, May 17 1998. [Return to text]
8.
Sarwar B. E-mail correspondence. June 19, 1998. [Return to text]
9. Haider E. The Friday Times. May 22, 1998. Cited by B. Sarwar
in e-mail correspondence, June 11, 1998. [Return to text]
10. The News. Lahore. May 18, 1998. Cited by B. Sarwar in
e-mail correspondence, June 11, 1998. [Return to text]
11. Ahmad E. India’s obsession, our choice. (South
Asians Against Nukes website.) [Return to text]
12. Mian Z. The taste of grass. (South
Asians Against Nukes website.) [Return to text]
13. Cited by B. Sarwar in e-mail correspondence, June 11,
1998. [Return to text]
14. Ahmad
E. When mountains die. June 1, 1998. (Available on South
Asians Against Nukes website.) [Return to text]
JL is Executive Editor of Medicine & Global Survival. Address correspondence
to John Loretz, Medicine & Global Survival, 727 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge,
MA 02139; e-mail: jloretz@ippnw.org.
© copyright 1998 Medicine and Global Survival
Support
from Abroad On 19 June, more than 100 Indians and Pakistanis living in
other countries published an appeal in the newspapers India Abroad and India West,
intended to mobilize public opinion against the tests and the further development
of nuclear weapons on the subcontinent. “Other than the danger of possible
radioactive fallouts from such tests,” they wrote, “we are deeply concerned
that the poor citizens of India and Pakistan will have to bear the brunt of the
massive expenses to build nuclear weapons,...putting their already difficult lives
in serious jeopardy.” More than 200 Pakistanis living in Pakistan,
Europe, the U.S., and other countries, and representing a wide cross-section of
professions, wrote an open letter to the prime ministers of both Pakistan and
India on August 11 condeming the tests and calling them “an incalculable
danger and threat to peace and stability in the region.”
Making the Hiroshima Connection
The anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki approached
soon after the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests, and opponents of nuclear weapons
in both countries commemorated the victims of the bombings, focusing attention
on the risks and consequences of the pursuit of nuclear weapons. The Movement
in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND) issued a statement on August 6 recalling
“the instant destruction of 70,000 people in Hiroshima from a single atom
bomb dropped by the U.S.” and demanding that India and Pakistan “totally
abandon the nuclear weaponisation program” and that the nuclear weapons states
“adopt a total nuclear disarmament programme by the turn of the century.”
Pakistani opponents of nuclear weapons published a statement marking the anniversary
and criticizing the governments of both countries for “choosing a path that
can lead only to mutual destruction....As those who are likely to die if the nuclear
threat turns into nightmare, it is our right to be fully aware at this time of
the human, environmental and economic costs of a nuclear weapons programme.”
“So many things can fail...”[Editor’s
note: The following remarks are excerpted from a speech by retired Admiral L.
Ramdas, the former chief of the Indian Navy, to a convention against nuclear weapons
held in New Delhi on 9 June, 1998. The entire speech is available on the South
Asians Against Nukes website.] Once you cross over the threshold
of nuclear weapons, there are so many things that can fail, that can mislead you,
that can take you into disaster....The whole concept of nuclear warfare and the
havoc it can create has not been well understood. Who has thought about
the command and control systems?...These systems are highly expensive. Therefore,
this will lead to cuts in social programs--health, education, and so on.
...Economically it’s going set us back, militarily it has not helped us one
bit. ...The public must get to know the stark realities of the indefensible
nature of arguments for possessing nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are no longer
a deterrence. The time and space that we are confronted with...is in minutes or
in some cases, even less. A tactical nuclear missile takes...only seconds. Who
will have the time to react, who will have the time to fire an anti-missile missile?
...[W]hoever is in charge will have 50 or 60 seconds to determine whether the
missile is carrying flowers, bouquets, greeting from Pakistan, or a nuclear warhead.
So he will press the button as nobody can take the chance. Even if we sign a no-first
use agreement, on both sides of the border we have people who are irresponsible
enough to start a war. With no safeguards and no fail safe mechanism in the command
and control system, with people in power who are all gung-ho, before we know it
we will have a nuclear war. And we can not limit it to tactical nuclear weapons--this
will rapidly escalate to a nuclear holocaust. Return
to text
From
“The End of Imagination” by Arundhati Roy
If only, if only nuclear war was just another kind of war. If only it was about
the usual things--nations and territories, gods and histories. If only those of
us who dread it are worthless moral cowards who are not prepared to die in defence
of our beliefs. If only nuclear war was the kind of war in which countries battle
countries, and men battle men. But it isn’t. If there is a nuclear war, our
foes will not be China or America or even each other. Our foe will be the earth
herself. Our cities and forests, our fields and villages will burn for
days. Rivers will turn to poison. The air will become fire. The wind will spread
the flames. When everything there is to burn has burned and the fires die, smoke
will rise and shut out the sun. The earth will be enveloped in darkness. There
will be no day--only interminable night. What shall we do then, those of
us who are still alive? Burned and blind and bald and ill, carrying the cancerous
carcasses of our children in our arms, where shall we go? What shall we eat? What
shall we drink? What shall we breathe?... All I can say to every man, woman
and sentient child in India, and over there, just a little way away in Pakistan,
is: take it personally. Whoever you are - Hindu, Muslim, urban, agrarian - it
doesn’t matter. The only good thing about nuclear war is that it is the single
most egalitarian idea that man has ever had. On the day of reckoning, you will
not be asked to present your credentials. The devastation will be indiscriminate.
The bomb isn’t in your backyard. It’s in your body. And mine. Nobody,
no nation, no government, no man, no god has the right to put it there. We’re
radioactive already, and the war hasn’t even begun. So stand up and say something.
Never mind if it’s been said before. Speak up on your own behalf. Take it
very personally.
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