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Thinking the Unthinkable
hen Bertrand Russell was asked to describe his vision of the 21st century he ruled it out as an impossible question. “I do not know at all,” he declared. But he had severe misgivings about the future of humankind, and he spoke out on the single topic which absorbed the closing years of his life as a pacifist and Atheist - nuclear war.
“I do think that once the knowledge of nuclear capabilities becomes general there will always be the threat of nuclear war. The nuclear peril represents a danger which is likely to last as long as governments possess nuclear weapons, and perhaps longer if such destructive objects get into private hands.”
In the final volume of his autobiography he sounded downright pessimistic: “Like Cassandra, I am doomed to prophecy evil and not be believed. Her promises came true; I desperately hope that mine will not.”
Russell, Einstein, and other intellectuals of their time were convinced that debates on human survival in a perilous age of nuclear weapons should be conducted only by “rational adversaries with a sense of history, and a compassion for the continued existence of the species Man.”
“Rational adversaries” presupposes national and world leaders inspired by reason and common sense. What appalled right-minded citizens on this sub-continent was the rabid display which followed nuclear tests in India and then in Pakistan. The nuclear threat was given a deadly sectarian color: Islamic green against Hindu saffron. A Hindu Bomb was answered by a Muslim Bomb.
Both explosions were hailed as significant religious events. The Indian test was carried out on a site in the desert of Rajasthan where, in 1974, Indira Gandhi presided over an earlier test to bolster her shaking political career as prime minister. That was Pokhran I. Now we have Pokhran II, with a test carried out by a government led by a right-wing Hindu party, the Bharatya Janta Party (BJP), to try to establish its credibility as the government destined to take us into the 21st century - saffron banners flying. This government is out of office as I write, defeated by one vote! We are to go for another general election. The wobbly character of our governments is evident from the fact that we have had four prime ministers in five years, heading different coalitions. The scenario is not much different in Pakistan, where the Prime Minister has been targeted often by assassins. If the growing nuclear arsenal in both countries were to fall into lunatic hands, it could lead to a global catastrophe.
In May of 1998, India Today, a leading newsmagazine, described the BJP’s nuclear test thus:
By afternoon the wind had fallen silent over Pokhran. At 3:45 p.m. the timer detonated the three devices. Around 200 to 300 meters deep in the earth, the heat generated was equivalent to a million degrees centigrade - as hot as temperatures on the sun. Instantly, rocks weighing around a thousand tons, a mini-mountain underground, vaporized... shock waves from the blast began to lift a mound of earth the size of a football field by several meters. One scientist, on seeing it, said: “I can now believe stories of Lord Krishna lifting a hill.”Allah in his turn took a hand, in the nuclear test in Pakistan which followed soon after. Zealots there were sure of it. There is a popular belief among Hindus that people of ancient India already knew nuclear weapons and some were used in the Mahabharata with spectacular effect. So we had come full circle.
Lumpen elements like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and other extreme outfits danced in the streets and celebrated Pokhran II as if it was a remarkable achievement, brought about overnight by a Hindu government after only a few weeks in office. They trekked out to the site and launched a campaign to raise a monument close to the test site. Others were to carry quantities of this sacredly radioactive sand across the country to distribute among the devout. The jingoism was so blatant that even our political leaders were red in the face. What appeared like a successful policy statement at home, appalled everyone abroad. The VHP etc. were asked to tone down the chauvinism somewhat. But the euphoria remained.
That anyone should think fit to raise a monument to a weapon of mass destruction is horrendous. Among the first to arrive here after the test was a delegation of Japanese. The Indian government was not interested in what they had to say. They were able to meet and address smaller gatherings of worried citizens who were as appalled as they were.
Mahatma Gandhi is not so popular around here nowadays. We have a vocal lobby denouncing him for having sold us out to Pakistan by agreeing to partition this ancient Hindu land. The man who assassinated him is a hero to a large section of zealots. The truth is that non-violence and pacifism has never been used as a state policy even by ancient rulers. Pillars and monuments were raised to the victorious, and the greatest king was a conquering one who ravaged and laid waste his opponents’ kingdoms, even destroying their gods and temples to carry off their loot.
Nirad Chaudhuri, the Indian scholar who not so long ago launched his latest work in London, written at the age of a hundred, once wrote a book about us Indians called The Continent of Circe. It was not popular with his fellow countrymen. In a chapter headed “Janus and His Two Faces” Chaudhuri examined the puzzling dichotomy evident among Indians over a wide spectrum: a great respect for tradition and stability on one hand, and an uncontrolled bent for disunity and disruption on the other. He further listed megalomania against self-abasement; xenophobia against xenolatry; anarchic individualism against authoritarianism; militarism against pacifism; violence against non-violence; possessiveness about property against carelessness; courage against extreme cowardice; and cleverness against extreme stupidity.
Thus, even while claiming reverence for sages and ascetics, it is the warrior-king who fires the public imagination. He is seen as a saint because he does not shrink from shedding blood in a righteous war. And all wars we fight are righteous - it’s the enemy who is diabolic. Pakistan is demonized in all our films.
In the Bhagavad Gita the hero Arjuna is engaged in a war which involves spilling the blood of his kinsmen. As a Kshatriya, a member of the warrior caste, he suffers misgiving. The god Krishna, acting as his charioteer, urges him to do his duty rather than worry about the morality of his action: “Looking to your own duty, thou shouldst not tremble, for there is nothing more welcome to the Kshatriya than a righteous war. The Kshatriya who obtains such a fight unsought, like an open door to heaven, should be happy. If however, you will not carry on this righteous war, then, having cast away your own duty and your honor, you will incur sin.”
Myths, legends, and early historical accounts abound with feats of arms, ruthlessness and cruelty in destroying enemies. Where all else failed, guile and chicanery were used.
The inability of Hindu kings to unite made this sub-continent easy prey for marauders entering through the northern passes. A Moghul empire was founded by Babur in Delhi in 1526. After the Moghuls came the British. Today, as in Ireland and the Balkans, tribal memory plays havoc in twentieth century politics. Implacable hatred still infects Hindus and Muslims. Muslim heroes are villains to the Hindus, and vice versa. Inwardly, fanaticism has not yielded an inch - despite centuries of shared historical experience and ties of culture, language, and geography.
The BJP’s emergence as the leader of a coalition resulted in all the most serious defects of national character being paraded openly as “patriotism” and nationalism. Muslim Indians, who are early converts from Hinduism, were told to go to Pakistan. Christians, attacked and persecuted, were told to go back to England, as though they had arrived here with the British!
The BJP’s election slogan was “One Nation - One Culture,” suggesting it would be the best thing for all the sheep to now return to the fold again. Tribals turned Christian are being “brought home” with rituals meant to purify them.
Given this kind of mind-set, the detonation of a nuclear device is a frightening thing. The government followed up the blast with test-firing missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Agni I and Agni II were answered by Pakistan with Ghauri I and II, and so on - all serial killers, primed and numbered.
In two bitterly confronting countries, who has his finger on the nuclear button? Is there any system in place to prevent an accidental war, or some stupid error like mistaking a flock of migrating geese on radar as a flight of missiles? If our scientists are to be believed, war has now become obsolete!
The concept of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ (MAD) protects us completely. Neither Pakistan nor China will ever dare attack us because they know we in our turn can destroy them utterly. We are now busy stock-piling. There is even talk of selling some of our arsenal to “friendly” nations.
To me one of the most obscene spectacles on national television was of scientists, gleeful and self-congratulatory, enjoying their hour of glory. The father of the Hindu Bomb is a Muslim - a fact which right-wing Hindus point out as proof of their own secularism.
There has been some protest by other scientists, but the media have played it down. Nobody wanted to appear “unpatriotic.” Euphoria infected all. In a letter to the editor of The Times of India, one NRI wrote from America that nuclear bombs would make India strong, “so let us make more and more bombs.” An NRI is a Non-Resident Indian who has voted against his motherland with his feet, to make a good life for himself in a Christian country, while funding Hindu outfits here to promote agendas which are destroying us as a viable civilized society. Hindu revivalist organizations get enormous amounts of money from fellow-believers abroad.
In 1961 Bertrand Russell wrote: “It is despairing to observe how high-placed men, who in other respects are not devoid of intelligence, can believe, both in the East and West, that peace can be preserved by one’s own side being always stronger than the other side. It may well be that the next year will end with the stronger still possessing the H-bombs, but neither side possessing live human beings.”
With IRBMs like Agni I and Agni II countered by Pakistan’s Ghauri I and Ghauri II and the more modest Shaheen, we are into an arms race on the sub-continent. But if MAD saved the West from a nuclear holocaust, there is no guarantee it will work here. Our politicians are light-weight and self-serving, destabilizing successive governments, horse-trading and buying and selling votes. The Westminster parliamentary system we have is in shambles. It no longer works. Pakistan on its part is in dire economic distress. The influence of the army looms over every politician appointed as prime minister. The army not only has a medieval mind-set regarding religion, it is deeply involved in the arms and narcotic trade. Islamic militant outfits are generously funded, trained and directed by Pakistan in Kashmir. Every day we read of Hindu villagers massacred, or soldiers on either side of the firing lines being shot dead. We are involved in an ongoing holy war which started fifty years ago and shows no sign of ending.
One optimistic commentator claimed that India must survive a nuclear conflict for two good reasons. One, area-wise we have a wider range to locate our nuclear weapons so that many more would survive a first-strike attack. Two, matching population person for person with Pakistan, we have a greater number and will still have enough to carry on after every Pakistani is wiped out!
The abysmal ignorance that inspired Hindu goons to collect radioactive sand from the nuclear test site to distribute as prasad (puja offering) to all patriots, also infects our administration. Shortly after Pokhran II we read of two sensational arrests made by the police of men carrying uranium in shopping bags. Sent to a laboratory for analysis, the stuff turned out to be rosin. There is no program in place to educate the public about disaster management, civil defense, fires, radiation hazards, and much else. In October 1998, the Chairman of our Atomic Energy Commission, Dr R. Chidambaram, addressed the Bombay Rotary Club on “The Indian Nuclear Scene.” He said war is now obsolete. MAD has made it so.
Another highly-placed scientist of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Bombay, in an interview with a newspaper in April, 1998, was a little more helpful. In the event of a nuclear attack, said he, we should take the same precautions as are taken in nuclear plants when accidents occur. We should take iodine pills, stay in-doors, preferably in basements, use only stored food and water, and avoid milk. Infants should be given powdered milk. All this - in the space of two minutes, the time taken for us to know that a Pakistani nuclear missile, guided by Allah himself, is on its way.
How safe is our own stockpile of nuclear weapons from our own stupidities? We read of dreadful leakages, and genetic damage in villagers and livestock around our nuclear power plants. Water in deep wells is contaminated, and villagers around Pokhran have reason to worry. Accidents could occur while carrying missiles from one site to another because of carelessness. Then there is the lax security and the ever-present threat of mercenaries and religious fanatics in our midst, triggering off bombs in crowded places.
Islamic fanatics will gladly lay down their lives for their cause not only in Pakistan, but among the militant-minded in our own Muslim population. But the short success of the right-wing BJP party at the Centre has brought hundreds of Hindu loonies out of the woodwork. Crusades in the West now have a different connotation from the bloody wars of medieval times waged against the Infidels. Here we have dharm yudhs and jihads which still bring psychopaths out into our streets, brandishing axes and swords, or worse, state-of-the-art weapons. When people start hearing voices directing them, we reckon they need psychiatric help. But zealots who launch jihads and dharm yudhs are allowed to move about among us. They are “morally inspired.” Deity has never had any respect for “no first-use clauses” nor even comprehended “minimum deterrence.”
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully,” wrote Pascal, “as when they do it from religious conviction.” The infliction of suffering and cruelty with “good conscience” has always been the delight of moralists and religious fanatics. They rationalize their most insensate behavior, and are convinced they have direct access to heaven even as suicide-bombers. What is the likelihood of Allah whispering into the ears of the faithful in Pakistan? Or the devout here thinking to re-enact another Mahabharata? If the world is appalled it is because it sees now, armed with weapons of extinction, two cultures engulfed by implacable hatred and goaded on by a fractured sense of history. Our “mutually assured destruction” will happen eyeball to eyeball.
Margaret Bhatty comes from a Christian missionary family. She is a free-lance journalist and author of books in English for Indian children. She lives in Nagpur, India. For many years a columnist for American Atheist, she is the author of the AAP book An Atheist Reports From India, which is available from American Atheists ($9.00, ISBN 0-910309-42-6, Cat. No. 5026).
