India made a giant leap in its nuclear energy programme as its Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) attained first criticality on April 6. Located in Kalpakkam in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, the indigenously developed nuclear reactor can generate 500 MWe of electricity for commercial use. This milestone marks India’s entry into the second stage of its three-stage nuclear power programme, originally designed in the 1950s. The reactor is expected to supply electricity to the national energy grid in September 2026, making India the second country, after Russia, to operate a commercial Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR).

In the past, the USA, the UK, Germany, France, Japan and China experimented with FBRs, but these programmes were eventually shut down, largely due to safety concerns.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has hailed India’s nuclear breakthrough as a significant milestone in the future of nuclear energy and advancing fuel sustainability.

However, India’s nuclear progress has drawn sharp criticism from across the border. Pakistan’s arms control adviser, Zahir Kazmi, alleged it to be a plutonium bomb push operating outside the surveillance of IAEA safeguards, describing India as a major destabilising force in the world.

Nuclear oversight in India and Pakistan

The IAEA Safeguards system is a critical component of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to deter the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology. Although not an NPT signatory, India’s impeccable non-proliferation record prompted the US to consider a broad nuclear partnership with India. In 2008, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed the US-India Civil Nuclear Co-operation Agreement under which India agreed to allow oversight of its civilian nuclear facilities.

Pakistan followed a similar path, though under very different circumstances. International outrage followed the revelations that Islamabad had been engaging in clandestine nuclear proliferation involving states under international scrutiny. To avert the threat of crippling economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation, Pakistan was compelled to place its civilian facilities under IAEA safeguards.

Pakistan’s dangerous legacy of nuclear proliferation

Pakistan moved to develop a nuclear bomb in the mid-1970s after Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan — hailed in Pakistan as the “father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb” — stole classified information, sensitive centrifuge technology and nuclear blueprints while working as a subcontractor for URENCO in the Netherlands.

The Amsterdam Court sentenced Khan to four years in prison in 1983 for stealing nuclear secrets, but his conviction was overturned at the behest of America.

Internationally, Abdul Qadeer Khan is remembered as the world’s best-known nuclear proliferator.

He established a clandestine network of private suppliers and intermediaries to supply nuclear and missile-related technologies. While his tactics were long associated with organised and financial crime, analysts say the Khan network marked one of the first large-scale uses of these methods in global nuclear proliferation.

By the 1990s, Khan had operationalized the world’s most dangerous nuclear black market, fuelling the secret ambitions of Iran, North Korea, and Libya while even making overtures to Iraq.

His network provided Tehran with critical P-1 and P-2 centrifuges along with the designs and traded enrichment hardware and centrifuges to Pyongyang in exchange for medium-range missile technology.

The enterprise reached its zenith—and its eventual downfall—in Libya, where Khan’s network attempted to export a turnkey nuclear program involving weapons designs and over a million components. Additionally, Khan provided weapons-related blueprints to Libya, and possibly Iran, reportedly derived from a bomb design China had earlier transferred to Pakistan in the 1960s, which formed a critical underpinning of Pakistan’s early weapons programme. This unprecedented proliferation scheme, described by experts as a “one-stop shop” for the bomb, effectively bypassed decades of international safeguards to arm some of the world’s most volatile regimes.

Khan’s activities continued until 2003, when the IAEA linked Pakistan-origin technology to Iran’s Natanz enrichment site, an assessment reinforced by CIA evidence of sensitive technology and design transfers.

In early 2004, the Dutch government confirmed that Pakistan had illicitly acquired URENCO centrifuge technology, which Khan later channelled to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. This black-market pipeline was built on stolen blueprints: Pakistan’s P-1 centrifuge was a direct derivative of a URENCO design, while the advanced P-2 model was based on German G-2 documents Khan had translated while working in the Netherlands during the 1970s. These legacy P-1 systems eventually became the backbone of Iran’s early enrichment efforts.

In February 2004, following U.S. media exposure of his global black market, Khan issued a televised confession admitting to the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. President Pervez Musharraf acted swiftly to grant him a pardon and refused to make Khan available for interrogation by the US or the IAEA —a move critics viewed as a strategic shield to protect the military establishment from international scrutiny.

Multiple international analysts and non-proliferation experts have argued that Khan’s global nuclear trafficking network could not have operated for decades without at least tacit support or knowledge from elements within Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment. Studies by US and German institutions, along with arms control analysts, have cited the scale of the transfers, overseas logistics and repeated ignored warnings as indicators of possible state complicity or deliberate inaction. One such report claimed that many Pakistanis believed Khan had taken the blame to shield the wider establishment, particularly the military. Even former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto reportedly suggested that Khan, who was held responsible for leading a nuclear proliferation network, may have been made a scapegoat to deflect attention from more powerful figures.

In his personal diaries, Khan maintained that he acted only with the full backing of the Pakistani government.

India’s Nuclear Restraint and Pakistan’s Offensive Posture

India initially opposed nuclear weaponisation, treating atomic energy as a tool for development and advocating global disarmament under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a prominent international voice against the nuclear arms race. His successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri, maintained this stance even after China’s first nuclear test, though India later expanded its nuclear programme and explored “peaceful nuclear explosion” capabilities amid growing strategic pressures and demands for technological parity.

Although India built Asia’s first nuclear reactor, its advanced nuclear programme was dedicated exclusively to civilian purposes. Its shift toward nuclear armament was a direct response to Chinese aggression and its growing nuclear capabilities. India’s crushing defeat in 1962, which resulted in China seizing Jammu and Kashmir’s Aksai Chin in a surprise offensive, created a permanent security deficit that deepened significantly after Beijing’s first nuclear test in 1964 and a series of subsequent tests. Eventually, mounting strategic concerns pushed New Delhi towards an indigenous weapons capability, culminating in India’s first successful nuclear test in 1974.

In 1988, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi proposed that India forgo nuclear weapons if global nuclear powers agreed to a time-bound plan for complete disarmament. With no response from the major nuclear states, India later cited the lack of progress toward universal disarmament as a key factor leading to its 1998 nuclear tests.

Pakistan’s nuclear armament developed within a markedly different strategic framework. From its inception to its present-day expansion, Pakistan’s nuclear programme— and indeed much of its broader military establishment — has remained India-centric. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, infamously declared in 1965, “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves — even go hungry — but we will get one of our own.”

Pakistan ramped up its military programme, which had been built on espionage and China’s covert assistance, to conduct its first series of nuclear tests in 1998, immediately following India’s nuclear tests. After India conducted five nuclear tests, Pakistan responded by detonating six devices, a move with the stated intention of gaining parity with India.

For decades, Pakistan has consistently employed aggressive nuclear signalling and sabre-rattling as a primary instrument of its strategic posture toward India. The rhetoric resurfaced recently when Pakistan’s military chief, Asim Munir, during a visit to the US, warned that as a nuclear power, the country could take “half the world down” in the event of a conflict with India. Again, on May 20, a Pakistani senator speaking in New York openly threatened India with annihilation.

Even Pakistan’s missile naming strategy is deliberately provocative. While India has largely named its missiles after the five elements of nature and other Sanskrit terms, such as Agni, Prithvi, Akash, Pakistan has chosen names associated with medieval Islamic invaders — including Ghauri, Ghaznavi, Abdali, Babur and Taimoor — who launched brutal campaigns into the Indian subcontinent, leaving behind a legacy of bloody conquests, plunder and massacres.

It is a remarkable irony that Pakistan’s leadership glorifies medieval invaders as symbols of national pride, seemingly forgetting that the populations of present-day Pakistan were among the first victims of those invasions when the region belonged to the broader Indic civilisation, centuries before the emergence of the Pakistani state. Naming missiles after such conquerors reflects a unique brand of selective amnesia, given that these campaigns had swept through today’s Pakistani territory with violence and plunder before advancing deeper into the subcontinent.

Contrasting Nuclear Doctrines of India and Pakistan

India adheres to two key nuclear doctrines underscoring New Delhi’s position that its nuclear arsenal is intended primarily for deterrence rather than warfighting.

India’s no first use (NFU) doctrine states that it will not use nuclear weapons unless first attacked by nuclear means. This principle underscores India’s position that nuclear forces are intended solely for deterrence and retaliatory defence.

India’s second doctrine is credible minimum deterrence, which entails maintaining nuclear capability deemed sufficient to deter adversaries without entering an open-ended arms race. The stockpile is calibrated to meet perceived threats while ensuring the capability to deliver the required deterrent effect.

The authority to order nuclear retaliation lies with the civilian political leadership. The decision will be taken in cooperation with the Nuclear Authority of India, which has a two-tier structure, with the Political Council led by the Prime Minister and the Executive Council led by the National Security Advisor.

India’s strategy eschews tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs), which are low-yield, short-range systems designed for use on the battlefield even against advancing conventional forces. It remains aligned with its doctrines of NFU and credible minimum deterrence, with the arsenal geared primarily towards deterrence and assured second-strike capability.

Unlike India, Pakistan rejects an NFU doctrine, leaving open the possibility that Islamabad could be the first to launch a nuclear strike in a conflict scenario. A former senior military official stated that the country’s nuclear arsenal is intended to respond to all forms of perceived threats from an adversary.

Its strategy is guided by full-spectrum deterrence, explicitly aimed at countering India across every level of conflict — strategic, operational and tactical. Former Pakistani military strategist Khalid Ahmed Kidwai said the doctrine was designed to ensure full coverage of the Indian landmass and “[India would have] no place to hide”.

Pakistan’s nuclear operations control lies with the Chief of Defence Forces under the Constitutional Amendment of 2025, which consolidates command of the army, navy and air force and dramatically expands military power. This reform makes Pakistan the only nuclear-armed state where authority over nuclear use is entrusted to one military officer.

Pakistan has even engaged in the development of TNWs, sparking international concern for lowering the nuclear threshold. Analysts warn that their deployment in conventional military conflicts significantly increases the risk of a “use it or lose it” dilemma and unauthorised launch by lower-level commanders, raising the likelihood of a full-scale nuclear war.

Deterrence versus destabilization

The divergence between the two nuclear doctrines extends far beyond military strategy, with India maintaining restraint and prioritising a stabilising deterrent over aggressive nuclear signalling. Pakistan remains a deeply volatile nuclear power whose “First Use” doctrine and military-dominated command structure contribute to an increasingly precarious security environment. The country continues to grapple with entrenched extremist and jihadist groups, some of which have openly turned against the state, fuelling longstanding international concerns over the security of nuclear assets and the risk of sensitive technology falling into militant hands. While Islamabad frequently portrays India as a destabilising force, the reality is that Pakistan’s murky record of nuclear proliferation, aggressive posturing, de facto military-civilian hybrid regime, chronic insurgencies, and internal instability pose serious threats to regional and global security.