India Defense

India's government has slashed defense spending and diverted funds to fight hunger and illiteracy and provide housing for the homeless. The unprecedented reduction in defense spending was contained in the government's budget for 1989-90, introduced in Parliament by Finance Minister S. B. Chavan. India will spend $133 million less on defense in the 1989-90 fiscal year compared to the previous year, Chavan said. He pledged to spend $1.

India test-fired a short-range missile Friday that is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, and neighboring Pakistan called the launch destabilizing amid a massive military buildup along their shared border. India insisted that there was no political message in the firing of its newest version of the Agni ballistic missile, a weapon with a range of about 420 miles. The missile was successfully fired over the Bay of Bengal from the Wheeler Islands, off India's eastern coast.

It was with deliberate drama and flourish that then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi stood atop the conning tower of a Soviet-built nuclear submarine on the morning of Feb. 3, 1988, and proclaimed to the region and the world that India's military might was finally coming of age. "Those who conquered us from the sea ruled us as alien masters," he declared that day to the applause of India's senior naval officers.

Michael Krepon clearly outlines Pakistan's role in fomenting violence in India (Commentary, Nov. 7). India is a secular democracy while Pakistan has had military dictatorships and is an Islamic state. The people of the state of Jammu and Kashmir have participated in local, state and national elections, and the main political party in the state is part of the national ruling coalition government. India has been quite humane in its handling of the Kashmir crisis. In fact, many would argue that it should follow the U.S. and Israeli line and attack the terrorists where they train and receive funding and support, in Pakistan.

Restoration of peace in Afghanistan should return the question of control of nuclear weapons to the top of U.S. policy objectives in South Asia, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee aide said in a report released Sunday. For more than a quarter century, Washington sought, with only limited success, to halt the development of nuclear arms by India and Pakistan, the report said. But in the 1980s, the Afghanistan conflict increasingly dominated U.S.

British Defense Secretary George Younger said that London is prepared to supply India--without conditions--with advanced military hardware, including its latest Jaguar and Sea Harrier jet fighters as well as a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Press Trust of India reported. Younger, on the third day of a five-day visit to India, said that discussions with military officials in New Delhi have opened a "wide scope for further cooperation . . . in the field of defense."

Soviet-built MIG-29 fighter aircraft were formally inducted into India's air force Sunday, and the country's defense minister said the new planes make it one of the most modern forces in the world. The Press Trust of India said India's air force is the first outside the Soviet Union to be equipped with the all-weather interceptor, which the North Atlantic Treaty Organization calls the Fulcrum.

Pakistan, long troubled by India's naval buildup, has struck a deal to lease up to eight of the 16 U.S. Navy frigates that are being retired for budgetary reasons, officials said Friday. The ships being offered to Pakistan are Garcia and Brooke class frigates built in the mid-1960s. Lt. Barbara Kent, a Navy spokeswoman, said Congress on Thursday was informed of the deal in a letter from Rear Adm. Thomas C. Lynch, the Navy's chief of legislative affairs.

India announced a dramatic boost in military spending Tuesday as heavy fighting along the disputed border with Pakistan prompted fears that relations with its archrival are entering a dangerous new phase. The declaration that the Indian government will allocate 21% more--or $2.3 billion--for defense spending in the coming year follows a recent series of bloody skirmishes along the two countries' 450-mile border in the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

India's defense minister called for foreign consumer goods to be banned from sale in his country. George Fernandes told a student conference in Bombay that India should import "only those goods needed for its defense and development." In 1977, during a stint as industry minister, Fernandes banned Coca-Cola from the country. In his speech, Fernandes charged that foreign companies control India's soft-drink industry. Coca-Cola and Pepsi products are now sold in India.

India does not intend to build a large nuclear arsenal or create an elaborate command and control system to manage the weapons, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said in the wake of his country's five underground nuclear tests last month. The United States and other nuclear powers have been attempting to persuade rivals India and Pakistan to end the nuclear tests each of them has conducted recently and refrain from building and deploying nuclear weapons systems.

The Indian subcontinent has lived under an umbrella of nuclear deterrence for years, yet the threat of a runaway arms race has always lurked near as India and Pakistan have accumulated nuclear material and developed deadly ways to deliver it. India has one of the world's most ambitious missile programs, and far outpaces smaller Pakistan in almost every military category.

Just after sunrise Friday, as the Indian and U.S. navies staged their first joint military exercises in the Arabian Sea off India's western coast, Indian rocket scientists on the east coast conducted an exercise of a far different sort--the successful test of a ballistic missile capable of striking targets in China, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The long-planned naval exercises were meant to symbolize a new age of cooperation between India and the United States.

It was with deliberate drama and flourish that then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi stood atop the conning tower of a Soviet-built nuclear submarine on the morning of Feb. 3, 1988, and proclaimed to the region and the world that India's military might was finally coming of age. "Those who conquered us from the sea ruled us as alien masters," he declared that day to the applause of India's senior naval officers.

India launched its first locally manufactured submarine, giving its navy and arms industry a major boost and heightening regional fears over its rapid military expansion. Sonia Gandhi, wife of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, pressed the launch button from the yard of the state-owned Mazagon Dock, sending the submarine sliding down its dry dock at Bombay into the Arabian Sea.