EVENTS

Abstract        

India’s delayed response to the Chinese nuclear test in October 1964 has often puzzled both historians and proliferation experts. It took India a decade to show a modicum of nuclear capability with the 1974 Peaceful Nuclear Explosion. What explains Indian policy in the intervening years? 

Based on an extensive study of the recently declassified documents in the Indian archives, this paper argues that rather than posing a direct military threat, China’s nuclear programme in 1960s was perceived by Indian decision-makers to be a part of China’s psychological warfare and largely an issue of prestige. For New Delhi, its most immediate impact would have been on India’s standing in the world especially among the Afro-Asian countries. Militarily, rather than a nuclear deterrent, India’s national security interests lay in defending its territory in another conventional war with China and to restrict the Chinese from influencing and instigating revolutionary wars in the Indian body-politic.

The perceptions of Chinese conventional military threat consistently declined between 1964 and 1974 largely on account of two developments. First, in the latter half on 1960s, there was increasing confidence among Indian decision-makers that India will be able to conventionally defend its territorial integrity. Second, India’s strategic environment continuously improved with the Sino-Soviet rift in late 1960s.

About the Speaker

Yogesh Joshi recently finished his PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is currently working on a book manuscript on the history of India’s nuclear submarine project. He has been a fellow at George Washington University, Kings College London and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC. His research has appeared in journals such as Survival, US Naval War College Review, Harvard Asia Quarterly, India Review and Comparative Strategy.