A Million Shadows

As fatiguing as a marathon run must surely be reading 66 essays—even though the 35contributing authors wrote them in anger, anguish and despair. The nuclear'debate' in South Asia has now moved from the simplistic levelsBooks of 'totest or not to test' into the complex bylanes of weaponising, deploying andestablishing command and control. like this one will always enrich the debate by bringingin human values, ethics and morality into nuclear strategy, missile payloads and theConstant Error of Probability. Like the forgotten movement for nuclear disarmament in theUK in the '60s, which reintroduced moral concerns about nuclear weapons even amidst abitter cold war, Out of the Nuclear Shadow must be read by all those in thebusiness of establishing deterrence and creating nuclear stability. The book aptly beginswith Mahatma Gandhi's statement on the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and followsup with Arundhati Roy's ever-readable The End of Imagination. These twoessays lay the groundwork of the moral, human and ethical concerns against nuclearweapons. Joining them are a host of excellent authors with essays from both sides of theborder, that include Anand Patwardhan, Praful Bidwai, Amartya Sen and Ashis Nandy fromIndia, and I.A. Rehman, Pervez Hoodhboy and Zafarrullah Khan from Pakistan. These indeedare 'Voices of Conscience', and voices that occupy the moral high ground as anystrategist would gladly concede.

Mixed up among these famous names are some other famous names who haven't writtenas 'voices of conscience' but essentially as suggestions of an alternativestrategy. These essays are unlikely to exert much weight on the debate, for the authorshave mixed up strategy and morality and often appeal for a more moral or ethical course ofaction because the present one is patently bad strategy!

It is interesting to know where the scientists stand in all this protest, since theycreated the monsters in the first place. There is a rather tame piece from the Indianscientists against nuclear weapons, but no mention of the awful sight of the Indiannuclear scientists in Rajput turbans cavorting at Pokhran, or their Pakistani cousinsdoing something equally horrible. Most unconvincing is the protest by the biologists whosecolleagues are even today cloning human beings in some dark and secret laboratory orprotesting the attempt to legislate uncontrolled science. On the one hand, almost allscientists claim the right to pursue research to its ultimate ends, indeed arguepassionately about the excitement of working at the frontier of knowledge. At the sametime, they have no answers on preventing many of their colleagues from misusing science togive their masters military superiority. This is the point at which the realists divergefrom the idealists. The former attempt to 'manage' the monsters who continue tobe created by the march of technology, while the latter merely exhort the Dr Frankensteinsto desist.

Interspersed among the essays occupying the high ground are a couple of Pakistaniessays that bemoan the Indian initiative in testing, thereby forcing Pakistan to divertits meagre resources into nuclear weapons. This is precisely the trouble with departingfrom the straight and moral path, for one then has to forget 'eating-grass'Bhutto who convened a nuclear bomb-making durbar immediately on returning from Shimla. Orworse, the recent admission by Pakistan that it started work on the nuclear bomb triggerin March 1974, two months before Pokhran I and 14 years before Pokhran II.

There are six excellent essays on the role of the media in the run-up to the tests andthe unseemly celebrations that followed. The general complaint of the essays is that themedia supported the tests by both countries and didn't give enough coverage to thosewho opposed them. Perhaps the popularity poll conducted by one of the papers gives theanswer to that one. If 91 per cent of the people allegedly supported the tests, it wouldbe an altruistic press that would write the opposite. Some criticisms of the tests appearto be criticism for its own sake and end up with authors taking opposing views. One writerchallenges the yield at Pokhran II justifiably, but surely this is building a case forfurther explosive testing—a view contested by another author strongly supportingIndia's urgent accession to the ctbt. A number of peoples' organisations on bothsides have issued joint statements condemning the nuclear arms race and this is a mostencouraging sign. Among the best of these statements is surely the one that came out ofPakistan after a series of meetings in Karachi, between members of nine Pakistanipolitical parties. Equally commendable is the fact that retired Pakistani officersoutnumber Indian faujis four to one in the joint peace declaration by the two sides.

The large number of essays, which may exhaust a reviewer, is perhaps an attraction toreaders who can select the views closest to them. Attractively bound (hardback editionpriced at Rs 500) and well edited, the witty illustrations break the monotony of ploughingthrough a 500-page book. It's definitely worth a buy.