Nuclear Disarmament and NPT: India's Policy

The case Jose De Costa v. Bascora (1975) established that the acquisition of foreign territory is governed by international law and does not fall under Article 1 of the Indian Constitution.

India's foreign policy was shaped by Jawaharlal Nehru who was the first Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of independent India. International factors such as the second world war, weakening of imperial forces and growth of pro-democracy forces had an influence on shaping India's foreign policy. In 1927 Nehru helped formulate the foreign policy of the congress, which was it's first foreign policy statement. The contents of the policy stated that India should not participate in imperialist wars.      

India is very much against the production of nuclear weapons and began to condemn it throughout the world. India was one of the first nations to bring a resolution in the UN General Assembly in favour of disarmament in 1956.

Disarmament means the reduction of arms and weapons through international treaties and agreements signed in between two or more states. It’s an attempt to eliminate or radically reduce armaments. Most disarmament proposals are based on the assumption that weapons are an important source of conflict in themselves.

First nuclear test was conducted in Pokhran.

 It is a remote location in the Thar Desert region and served as the test site for India's first underground nuclear weapon detonation.

India conducted its nuclear tests in Pokharan. Pokharan is located in Jaisalmer district of Indian state of Rajasthan. The first nuclear test was conducted on 18 May 1974 in Pokharan.

The nuclear arms race was a competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During this period, in addition to the American and Soviet nuclear stockpiles, other countries developed nuclear weapons, though none engaged in warhead production on nearly the same scale as the two superpowers.

• The first explosion of an atomic device was carried out in the state of Rajasthan. The code name of India’s first nuclear bomb test was 'Smiling Buddha'.
  
• It was detonated on 18^th may 1974 in the army base of Pokhran test range in Rajasthan.
  

NATO stands for The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. It was established in the year 1949. It's headquarter is located in Brussels, Belgium. Unlike NPT, SALT, and CTBT, NATO is not related to disarmament. Its main purpose is to safeguard the freedom and securities of its member countries.

The aim of disarmament is:-

The Radiation Effects Research Foundation  gives a range of 90,000-140,000 1945 deaths at Hiroshima out of a population of 310,000. The Hiroshima Peace Site website gives a figure of 140,000 deaths by December 1945, out of a population of 350,000.

• The Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT has three pillars :  
  

1. Nuclear Disarmament: Includes disarmament and dismantling military nuclear programs.
2. Non-proliferation: Non nuclear weapon states agree to avoid developing nuclear technology while NWS agree not to spread the technology.
3. Peaceful Uses Of Nuclear Technology : Using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and not for war and its nuances. 
   

Three days after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9 – a 21-kiloton plutonium device known as Fat Man. On the day of the bombing, an estimated 263,000 were in Nagasaki, including 240,000 Japanese residents, 9,000 Japanese soldiers, and 400 prisoners of war. Prior to August 9, Nagasaki had been the target of small scale bombing by the United States.

The effects of testing and piling of nuclear weapons are as follows:-

In order to become a party to the NPT, India would need to join the treaty as a Non Nuclear Weapon State for which it would have to eliminate its nuclear arsenal. The NPT only recognises five countries as NWS. It would also have to accept IAEA safeguards. 

According to the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, the NPT has 191 state parties.

Nuclear arsenal reduction treaties like the START I have not been sufficient for disarmament thus far because they have been exclusively bilateral between the United States and the USSR/Russia. Therefore, treaties like the NPT were required in order to include other nations in the aim for nuclear disarmament and world peace. 

Twenty-five years after becoming signatories, NPT Parties met in May 1995 and decided that the NPT was to be extended indefinitely - there is no limit to its duration.

Four states—India, Israel, Pakistan, and South Sudan—have never signed the NPT. 

Opened for signature in 1968, the NPT entered into force on March 5, 1970.

South Africa is the only nation that developed nuclear weapons by itself and later deconstructed them. It renounced its nuclear weapons and joined the NPT as a Non Nuclear Weapon State in 1991. 

The NPT defines nuclear weapon states (NWS) as "those that have built and tested a nuclear explosive device before 1 January 1967:; these are the United States, The United Kingdom, Russia, China, and France.