Terry Conway Those who failed to understand the signiticance of the recent inclan pectons nave been forced to pay attention by the rush to nuclear testing first by the Indian government and then in tit for tat fashion by Pakistan. Historically India always cited the moral factor as a major reason why it would not behave like nuclear elites elsewhere. Following the installation of the BJP government - elected on a communalist programme but without an overall majority -such concerns have been unceremoniously dropped.
The BJP is happy to use the old card of war-mongering - especially in relation to Muslim Pakistan to bolster support for the illusory and reactionary dream of Hinduvata. But while the BIP have initiated tests, the ground was certainly laid by previous Congress governments and, as our Indian comrades explain helow the tests have had wide support across the political specTrUM Indian socialist Achin Vanaik explained after India's tests: "There will now be tremendous domestic pressure on Pakistan to carry out its own test in retaliation. If this happens, which is more than likely, the pressure on India to go a step further and openly deploy nuclear weapons will become intense Once this happens, Pakistan will follow suit and the regional nuclear arms race will begin."
In Pakistan, too, support for the tests has come across the political spectrum. As Tariq Ali pointed out in The Guardian (May 29) the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto had for several weeks been taunting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for hesitating before exploding bombs. She called for "rogue nations" to be taught a lesson and for a preemptive strike against India's nuclear installations by the West. Cricketer Imran Khan was another player in this grotesque The actions of both governments should be roundly condemned by all socialists inside and outside the region. At the same time the left should also oppose sanctions against these countries.
As we have seen in Iraq, sanctions attack the weak and poor, not the governments and rulers who are indeed often strengthened by them. It is completely hypocritical for the nuclear imperialist powers to impose sanctions on other countries for daring to join them.
Gone are the voices of discord. Congress, Janata, Samajwadi, and various regional parties are tripping over in their bid to hail the shiny, new-found national unity in the aftermath of India's nuclear explosions. "National security" has become the watchword with which the Vajpayee government, and the [Hindu communalist] family, are seeking to mobilise public opinion.
"National security," agrees
Mulayam Singh Yadav, ex-defence minister, spurious socialist, and supposedly the BJP's major rival. "National security," agrees the [opposition] Congress Party, stressing that they, not the BJP, are the real father of India's nuclear teeth. And "national security," mumbles the shame-faced left. But who is threatening whom? Whose security will the nuclear explosions safeguard? For the Indian working class, the answer is clear. The day the nuclear devices were exploded, Maoist activists were still being murdered in Bihar state by the Ranvir Sena, a private militia closely linked to the BJP. Striking nurses in Delhi were being threatened with eviction, arrest and any number of repressive measures. Delhi University teachers, recently on strike for better pay and other benefits, were threatened with pay cuts for the period of strike. The waveref chauvinistic nationalism has drawn in the major parties of the Indian left. The CPI and the CPI(M) have done no more than slightly distance themselves after the second round of explosions, that their bourgeois allies will not be too upset by their criticisms. The threat of war is always a good weapon. It whips the petty bourgeoisie, and even layers of the working class, into a frenzy. It isolates the class conscious vanguard. It gives the regime legitimacy in attackBoth ing working class living standards, in attacking governments should seeking to smash be condemned, but he IOS. left should oppose In sanctions against them As BJP can also call on the mass organisations we have seen in Iraq, fascism that have been sanctions attack the weak built up over the years, and poor, not the rulers particularly the RSS.
Already, the who are often have warned that strengthened by tions must be them. determination." Indian capitalism clearly has the required determination. Determination that the costs must be passed on to the working class, and that the union-protected, hard-earned rights of the workers must go. As sanctions begin to bite, struggles by the working class to maintain its standard of living will be branded treasonous activities. Every major strike will face, not only state action, but the organised violence of the fascist forces. Are India's security and sovereignty truly threatened? By whom? Can Pakistan really invade and dismember India? Had there been no sustained history of repression in Kashmir, had their right of self-determination not been trampled underfoot, just as West Pakistan had done with the people of then East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), then Pakistan would have been able to do nothing in that region. What are nuclear weapons supposed to do?
happily No imaginary line on a map will stop radioactive fall-out. dropped in Pakistani cities from the fact that Pakistan may retaliate in kind. that the government wants to demonstrate? has meant that the sovereign state plays a very limited role in many crucial areas. India, nor any other country, can ignore the struggles, tions, can do that. after ensuring Indian working class. or Sri Lanka. struggles, by bank employees and others, have politically blocked cerand tain moves in the direction of trade liberalisation. with the upper classes. The today's India, the sovereign state is now urged of to exercise its mind in this, direction. Obviously, there is also a foreign policy dimension - the attempt by the Indian bourpoliticians "sanc- geoisie to attain big-power status.
Increasing sections of the military, the faced with armed, combative India, opinion by the paid "opinion-makers" payee's private messages to Clinton. Pakistan and China. parity between India and China.
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that's why he has been regularly ' . buying plutonium from us? An Indian nuclear weaker economy. like Lahore or Karachi will also affect Indians, quite apart Is it the sovereignty of India vis-a-vis USA ment. This is farcical. Internationalisation of capital Neither WTO or the international financial institutions. Nothing short of world-wide workers' culminating in workers' revoluWhat is being sought is far more sinister. Indian capitalism, rallying behind a fascist-militarist tendency, wants to strengt ten state power against its own most mortal enemy, the But The economy of India is not yet like Jamaica Significant sections of the working class still get substantial cost-of-living increases, and This kind This rankles of "national security" jeopardises the lives of millions of ordinary Indians state bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie are adopting the long-cherished RSS vision of an dominating Asia from Kabul to Singapore. This vision is being enthusiastically fed to middle class public nuclear attacks.
This big power status means India will be able to dominate neighbours like Pakistan, so long as direct US interests are not challenged. This is the meaning of Prime Minister VajOther negotiations.
This is bound to raise tension in the region, and create a local arms race, involving India, With Vajpayee and Defence Minister Fernandes now identifying China as the main enemy, India is virtually declaring that India wants to re-negotiate the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, to ensure anywhere.
Since China has a declared stockpile of 300 nuclear arms, and knowing that producing the nuclear warheads is only a small part of the total cost of weaponisation, the indications are grave. The Indian government is willing to rush into missile production at a very high rate, and enter into a contest with China, which iS three times as rich as India, and has a faster-growing This can be done. In the 1930s, Hitler rearmed Germany al a breathtaking pace. And the USSR maintained an arms race with the USA for many years, despite its But the cost is very high, and inevitably falls on the working class, though, for a certain period of time, militarisation can offer large profits, and provide a major area of investFrom the point of view of Indian capital, such a programme may compensate for the effects of Western sanctions.
The United States is showing its usual hypocrisy. This is the only country to have actually used the atom bomb, and the first country to test the hydrogen bomb and make the neutron bomb. The United States has fought more destructive wars than any other country since World War II.
They say sanctions are intended to ensure that nasty weapons do not fall into the wrong by what standards are 'their' hands the right ones? The imperialist butchers of Korea, Vietnam and Iraq have no moral right to dictate terms Like Nehru and Indira Gandhi, India's current rulers want to exploit the legitimate anti-imperialist feelings of the mass of the people for their nefarious ends. Threats and sanctions will be used to consolidate the RSS-BJP position, just as the savagery of the second Gulf War has strengthened the power of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. India's testing of nuclear devices was wrong, just like every testing of nuclear devices. It is not the neighbouring country, but the ruling class at home, that constitutes the main enemy of the toiling masses. This kind of "national security" jeopardises the lives of millions of ordinary Indians, by exposing them to the risk of retaliatory As well as replacing nationalist hype with clear, class demands, those who want peace and amity in the sub-continent, should unite to fight for India's immediate signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty with no furThis does not mean supporting sanctions against India. On the contrary. Nuclear weapons are unsafe in any hands, but the struggle against the bomb must be a progressive and internationalist struggle, and oppose every ruling class attack on the proletariat • This is a shortened version of an article produced by the Inquilabi Communist Sangathan (Indian Section of the Fourth International) and published in International
economy since the exchange rate crisis of 1992 has already lasted longer than most expected. The growth with low inflation was combination fairly steady growth always dependent on a particular combination of factors the weakness of the labour movement in the face of mass unemployment, the amount of spare capacity in the and