Operation Vijay to surgical strikes
How does the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) want the world to see India? There is a stark contrast between the styles of the two prime ministers from the party, at least as far as foreign policy is concerned.
Under current Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India’s currency of power is the capacity to conduct surgical strikes against neighbours. At multilateral fora, it is about proximity to and familiarity with the powerful, that Congress President Rahul Gandhi derides as “hug-plomacy”. But Atal Bihari Vajpayee had a hard time of it. Two disruptive events, and an American regime with little sympathy for India, made for an unfriendly international environment.
Late afternoon on May 13, 1998, phones began ringing. Vajpayee was calling a press conference. Everyone knew the government was unstable, unlikely to last long. So what was the crisis?
Reporters arrived at Race Course Road to a single chair with a podium, the Indian flag draped behind it. Information Minister Pramod Mahajan barked instructions. Later, upset at the reportage, he told reporters: “Barked? Mein kutta hoon kya? (Am I a dog?)”. Vajpayee walked in. He read out a few lines in Hindi and English, took no questions. The world gasped. India had tested a nuclear device.
Unsurprisingly, all hell broke loose. The additional twist in the tale was a letter written by Defence Minister George Fernandes to US President Bill Clinton, citing not Pakistan, but Pakistan aided by China as the reason for the nuclear tests. The letter was leaked through the US to Indian newspapers. Later halfdenials were issued. But the phrase “rough neighbourhood” became current as the justification for the tests.
The BJP leadership was halfelated, half-defiant, half-afraid. As Secretary of State Madeleine Albright waggled her finger in India’s face, and said India had dug itself into a hole, Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh rebutted this with his characteristic sardonic half smile. “We don’t dig holes, not even to bury our dead,” he said.
The nuclear tests gave rise to multiple rounds of dialogues between Singh and US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. The two even co-authored a book. The Draft Nuclear Doctrine was followed by an official nuclear doctrine in 2003, that suggested that India might use nuclear weapons to retaliate against attacks using chemical and biological weapons, and Indian retaliation to any nuclear attack would be massive.