This article examines the feasibility and advisability of India joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Before India came out openly as a nuclear-armed state, it could find, in many quarters, sympathy—if not actual support—for its disdainful stance toward the NPT. Since the indefinite extension of the NPT and India's nuclear test explosions, nothing whatsoever is gained by remaining aloof from the NPT community which is, for all intents and purposes, the rest of the world. Without formally adhering to the treaty, India should embrace it wholeheartedly and be an exemplary nuclear-weapon state, showing the way ahead for the treaty's nuclear-weapon states.

India's nuclear development has been accompanied by a dual track strategy of developing and building weapons while criticising the non-proliferation regime as discriminatory and simultaneously making public statements and proposals in favour of nuclear disarmament. But with international progress likely on aspects of nuclear disarmament over the next few months, India will be in the spotlight at the forthcoming 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference to help move the disarmament and non-proliferation agenda forward.

That a nuclear taboo exists indicates the divide between conventional and nuclear war. It is no wonder then that India – though a nuclear weapons power – deems nuclear weapons not for military use but for deterrence purposes. These are, therefore, taken as political weapons. Seeking to deter use of nuclear weapons against India or its forces anywhere, India's nuclear doctrine promises ‘massive’ punitive retaliatory strike in case of nuclear use by its enemy. This is evidence that the Indian leadership is cognizant of the special status of nuclear weapons.