They know that India, the world's biggest cesspool of poverty and backwardness, will miss the bus to 'Asian 21st century'. They want a shortcut to high global stature. The typically edgy, insecure Indian diplomat, businessman or lawyer is now increasingly inclined to demand equality with the north's elite on crude terms. Nuclear weapons are mystified as the ultimate currency. India can become a fully paid up member of the club of advanced nations by going nuclear.
Greatness is defined purely in terms of power untempered by civilised conduct or compassion.
The growing importance of militaristic nationalism is reflected in India's public discourse. At the grassroots, there is the moral, liberating discourse of rights, justice, self-assertion by the disenfranchised and underprivileged. Amongst the elite, as if in opposition to this, is the discourse of power and privilege. This is a sort of primitive quasi-Hobbesian state, irredeemably immoral. Within this framework, the real becomes rational.