40 years in Eternal India

On the way to Pondicherry (photo courtesy: Michel C.)

Four years ago, I wrote this to celebrate my arrival in India.


My article 40 years in Eternal India, on the occasion of my arrival in India. It appeared in Rediff.com

Here is the link...

Often when I meet a new Indian friend, who is not aware of my background, he exclaims: "So many years in India! but why, why? I can't understand! My dream is to go to the States or Europe and you are living in 'this' country!"
Claude Arpi, who was born a Frenchman, looks back on his 40 years in India.

Forty Years is a long time!
On December 20, 1974, after more than two-and-a-half months on the road, travelling from Paris to South India, crossing Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, I arrived in Auroville, near Pondicherry.
What a journey!
Since then, I have adopted Bharat as my home and Bharat adopted me (I hope).
Often when I meet a new Indian friend, who is not aware of my background, he exclaims: "So many years in India! but why, why? I can't understand! My dream is to go to the States or Europe and you are living in 'this' country!"
I appear to them a strange creature, going against the tide (indeed, it was against the tide in 1974!).
His next question is: "What do you find in 'this' country? It is dirty, hundreds of millions are poor, nothing works, please explain, I want to understand."
It is not an easy proposition to explain what attracted me to India and why I have stayed here all these years. An easy answer could be: Karma (bad karma to my questioning new friend, good to me).
It is true that in Asia, this word can explained many things. It is a very practical concept which elucidates happenings that cannot be understood otherwise.
Some 42 years ago, when I first visited India, it was probably my karma to encounter smiling Tibetans on Himalayan roads! In Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, I met their leader, the Dalai Lama and I began to understand something that I had not grasped so far: The refugees had lost their material wealth, their family and their country, but they had not lost the deeper human qualities called peace of mind or compassion; their leader was the living example of these qualities.
That is one of the reasons why I decided to settle down in India.
I had also come across the writings of Sri Aurobindo, the Great Rishi, who fought hard for the Nation's Purna Swaraj from the British ('The most dangerous man we have to reckon with,' wrote Lord Minto) and later from his room in Pondicherry, for a new step in the Evolution of Mankind.
Just like 40 years ago, his words continue to echo in my mind: '(Don't) let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected.'
In 1974, I left France because these words resonated in me, despite the often frustrating slow motion of the Elephant.
Of course, there are many, many things that I don't like in India. Several years ago, I wrote for Rediff.com, The 10 things I hate in India. Some readers commented, 'Go back to France, if you don't like India.'
They missed the point.
Retrospectively, one of the darkest times for me was when the government trumpeted 'India is Shining!' There was, of course, some truth in the slogan, but so many aspects of 'Incredible India' still belonged to the middle ages: Child marriage, rape, corruption, filth, to cite a few. How can one show only one side of the coin while neglecting the rest?
During these 40 years, one great moment has been when the present prime minister decided to 'Sweep India.' Narendra Modi dared to tell tens of thousands of NRIs assembled at the Madison Square Garden in New York: 'Yes, India is dirty, but we shall all clean India together.' We all can imagine what India would be if it was spot clean like Switzerland. It would be incredible!
Only when India tackles evils like babudom, bigotry, casteism, lack of innovative spirit, etc (I could name many more), will the nation find her true place in the concert of the nations.
Though many things have to change in the land of Bharat, some remain the same. Take the principle of 'seniority' which prevents the emergence of merit and of a greater dynamism.
Isn't it ironic that the US Senate just confirmed Dr Vivek Murthy, a person of Indian origin, as US Surgeon General. At 37, Dr Murthy will be the youngest surgeon general, and the first of Indian-American descent. Could this happen to India?
Here, we have witnessed generals going to court to affirm their 'rights' to promotion, just because they are a couple of weeks older than luckier colleagues. What nonsense!
I remember telling an Indian Air Force officer that General Denis Mercier, the present French chief of the air staff, has reached the top at the age of 53. When my friend asked: 'How did he make it?' I answered: 'Because he was found to be suitable for the job.' His reply was: 'But in India, that it would be very dangerous, politicians would nominate their friend for the top slots, imagine the consequences.' This has to change.
Politicians -- who, let us not forget it, are elected by The People of India -- need to put the Nation's interests before theirs. The old trend to think of one's pocket first has to go.
Observing the political scene for decades, I have time and again noticed that the Electors are no fools, but they need alternatives. Once they have it, they will not cast their votes on empty promises anymore.
Ditto for corruption. The electorate is able to recognise between 'corrupt' and honest politicians. The last election brought some hope that things can be different. Let us cross our fingers.
India, 40 years ago, like today's India, is a land of possibilities. Despite a bloated bureaucracy and the 'chalta hai' attitude, if you really want to realise something (and if you are tenacious enough), you can fulfill your dream.
In my own case, how could a dentist (that was my profession!), become a writer and political analyst? In France or in America, no doubt I would have remained what I was trained for, to pull out teeth, for the rest of my life.
In the early 1970s, before settling in the South, I extensively travelled in the Himalayas. I remember staying a week or so in Manali, Himachal Pradesh. I was the only tourist in the then peaceful mountain village. There was no hotel, no travel agency, no guide; I used to sleep on a charpoy, eating tasty momos from Tibetan refugees, who were not yet rich.
The tiny village was an oasis of peace surrounded by high peaks and although the inhabitants, local paharis or Tibetans, were poor, they knew the meaning of hospitality; they were content, to use a Buddhist term (santosham).
Today, after being put on the tourism world map, Manali is a different world. Is it progress? Are we losing the Himalayas?
I also remember staying for several days in a tiny Himalayan village, with just a Rs 100 note. As nobody had change for the amount, I was provided free lodging and boarding till the day I could 'break' my note and pay my debts. Trust was a way of life. I am not sure if it is still so.
Whatever the way India has evolved, I believe it is ultimately for the good. Personally, I have never thought for a second to return to my native douce (sweet) France, though I am proud to have taken birth in the land of Joan of Arc, Napoleon and Descartes (Cartesianism would sometimes not be bad for India).
Forty years down the line, I am content with my life in India, these words of Sri Aurobindo continue to accompany me: India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples.
It is Eternal India which called me here long ago.

Mrs Gandhi’s triumph

My article on the first Indian nuclear test appeared in today's edition of The Pioneer.


Recently declassified American documents explain how India caught the US by surprise on May 18, 1974 when it conducted its first nuclear test.

It is perhaps a coincidence, but as India celebrates the 40th anniversary of the most resounding victory of its Armed Forces, America’s National Security Archive has declassified a series of secret documents entitled “The Nixon Administration and the Indian Nuclear Programme, 1972-1974”, analysing why the US Intelligence agencies failed to predict the first Indian nuclear test in May 1974.
In India, triumph was soon followed by the worst diplomatic debacle. Mrs Indira Gandhi, who had led Indian troops to victory, lost everything on the negotiating table at Simla. The Simla Agreement, signed on July 2, 1972 by Mrs Gandhi and her Pakistani counterpart, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, should have provided opportunities for both countries to start over in a new direction.
That was not to be the case, though Mrs Gandhi had all the cards in her hand, in particular 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war. Although the Simla Agreement was to put in place some basic concepts such as the normalisation of relations between the two countries, the opening of posts, telegraph, road, air or sea communications, or border crossings, it did not do so.
Mrs Gandhi probably believed that the Jammu & Kashmir issue could soon be resolved (it is said that Bhutto had agreed to a solution in a secret deal), but many in Pakistan felt that Bhutto had made too many concessions to “that woman” as Gen Yahya Khan used to call India’s Prime Minister. Soon after the Simla summit, Mrs Gandhi realised that she had been taken for a ride. This is probably the reason why on September 7, 1972, she authorised scientists of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre to work on a nuclear device. As Bhutto’s political position gradually weakened, he could not afford anymore ‘compromises’ on Jammu & Kashmir and the possibility of fresh conflict reappeared. It was then that Mrs Gandhi decided to go ahead with the ‘peaceful’ nuclear test at Pokhran in Rajasthan.
The newly declassified papers cover the period starting just after the Bangladesh liberation war till the ‘post-mortem’ assessment in 1976. On January 14, 1972, the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research Intelligence prepared a top secret note: “India to Go Nuclear?” The memo pointed out: “There are continuing reports that the Indians are preparing to detonate a nuclear device during the next several weeks. While the exact timing described in these reports varies, the date chosen may prove to be January 26, the day on which India celebrates the promulgation of its post-colonial Constitution and the end of dominion status.” It added, “The purpose of the planned detonation is unclear in the reports.”
The documents demonstrate that the CIA knew India had the capability to produce 20 to 30 weapons and “could easily test a device in an underground site, such as an abandoned mine”. However, Washington, DC did not show great interest in “the concerted effort by India to conceal such preparations … which may well succeed”. The first lot of documents deal with the period before the Simla summit.
For American analysts, India’s motivation to test a nuclear device would be “domestic political pressures and concerns about China and Pakistan”. The intelligence analysts believed that an eventual test would be more “a demonstration of scientific and technological prowess”; the strategic significance was negligible for the US. Hence, the scrutiny of India’s nuclear preparations did not go further due to “a relatively modest priority has been attached to relevant intelligence collection activities”.
In other words, the US did not consider it worth its effort to keep a watch on India. Greater resources and more personnel were deployed to keep a watch on China which had exploded a nuclear device at Lop Nor in Xinjiang eight years ago. US President Richard Nixon was more interested to change the dynamics of the Cold War by visiting the Forbidden City to Chairman meet Mao Tse-tung.
Britain had passed intelligence inputs to the US in April 1972 which concluded that India was not going to conduct a nuclear test. “HMG (Her Majesty’s Government) had taken new preliminary look at Indian nuclear intentions. The UK had concluded that India had the capacity of proceeding to nuclear explosion, but that it had detected no indication that GoI (Government of India) had in fact decided to do so,” the documents say.
But some thought differently. Japanese diplomat Ryohei Murata believed that India had decided to go ahead with conducting a nuclear test and detonation could take place any time. Murata also accurately predicted that the Thar desert in Rajasthan would be the test site. The Japanese believed that the ‘forces’ wanting to go nuclear within the Government of India were prevalent. The Americans described the Japanese information as “scanty”.
Around that time, Mr Henry Kissinger ordered a National Security Study Memorandum on the implications of an Indian nuclear test for the US. In August 1972, a Special National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the chances of India deciding to conduct a nuclear test were “roughly even”. The SNIE’s assessments on this issue were later criticised in a post-Pokhran report as “marred by waffled judgdments”. The conclusions should have been 60-40 in favour of a decision to test.
The SNIE had suggested that the factor “impelling India to set off a test was the belief that it would build up its international prestige and demonstrate India’s importance as an Asian power and overawe Pakistan”. In early-1973, John Pinajian, the IAEA’s representative in India, became suspicious that New Delhi was preparing for a nuclear test after Mr Raja Rammana, the BARC director, did not allow him to access the facility to conduct an experiment which had been approved by India’s Atomic Energy Commission.
The US Embassy in Delhi sent a cable to the State Department in early 1974 about “India’s Nuclear Intentions”. The conclusions were: “Deeper economic problems, among other considerations, militated against a nuclear test in the near future, even though the Indian Government had the capabilities to produce and test a device.” The Embassy, however, admitted that “we know little about relevant internal Government debate”.
India’s ‘peaceful’ nuclear explosion on May 18, 1974 caught the US by surprise. The post-explosion analysis shows that the American intelligence agencies had not been searching for signs that a test was on the cards. The day after the explosion, the US Embassy in Delhi tried to justify its failure. As Ambassador Moynihan was in London, Deputy Chief of Mission David Schneider sent a report to the State Department, “India’s Nuclear Explosion: Why Now?” The Embassy, which had no clue of the “Indian decision-making”, put the blame on domestic politics and psychological reasons. It rationalised the test by “the need to offset domestic gloom and the need for India to be taken seriously. The decision will appeal to nationalist feeling and will be widely welcomed by the Indian populace”.
We now anxiously wait for New Delhi to declassify documents for an Indian view in the matter. Whether we will see that happen in our lifetime is another matter.

1971 and the Indian Nuclear Test

Site of India's first atomic reactor in Trombay

This series of documents on the 1974 Nuclear Test in Rajasthan published by the National Security Archive comes at the time when India is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Bangladesh Liberation War.
As briefly mentioned in the introduction to the documents, the two events are deeply linked.
It is after Indira Gandhi realized that she was made a fool by the clever Bhutto at Simla that she decided to go for a test.
Let us hope that the Indian archives will one day be declassified so that the decision process for testing a nuclear device can be better understood.

The Nixon Administration and the Indian Nuclear Program, 1972-1974
U.S. Post-Mortem on 1974 Indian Test Criticized Intelligence Community Performance for "Waffling Judgments" and Not Following Up Leads
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 367
December 5, 2011

India's "peaceful nuclear explosion" on 18 May 1974 caught the United States by surprise in part because the intelligence community had not been looking for signs that a test was in the works. According to a recently declassified Intelligence Community Staff post-mortem posted today by the National Security Archive and the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, Nixon administration policymakers had given a relatively low priority to the Indian program and there was "no sense of urgency" to determine whether New Delhi was preparing to test a nuclear device. Intelligence "production" (analysis and reporting) on the topic "fell off" during the 20 months before the test, the analysis concluded.
In early 1972, however—two years before the test—the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) had predicted that India could make preparations for an underground test without detection by U.S. intelligence. Published for the first time today, the INR report warned that the U.S. government had given a "relatively modest priority to … relevant intelligence collection activities" which meant that a "concerted effort by India to conceal such preparations … may well succeed."
The post-mortem, the INR report and other new materials illustrate how intelligence priorities generally reflect the interests and priorities of top policymakers. The Nixon White House was focused on the Vietnam War and grand strategy toward Beijing and Moscow; intelligence on nuclear proliferation was a low priority. Compare, for example, the India case with that of Iraq during 2002-2003, when White House concerns encouraged—some say even compelled—intelligence producers to cherry pick raw information to demonstrate the development of WMD by the Saddam Hussein regime.
INR prepared its India report at a time when secret sources were telling U.S. intelligence that New Delhi was about to test a nuclear device. The "small spate" of reports about a test had such "congruity, apparent reliability, and seeming credibility" that they prompted a review of India's nuclear intentions by INR and other government offices. In the end, government officials could not decide whether India had made a decision to test although a subsequent lead suggested otherwise.
According to the intelligence community's post-mortem, obtained through a mandatory review appeal to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), one of the problems was that intelligence producers were not communicating with each other, so the "other guy" assumed that someone else was "primarily responsible for producing hard evidence of Indian intentions." The analysis was especially critical of an August 1972 Special National Intelligence Estimate for its "waffling judgments" on Indian nuclear intentions.
Other declassified documents reproduced here from 1972 through 1974 illustrate the range of thinking on this sensitive topic:

• An INR report in February 1972 concluded that it could not "rule out a test" in the near future and it was "entirely possible that one or more nuclear devices have actually been fabricated and assembled."  All the same, "it our judgment that a decision to authorize a test is unlikely in the next few months and may well be deferred for several years."
• During March and April 1972, Canadian and British intelligence concluded that they had no evidence that India had made a decision to test a nuclear device. Nevertheless, the Canadians believed that New Delhi could produce a device in less than a year.
• In June 1972, Japanese diplomat Ryohei Murata argued that the "Indians have decided to go ahead with a nuclear test" and that the Thar Desert in Rajasthan would be the test site. While basically correct, Murata's estimate was discounted because it did not represent an official Foreign Ministry view.
• Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) 31-72 published in August 1972 also held that the Indians could produce a device "within a few days to a year of a decision to do so," but concluded that the chances that India had made a decision to test were "roughly even."
• In 1973, the Atomic Energy Commission's scientific representative in India  told the U.S. consul in Bombay (Mumbai) that several "indications" suggested that India "may well have decided" to test a nuclear device.
• Five months before the test, the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi reported that the probability of an "early test" was at a "lower level than previous years."

The rumors that India was going to test emerged in the wake of the South Asian crisis, when the Nixon White House tilted toward Pakistan, India's archrival. Relations between New Delhi and Washington were already cool during the Nixon administration which treated India as a relatively low priority.  Henry Kissinger's secret trip to China underlined India's low priority by suggesting that if New Delhi ever faced a crisis with Beijing it could not count on Washington for help.  Relations became truly frosty during the balance of 1971 when New Delhi signed a friendship treaty with Moscow and India and Pakistan went to war. Later Nixon and Kissinger wanted to improve the relationship, but India's nuclear intentions were not on their agenda. That India had refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was a non-issue for Nixon and Kissinger, who had little use for the NPT and treated nuclear proliferation as less than secondary. While the State Department cautioned India against nuclear tests in late 1970, concern did not rise to the top of policy hill.
Whatever impact the events of 1971 may have had on India's decision to test a nuclear device that decision was soon to be made. According to George Perkovich, an authority on the Indian nuclear program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "it may be conjectured that support in principle for developing a nuclear explosive device was solidified by late 1971, that concentrated work on building the vital components began in spring 1972, and that formal prime ministerial approval to make final preparations for a PNE occurred in September 1972." In this context, the reports collected by U.S. intelligence in late 1971 and early 1972 about a possible test may have been good examples of the old chestnut that "where there's smoke, there's fire."
Yet, the analysts who wrote SNIE 31-72 decided that the smoke had no significance because they saw only a 50-50 chance that New Delhi had made a decision to test (even though New Delhi was closing in on a decision).

To read the documents, visit  National Security Archive's website.