While U.S. President Barack Obama has been quick to focus on the quantum of nuclear arsenal that India and Pakistan possess, he has mysteriously chosen to ignore the issue of India’s membership to the UNSC or a role for it in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (“ > India, Pakistan should reduce their arsenal, says Obama ”, April 3). Prime Minister Narendra Modi seemed to have been nothing more than a visitor in Washington as there was none of his spirited rhetoric this time. Such summits will have no effect if the underlying motives behind promoting such weapons of destruction are not discussed.
Shivam Dwivedi,
Lucknow
The threat of “nuclear terrorism” appears to be weighing heavily on the international community as the prospect of a “dirty bomb” being improvised by terrorists is a frightening prospect. At the same time, a commitment to “not use nuclear weapons first” does not go to make the world, fractured in many respects, any safer. Mr. Obama’s unsolicited advice to India and Pakistan would have carried greater weight had he first openly admitted that 93 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons are held by the U.S. and Russia alone and committed his country to disarmament in a time-bound manner. Incidentally, President Putin’s conspicuous absence was a clear giveaway that all is not well between the two powers. It is also strange that despite the Modi-Obama bonhomie, Mr. Obama bracketed India with Pakistan.
G. David Milton,
Maruthancode, Tamil Nadu
India is both a responsible nuclear nation and a victim of terrorism. Hence its persuasive push for membership of the exclusive NSG is wholly justified. It clearly underlines New Delhi’s concerns in not only ensuring the safety of its domestic nuclear installations but also the rest of the world’s as well. However, President Obama viewing India, with an impeccable nuclear record, through the same prism as he does Pakistan, with redoubtable nuclear credentials and a record of state-sponsored terrorism, is regrettable to say the least.
Nalini Vijayaraghavan,
Thiruvananthapuram
Mr. Obama’s prescription that India and Pakistan should reduce their arsenal is disappointing and insulting and shows that the U.S. is still stuck to its imperialist and arrogant standpoint of pure self-interest. With typical American insensitivity he has chosen to equate Pakistan — an almost failed state torn between its dictatorial army, its powerless and corrupt civil government and its out-of-control extremists and radicals, united only by their paranoid hatred of India — with India, the largest democracy and a peaceful nation. How can he forget that India has strategic concerns other than resisting Pakistan’s aggression? It is a force for global peace in its own right and not a pawn serving the U.S.’s anti-China strategy. It is also a victim of terrorism.
A.N. Lakshmanan,
Bengaluru
