Kahuta, Betrayal, and the Cost of Indian Obedience

History may one day judge that the single greatest failure of Indian strategic thinking wasn’t the loss of territory or the delay in modernization—but the decision not to bomb Kahuta when we had the chance. In 1982 and again in 1984, under Indira Gandhi, India had coordinated with Israel to carry out a surgical airstrike on Pakistan’s nuclear facility at Kahuta. Israeli jets were to take off from Jamnagar, sweep in low under Pakistani radar, and eliminate A.Q. Khan’s bomb factory. It would have changed the course of South Asian history. But then America intervened—again. The same United States that was arming Pakistan to the teeth for its Afghan jihad, that winked at Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization, and that quietly watched A.Q. Khan smuggle blueprints across continents—lectured India on “regional stability.” Under Washington’s pressure, Indira blinked. And the world paid the price.

The consequences are not abstract. They are Kargil. They are 26/11. They are nuclear blackmail over every border skirmish. They are Chinese scientists “visiting” Pakistani labs. They are Rawalpindi using the bomb as a cloak for terrorism. But the bigger betrayal came not from Washington, but from within New Delhi.

Morarji Desai’s obsessive need to prove himself a Gandhian statesman led him to believe Zia’s farcical assurances that Pakistan had no bomb. Worse, Desai didn’t just shut down covert operations—he turned over Indian intelligence assets to the ISI. Names. Files. Lives. His naïveté got our spies killed. IK Gujral, too, fancied himself a statesman of peace. In reality, he quietly gutted R&AW’s operations in Pakistan to please the doves in his own party and in Washington. Between them, Desai and Gujral dismantled India’s eyes and ears, while Kahuta enriched uranium unbothered. Both had blood on their hands—Indian blood. The blood of agents who died betrayed by their own Prime Ministers’ illusions.

Contrast this with Narendra Modi. He is no pacifist-in-chief. He understands that soft power flows from hard power, not from lofty speeches at candlelight vigils. His foreign policy is transactional when it needs to be, principled when it must be. India under Modi has the rarest of things—a leader who understands the language of deterrence. This is why the current moment matters. Israel is doing what India once planned: bombing nuclear facilities that pose a threat not just to itself, but to global order. The Iranian regime—like Pakistan—has used diplomacy as delay, and terrorism as leverage. Trump, to his credit, greenlit Israeli strikes on Iran despite his own transactional ties with Pakistan’s General Munir. He may be duplicitous, but he is not sentimental.

India must not repeat past mistakes. No more deference to American guilt-trips. No more moral lectures from the same West that armed Zia, overlooked Kahuta, and tut-tutted while Pakistan became a jihadist nuclear state. This time, India must back Israel openly and unambiguously—not for Tel Aviv’s sake, but for Delhi’s. Because the next Kahuta might not be in Iran. It could be in Myanmar, in Turkey, or in a Chinese-funded tunnel in Gilgit. Modi has a chance to rewrite the script. To show that Indian leadership is no longer a hostage to America’s hypocrisy or our own moral vanity. To support our allies without apology. And to ensure that when history knocks next, we don’t blink.