Indian Foreign Policy

2	Nuclear technology, disarmamentand the ambivalence ofpostcolonial identity

In 1996 the Indian government submitted a Memorial to the International Court of Justice on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. In this carefully argued Memorial, India concluded that the use of nuclear weapons in a first attack or even as retaliation would be illegal under international law (India 1998a: 72). Further, the Memorial stated that India considered the theory of nuclear deterrence ‘abhorrent’ since it implied that the ‘keeping of peace or prevention of war is to be made dependent on the threat of horrific indiscriminate destruction’ and because it justified the stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction ‘at an enormous expense’ (India ...