India Could Be in NSG, If Not for Nehru: Ex-Foreign Secretary

Nehru had turned down the US offer to help India detonate a nuclear device before China.

India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. (Photo Courtesy: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library)

China may be blocking our NSG bid now, but it’s a situation of our own making, according to ex-foreign secretary, Maharajakrishna Rasgotra.

If then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had accepted the US offer of helping India detonate a nuclear device before China in 1964, India would not have to make desperate attempts to enter the coveted Nuclear Suppliers’ Group today, he said. Rasgotra was speaking at the release of his new book A Life in Diplomacy at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF).

He went on to say that had Nehru had accepted the offer, India would have tested the nuclear device first in Asia, even before China. It also “would have deterred China and Pakistan” from launching offensives in 1962 and 1965 respectively.

(JF) Kennedy, who was an admirer of India’s democracy and held its leader Jawaharlal Nehru in very high esteem, felt that democratic India, not Communist China, should be the first Asian country to conduct a nuclear test.

Maharajakrishna Rasgotra, Former Foreign Secretary

The then-US President, John F Kennedy, had reportedly sent a hand-written letter to Nehru.

The letter was accompanied by a technical note from the chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission. It elaborated on the assistance his organisation would provide to Indian atomic scientists to detonate an American device from atop a tower in the Rajasthan desert.

In the letter, Kennedy had said that he and the American establishment were aware of Nehru’s strong views against nuclear tests and nuclear weapons, but emphasised the political and security threat China’s test would spell for Nehru’s government and India’s security.

(With inputs from PTI)