Yes, I am from India. No, I am not swelling with nationalistic pride.

Yes, I know I’m going to tread on a lot of toes with my opinion here. Yes, I’m going to end up with stubbed toes too. No, this is no attempt to be the Voice of Reason. There isn’t such a thing in international affairs.

I’m of course talking, to put it mildly, about the global village’s shock and (over)reaction to the bull-dozed entry of India into the “Nuclear Club.” “Welcome to World War III,” Nostradamus might have said. But the French Seer whose predictions include a global war in the last years of this millennium, only had the power of foresight, not the power to see the present from the present for eternity. And that’s why it’s so hard to figure out what the issue is here. Let me try and put some facts forward.

India (and Pakistan) are not among 149 nations who have signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) aimed at nuclear non-proliferation. India is all for nuclear disarmament, as long as every country in the world, including the nuclear haves, play to the same rules of the game.

The Indian political environment has been all jumbled up for the last five to eight years. A new, two month-old, Hindu-led coalition government is trying to retain its fragile hold over power and the faith of 1 billion people in its ability to govern.

The “Nuclear Club” members, the five nuclear powers of the world, and hence also the members of the UN Security Council — Britain, Russia, China, France and the United States, are trying to ensure the rest of the world is non-nuclear, while they retain their capabilities.

In a lead-up to the series of nuclear tests it is going to conduct (that nobody knows of), the Indian government voices its ire against China, and its arms policy.

India explodes three nuclear devices in the desert state of Rajasthan and catches the entire world unaware. And then two more were exploded the very next day.

So what are the reactions of the international community? Some are knee-jerk, some are over-reactive, some are guarded, most voice “concern” over the proliferation of a nuclear arms race. But everybody is definitely sitting up and looking at India a little warily, with a little deference that wasn’t there before.

Indians all over the world are certainly swelling with pride over this technologically global achievement that places them par with the, dare I use the term, superpowers. Notice that nobody is asking how this makes a difference to the man on the street, the problems of illiteracy, poverty and unemployment that still plague the country. The politicians are all patting each other’s backs.

Pakistan, India’s long-standing rival and neighbor, immediately vows not to be left behind even though India has said the testing was preparatory defense against potential Chinese weapons policies.

Most of India’s patrons in the international financial community (including France, Japan and Canada) have either condemned the tests or slapped on sanctions.

And what of the United States? There have been three observable sides to the issue here. President Clinton has immediately decried the tests and slapped massive sanctions on India, with threats to impose stricter sanctions soon if India does not sign the CTBT, unconditionally.

Newt Gingrich and a few other intellectuals try to bring out the “double-standards” side of the issue, raising the question of why the U.S. did not react similarly when China, with a dictatorial regime, tested its nuclear facilties.

The third side of the coin has been the already-hushed up “failure of the decade” of the U.S. intelligence agencies to detect any trace of India preparing for such a series of nuclear tests.

The reaction of China, seemingly the primary reason for India’s actions, has been very guarded and careful. And seemingly again, the danger of taking this nuclear race forward in the region seems to be not from China, but from Pakistan.

So how did India, technologically capable, but still economically backward, decide to go ahead with such a decision despite the obviously foreseeable backlash from the international community? Will the Nuclear Club’s economic sanctions make India buckle under? Is this going to trigger a headlong rush into nuclear arms production, and a possible WWIII, a “Gotterdammerung” or the Dusk of the Gods, all over again?

These questions require logical thinking to provide feasible answers. And, as I have noted previously, the Voice of Reason seems to be one characteristic conspicuous absence in the international community right now. Perhaps the powers that be need to stop being so ego-geocentric and do what the man on the street wants to do about the whole issue. Nothing.

That way, perhaps, things will get back to normal. And Nostradamus might perhaps be proved wrong after all.

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Narayan Devanathan is a graduate student in journalism and mass communication from India.