India and the Nuclear Question

Nuclear Policy Evolution

India's engagement with nuclear technology began almost immediately after independence. The Indian Atomic Energy Commission was established in 1948 under the Atomic Energy Act, with the programme led by physicist Homi Bhabha. Jawaharlal Nehru regarded the atomic bomb as a symbol of evil and directed India's nuclear effort exclusively toward civilian applications. Yet even in this early phase, India was careful not to foreclose the weapons option. When the United States proposed the Baruch Plan for international control of nuclear energy, India opposed it on the grounds that it sought to prohibit national research and development in atomic energy production. In 1960, a tender was issued for India's first nuclear power station at Tarapur in Maharashtra, and civilian nuclear operations subsequently began at Tarapur with American assistance and at Rajasthan with Canadian assistance.

The strategic calculus shifted decisively in the early 1960s. India's defeat in the 1962 war with China was a turning point. When India appealed to both superpowers for assistance, the United States and the Soviet Union were preoccupied with the Cuban Missile Crisis and could offer little. This experience of strategic isolation prompted Indian policymakers to take the weapons option far more seriously. The conviction deepened in October 1964 when China tested its first atomic bomb. Homi Bhabha urged the government to approve a weapons programme, arguing that atomic weapons give a state possessing them in adequate numbers a deterrent power against attack from a much stronger state. Prime Minister Shastri, however, remained opposed, and American assistance for weapons development was declined by Washington. The premature deaths of both Shastri and Bhabha in 1966 removed the principal obstacle and the principal advocate simultaneously. The incoming Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was a firm proponent of nuclear weapons, and physicist Raja Ramanna was appointed head of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre with an explicit mandate to develop a device.

The broader strategic context of this period reinforced India's nuclear resolve. India's refusal in 1968 to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was rooted in its assessment that the treaty institutionalised nuclear inequality by dividing the world permanently into weapons states and non-weapons states. In August 1971 India signed the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union, signalling a strategic repositioning away from Western dependence. The 1971 war with Pakistan, in which China and the United States supported Islamabad, further underscored India's determination to develop an independent deterrent capability.

Pokhran I & II

Prime Minister Gandhi formally approved a nuclear test in September 1972. On 18 May 1974, at the Pokhran test site in Rajasthan, a device weighing approximately 3,000 pounds was detonated with a yield equivalent to 8 kilotons of TNT. Raja Ramanna reportedly communicated the success to Gandhi through the coded message that the Buddha was smiling. The test was officially designated Pokhran I but came to be informally known as Smiling Buddha. India described it as a peaceful nuclear explosion, though the international community remained sceptical of the distinction.

The international reaction was severe. Canada withdrew support from India's nuclear programme. The United States characterised the test as a violation of the Atoms for Peace programme and imposed sanctions. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned that the Indian explosion raised the spectre of an era of plentiful nuclear weapons in which any local conflict risked escalating into nuclear holocaust. In the same year, 1974, a group of countries led by the United States established the Nuclear Suppliers Group to govern the transfer of civilian nuclear materials, equipment, and technology, effectively placing India outside the mainstream of the global nuclear order.

In the years following Smiling Buddha, India encountered significant difficulties in procuring nuclear materials from a hostile international market. The Dhruva reactor, constructed by BARC in 1977, became the primary source of plutonium for the weapons programme, though it did not reach full operational capacity until 1988. A ballistic missile programme was approved in 1983, leading the Defence Research and Development Laboratory to develop the short-range Prithvi and the long-range Agni missiles, both of which were eventually equipped with nuclear warheads.

Renewed international pressure accompanied the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty negotiations of the 1990s, which sought to end all nuclear explosions including underground tests. India did not ratify the CTBT, viewing the treaty as discriminatory toward non-nuclear weapon states expected to accept permanent prohibition while existing weapons states retained their arsenals. Prime Minister Vajpayee articulated the political dimension of India's nuclear ambitions at a United Nations meeting in 1997, observing that membership of the Security Council was effectively restricted to those with economic power or nuclear weapons, and that economic wealth was difficult to achieve rapidly.

On 11 May 1998, India conducted Operation Shakti, also known as Pokhran II, detonating five nuclear devices. Prime Minister Vajpayee declared that India was now a nuclear weapons state and that its weapons would never be instruments of aggression. The international condemnation was near-universal. The United States expressed deep disappointment, Germany described the tests as a slap in the face to CTBT signatories, and Pakistan's foreign minister observed that India had thumbed its nose at the international community. Less than three weeks later, Pakistan conducted its own nuclear tests, formalising a South Asian nuclear dyad that fundamentally altered the regional security environment.

No-First-Use Doctrine

In the immediate aftermath of the 1998 tests, India established the National Security Advisory Board, which formulated a no-first-use policy for Indian nuclear weapons. This policy was later amended to include the option of nuclear retaliation in response to a biological or chemical attack against India or its forces. Vajpayee tabled a paper titled Evolution of India's Nuclear Policy, the first comprehensive statement of India's nuclear position, declaring that nuclear weapons were not weapons of war and affirming that India's nuclear capacity served purely defensive and deterrent purposes.

India released its formal nuclear doctrine in 2003. The doctrine, summarised by Rakesh Sood, rests on ten interconnected commitments: building and maintaining a credible minimum deterrent; maintaining a posture of no-first-use; retaliating massively and with unacceptable damage in response to a nuclear attack on Indian territory or forces anywhere; non-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states; retaining the option of nuclear retaliation against chemical or biological attack; maintaining strict export controls on nuclear and missile-related materials; participating in Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty negotiations; continuing the moratorium on nuclear tests; and pursuing the goal of a universal, verifiable, and non-discriminatory nuclear-weapons-free world.

The doctrine reflects the view that nuclear weapons are inherently political instruments rather than battlefield weapons. Rakesh Sood characterises India as a reluctant nuclear-armed state, noting that India's nuclear restraint grew from its belief in a nuclear-weapon-free world, rooted in the non-violent tradition of the freedom struggle and the aspiration to concentrate national resources on development and equity. Raja Menon has argued that India's nuclear doctrine reflects not so much a strategic choice as India's own civilisational culture. The doctrine is grounded in what analysts describe as defensive realism and is built on the concept of credible minimum deterrence, a posture that maintains the smallest arsenal necessary to assure retaliation and thereby deter attack. The assurance of a second-strike capability, recently reinforced by India's achievement of a sea-based nuclear deterrent through submarine-launched missiles, is central to the logic of minimum deterrence because it removes the pressure to pre-empt.

The debate over whether India should retain the no-first-use doctrine has been sustained and substantive. Those who favour retention make several arguments. Manpreet Sethi argues that no-first-use removes the need for expensive nuclear infrastructure maintained at high alert, places the onus of escalation on the adversary, and allows India to keep warheads in disassembled form without elaborate security systems required to prevent unauthorised use. K. Subrahmanyam has argued that deterrence is ultimately a matter of perception and that a first-use posture may be so provocative as to invite the very pre-emptive attack it seeks to prevent. Shivshankar Menon has pointed to China, which maintains no-first-use despite significant asymmetry with the United States, as evidence that no-first-use is compatible with credible deterrence. Rajesh Rajagopalan has noted that India, unlike Pakistan or Israel, does not face an existential threat from its neighbours, meaning nuclear weapons serve primarily as insurance against nuclear coercion rather than as a guarantee of national survival.

Critics of the no-first-use doctrine offer a different assessment. Bharat Karnad argues that no-first-use is credible only for a state with extreme confidence in the survivability of its nuclear forces and that efficient crisis management, which no-first-use requires, is not a strength of the Indian system. Former Lieutenant General B.S. Nagal contends that accepting first-strike destruction before retaliating is morally untenable and exposes the population to unacceptable risk. P.K. Chari has argued that nuclear doctrines need not be static and that when India's leadership considered nuclear weapons primarily as deterrents against China, a no-first-use commitment offered insufficient deterrence at the conventional level. He draws a contrast with Pakistan, whose nuclear posture provides deterrence across the full spectrum from conventional to proxy to nuclear conflict, while India's weapons serve primarily political purposes. Former Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain has suggested a middle position, arguing that while the declared no-first-use posture should be maintained, India should also prepare operationally for scenarios that might require first use if circumstances demand.

The Indian government has repeatedly reviewed and upheld no-first-use, concluding that abandoning it would undermine rather than strengthen deterrence by removing the clarity that credible minimum deterrence requires, triggering a regional nuclear arms race, and increasing mutual suspicion between India and Pakistan. The Nuclear Command Authority, chaired by the prime minister, retains sole authority to authorise a nuclear strike. India's estimated arsenal stands at approximately 135 warheads.

Indo-US Nuclear Deal

India's refusal to sign the NPT and its conduct of nuclear tests left it outside the formal nuclear order, forcing it to develop the entire nuclear fuel cycle independently. The Nuclear Suppliers Group's export restrictions affected India primarily in the civil nuclear sphere: while India possessed adequate uranium for its weapons programme given estimated reserves of 80,000 to 112,000 tonnes, its uranium reserves represent only approximately one percent of known global reserves, making NSG restrictions a significant constraint on civil nuclear power generation capacity. Despite the strategic achievements of the 1998 tests, India's civilian nuclear programme remained internationally isolated.

The effort to end what India characterised as nuclear apartheid culminated in a joint statement by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush on 18 July 2005. The framework required India to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities and to place all civilian facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. In return, the United States committed to working toward full civilian nuclear cooperation with India. The agreement required amendment of American domestic law including the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, negotiation of a civil-military separation plan in India, conclusion of an India-IAEA safeguards agreement, and the grant of a special exemption by the NSG. The IAEA approved the safeguards agreement in August 2008, and the 48-nation NSG granted India a waiver the same year, making India the only state known to possess nuclear weapons that is not party to the NPT yet permitted to engage in nuclear commerce with the rest of the world. The agreement is commonly referred to as the 123 Agreement, after Section 123 of the United States Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which establishes cooperation agreements as a prerequisite for nuclear deals with other nations.

Analysts have interpreted the deal's significance from multiple angles. C. Raja Mohan argues that the agreement carries profound geopolitical significance as a recognition of India's status as a major power and as a legitimisation of India's nuclear weapons programme. Rajeshwari Rajagopalan describes it as a direct consequence of the United States' acknowledgement of India as a rising power and of India's strong non-proliferation record. Sumit Ganguly emphasises the strategic logic from Washington's perspective, noting that a stronger partnership with New Delhi would help balance a rising China. S. Jaishankar has described the 2005 deal as a turning point in India's foreign policy that raised India's global stature and opened new strategic and commercial opportunities.

The implementation of the civil nuclear framework has encountered a significant domestic legal obstacle. India enacted the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act in 2010 to establish a compensation mechanism for nuclear accidents. The act imposes strict and no-fault liability on the operator of a nuclear installation and caps operator liability at 1,500 crore rupees, with the government stepping in for damages exceeding this amount up to a ceiling equivalent to 300 million Special Drawing Rights. The act departs from international norms in two provisions that have deterred foreign suppliers. Section 17(b) grants the operator a right of recourse against suppliers where a nuclear incident results from equipment or material with patent or latent defects or sub-standard services. Section 46 allows criminal liability to be pursued and potentially exposes suppliers to unlimited civil liability through the law of tort, whereas international conventions channel all liability exclusively to the operator. Foreign suppliers have objected that India is the only country where suppliers can face compensation claims, that the absence of a capped figure creates unlimited exposure, and that the government's assurance that Section 17(b) permits but does not require recourse has not persuaded private investors. As a result, major projects including the Jaitapur plant in Maharashtra and the proposed facility at Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh have stalled for over a decade. The only foreign nuclear presence operating in India remains Russia at Kudankulam, a project that predates the liability law.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation & India

India has consistently refused to join both the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, characterising both instruments as discriminatory. The NPT divides the world into recognised nuclear weapon states and non-weapon states, perpetuating an asymmetric order in which the original five weapons states retain their arsenals while others forgo the option permanently. India's objection is not to the goal of non-proliferation but to the framework's legitimation of the existing nuclear hierarchy without binding commitments from weapons states to disarm. The CTBT, in India's assessment, similarly imposes prohibitions on non-weapons states while allowing the established powers to maintain and modernise their existing stockpiles through computer simulation and subcritical testing.

India's approach has therefore been characterised by a dual posture: maintaining its own deterrent while simultaneously advocating universal and verifiable disarmament. India has used multilateral platforms, particularly the Non-Aligned Movement and the United Nations General Assembly, to press for a comprehensive approach to nuclear disarmament rather than selective non-proliferation. In 1988, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi presented an action plan at the United Nations proposing time-bound elimination of nuclear weapons through a phased approach with binding commitments and verification at each stage.

The emergence of what analysts call the second nuclear age has further complicated India's strategic environment. The first nuclear age was defined by the Cold War dyad of the United States and the Soviet Union and by the Euro-Atlantic security framework. The second nuclear age is centred on the Indo-Pacific, involves multiple nuclear actors, and is characterised by a more complex web of strategic relationships in which a nuclear exchange between two players risks drawing in others. India's nuclear doctrine and its quest for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council are both shaped by and directed at this evolving multipolar nuclear order.

India's relationship with the NSG remains unresolved in one important dimension. While the 2008 waiver allowed India to engage in civil nuclear commerce, India's application for full NSG membership has been blocked primarily by China, which insists that membership requires NPT adherence. India argues that its strong non-proliferation record and the precedent set by the 2008 waiver justify membership on criteria other than treaty signature. The question of India's place in the formal nuclear governance architecture thus remains a live diplomatic issue, reflecting the broader tension between India's nuclear reality and the normative framework of a non-proliferation regime constructed without India's participation and without accounting for its strategic circumstances.