Mohammad Jamil
It has been reported by independent Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) that India has a stockpile of more than 100 nuclear warheads. Driven by a desire to match China and Pakistan’s firepower, India has been desperate to expand its nuclear capabilities. In 2012, the world came to know that in addition to many facilities, India is building a ‘secret nuclear city’ at Challakere, Karnataka. It was confirmed by independent researcher that two secretive agencies were behind this project, which is believed to be subcontinent’s largest military-run complex of nuclear centrifuges, atomic research laboratories and weapons and aircraft testing facilities. New Delhi has never published a detailed account of its nuclear arsenal and the world knew little about the construction at Challakere and its strategic implications. As a military facility, it is not open to international inspection and is not covered in Indo-US nuclear deal.
In July 2013, six years after the plans were green-lit by Delhi, the National Green Tribunal – India’s environmental agency – finally took up the villager’s complaints. It dispatched investigators to the scene and demanded that each government agency disclose its ambitions in detail. Anyhow, Indian secret Nuclear city in Challakere, India’s pronouncement of offensive military doctrine, massive acquisition of conventional weapons, expansion of strategic assets, and introduction of Anti-Ballistic Ballistic Missile Systems have upset strategic balance in South Asia. According to a recent report published in May 2018, a resident said that twelve feet high walls rose adjoining his village in 2012, cutting off Ularthi and 59 other villages from the sprawling open grazing lands. Challekere taluk is home to Amrit Mahal Kavals or grazing lands, on which more than 2,50,000 goats, cows, bulls and sheep found food. About 3,00,000 people depended on these lands for their livelihoods.
Since 2009, various levels of the government – district administration of Chitradurga, government of Karnataka and the Government of India – managed to discreetly divert more than 10,000 acres of lands in Challakere. “We didn’t know that these lands were not ours until one of the shepherds was disallowed from entering the lands,” said the resident Ranganna. Authorities justified the secrecy because the space was used for defence purposes. In 2011, Srikumar Banerjee, the then chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, spoke about the project and reportedly said that “the facility could be used to produce nuclear fuel to help nuclear energy in India.” Details of 10,000 acres of land are: Defence Research & Development Organisation was given 4290 acres, Indian Institute of Science was given 1500 acres, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre had about 1810 acres, Indian Space Research Organisation was given 575 acres.
In February 2017 Pakistan had drawn attention of world community towards India’s nuclear ambitions and the threat they pose to regional security and stability. During his weekly news briefing, Foreign Office spokesman Nafis Zakaria referred to building of a secret nuclear city by India, huge stockpile of nuclear weapons and testing of inter-continental ballistic missiles, and warned that these threaten to undermine strategic balance in the region. In fact, it was in December 2015 that a prestigious American magazine “Foreign Policy” published details of the secret nuclear city being developed by India at Challakere and its strategic implications especially for Pakistan and China. Earlier, in September 2015, an investigative report by Al Jazeera television confirmed that India was building a huge nuclear complex to produce highly enriched uranium and allow the country to produce thermonuclear bombs, one thousand times more powerful than those used against two Japanese cities in World War-II.
These reports were not taken as seriously by the world media as they should have been; but it was strange enough that there was also no worthwhile reaction from Pakistan, which is directly threatened by such dangerous developments across its Eastern borders. Possession of nuclear and thermonuclear devices as well as inter-continental ballistic missiles by a country that has extremist and narrow-minded coterie at the helm of affairs should be a matter of deep concern not only for Pakistan but for the region and beyond. Pakistan has reasons to be alarmed as India has a cold start doctrine, its Army Chief boasts of surgical strikes, its Prime Minister takes pride in being part of the conspiracy to dismember Pakistan and is willing to repeat the episode, and its Home Minister had the audacity to suggest referendum in Pakistan to determine whether its people want to join India – a country worst than a jail for minorities.
