This review is strictly not on the ‘Ministry of Defence’. But it is a feeble attempt to voice a concern about the defence of India. Now, I don’t intend to raise any controversy here. Just read and be informed.
This is written in the background of the re-appearance of war fears between Pakistan and India due to the recent attacks by terrorists in Kashmir and the repeated statements being issued by both nations for some time now that they would not mind using nuclear weapons if the situation demanded.
In the hullabaloo of we will do it alone or with whom we will do what, we are all losing an important point. Do we really want a war? Can we really afford a war?
More than a month back when the war clouds were hovering, the air raid alarm signals installed across Mumbai city were tested without warning. Only close to some 50 odd of the 400 odd alarms went off. This shows how prepared we were for a war. And to think people were actually clamoring for a war. That was the time when the American and Australian consultants working in our company flew over night to their respective motherlands, inspite of our repeated assurances that there could be no war (though George Fernandes was crying hoarse for one) and that even if we have one, Mumbai was not under threat (though the reality is the opposite).
As Missy in one of her comments asked “Are you all not afraid that maybe one day one of the countries is going to blow the other up????????” One of my friends in Japan also asked me “Aren’t we Indians afraid of nuclear devastation / nuclear radiation?” I told him that we Indians don’t even know the basic things about nuclear radiation and the damage it can cause. I have seen many people (more so in Mumbai) who are proud that India is a nuclear nation, without understanding the responsibility and perils that it brings along.
My request to all is that please somebody build me an Ark. It should be large and capacious enough to accommodate not only my family and friends and the chance acquaintance, but also the Neem and Mango trees in front of my house (in my native), a pair of Indian elephants (maybe from Guruvayoor ‘Anakotta’), Bengal tigers, Himalayan bulbuls and rose-ringed parakeets, my books and CDs, my dog ‘Sophie’, and any other sentient being on this subcontinent wishing to leave.
I really don’t want to sail away from my beloved motherland, but at this juncture the alternative on offer doesn’t really inspire confidence.
Amid the sabre-rattling, the battle cries and the glib talk of a limited war, which may escalate into a nuclear exchange, comes this reassuring piece of news: DRDO has developed a portable nuclear shelter usable for 30 people up to 96 hours, equipped with its own power supply, toilets and water tanks. This, according to the Government, is the alternative to my Ark.
We must rank first among the loony nations. Until yesterday we were witness to our government’s inability to contain the Gujarat carnage, and today we blindly trust it to navigate us through a possible nuclear holocaust unscathed — probably assisted by portable nuclear shelters developed by DRDO.
Naturally, neither the government nor the DRDO elaborates what would happen to the shelter were it to be three to 30 miles within the radius of the blast; whether it would be able to withstand the temperatures rising over 300,000 degrees Celsius? This government has long since abdicated responsibility of answering such questions. Trifling questions, perhaps, when it comes to defending the nation’s honour, but which must be answered.
The most honourable, patriotic, nationalistic people were the Japanese; ever ready to die for land and the emperor until Hiroshima put an end to all that nonsense.
There is a Japanese by name Taketa San every Indian should have met before they infact decided to go nuclear. He was barely in his teens when the Americans nuked Hiroshima. They lived out in the suburbs, but his sister was in the city that day and they bundled her home in a wheelbarrow. In an interview sometime later, he describes what he saw. He spoke to the world in Japanese, but from the tears flowing down his cheeks and the eloquent gestures of his hands it was evident that his sister was among the thousands whose skin had peeled off and had hung down from raw flesh like rags. Her death many hours later had been excruciatingly painful. Taketa San keeps the memory of that tortuous day alive, like a festering wound. Even though it must cost him physically, mentally, emotionally to do so, he recreates it afresh each time for a new audience so that we must feel what he felt, must feel the horror of it in our bones, so that we never, ever allow it to happen again.
For those who lack a sense of history to temper their bravado : The American A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a prototype, a crude and smaller version of the kinds of nuclear weapons we have in our possession today, and yet it killed over 200,000 people, many instantly, and many more slowly and painfully.
A recent study conducted by Dr M V Ramana and his team at Princeton showed that a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan, using only a tenth of the weapons in their possession, would kill or injure over four million people. Many would die in the immediate blast. Others would suffer slower deaths from burns and radiation.
The truly unfortunate would take their lifetime dying slowly, a lifetime searching vainly for water in the sere, treeless nuclear wastelands.
Admittedly, one good thing about the bomb is that it is perfectly democratic (and is that an irony that India is also democratic). So whether you’re the Raja of Race Course Road or the Leper of Lodhi, you get fried and no money in the world can bribe your way out of this mess. Also, it is perfectly incurable.
One small dose of radioactivity — and there’s much of that around with the mega-bombs — and cancer with impressive keloids could be your lot. As for your children, should they survive, and their children’s children, factor in the radioactive lifespan of Plutonium 239, which has a half-life of 24,000 years, and then hedge your bets.
India, as we know it, would be over. This wonderful, mad, exuberant civilisation, which took over 5,000 years to build, could be destroyed in under five minutes.
On second thoughts I’m not so sure I’d set sail on the Ark after all. What if half way across the globe I’d suddenly remember the smell of the earth after the first monsoon showers, and know I’d never smell that smell again. And if I were to recall Taj Mahal or Humayun’s tomb or the Sal forests of the Terai, which would surely be no more, I know my heart would shatter into a million irreparable pieces.
No, I think the alternative to my Ark would be to figure out where exactly the first bomb was going to drop and then to set up camp right there in the middle of it. Chances are, I would be vaporised immediately. And you, who will still choose the path to the DRDO shelter, consider this: that as your 96th hour of misery draws to a close you may just envy me my fate.
