Sat, Jul 5 01:05 AM
"WITH China at her back, and Pakistan lurking on the sidelines, she foresaw no alternative but to keep open her option on the production of nuclear weapons." This was what Indira Gandhi conveyed to Canada's High Commissoner James George on why India could not accede to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), which opened for signature 40 years ago on July 1, 1968.
A cable sent by US Ambassador Chester Bowles to the State Department on December 12, 1967, about the Indira Gandhi-James George meeting reveals that the then prime minister was aware that India might have to reverse its decision to use nuclear resources for peaceful purposes. "But who could foresee when it might become necessary to change this policy?" the cable, recently declassified, and posted on the website of the National Security Archive, quotes Indira Gandhi as saying.
"If the Americans want to come to our aid against an attack by the Chinese they will, even if we don't sign the NPT. And if they don't want to come to our aid, they won't even if we sign the treaty," she told the High Commissioner. At the outset, George told the prime minister that the Canadian parliament would demand a review of the country's economic aid and nuclear assistance programmes to India.
According to the cable, the Canadian envoy followed up his presentation to Indira Gandhi by meeting Foreign Secretary Rajeshwar Dayal, whose reaction to George's approach was later termed as "shocking". "Dayal reportedly said India would never give up an iota of its hard-fought independence by signing the NPT. India's political leaders held in sacred patrimony the freedom of future generations.
Accession to NPT would constitute an infringement of national sovereignty," the cable reads. India, Dayal told the High Commissioner, was aware of the potential threat of withdrawal of aid by the Americans, Russians, British and Canadians if New Delhi did not sign the NPT. "Let everyone stop their aid.
India would survive. The important thing was to protect the nation's freedom and independence from foreign domination, whatever the source and the guise," Dayal told his Canadian interlocutor.
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