Nuclear tests no cause for celebration
As a child it was hard for me to believe that there were people in this world who took pleasure in the killing of six million Jews, and people in the world who thought that killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians with atomic bombs was justifiable, and people who thought that the murder of Mahatma Gandhi was fine.
I now have the same feeling of disbelief at the moral bankruptcy and intellectual idiocy of a nation grown mindlessly euphoric about the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.
The argument that the US did the same and therefore has no moral right to complain is no doubt a valid one.
The US was not only the first to make the atomic bomb, it is the only country to have used it. Not only did it build up its own arsenal, it forced the Soviet Union and then China to divert vitally needed resources towards building up their arsenals at the cost of building up their economies.
But the question of America's moral right is a red herring.
Today it is not America that will suffer the consequences of a nuclear war or arms race in this region. The Cold War is over.
Nations that had pointed nuclear weapons at each other find themselves without good reason for further posturing.
Today the greater danger of nuclear war comes from countries like India, Pakistan, Israel and Iran and from the possible use of nuclear weapons by international terrorists who can quite conceivably lay their hands on a technology that has begun to proliferate and has become portable. Every child knows that in a nuclear war there can be no winners. Deterrence is cited as a reason for deployment but history has repeatedly shown the opposite to be true. Why is it so difficult for us in India to put ourselves in Pakistani shoes? What would our response have been in 1974 if a nation that had defeated us in a war three years before suddenly exploded an atomic bomb? We would have been forced by hook or crook, to reply in kind. So Pakistan acquired its A-Bomb. Now we have upped the ante with a hydrogen bomb.
Pakistan and China are bound to reply to Indian tests, overtly or covertly, and a huge escalation of a regional nuclear arms race is inevitable.
In the West there has always been a strong and vocal anti-nuclear movement. In India (and I suspect, in Pakistan) there is only a cacophony of 'patriotic' fervour that equates the bomb with national pride. People dance in the streets as if it is the Diwali festival. Newspapers roar 'Bravo India' and 'The Buddha smiles'. Young men sign messages of congratulations in blood.
It would not be so disturbing if all these were being orchestrated by those who took pride in the killing of Gandhi and those who distributed sweets when the Babri Mosque was demolished.
But when every political party including some 'left' parties joins in to demonstrate their 'patriotism' and when press, politicians and populace unite as one and the common man takes leave of common sense, there is little choice but to take refuge in the wisdom of children.
ANAND PATWARDHAN Film-maker Bombay, India
