The doctrine of the nuclear sword

The time has come again for India's Bheema to tear open the breasts of these infidels and purify the soiled tresses of Draupadi with blood…For what have we manufactured bombs? For what have we exercised the nuclear option?

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Newspaper, Panchjanya, 20 June 1999

I don't believe in the fantasy that India can ever attack Pakistan. This is not the Pakistan of 1971. Our Nukes are not for museums either.

Hafiz Saeed of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa on Twitter, August 2013

Concern about militarism among Indian leaders is over a hundred years old. It is apparent most notably in Mahatma Gandhi's political manifesto Hind Swaraj, written in 1909 in the form of a dialogue between himself as a newspaper editor and a reader representing the ideas and aspirations of the emerging Indian nationalist elite. Gandhi, writing in the voice of the Editor, asks the Indian Nationalist Reader, "Why do we want to drive out the British?" The Indian Nationalist Reader replies, "Because India has become impoverished by their Government. We are kept in a state of slavery. They behave insolently towards us, and disregard our feelings." Under Gandhi's probing for a vision of Indian self-government, the Nationalist Reader declares "we must own our own navy, our army, and we must have our own splendour, and then will India's voice ring through the world."