Is India Preparing For Nuclear Test at Pokharn, In Sikh Punjab's Backyard?

Instead of 'tit-for-tat' testing, why doesn't Pakishtan complain to the U.N. about danger of nucleare testing activity 60 miles from its border and thur hold the high moral ground?


Washington, D.C., Wednesday, May 05, 1999 - Are the United States and Pakistan again missing (or ignoring) the feverish telltale night activity in preparation of a nuclear test – which our sources have recently noticed – going on at India’s Pokharan Nuclear test site, in the Rajasthan desert, near the Pakistani border?

A year ago the New York Times (in its May 16th issue) recognized this column (Khalistan Calling) published in the CHARHDIKALA weekly’s May 7, 1998 issue in a report (headlined; "THE BLUNDER; Scooped on Tests, U. S. Scorns a Sikh Journal) by its ace reporter Elaine Sciolino, when she acknowledged that; "The Central Intelligence Agency may have missed India’s preparations for its nuclear tests this week, (May 11, 98) but a tiny weekly newsletter by a Sikh separatist group did not."

Ms. Sciolino went on to report in the above quoted New York Times story that; "when Ambassador Riaz H. Khokhar of Pakistan called on Karl E. Interfurth, the Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, on Wednesday (May 13, 1998) to officially protest the explosions as a threat to Pakistan, the Ambassador brought along a copy of the (Khalistan Calling) newsletter". "The purpose", Pakistani officials told her; "was to ask why the United States, with all its spy satellites and human intelligence operatives, had failed to predict the tests, when a small newsletter’s sources had got it right." "Mr. Inderfurth", she wrote, "was stunned," while another State Department official scorned the Sikh journal.

According to that (May 16, 1998) New York Times story the C.I.A. asked; "David E. Jeremiah, a retired admiral and former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, to investigate the intelligence failure." The story revealed that the CIA; "declined to comment citing the investigation." Ms. Elaine Sciolino, however, had the courtesy to quote verbatim the following last paragraph of the May 7, 1998, Khalistan Calling, which is as true today as it was then: "Preparation for an Indian nuclear test has been further confirmed by our sources in India (who so far have never been wrong having million of pairs of eyes and ears fixed to the ground) who report all kinds of feverish nighttime activities in the vicinity of Pokharan in Rajasthan state 60 miles from the Pakistan border."

A Year ago, in May 1998, hubris and diplomatic/intelligent myopia convinced that Brahmin – dominated fascist BJP government in Delhi into believing that Pakistan’s nuclear program was a bluff and therefore, (English – speaking Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh suggested that) Indian could blast its way, after ‘resolving’ the Kashmir dispute on the ground, into the exclusive Nuclear Club as a permanent U.N. Security Council member. Pakistan’s May 1998 Chagai nuclear counter – blasts took care of that Brahminical dream, pronto!

Now hubris and myopia (self – perpetuation rather than national security concerns) are again roaming around the corridors of power in Delhi. Our very reliable sources in India inform us that the Vajpayee caretaker government (Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, who like any idiot savant is good at aping the British accent and is therefore considered an intellectual among the motley Delhi crowd, is again the "standard bearer’ of the childish thought) is being convinced that if India conducts a series of Nuclear and missile tests before the upcoming Indian general elections then Pakistan can be goaded into testing and exhausting – in a tit for tat exercise – its missiles and nuclear ‘gun-powder’ reserves. Our sources in India are not wrong if they see the current revival of the feverish night time activity near Pokharan. This is a harbinger to a series of nuclear tests by India very soon, perhaps in this month of May. In fact, last May a Moscow newspaper "Kommersant Daily" had quoted a Russian defense expert closely linked to the Indian nuclear program who had prior knowledge of India’s May 11 nuclear tests, as having said that; "India has to conduct four more tests in order to perfect its nuclear weapons."

Every Sikh hopes that Sikh – friendly Nawaz Sharif government in Pakistan will not fall into this ‘tit for tat’ trap of nuclear and missile testing. Pakistanis should feel secure and should voice their gratitude – to Allah for his munificence, their scientists for their expertise and Pundit Atal Bihari Vajpayee for his follies. All of this for the geopolitical sea change that took place in a split second in Chagai, Baluchistan, last year when geographical depth, for the first time since 1947, became a lethal military disadvantage in the subcontinent. South, Middle and Eastern India is now very vulnerable, specially during the Northeast winter monsoon season, thanks to Vajpayee’s May 1998 Pokharan folly! The Swastika – worshipping morally repugnant Brahmin rulers in Delhi suffer from a myopic vision which is a limit laid down by reality and is also blurred by dogma and ambition, have not realized this yet. They have not even researched the difference between no-first-use and no-first-strike! But they will! As soon as the slumbering Pakistanis realize the above described Manna from heaven!

Pakistan in the mean time should hold its horses and preempt India’s nuclear test preparation in Pokharan. Islamabad can easily leap to the high moral ground and muster world opines with a complaint to the United Nations, against the provocative nuclear activity currently going on in the backyard of the two Punjabs – Sikh and Pakistani – sixty miles from Pakistan’s border, where any nuclear accident will be a catastrophe for millions of Punjabis especially during the May to September Southwest monsoon season. It could demand public access to the Pokharan site for Green Peace representative who last year publicly contradicted Indian claims that there was no radioactive fallout in Pokharan in an interview with Times of India – June 5, 1998. India could easily transfer its nuclear testing activity to the isolated and uninhabited Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal and has been suggested by this column umpteen times. Why doesn’t it? Because a nuclear test or a massive Airforce exercise at Pokharan, 60 miles from the Pakistan border, is useful for intimidation and coercive diplomacy vis-à-vis its weaker neighbors, Pakistan and Indian – occupied Punjab, Khalistan.