It further promotes and deepens the ugly militarisation of everyday life and thinking that is already taking place in India. The ideology of nuclearism which is currently being touted as nuclear nationalism is inseparable from the promotion of an ideology of masculinist aggressiveness. Today, this can be identified as the hallmark of communal nationalism. National nuclear arming creates a false sense of pride and imposes continuing and rising economic, social and political costs. The social and economic costs of nuclearisation, both through missed opportunities and direct weapons manufacture and deployment, can be crippling.
Nuclear weapons are incompatible with rational development goals.
They represent a wasteful diversion from the true and fundamental security needs of ordinary people. In India the high costs of development of a nuclear arsenal, of its maintenance, storage, constant upgradation and expansion, will impair our ability to redress our basic ills such as sharp inequalities, casteism, communalism and sexism. India must declare that it will never use nuclear weapons under any circumstances. The use of nuclear weapons is wholly immoral and unacceptable and indefensible under all circumstances. India must also seek no use pledge from all nuclear weapon states.