Explain India’s role in global disarmament. (2001)
India’s disarmament diplomacy is the other half of its nuclear argument. From Jawaharlal Nehru onwards it has demanded disarmament that is universal, verifiable and non-discriminatory, and its record of proposals is unusual among states that now hold nuclear weapons. It explains why India rejects the NPT as discriminatory without rejecting non-proliferation itself.
The Nehruvian foundation (1947–64)
- On 2 April 1954, after the American Castle Bravo test, Nehru proposed a standstill agreement on nuclear testing, an early governmental call for a test ban grounded in the effects of fallout.
- India signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963 and used the Non-Aligned platform from Belgrade (1961) to make disarmament a Third World cause.
- In the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee, India joined the eight non-aligned members whose memorandum shaped UNGA Resolution 2028 (1965): a non-proliferation treaty must balance obligations and be a step towards disarmament.
Activism under Indira and Rajiv Gandhi
- From 1982 India tabled resolutions for a convention prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons and for a freeze on production and deployment.
- The Six-Nation Five-Continent Initiative (1984) of Argentina, Greece, India, Mexico, Sweden and Tanzania demanded a halt to testing and production, a call echoed by Mikhail Gorbachev’s unilateral test moratorium of 1985.
- The Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan, presented to the UN Special Session on Disarmament on 9 June 1988, proposed eliminating all nuclear weapons in three time-bound phases by 2010, with binding, verifiable and universal obligations, cuts in conventional forces and a ban on weapons in outer space.
Refusal as a disarmament argument
- India refused the NPT because it legalised the arsenals of five states, and the CTBT (1996) because it froze capability without a link to time-bound elimination and named India in its entry-into-force clause. At the Conference on Disarmament, Arundhati Ghose called the draft a mere “nuclear weapon test explosion ban treaty” (June 1996).
- After Pokhran-II (1998) India adopted a testing moratorium and no first use, backed negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, and in a 2006 working paper proposed a global no-first-use agreement leading to a Nuclear Weapons Convention. It still tables annual First Committee resolutions on prohibiting use, reducing nuclear danger and keeping weapons of mass destruction from terrorists.
Beyond nuclear weapons
- India is a party to the Biological Weapons Convention and an original signatory of the Chemical Weapons Convention; it completed destruction of its declared chemical stockpile in 2009.
- The WMD Act, 2005 implements UNSC Resolution 1540, and membership of the MTCR, Wassenaar Arrangement and Australia Group reflects a clean non-transfer record.
An assessment
- Strength: India acted as a norm entrepreneur; its test-ban and humanitarian arguments preceded the ICJ’s 1996 advisory opinion and the TPNW.
- Limits: by acquiring weapons India seemed to ratify the hierarchy it attacked, and its stockpile has grown to about 190 warheads (SIPRI, 2026). It stays out of the TPNW, negotiated outside the Conference on Disarmament, and denies it any customary-law effect.
- Context: New START has expired (February 2026), the 11th NPT Review Conference failed (May 2026), and the CTBT, thirty years old, is still not in force amid talk of renewed testing. India’s call for a universal, verifiable convention is more relevant than ever, but it has fewer takers.
Conclusion
India’s role has been that of a conditional abolitionist: it shaped ideas more than outcomes. Its commitment is sincere as a preference but inert as a policy, because India will disarm only within a universal scheme, not by going first.