India's neclear dilemma

Should India "go nuclear" and r join the mad arms race which its• leaders have time and again deplored? Or should it stay out and use its influence, together with other like-minded nations, to pull the nuclear powers away from the precipice beyond which lies mass death and large-scale destruction? In all conscience, this is a cruel, excruciatingly hard decision to take for any nation, specially for India- because the stake is her security: Until China produced her own atom and hydrogen bombs, the hppe of non-nuclearnations like Indialay in persuading the Big Powers to agree on a programme of general and, in particular, nuclear dis- armament. But an immensely complicating new circumstance entered the disarmament scene after China gate-crashed into the uclear Club. The hand that controlled the nuclear trigger was now just across India's northern border-and it was a none-too-friendly hand at that.