India's tests were devoid of strategic rationale. Even before 11 May, India was militarily more secure than it had been a decade previously, owing to improved relations with China, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The nuclear threat to India had actually decreased, not increased. Even if this were not the case, New Delhi would not have been justified in testing/making nuclear weapons. That would have gone against its own long-stated policy, and its considered doctrine that nuclear weapons are not an effective, rational or legitimate means of meeting threats and that nuclear deterrence is "abhorrent".
India has now taken the inglorious path of the nuclear states. The reason for this has nothing to do with the "principled" global arguments cited by the bomb's apologists: India is fighting "nuclear apartheid" through an "anti-imperialist" bomb; nuclear disarmament will now be taken more seriously by the big five; and this is the best means of jolting them after the indefinite extension of Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the imposition of the "discriminatory" Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
Going by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's letter to United States President Clinton, the real reasons are not lofty or global but crass, regional and demeaning: India today feels "threatened" by China which"committed armed aggression" against it 36 years ago; and by Pakistan which China has "helped become a current nuclear weapon-state". This is a crude anti-China come-hither gesture to Washington. Further, Vajpayee proposes "cooperation" with (who else!) – the US "to promote the cause of nuclear disarmament". Since when did the US begin promoting the cause? Does this even remotely sound like the principled position of a self-respecting state?
Fifty years after the forces of Hindutva assassinated Gandhi, they finally put his legacy to rest by embracing the theology of mass destruction. The eleventh of May 1998 will go down in South Asian history as India's day of shame. Now, with Pakistan following suit, the dark shadow of a mushroom cloud hangs over all of South Asia. Nuclear devastation is no longer a distant threat; it is suddenly an immediate, felt danger for the 1.3 billion people who live in this turbulent, unhappy, tension-prone region.