Revision summary
India’s early nuclear path mixed scientific capacity with moral multilateralism and a recessed 1974 PNE. NPT hierarchy, NSG sanctions and CTBT’s closing window turned the default into a cage. China’s arsenal and Pakistan’s weapons-plus-proxy mix supplied the security case for 1998. Vajpayee’s government supplied the political will; status mixed with deterrence. 1998 was admission that survival could no longer be outsourced to a disarming great-power club.
Model answer
Introduction
- India’s nuclear story is unusual among great-power candidates: a long reluctance to treat the bomb as existential, a 1974 PNE that was not a doctrine, and a default faith that multilateral disarmament would eventually equalise the field. May 1998 ended that default. The shift was not a mood. It was a reading that the multilateral path had become a cage.
Body
The default
Nehru backed both a nuclear science estate and a moral campaign against big-power weapons. India stayed out of the NPT (1968) as a nuclear apartheid treaty, not because it was racing to test. The 1974 Pokhran explosion was called peaceful. Successive governments kept a recessed capability: neither weaponisation at pace nor signature of the NPT. NAM and UN speeches treated general and complete disarmament as the real security. That stance was possible because, in Delhi’s self-picture, no existential threat required a deployed arsenal — China 1962 was a humiliation, not a nuclear lesson fully taken, and Pakistan was not yet a nuclear peer.
Why the multilateral path failed India
The NPT locked a hierarchy. The CTBT (1996) threatened to close the test window without touching existing arsenals. The NSG after 1974 punished India’s fuel cycle. Great powers preached non-proliferation and modernised their own warheads. After the Cold War, the promised disarmament dividend did not arrive. A default that depended on others’ virtue became, in K. Subrahmanyam’s realist school, a strategic liability.
Why 1998
China was a nuclear weapon state with a rising conventional punch. Pakistan had a weapons programme, A. Q. Khan’s network, and a doctrine of covering jihad with a nuclear shield. The CTBT timeline said: test now or live forever as a threshold state under legal fire. The BJP government of Vajpayee had fewer inhibitions than Congress about breaking the sermon. Status — entry to a de facto nuclear club — mixed with security. The tests were followed by a doctrine of credible minimum deterrence and, later, the U.S. civil nuclear bargain that partially laundered 1998 into the order.
The ‘existential’ word in the question is the key. Until the 1990s India could tell itself that survival did not require a public bomb. China–Pakistan nuclear and missile coupling, and a closing test ban, made that self-talk look like unilateral abstinence. Crossing the Rubicon was the admission that multilateral default had failed the security test, not the moral one alone.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD D[Multilateral default] --> NPT[NPT apartheid] D --> CTBT[CTBT window] C[China-Pakistan] --> T[1998 tests] CTBT --> T T --> CMD[Credible minimum deterrence]
Conclusion
India delayed the bomb because it did not, for decades, read its threats as existential and because it bet on a disarming world. NPT, CTBT and the China–Pakistan pair killed that bet. 1998 was the security state catching up with a closed multilateral door.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Discuss some of the key drivers of India's new interests in Africa which might help in developing long-term comparative advantage over China
Next question in the 2025 paper (Q8). View answer →
-
Was 1974 already the Rubicon?
It was a technological crossing without a deployed doctrine. 1998 was the political-security crossing.
-
Did the U.S. nuclear deal undo 1998?
It partially integrated India into the order without NPT accession. It did not restore the old multilateral-default faith.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2025 · Q5(d) · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
Does the Non-Aligned Movement have any future in the wake of India's growing indifference towards it? -
2024 · Q1(e) · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
The changing global order and ongoing regional conflicts, with the global powers taking sides, have jeopardized the progress made towards disarmament in the past. Comment. -
2024 · Q3(c) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
Do you agree with the view that the USA uses NATO as a traditional tool of strategy to perpetuate its hegemony in the world? -
2024 · Q8(b) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
Discuss the implications of the scrapping of the Free Movement Regime with Myanmar by the Indian Government on the complex ethno-political dynamics of the north-eastern region. -
2023 · Q3(a) · PSIR GS 2 · 20 marks
"During the Cold War, the Non-Aligned Movement tried to become a Third force in World Politics, but failed because it was too large and unwieldy." Discuss -
2023 · Q3(b) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
Account for the rise of European Union as a highly influential regional organisation -
2023 · Q4(c) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
Discuss the various constraints on American hegemony today. Which of these are likely to become more prominent in the future? -
2023 · Q6(a) · PSIR GS 2 · 20 marks
Arms trade, economic ties and congruent geo-political interests are no longer the three pillars of India - Russia relationship in the emerging strategic context. Comment
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2025 · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
Discuss the psychological approach to the study of comparative politics.
Approaches to the Study of International Relations
The psychological approach studies personality, attitudes, civic culture and cognition in comparative politics. Lasswell, Adorno, Almond and Verba, Easton and later political psychology are the main lineage. It explains voting, protest, obedience and leadership better than a constitution or a class map alone. Surveys, experiments and psychobiography are typical methods. It is a layer, not a substitute for institutions and political economy.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2025 · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
Neo-liberalism lightened neo-realism's dark view of international politics. Comment.
Comparative Politics
Waltzian neorealism pictures anarchy, self-help and relative gains as a dark constant. Keohane and Nye’s neoliberalism keeps anarchy but adds complex interdependence, regimes and absolute gains. Institutions reduce cheating and transaction costs; they do not create a world state. Ukraine, tariffs and health-governance shocks show both residual darkness and institutional repair. The ‘lightening’ is cooperation under anarchy, not the end of power politics.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2025 · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
Explain the non-traditional security threats in the context of food and environmental crises.
Comparative Politics
Non-traditional security covers harms beyond organised military attack: food, environment, health, cyber and crime. Food security is availability, access, utilisation and stability; war, climate and export bans can all break it. Environmental crisis is a threat multiplier through climate, water, disaster and migration. UNDP 1994 human security and Buzan’s sectors supply the theory. These shocks overload the state and also force cooperation through FAO, WHO, Paris and regional reserves.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.