Panelists decry nuclear proliferation in India, Pakistan While the governments of India and Pakistan may have hoped that possession of nuclear weapons would enhance their standing in the international arena, the South Asian nations instead have become pariahs in their own region and on the world stage, three panelists said during a discussion at Yale on May 5. The panelists -- Praful Bidwai, Achin Vanaik and Lawrence Lifshultz -- discussed the topic "South Asia on a Short Fuse: Nuclear Politics in the Subcontinent." The event was presented by the South Asian Graduate and Professional Association (SAGA) and cosponsored by the Office of the Secretary, the Office of International Students and Scholars, and the McDougal Center. Bidwai, Vanaik and Lifshultz examined the causes and consequences of the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests and provided a framework for understanding the global context in which testing has occurred. The panelists agreed that in India, nuclear proliferation has been used by the government as a "shortcut" to building up national pride and diverting attention from the "real" problems of poverty and illiteracy, among others, rather than for the oft-cited reason that China is a regional security threat. Pakistan, in response, has attempted to build up its own nuclear arsenal because of its perception that India is a security threat, the panelists said. The nuclear bomb has been used as a political tool in both countries to garner support for the regimes in power, the panelists maintained. Yet, the possession of nuclear power has resulted in a regression to pre-partition communalism and prejudices, said the panelists. Bidwai and Vanaik have been senior editors at The Times of India and wrote a column called "Nuclear Notebook" for the Economic and Political Weekly, a prestigious Bombay journal. They are leading figures in the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND). Lifshultz, who is currently a research associate at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, has written extensively on Asian and European affairs and is at work on a new book titled "Averting Armageddon: Nuclear War in South Asia -- American Policy, Nuclear Weapons and The Politics of Nonproliferation."
In addition to evaluating the causes of nuclear proliferation in South Asia, Bidwai, Vanaik and Lifshultz also mapped out a new approach to nuclear abolition and called upon both Western nuclear powers and South Asia's new nuclear states to begin serious efforts towards full and complete nuclear disarmament.
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