Some unnecessary thoughts on Environment Day and the Nuclear Bomb

On June 5 the newspaper told us that Myanmar is building the N-bomb. I quote from the report: “‘Burma is trying to build pieces of a nuclear programme, specifically a nuclear reactor to make plutonium and a uranium enrichment programme,’ said the report’s co-author, Robert Kelley, an ex-director of the International Atomic Energy Agency. ‘The information brought suggests Burma is mining uranium, converting it to uranium compounds ... and is trying to build a reactor and/or an enrichment plant that could only be useful for a bomb.’” The point here is not to go for a validity check of the news item – my gut feeling says it’s more or less true. That is, the described extent of the progress might be exaggerated or mollified, but the fact of the matter is true. June 5 was also World Environment Day. The day we remember to pledge our sanity, our love, our concern and our little sacrifices for the planet – mother earth as we then lovingly call it. The planet cares little about whether we celebrate her greenery and her blue-ery, whether we dedicate a whole 24 hours to talk about her and take out peace march and write placards “Save the Green”, whether a series of NGOs are set up and are funded well enough to ‘care’ for it, whether we double the carbon emissions and size of footprints every year or halve it…. It is spinning around the sun and it will probably continue to do so even without us mortals making merry on its surface (unless of course we blow it to bits by our lovingly made bombs). It really cares not. In the huge universe, it is itself a tiny speck that is simply following laws of astrophysics – whether or not even the unified field theory is formulated and Nobel Prizes won for it, it is least bothered. This fragment of the sun. Revolving around it in some eternal oedipal love.

However, it matters a world to us – the mortals who populate this globe made of some metals, non-metals, gases and so on. So, given that whether or not the greenery and the blue-ery remain, whether or not the temperatures continue soaring like dream-sensex figures, whether or not birds and tigers grow extinct, matter like life and death to us; we better start becoming slightly more cautious. And this nuclear ramp will do none of its two bits towards aiding it. The ramp has long been made – strutting down it came the United States and then there was a mountain of speculation whether Germany might have worn the label earlier; soon others came in tow and we also had Mother India celebrating the grand “potent” moment in Pokhran and then Pakistan “our immortal enemy” – and now Myanmar …

All governments have inevitably put forward the argument that they are only building an arsenal as a self defense measure against future attacks by enemy states. And our India was fortunate enough to have been gifted a permanent enemy state by the British as a parting gift. Both of us said that we built the bomb so as to drop in on the other’s territory if they dare trespass us. But, will it ever be that easy? The Pakistani Lahore and the Indian Amritsar are barely 30 miles apart; we share land, skies and air – “where radioactive fallout will land on any given day depends entirely on the direction of the wind and the rain … If we bomb Lahore, Punjab will burn. If we bomb Karachi, then Gujarat and Rajasthan and perhaps even Bombay will burn.” In the article “The End of Imagination” Roy – the confused crazy Maoist sympathizer – writes and I quote her: “Soon every country will want to have its own bomb. And why not? Every country in the world has a special case to make. Everybody has borders and beliefs … the only good thing about nuclear war is that it is the single most egalitarian idea man has ever had. On the day of reckoning you will not be asked to present your credentials. The devastation will be undiscriminating” … “Our cities and forests, our fields and villages will burn for days. Rivers will turn to poison. The air will become fire … when everything there is to burn has burnt, the smoke will rise and shut out the sun … there will be no day. Only interminable night. Temperatures will drop to far below freezing and nuclear winter will set in.” What shall we do then, those of us who might manage to stay alive? Proud Indians or Americans maybe? “Burned and blind and bald and ill, carrying the cancerous carcasses of our children in our arms?” Say that we have had superior technology? That we are the victors?

If you are god-believing, then remember that this bomb is man’s challenge to God – We’ve the power to destroy everything you created.

If you are not (god-believing), then look at it this way: this world of ours that we desperately need to be in one piece for our very selfish needs, is 4,600 million years old. It could end in one afternoon.

What if we had bargained for the more powerful and infinitely ethical position? What if we had said, we have the technology, we can make nuclear bombs if we want to, but we won’t. We don’t believe in them? Very unmanly I guess … and if this is the face of manhood, of coveted potency, then perhaps the death and cold of the nuclear winter awaits us rightly enough!

Happy World Environment Day to all…

[I acknowledge the insanity and irrationality that is Arundhati Roy.]