Nehru's refusal of Kennedy's offer of nuclear detonation kept India out of the NSG

NEW DELHI: Had India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru accepted US President John F Kennedy’s offer of helping India detonate a nuclear device much before China did in 1964, India need not have to make desperate efforts to enter the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) now, according to former Foreign Secretary Maharajakrishna Rasgotra.

Rasgotra said if Nehru had accepted the offer, not only India would had tested the nuclear device first in Asia, before China, but it “would have deterred China from launching its war of 1962 and even imparted a note of caution to [Pakistan’s] Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s plans for war in 1965”.

Rasgotra said this while speaking at the release of his new book “A Life in Diplomacy” at Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF) on Monday. The book was formally released by former External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha.

In the book, Rasgotra notes that Kennedy made the extraordinary gesture towards India after learning through American intelligence in the late 1950s that China’s nuclear programme was progressing towards a weapons’ detonation in 1964.

Rasgotra said “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”.

Kennedy’s hand-written letter was accompanied by a technical note from the chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, setting out the assistance his organisation would provide to Indian atomic scientists to detonate an American device from atop a tower in Rajasthan desert.
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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.

“Nothing is more important than national security”, Kennedy’s letter had emphasised.

However, after discussions with Dr Homi Bhabha and G.P. Parthasarathy, Nehru finally turned down the letter, though he was not disinclined to the offer initially and had instructed Dr Bhabha to “work out a plan of action on most urgent basis, should we finally accept Kennedy’s offer”.

The book tells the story of India’s foreign policy formulation from the initial years till towards almost the end of the 20th century. After being one of the country’s top foreign secretaries, Rasgotra retired in 1990. He was the foreign secretary under Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.

Describing the book as a “great work with lots of wisdom”, Yashwant Sinha said he wished the book also provided a picture of the global economy then and the economic relationships. He also impressed on the need for Indian leadership to focus more on Africa and Latin America to further the country’s interests.

Comparing diplomacy to geology, Sinha said the surface may be soft and even as one keeps digging, the soil gets harder and harder and finally hits hard rock. The diplomats should find out where are the hard rocks lying and guide the leadership to help drill through them.