DiaNuke.org

This month in India marked 21 years of the 1998 Pokharan nuclear tests, amid an acerbic and jingoist election campaign, resulting in the Hindu nationalist BJP’s return to power with Mr. Narendra Modi at the helm. Now that the cacophony of the election season is over, and the PM has extended greetings to his Pakistani counterpart, it is time we think more seriously about the impacts of intensifying militarization in a nuclear South Asia. We interviewed Prof. Robert Jacobs of the Hiroshima Peace Institute on the various human, climatic and political implications of nuclear tests.

Kumar Sundaram | Such amplified machismo used for electoral calculations is unprecedented in the country’s domestic politics. What we are witnessing in India today is the normalization of nuclear and war rhetoric and its purposefully religiously-charged packaging, deployed to push an ultra-nationalist narrative and discredit political opposition and civil society.