The Simla agreement was signed on 2nd July 1972. The Pakistan nuclear program was initiated in January 1972. So while Bhutto was in Simla seducing our gullible leaders, an India-centric nuclear weapons program had started under the leadership of Munir Ahmed Khan and a non-Muslim scientist who would go on to win the Nobel Prize, Dr. Abdus Salam (he was am Ahmadiyya / Qadiayani). After Salam left the country (no surprise), the biggest thief in the history of all nuclear programs, A. Q. Khan joined the program and brought it to fruition.
Now in those days, the US was using Pakistanis to get into China and then to wage a proxy battle against the Russians in Afghanistan. Declassified documents show a great deal of confusion in the US about how to deal with the progressing nuclear program in Pakistan. I suppose they did not want to antagonize the Pakistanis and sought to put diplomatic pressure on them to do the right thing. The US would have had a better success trying to get a drug addict to give up drugs. Thanks to a muddled approach of the US, the Pakistani weapons program progressed unfettered.
All this while the Indian leadership was trying to “apologize” to the world for carrying out our nuclear test. Instead of showing guts and continue on with our program, we self-imposed a moratorium on further testing. As Maj. Gen. Suman says in his article: "Instead of asserting India’s newly acquired status of a nuclear power and demanding recognition, India turned apologetic and tried to convince the world that it had no nuclear ambitions. Strangely, it termed the Pokharan test as a ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’ – a term unheard of till then. The Defence Minister went to the extent of claiming that the Indian nuclear experiment was “only for mining, oil and gas prospecting, for finding underground sources of water, for diverting rivers, for scientific and technological knowledge.”
Whereas a few more assertive follow-on tests would have forced the world to accept India as a member of the nuclear club, India went into an overdrive to placate the world through a self imposed moratorium on further testing. It lost out on all the advantages provided to it by its scientists. It suffered sanctions and yet failed to gain recognition as a nuclear power. The country missed golden opportunities due to the timidity and spinelessness of its leaders.
In the meantime, our leaders knew about the Pakistani nuclear weapons program. The must have known how its success would change the future of Indo-Pak battles. It would leave us vulnerable to blackmail by a country whose raison de etre was hatred for India. As per declassified US documents, all they did was talk tough. Here is what Morarji Desai said: "that if Pakistan did the same "the two pledges would be as good as a joint agreement." He rejected Goheen's suggestion that a formal agreement would be more effective and dismissed altogether the nuclear weapons free zone concept. Responding to Goheen's query about a prospective Indian reaction to a Pakistani weapons test, the prime minister was belligerent: "If he discovered that Pakistan was ready to test a bomb or if it exploded one, he would act at [once] 'to smash it.'"
Atalji was the Foreign Minister back then. He tried to “solve” the problems between India and Pakistan. What a dangerous combination of myopia and chutzpah that was!
What we should have done was attack Pakistan with all our might and ensured the demise of their nuclear weapons program instead of doing what we are good at: hoping and praying. There are rumours that the Israelis (God bless them!) wanted to destroy the Pakistani nuclear facilities like they had done in Osirak, Iraq. It seems that they wanted some logistic help from India but our PM Mrs. Gandhi refused. SHE REFUSED!! Someone else was going to do the heavy lifting and all we had to do was refill their planes. Even if we could not deny the help given to the Israelis, what is the worst the Pakistanis could have done? A stitch in time could have saved us twenty years of intifada like terrorism in J&K, terrorism which we have been facing in the last ten years and may even have helped us in controlling the terror in Punjab .
Therefore lack of assertiveness denied our nuclear program the legitimacy it deserved and lack of guts and foresight stopped us from doing something about the Pakistani nuclear program. That definitely classifies as a Foreign Policy blunder for which we will always pay in blood and resources.
Israel planned to strike Pak nukes
PTI,Mar 8, 2004,
WASHINGTON: Israel, which successfully destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor, also considered a pre-emptive strike to destroy Pakistan's nuclear facilities, according to State Department papers released by the National Security Archive, a private research agency.
The declassified US documents can be read at: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb333/index.htm
The Israelis article can be read at: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2004-03-08/pakistan/28336172_1_nuclear-bomb-islamic-bomb-declassified-papers
The Article which started the series can be read at: http://www.indiandefencereview.com/2010/07/seven-blunders-that-will-haunt-india-for-posterity.html
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