No First Use’: Policy and Problems of India’s Draft Nuclear Doctrine

During the first twenty-five years of independence, from 1947 to 1971, India encountered three wars with Pakistan (1947, 1965 and 1971) and one with its neighbour China (1962). These military engagements, sometimes inevitable, compelled Indian government, quite justifiably, to review and reorient its defence policy, where in face of the potential threats from its neighbours, India was supposed to showcase a defence mechanism that could convey the message of India's strength to the world. India's two nuclear tests, one in 1974 and the other in 1998, immediately made the world powers aware of India as the new member of the nuclear power club of the world. After conducting these explosions in May, 1998, India declared a voluntary moratorium and declared to refrain from conducting underground nuclear test explosions, which was perfectly in tune of India's long advocacy about ‘peaceful use of nuclear energy'. Post-independent India's nuclear policy, evolved as it was at the turn of the twenty-first century. Therefore, may be seen as an outcome of the contemporary international situation, where apart from the peaceful usage of the nuclear energy, its destructive power was also explored and stored in hand.