India makes a nuclear submarine

The Indian Prime Minister cracked the auspicious coconut on the hull of the country's first made-in-India nuclear submarine.

The occasion gives us many reasons to pat ourselves on the back. Firstly, of course, is that we made nuclear submarine ourselves. Also, a nuclear submarine can stay underground and sail on for many thousand miles without the need of refuelling. Thus it can go into action far away from Indian waters. Arihant (the nuclear sub's name) can carry nukes. It gives India the capability to launch nukes from the sea too (It already has land and air nuke capability already).

Now some points which make us feel less smug about ourselves. Though we built the steel structure of the submarine (some unkind souls point out that it is just a copy of the subs the US made forty years ago), the nuclear reactor that powers it was given by the Russians.

And we have lot of catching up to do. The US has 74 nuclear subs. Russia 44, Britain 13, France and China have 10 each. India has made one and it is going to make another two. And we are going to get one on lease from the Russians.

That is the problem (if I may use the term) with India. We do not recognise our true potential. We also lack the killer instinct.

The other countries who have the nuclear sub; the US and Russia spurred each other on during the cold war. Russia has the feeling of pride and wants to be acclaimed as a major world power. France and Britain have the legacy of the industrial revolution and the pride that they were once big powers around the two world wars. China has that fierce nationalist feeling, which is still fanned by the memories of the lousy way the Western powers and Japan treated it in the centuries gone by.

India nurses no such aggression or feeling of ill-will. It assimilated the Mughals and the Britishers and made them Indians. The philosophy of Hinduism is responsible for that. We have a big heart and we hate nobody.

That is the true Indian way. We should be proud of it and work hard to give ourselves a place of pride amongst the nations of the world.