INDIA'S NUCLEAR DILEMMA FACES A DRAMATIC MOMENT OF RECKONING

After Trump's revelations, India has no choice but to face harsh questions about its nuclear posture.

- HINDOL SENGUPTA

A representational image of a nuclear testing created by GrokA

(GrokA)

The fragile foundations of the 21st-century's nuclear non-testing norm have been shattered.

The autumn 2025 announcements by US President Donald Trump, alleging that China, Russia, and even Pakistan have been conducting clandestine nuclear tests, have been chillingly substantiated. The subsequent confirmation from the CIA, asserting that both Beijing and Moscow have engaged in "supercritical nuclear weapons tests"—thereby exceeding the "zero-yield" standard that underpins the global moratorium-has plunged the world into a new and dangerous strategic era.

For India, this revelation is not a distant great power dispute; it is an existential crisis. It forces New Delhi to confront its own quartercentury-old, self-imposed moratorium on nuclear testing, a policy that has been a cornerstone of its identity as a responsible nuclear power. The new global reality-where adversaries are actively modernizing their arsenals with new explosive tests, while India relies on 1998 data-has poured gasoline on a smouldering, unresolved fire at the very heart of the Indian strategic establishment.

This is the first of a threepart series on India's critical nuclear dilemma, and why the future looks bleak unless strong choices are made.

This dilemma is not new, but the stakes have never been higher. The central, agonizing question—is India's deterrent truly credible?—must now be answered. This essay will analyse India's stark choice, tracing its roots to the profound, unresolved ambiguities of the 1998 Pokhran-II tests and framing it through the two diametrically opposed strategic philosophies that define the modern Indian debate: the "maximalist" school, championed by Bharat Karnad, and the "sufficiency" school, represented by Manpreet Sethi.