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Why India could join hands with Japan and Kazakhstan to push the world on the road to nuclear disarmament, says Ramesh Ramachandran
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| Pix Courtesy: Reuters |
Astana and Semey in Kazakhstan
29 August 2014
On 29 August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with a group of Japanese journalists ahead of his visit to Tokyo and sought to reassure them about India’s commitment to universal, non-discriminatory and global nuclear disarmament and a unilateral and voluntary moratorium on nuclear explosive testing. The same day, in the far-away steppes of Kazakhstan, former Japanese diplomat Yasuyoshi Komizo joined the locals of Semey, a small town located on the banks of the Irtysh river, bordering Russia, to mark the International Day Against Nuclear Tests by observing a moment’s silence in honour of all victims, living and dead, of nuclear tests.
Komizo, 66, who now serves as the chairperson of Hiroshima
Peace Culture Foundation and the secretary general of Mayors for Peace, also
planted a sapling of the Gingko Bilopa tree, which survived the 6 August 1945
atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Present on the occasion was armless Kazakh painter Karipbek
Kuyukov, 46, who is a second-generation victim of the nuclear tests at Semey
and the face of the anti-nuclear movement in Kazakhstan.
Kuyukov, who holds a brush in his mouth or between his toes
to give expression to his creative spirit, was born near Semey and is one of
more than 1.5 million people, as per a United Nations estimate, who suffered
the consequences of nuclear testing.
Today, he divides his time between painting and campaigning
for a global ban on nuclear tests as an honorary ambassador of The ATOM Project
(an acronym for Abolish Testing. Our Mission), which Kazakhstan President
Nursultan Nazarbayev launched on 29 August 2012.
The coming together of the victims of nuclear tests such as
Kuyukov and the Hibayushas (Japanese for survivors of an explosion) of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only victims of atomic bombings, is instructive for
India and the world.
A Study In Contrast
The Republic of Kazakhstan was not even
born when the late Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi unveiled his now
eponymously-named “action plan to usher in a world order free of nuclear
weapons and rooted in non-violence”, on 9 June 1988 at the UN General Assembly.
However, since then, while India’s moral heft and political
will to pursue the twin issues of non-proliferation and disarmament to a
logical conclusion have seen a decline, Kazakhstan — undaunted by the prospect
of a David versus Goliath battle or unfazed by the criticism of not making
enough progress towards genuine media and political freedoms — has taken upon
itself to champion the cause of a global test ban leading to an eventual ban on
nuclear weapons. And it has all the right credentials, to boot.
On 28 February 1989, a poet-activist by the name of Olzhas
Suleimenov, now 78, founded the Nevada- Semey anti-nuclear movement to mobilise
public opinion against the nuclear explosions conducted by the then USSR at the
Semey (formerly Semipalatinsk) test site and to show solidarity with similar
movements in the US for closing down the Nevada nuclear test site.
A groundswell of public opinion following the launch of the
movement ensured that the erstwhile USSR did not conduct another nuclear test
at Semey after 19 October 1989 (although it would not be until after the 24
October 1990 test at Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, that
the erstwhile USSR completely stopped all nuclear tests.)
On 29 August 1991, Nazarbayev, president of what was then
the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, officially shut down the Semey nuclear
test site. (Kazakhstan became an independent country on 16 December 1991.) It
brought to an end a 40-year-long history of nuclear tests at Semey, which began
on 29 August 1949; a total of 456 tests (including 116 above-ground tests) were
conducted at Semey. He followed it up by announcing that Kazakhstan would
voluntarily renounce its nuclear arsenal — the fourth largest in the world at
the time — that it had inherited from the erstwhile USSR.
That process was completed by 1996 but his
ambitious endeavours didn’t stop there. Next on his agenda was a Central Asia
Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty, which was signed by all five Central Asian
States — Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan — on 8
September 2006 at Semey and came into force in 2009. This May, all five
permanent members of the UN Security Council signed the protocol to this
treaty, giving negative security assurances and committing themselves not to use
nuclear weapons against the Central Asian States.
On 2 December 2009, the 64th session of the UN General
Assembly accepted Kazakhstan’s proposal for declaring 29 August as the
International Day Against Nuclear Tests. The Resolution 64/35, which was adopted
unanimously, called for increasing awareness “about the effects of nuclear
weapon test explosions or any other nuclear explosions and the need for their
cessation as one of the means of achieving the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free
world”. (India and seven other countries — China, Pakistan, the US, Iran, North
Korea, Israel and Egypt — are still to sign and/or ratify the Comprehensive
Nuclear- Test-Ban Treaty or the CTBT.)
During his visit to Semey in April 2010, UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon urged the leaders of all countries, especially the nuclear
powers, to follow the example of Kazakhstan on disarmament and
non-proliferation.
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| In memoriam People gather at the Stronger than Death Monument in Semey, Kazakhstan, to mark the International Day Against Nuclear Tests on 29 August Pix courtesy: Ramesh Ramachandran |
Among the latest to join countries such as Kazakhstan and
Japan in a concerted campaign for a global test ban leading to eventual
disarmament is Marshall Islands, a tiny archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, where
the US had conducted a series of nuclear tests, including the detonation of a
nuclear device that was equivalent to a thousand Hiroshimas. (In April this
year, Marshall Islands filed a lawsuit against India and eight other
nuclear-armed countries at the International Court of Justice at The Hague for
not disarming themselves.)
In comparison, India’s quest for a nuclear-free world dates
back to 1954 when the late prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru became the first
statesman to call for a “stand still” agreement on nuclear testing. Three
decades later, the late prime minister Indira Gandhi joined five other heads of
state and/or government in issuing the Appeal of May 1984 to refocus the
world’s attention on nuclear disarmament. However, by then a combination of
circumstances and national security imperatives had already begun impelling
India towards effecting a shift from a foreign and security policy based on
moral considerations to one that was dictated by realpolitik; the nuclear tests
by India in 1998 are a case in point.
As Rajiv Gandhi had said in his 1988 speech, “Left to
ourselves, we would not want to touch nuclear weapons. But when, in the passing
play of great power rivalries, tactical considerations are allowed to take
precedence over the imperatives of nuclear non-proliferation, with what leeway
are we left?”
Reconciling Dilemmas
To the proponents of non-proliferation and disarmament, the
discourse in India today, unlike the time when it sought to punch above its
weight in the international arena, has markedly shifted away from a moral
self-righteousness to the pursuit of a foreign policy bereft of a moral
compass. Yet, there is an overwhelming body of opinion, both within the
government and without, that India can and must play an effective role in
working towards attaining the goal of disarmament. As Prime Minister Modi
himself said in his interaction with the Japanese journalists in New Delhi,
“There is no contradiction in our mind between being a nuclear weapon state and
contributing actively to global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.”
He iterated India’s position a second time, this time during
the course of an interaction with the students of Sacred Heart University in
Tokyo, that India’s commitment to non-violence is total; it is ingrained in the
“DNA of Indian society and this is above any international treaty”. Modi went
on to assert that “India is the land of Lord Buddha. Buddha lived for peace and
suffered for peace and that message is prevalent in India.”
On the face of it, Modi’s remarks are consistent with those
of his predecessors, particularly Manmohan Singh, who had wrestled with the
pros and cons of disarmament in the light of the relevance (or lack thereof )
of the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan and India’s moral stature in pushing for a
global consensus on the issue.
A committee constituted in the second term of Manmohan Singh
had recommended, among other things, that India should lead the campaign for
disarmament because over the decades, it has been in the forefront of such
efforts and its emergence as a power to be reckoned with would further enable
it in this endeavour.
The Road Ahead
What Rajiv Gandhi said in his 1988 speech rings true even
today: “Humanity is at a crossroads. One road will take us like lemmings to our
own suicide. (The) other road will give us another chance.”
Surely, the latter road passes through Semey. The least
India can and must do is to lend its voice and weight to the efforts being
championed by Kazakhstan and Japan alike. The essential features of the
four-fold Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan are similar to the four specific steps that
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida articulated recently in an article published
by Foreign Affairs, a leading American magazine on international relations. In
the article, Kishida, who, incidentally, hails from Hiroshima, hoped that a
consensus could be reached at the 2015 NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) Review
Conference on a new plan of action to reduce nuclear weapons and ensure
non-proliferation.
The year 2015 would also mark the 70th anniversary of the
Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. New Delhi and Tokyo would do well to dovetail
their efforts for greater synergy. Doing so will also endear India to those
sections of the Japanese society that remain sceptical of civil nuclear
cooperation with a non-NPT and non-CTBT country such as India.
For its part, Kazakhstan has listed nuclear disarmament and
non-proliferation among its key foreign policy priorities in the event of its
election as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for the 2017-18
period. As for India, Prime Minister Modi’s talks with the leaders of China and
the US and his intervention at the UN General Assembly this month should be a
good starting point for it to lay out its vision for reducing the salience of
nuclear weapons in international affairs. Therefore, going forward, there is
ample scope for India, Japan and Kazakhstan to coordinate their positions.
For if, as Modi said, the friendship between India and Japan
will determine what the “Asian century” will look like, then it behoves of them
to partner like-minded Asian countries such as Kazakhstan for an alternative
universality. A 2012 strategy document, titled ‘Nonalignment 2.0: A foreign and
strategic policy for India in the 21st century’, published by the New
Delhi-based think-tank Centre for Policy Research, had concluded that “India
should aim not just at being powerful. It should set new standards for what the
powerful must do.”
In a similar vein, Jonathan Granoff, president of the
US-based Global Security Institute, had said on the occasion of the 20th anniversary
of the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan in 2008 that “the world needs the compass point
of leadership”. Will India, and Modi, oblige?
Painter Karipbek Kuyukov is a living testimony to the damage
caused by radioactive fallout from nuclear testing, says Ramesh Ramachandran
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| Trailblazer Karipbek Kuyukov Pix courtesy: Ramesh Ramachandran |
The remoteness of Semey (formerly Semipalatinsk) proved to
be its undoing. A land that was once home to Kazakhstan’s most famous poet,
Abai Kunanbayev, or the place where Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky of Crime
and Punishment fame was exiled to, is today infamous for the nuclear pursuits
of the erstwhile Soviet Union. The Cold War saw the Soviets use the vast steppe
around Semey for conducting a series of nuclear tests. Consequently, this
nondescript town, which today has a population of only a little over 300,000,
has seen some of the worst human, man-made tragedies.
Karipbek Kuyukov, 46, is a living testimony of the damage
caused by radioactive fallout from the explosions. He was born in 1968 in the
village of Yegyndybulak, about a 100 km away from Semey, where the former
Soviet Union tested its nuclear weapons between 1949 and 1989. Little did his
unsuspecting parents know that years of indiscriminate nuclear testing during
the Cold War would rob their son of the simple pleasures of life that you and
I, who are far removed from the steppes of Kazakhstan, would take for granted.
Kuyukov was born without arms — an unwitting victim of his parents’ exposure to
nuclear radiation.
“When I was a child, my parents used to tell me stories
about how the ground trembled,” Kuyukov recalls. “Growing up, I remember the
armoires shaking and the rattling of dishes.”
He spent an early part of his life at an institute in St
Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), where his father hoped he would learn to use
prosthetic arms. The young Kuyukov tried but failed to master the prosthetic;
he wouldn’t tell if it militated against his aesthetic sensibilities but he
lets you in on his intimate thoughts and how and why he chose art to give
expression to his creative talent. “My soul was looking to create something
beautiful,” he reminisces.
What began as a painfully slow and exhausting attempt at
redeeming himself eventually transformed into a cathartic, and almost
transcendental, experience — one that would not only give meaning to his life
but hold him up as a conscience-keeper for generations to come.
“I will be the happiest if I am among the last victims of
nuclear tests,” says the diminutive painter, who has made it his life’s mission
to encourage people, as opposed to governments, to seek a ban on nuclear tests
and to make a world free of nuclear weapons a reality. Left to themselves,
governments will forever cite reasons for holding on to their nuclear arsenals
but people can turn the tide when they force governments to sit up and take
notice of the will of the people, he reasons. And that is the message he seeks
to convey through his paintings. Holding a brush in his mouth and between his
toes, Kuyukov has painted on themes ranging from fear and loneliness to the
mushroom cloud and nature.
“Through my works, I want to share with the people the
horrible consequences of nuclear tests, the pain and suffering of the victims
of nuclear tests and the agony of mothers,” he says. Today, he spends a
considerable part of his time campaigning for a ban on nuclear tests in his
capacity as an honorary ambassador for The ATOM Project. (The ATOM Project is a
global petition drive to mobilise international public opinion against nuclear
tests and to deliver those petitions with signatures to the leaders of the
countries with nuclear weapons.)
“The last 25 years of my life have been a battle. When I
joined the movement, I remember that in those days when neither the Internet
nor mobile phones existed, we collected signatures on sheets of paper from
every region,” Kuyukov says. “I don’t have arms to hug you but I have a heart
and it belongs to you!”
According to The ATOM Project, “Today, many in the area
around the former Semipalatinsk nuclear test site (or The Polygon, as it was
known) do not live past 60 and, as a result of exposure to radiation, the
genetic code of those parents and grandparents was permanently altered,
resulting in horrific birth defects to this day. According to the UN, in all,
more than 1.5 million people in Kazakhstan are believed to have suffered
premature death, horrible radiation-related diseases and lifetimes of struggle
as a result of birth defects.”
The ATOM Project has designated 11.05 am (the local time in
respective countries) on 29 August of every year as the occasion to observe a
moment’s silence in honour of all victims of nuclear tests. At 11.05 am, the
hands of a clock form a ‘V’ for victory and it therefore chose this time to
signify a victory of common sense over fear and for global efforts towards a
nuclear weapons-free world.
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