India’s Nuclear Limbo and the Fatalism of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime, 1974–1983

Jayita Sarkar

Archive data: Person was Visiting Fellow at IDSA Jayita Sarkar is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. She holds a Masters in… Continue reading India’s Nuclear Limbo and the Fatalism of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime, 1974–1983 read more

India’s relationship with the nuclear non-proliferation regime deteriorated sharply after its 1974 underground nuclear test which, according to India, was a peaceful nuclear explosion, but which was not accepted as such by the regime. That it did not follow up with immediate weaponisation challenged the core logic of the non-proliferation regime which operates on a Murphy’s Law of ‘nuclear fatalism’, i.e. if a country has the know-how to produce nuclear weapons, it will certainly produce them. This article argues that at least until the beginning of its integrated guided missile development programme in 1983, India’s nuclear inaction posed a normative challenge to this logic.