Aug 25 2007
Why We Are Against the India-US Nuclear Deal
Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to
By Sandeep Pandey, Aruna Roy & Medha Patkar
8/25/07
Much has been said and written about the India-US Nuclear Deal, beginning with the statement issued by many eminent nuclear scientists soon after the talks on the deal began between the India and US governments. Public fora and people’s organisations such as Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace called it anti-sovereignty. Today when it is seen as an issue of conflict between the UPA and its Left front allies, we as representatives of people’s movements must re-iterate our stand, which is that the deal is not just anti-democratic but against peace, and against environmentally sustainable energy generation and self-reliant economic development.
The Left front is questioning the fact that such an international deal with significant implications is imposed on the Indian people and Parliament with no public debate and consultation. While the US Congress took a year and a half to discuss the proposed change in US laws to permit nuclear commerce with India, the process in India has been totally undemocratic.
The deal is part of a successful attempt by the United States to build a strategic relationship with India. In confronting the rising capitalist challenge from China, India will be used as its client in the region. Directly or indirectly, the US will also enter the Indian sub-continent to manage intra-regional, inter-country relations. This whole process is likely to escalate the arms race between Pakistan and India, sabotaging the India-Pakistan peace process. How can we ignore the fact the US sells arms to both India and Pakistan?
The agreement also facilitates a full-fledged international exchange of nuclear fuel and technology with insufficient caution and control. There will no doubt be a corporate rush to extract, export and misuse nuclear fuel and technology, and it will be very difficult to prevent misuse even for the arms trade. Highly superficial clauses don’t instill any confidence against such a possibility.
However, our basic objections to this deal stem from our opposition to the production and use of both nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. The irreversible dangers of radioactivity and its ongoing impact on health, water, and the environment are factors that are being summarily dismissed in an irresponsible manner. The whole cycle of nuclear production (beginning with uranium mining) is fraught with catastrophic dangers, and as a nation we cannot use the decisions of another country as justification for our own. Places like Jaduguda in Jharkhand, Kota and Pokhran in Rajasthan have already demonstrated the ongoing dangers of nuclear use to the common citizen.
We in India have inherited rich renewable sources of energy which are environmentally benign and abundantly available. The solar, wind, and ocean waves along with human power need to be fully tapped and put to use with people’s control. Appropriate technology, research and development for production of cheaper equipment and tools need to be combined with just distribution for the right priorities. There is no political will for this in the ruling establishment. Estimates show that India can generate far more energy through alternative, environmentally sound sources. The nuclear energy option should be put up for widespread public debate, giving citizens a full opportunity to make an informed choice.
This deal however raises questions beyond nuclear energy, opening up large spaces for US government and corporate control in India. This, without a doubt, is a symbol of imperialism already demonstrated through the Iraq war and the obvious links of US policy with corporate control over resources. With unbound exchange of information, data, material, knowledge and technology the dominant global power is all set to encroach upon Indian reserves and impinge upon our sovereignty. The deal ensures a supply of sufficient nuclear material to nuclear reactors in India for the next 40 years, but the precautionary agreements to negotiations and consultations are only promises for the future. All this is subject to approvals and conditions to be monitored by the US Congress, while sidelining the Indian parliament.
The UPA government is proving to be increasingly submissive to the exploitation of our resources, knowledge and cheap labour by commercial and corporate interests. The BJP and its allies are also in the power game, using capitalist forces for support. The Left has raised an important issue using their bargaining power. Non-party people’s formations may not have the power in parliament, but we have an important set of issues that need to be considered.
The Indian Constitution and international treaties which allow deals such as this to be reached without democratic consultation need amendments to make public debate and referendums mandatory and pre-conditional. We need an approval from the Indian electorate before we agree to sign the agreement.
Sandeep Pandey
Aruna Roy
e-mail: ,
Medha Patkar
e-mail:
Contributed by Isha Khan, who can be reached at
A SPECIAL MESSAGE TO OUR READERS.
For over two years now, Thomas Paine’s Corner has been a powerful and unwavering voice for a courageous and badly needed agenda for change. We have consistently delivered hard-hitting and insightful commentary, polemics, and analysis in our persistent efforts to persuade, educate, and inspire, and serve as a discriminating but generous platform for voices from many points of view with one thing in common: their spiritual honesty and quality of thinking.
•
Aside from the caliber of its content, Thomas Paine’s Corner’s strength is that there are no advertisers or corporations to exercise de facto censorship or orchestrate our agenda. We aim to keep it that way and we need your help!
•
As a semi-autonomous section of the multi-faceted, thoroughly comprehensive, and highly prestigious Cyrano’s Journal Online, we share Cyrano’s passion for winning the battle of communications against systemic lies, an act which is essential to attaining social and environmental justice. To help us achieve that goal, Cyrano’s Journal, besides its regular editorial pages, intends to begin producing editorial videos to expose the lack of proper context, ahistoricalism, excessive over-emphasis on inane events, and outright lies the corporate media, and in particular television, present to you and your family as a steady diet of pernicious intellectual junk food. This will be an expensive under-taking and there will be no grants forthcoming from the likes of the American Enterprise Institute, the Coors or Heritage Foundation. You can be sure of that!
•
As Greek mythology has it, the powerful are frequently defeated by their own hubris, and that’s precisely what we are witnessing today. Our rotten-to-the-core, usurping plutocracy has become so overtly and arrogantly corrupt that our patience has now reached its generous limit, and the membrane of America’s collective consciousness is about to burst. This will result in a significant restructuring of our socioeconomic and political environments, we hope (and must make sure) for the better. Considering what is at stake in the world today, Cyrano’s Journal and Thomas Paine’s Corner want to accelerate the arrival of that new day, and its promise of a new, truly well organized, kind, and honest civilization.
•
Assisting us in our cause is as simple as clicking on the PayPal button below and exercising the power of your wallet. No matter how large or how small, we thank you in advance for your donation! If you are serious about our struggle for a new society, please don’t put it off. Let us hear from you today.
•Jason Miller
Associate Editor, Cyrano’s Journal Online, and Editorial Director, Thomas Paine’s Corner.
Patrice Greanville, Editor in Chief, Cyrano’s Journal Online
The Indo-US nuclear deal besides being an isufferable affront to India’s national sovereignty is an ipso facto extension of the US hegemonistic global sweep. I endorse the views of the writers that “basic objections to this deal stem from our opposition to the production and use of both nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. The irreversible dangers of radioactivity and its ongoing impact on health, water, and the environment”
I would like to recall that I had written to the then prime minister Indira Gandhi dt. March 1, 1983 referring to her “meaningful observations when addressing the Foreign Correspondents’ Association on 25.2.83. when she said that she was “a bit divided within myself” about using nuclear energy even for peaceful purposes, and that while she was personally opposed to using nuclear energy even for developmental purposes because of its adverse ecological effects, as head of a government and in the face of an energy crisis it had become imperative to use nuclear energy in industry and agriculture for speedy development.”
Further I said: “I find your above observation complementary to what you proposed in your keynote address at the UN Conference on New and Renewable Sources of Energy held at Nairobi in august,1981, when she called for a “world energy programme” and an international consortium to plan and monitor it to provide aid, knowhow and expertise to the Third World countries with an emphasis on new and renewable sources of energy
Voicing my serious misgivings about India’s nuclear programme and the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. Sethna’s claim that “India is the only country to have full control over the fuel cycle(uranium mixing and ,milling, fabrication of fuel elements and storage of waste) apart from major nuclear countries such as the U.S. Russia, France and Britain.”
“I am afraid Dr. Sethna’s claim cannot be sustained in the context of the operational facts of the nuclear plants the world over and the Tarapur plant which has been beset by grave difficulties from its very inception and that environmental hazards of nuclear power to the power plant operator or to those in its immediate vicinity were far less than that caused by cigarette smoking.
Further I wrote:
“When I wrote to Lord Flowers, FRS, former Rector of the Imperial College of Science and Technology , London and Chairman of the British Royal Commission on Environmental Protection appreciating his recommendations in the Commission’s Sixth Report on Nuclear Power and the Environment he was good enough to send me a copy of his speech Problems of Nuclear Power delivered at the Geneva Colloquium on Nuclear Energy in 1977.
“Lord Flowers has expressed his belief that political decisions arising from major technological developments should be taken in the light of popular but rational debate, and has urged extreme caution in the future development of nuclear power beyond the present generation of thermal reactors.
“Conceding the radioactive waste management to be a profoundly serious issue, central to the environmental evaluation of a nuclear power programme the Commission concluded that the “development of fission power on the scale we have described earlier carries implications and potential risks for society which are too serious to be disregarded on the grounds that they are necessarily speculative and of a kind that we have not hitherto expected to address in decisions on technological development. Decisions should not be taken simply on the basis of technological or economic advantage and the assumed necessity of securing increasing energy supplies. The social and ethical issue involved are real and important, and should be widely appreciated and discussed” Hence, Lord Flowers concludes definitely that there should be no commitment to a large programme in Britain until it has been demonstrated “beyond reasonable doubt” that a method exists to contain high level waste indefinitely.”
Indira Gandhi was good enough to note my view and refer my letter to the then Minister of State Science & Technology Atomic Energy,Space Electronics & Ocean Development, Shri Shivraj Pati (presenty, the Union Home Minister, Government of India)l who responded in his letter dated May 19, 1983 as follows:
“Dear Shri Bal Patil,
Please refer to your letter of 1st March 1983 to the Prime minister regarding your apprehensions about our nuclear power programme. The Prime Minister, as you no doubt are aware, has on several occasions voiced her concern about conservation, environmental protection and the need to safeguard against the hazard of pollution and the Government is fully alive to its special responsibility in this regard. Government has embarked on its programme for utilization of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes including the generation of power keeping in mind its ecological and other implications. I would like to assure you that these aspects are taken due note of and accorded due importance.
As regards some of the opinions cited by you, you may also be aware of the existence of equally committed pro and anti groups when it comes to issues related to nuclear energy. I would venture to suggest that some of the reports in certain sections of the press do tend, for reasons not clear, to mis-inform and create needless alarm by distorting facts. It is necessary to see the matter objectively and in its entirety.
Yours sincerely,
Sd/-
Shivaraj V.Patil
In the aforementioned context I took the liberty of writing to Smt.Sonia Gandhi dt. August 18, 2007 as follows:
“Dear Madam,
I wish Indiraji was alive today to pull up the Government of India to stop the mess it is making in its nuclear policy. I have taken a deep interest in India’s nuclear programme right from the first nuclear test. I had written to Indiraji later pointing out the real dangers from the nuclear wastes. She was good enough to note my view and asked the then Science & Technology, Atomic Energy Minister, Shri Shivraj Patil to respond which I have attached.
Madam, America has alway entertained a patronising and hegemonic attititude towards India. And now it has the cheek to warn India that we cannot conduct tests. This is outrageous. I cannot understand how the External Affairs Ministry has so blunderingly failed to read the fine print of the Indo-US nuclear Pact.
The US is the original culprit in the atomic proliferation right from first atomic test
which culminated in Truman’s dropping of the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki even when Japan was on the verge of surrender. It was done only to show to the world now America was invincible. America was so secretive then that it would not even share the atomic technology with their closest ally the UK.
Actually, Madam, the US is a worse war criminal that the Nazi Hitler because Hitler was at least honest in his fascist actions. But America flaunts as the greatest democracy anda great civilised nation. Therefore her war crimes are worse.
Madam, I seriously urge you that the only honorable course open to the Government now is to terminate the Pact summarily and tell the US: thus far and no further.”
I followed it up with a further letter dt. august 2007 as follows:
FOR IMMEDIATE AND URGENT ATTENTION PLEASE
DEAR MADAM,,
I REFER TO MY EARLIER LETTER DT.AUG.18, 2007, ABOUT THE INADVISABILITY OF PROCEEDING WITH THE NUCLEAR DEAL. SINCE IT IS MY HUMBLE CONVICTION THAT THE NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISORS TO THE PRIME MINISTER ARE NOT SUFFICIENTLY INFORMED ABOUT THE HISTORIC GENESIS OF THE US NUCLEAR POLICY, AND SINCE AS AN INDIAN CITIZEN I DO NOT THINK THAT THE NATION SHOULD BE PLUNGED IN THE ELECTORAL TURMOIL I TAKE THIS LIBERTY.
I BESEECH YOU MADAM NOT TO PLUNGE THE INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT INTO THE US-ENGINEERED NUCLEAR INFERNO. IN CASE YOU ARE STILL IN TWO MINDS PLEASE CONSIDER FOR GOD’S SAKE THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT OF STIMSON, THE THEN SECRETARY OF STATE TO THE THEN PRESIDENT TRUMAN PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS FEB.3, 1947:
“THE FUTURE MAY SEE A TIME WHEN SUCH WEAPON MAY BE CONSTRUCTED IN SECRET AND USED SUDDENLY AND EFFECTIVELY WITH DEVASTATING POWER BY A WILFUL NATION OR GROUP AGAINST AN UNSUSPECTING NATION OR GROUP OF MUCH GREATSIZE AND MATERIAL POWER. WITH ITS AID EVEN A VERY POWERFUL AND UNSUSPECTING NATION MIGHT BE CONQUERED WITHIN A VERY FEW DAYS BY A VERY SMALLER ONE…”
QUOTING THIS THE MOST DISTINGUISHED EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICIST AND NOBEL PRIZE WINNER IN 1948 P.M.S. BLACKETT SAYS IN HIS BOOK ‘THE MILITARY AND POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF ATOMIC ENERGY’ (1948):
“THE OBVIOUS RESULT HAS BEEN TO STIMULATE A HYSTERICAL SEARCH FOR 100 PER CENT SECURITY FROM SUCH ATTACK. SINCE THERE CAN BE NO SUCH COMPLETE SECURITY FOR AMERICA EXCEPT THROUGH WORLD HEGEMONY BY AMERICA IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER…”P.128
MADAM, OFFICIALS AND ANALYSTS IN THE UNITED STATES HAVE BEEN WARNING THAT AL-QUAIDA OR ASSOCIATED GROUPS ARE PLANNING SUCH NUCLEAR ATTACKS ON AMERICAN SOIL.
DUBBED AMERICAN HIROSHIMA THE PLAN APPARENTLY TARGET NEW YORK , MIAMI LOS ANGELES, PHILADELPHIA, CHICAGO, SAN FRANSISCO, LAS VEGAS , BOSTON AND WASHINGTON D.C.
FORMER US DEFENCE SECRETARY WILLIAM PERRY SAYS THERE IS AN EVEN CHANCE OF A NUCLEAR ATTACK ON THE US THIS DECADE. RENOWNED INVESTOR WARREN BUFFET HAS PREDICTED “A NUCLEAR TERRORIST ATTACK…IS INEVITABLE….”
IN THE ABOVE CONTEXT I BESEECH YOU , MADAM, PLEASE
CONSIDER WHETHER IT WOULD NOT BE SUICIDAL FOR INDIA TO
ALLY WITH SUCH A HORRIBLE NUCLEAR SHADOW.
YOURS SINCERELY,
(BAL PATIL)
A significan straw in the wind is the latest speech by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin : http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL1053774820070210 in one of his harshest attacks on the US in seven years in power, accused Washington on Saturday of attempting to force its will on the world.
Attacking the concept of a “unipolar” world in which the United States was the sole superpower, he said: “What is a unipolar world? No matter how we beautify this term it means one single center of power, one single center of force and one single master.”
“It has nothing in common with democracy because that is the opinion of the majority taking into account the minority opinion,” he told the gathering of top security and defense officials.
“People are always teaching us democracy but the people who teach us democracy don’t want to learn it themselves.”
There is a weird air about the American foreign policy of a new-fangled economic voodoo, just as there has been for long in operation in America of what Senator Fulbright called in his Arrogance of Power “That there is a kind of voodoo about American foreign policy. Certain drums have to be beaten regularly to ward off evil spirits-for example, the maledictions regularly uttered against North Vietnamese aggression” (p.32) In place of ‘North Vietnamese aggression’ to which President Bush has drawn ironically a parallel with the Iraq war, one can replace WMDs of Iraq and international terrorism. and the persistent pursuit pf pax americana. And there is no doubt that this too would prove in course of time a Bushgate.