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Indira offered to share N-tech with Pak in ’74

From the archives of The Times of India

April 10, 2013

They are hostile neighbours widely seen by many as competing to have a bigger nuclear arsenal. However, after its first nuclear test in 1974, India offered to share nuclear technology with Pakistan. In her statement to Parliament after the tests on July 22, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi said she had told her Pakistani counterpart, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, that New Delhi would be ready to share the relevant technology with Islamabad. Quoting her statement, the US embassy reported, as revealed by Wikileaks, “I have explained in my letter to Prime Minister Bhutto the peaceful nature and the economic purposes of this experiment and have also stated that India is willing to share her nuclear technology with Pakistan in the same way she is willing to share it with other countries, provided proper conditions for understanding and trust are created. I once again repeat this assurance.”

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Gandhi was bemused by int’l fallout after Pokhran

Indira Gandhi’s offer to share nuclear technology with Pakistan was extraordinary in its audacity, but equally in its foresight. The Indian offer came as her Pakistani counterpart Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto termed as insufficient Gandhi’s assurance that tests were not meant to harm Pakistan. In his response to Gandhi, Bhutto said, many past assurances from India “regrettably remain unhonored”. Testing a nuclear device is no different from detonation of a nuclear weapon, he wrote.

Pakistan first tested a nuclear weapon in May 1998 — a fortnight after India conducted its second nuclear test. But Gandhi’s offer to share nuclear technology with Pakistan was not the move of a potential nuclear proliferator. Instead, it showed the confidence of a leader who probably believed that India, after the test, could seamlessly become part of the international nuclear system, where New Delhi could become a legitimate nuclear supplier. Gandhi’s confidence, as it turned out, was misplaced. India was immediately placed under a tough technology denial regime. In fact, the Nuclear Suppliers Group was created as a result of the test precisely to keep countries like India beyond the pale. It took a hard-fought nuclear deal with the US to open that door for India in 2008.

But on July 22, 1974, Gandhi was looking ahead, and wanted to ensure that the craters formed by nuclear explosions could be used for strategic storage of oil and gas or even shale oil extraction. In her statement to Parliament, she seemed bemused by the international reaction to the first Pokharan test. “It was emphasized that activities in the field of peaceful nuclear explosion are essentially research and development programmes. Against this background, the government of India fails to understand why India is being criticized on the ground that the technology necessary for the peaceful nuclear explosion is no different from that necessary for weapons programme. No technology is evil in itself: it is the use that nations make of technology which determines its character. India does not accept the principle of apartheid in any matter and technology is no exception.”

Pokhran-II

India Today.in , Building up a nuclear muscle “India Today” 15/12/2016

One of the five atomic weapons that were tested on May 11, 1998, being lowered into the test shaft , India Today

1998

Pokhran-II

On May 13, 1998, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announced India's new status as the world's sixth nuclear weapons armed power. Two days before the prime minister's announcement, on May 11, 'Operation Shakti' had been initiated. India had stunned-and somewhat alarmed-the world community with a series of five nuclear weapons tests. The weapons were of three different kinds-one fusion or thermonuclear weapon, two fission devices and two sub-kiloton devices-which indicated the flexibility and range of India's nuclear arsenal, slowly built up over the years. Pokhran-II was the first Indian test of a nuclear weapon since 1974. Post-1974, bomb technology had been placed on the backburner, until Pakistan came close to acquiring a nuclear weapon with Chinese assistance. Faced with the twin threats of a Chinese and Pakistani nuclear weapons arsenal and a closing global window-the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was opened for signatures in 1996-the strategic community was left with no other option but to hit the test button.

See also

Pakistan- India economic relations

Pakistan- India: issues

Pakistan vs. India, cricket

Pakistan- India: Cease-fire and its violations

Nuclear weapons testing: India- Pakistan

Nuclear arsenals: India, Pakistan

Russia- India trade relations

and many more articles, especially about the 1965 and 1971 wars, The Kargil war of 1999, 1947...