NOTES India's Nuclear Policy : Case Against the Bomb WIDE CONCERN is felt among Indian people at the news appearing from rime to time that Pakistan is manufacturing a nuclear bomb. The paper seeks to analyse the political factors that led to the emergence of the atom bomb in the international arena and eventual pursuit for it in the Indo-Pak subcontinent which can be related to the policies pursued by the aggressive forces in the United States. The policy of nuclear deterrent for India is examined in this context. The production of nuclear bomb^was a part of the global strategy of the U.S. and British Governments .led by the monopoly capital to stall the growth of the socialist forces led by the Soviet Union, a policy that continued ^ unabated since the success of the October revolution. Contrary to the view widely held, the nuclear bomb, was not used against Japan to shorten the Second World War. The bombs were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to wrest the initiative of the war against Japan from the Soviet Union which had just entered the war against her. Japan was already on the verge of collapse and the bornbs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were dropped with the full knowledge of the U.S. Government that Japan was desperately sending signals for armistice. The dates for dropping of atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 'August 6 and 9 in 1945 respectively, were chosen with particular care. It was already known to the U.S. Government that Soviet Union "was expected to declare war against Japan on August 8. For, Stalin gave the assurance in the Yalta Conference in February 1945 that the Soviet Union would do so within three months from the day of cessation of war in Europe-.The European war ended on May 8 and the Soviet Union was to enter the war with Japan on August 8, 1945^ PMS Blackett showed in his widely quoted book how political, rather than military considerations, were uppermost in the minds of the U.S. strategists in manufacturing the nuclear bomb'. Blackett cites from an article by Norman Cousins and Thomas K Finletter in the Saturday Review of Literature on June 15, 1946 where the authors sought to explain why the suggestion offered by sixty four leading U.S. scientists to hold a demonstration blast to bring Japan to surrender could not be pursued : *'..... No, any test would have been impossible if the purpose was to knock Japan out before Russians came in—or at least before Russia could