[Reader-list] Stop the Nuke Deal

[prakash ray]

Dear Friends

This is an open letter to the prime minister to scrap the Indo-US nuclear
deal signed by religious leaders, leaders of social movements, left
activists, journalists and other professionals. Please endorse it. And if
possible please forward it to others.



AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIME MINSTER OF INDIA TO SCRAP THE INDO US NUCLEAR
DEAL



To

Shri Manmohan Singh

Prime Minister



Dear Prime Minister,



We the undersigned demand scrapping of the Indo-US Nuclear Deal with
immediate effect. The content of the Deal which is currently being
negotiated between India and the US was the first laid out in the joint
statement issued by the Prime Minister and the US President on July 18, 2005
from Washington DC and further reiterated on March 2, 2006 in another joint
statement by them issued from New Delhi. The signing of the Henry Hyde Act
on December 18, 2006 is logical interference of the content of the Act
legally making India a junior ally of the US Imperialism confiscating and
trunacating our hard earned sovereignty.



We therefore demand that the Indo-US Nuclear Deal be scrapped given up with
immediate effect and the ongoing talks between IAEA should be called off
immediately.



The Indo-US Nuclear Deal is patently anti-people, will make India a
strategic ally of American Imperialism in South Asia to impose its hegemony
over Asia. The Deal also negates the concrete achievements gained by the
International and national peace movements for disarmament and Nuclear-free
World. After the example of the ruthless genocide, devastation and
occupation of Iraq before us, we feel that the Indo-US Nuclear Deal will
become an instrument for ruthlessly imposing the neo-liberal economic agenda
and pliant regimes over the impoverished people of the Third World and
further tightening the hold through the Indo-US Nuclear Deal, US Imperialism
will have a firm grip over the governments of   the independent
nation-states of India and Asia. This makes a mockery of the cherished
values of equal and democratic world order and the aspirations of the
national liberation struggles including the whole spirit of decolonization.



The Indo-US Nuclear Deal is an outrageous instrument of recolonization of
India and Third World. The Deal, as and when comes through will, grievously
undermine the current global;  regime of nuclear non-proliferation, as it is
meant to make an unique exception in case of India, in gross violation of
underlying principles of the International peace, workers, environment and
women's movements.



The fact that Pakistan has been brusquely refused a similar deal by the US
in spite of persistent clamouring, and Iran is being demonstratively coerced
to desist from developing its own nuclear power production allowed and
encouraged under article IV of the NPT which further brings out graphically
the abominable discriminatory nature of the Deal. The deal is likely to
trigger a stepped up vertical and horizontal proliferations all over Asia.
This goes against our commitment of Nuclear-free Asia and World.



We totally reject the proposition that it will enhance India's energy
security and, we categorically assert that nuclear power is prohibitively
costly., therefore the Deal will distort India's energy options by diverting
resource guzzling, and the intrinsically hazardous and potentially
catastrophic, nuclear power at the cost of eco-friendly and many times
financially cheaper renewable sources of energy.



With the human development index of India and the Third World miserably low,
we demand that instead of spending irrationally on nuclear power,
expenditures on in health, education, food security, rural and urban
employment be enhanced.

We want to remind you that India as the leader of the Non- Aligned Movement
and as vocal participant in various international forums including the UN,
has always committed itself for a Nuclear-free World and abolition of the
existing nuclear weapons. In the spirit of the above we want the Government
of India to ban the entry of nuclear powered sub marines of the US and other
major NATO countries. After six decades of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki
nuclear tragedies, we demand that immediate steps to be taken for a
Nuclear-free Asia and the world.



The above Indo-US Nuclear Deal will further reinforce the unequal strategic
relationship between the US and thereby would add momentum to the US
imperialistic project for unfettered global dominance .We reject any
ambitions of the Indian ruling classes to act as the a Big Brother in South
Asia or to emerge as a global power basking in the reflected glory of global
headman and goon. This will not only undermine India's position as a
founding and leading member of the Non- Aligned Movement but will seriously
undermine prestige of NAM as a whole;

of meekly surrendering to the US Imperialism defying the democratic
aspirations of the toiling masses of the Third World for a Nuclear-free,
just and livable world.

Thomas Kochery

President, National Fisherman's Forum and NAPM

Dr John Dayal

President, All India Catholic Union

Feroze Mithiborewala

Muslim Intellectual Forum

Maulwi  Farooq

Jamat-E-Islami Hind

Dr Zafurul Islam Khan

Editor-The Milli Gazette New Delhi

Gopal Rai

Convenor, Teesra Swadhinta Sangram

Dunu Roy

Hazards Centre, New Delhi

Seela Manasweenee

Hazards Centre, New Delhi

Subhash Lomte

National Convener, National campaign Committee for Rural workers

Faisal Khan

Asha Parivar and NAPM

Kavita Krishnan

Editor, Liberation

Shailendar

Social Activist, Delhi

Dhananjay Tripathi

Ex President, JNU Student's Union

Vijay Pratap

Convener, Lokayan



Babu Lal Sharma

Convenor, Global Gandhi Forum



Rakesh Bhatt

Coordinator, SADED/CSDS



Kiran Shaheen

Social Activist



Chandrika

Editor-Dakhal Duniya web magazine



Prakash Kumar Ray

Film maker and Research Scholar JNU



Jeet Bhattacharya

Research Scholar JNU



Rishika Mehershi

Research Scholar JNU



Asit

Researcher and Social Activist



Kumar Sameer

Social Activist



Peeyush Pant

Editor-Lok Samvad