Open Letter on the International Day of Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

26th Sep­tem­ber 2014
To Prime Min­is­ter Naren­der Modi and Prime Min­is­ter Nawaz Sha­reef,

India and Pak­istan, two nations, two iden­ti­ties but with one spir­it, one cul­ture and one desire to strive towards progress and peace. How­ev­er it is not only our virtues but also our vices that make us one and the same. When it comes to our secu­ri­ty, we are both nations with mis­placed pri­or­i­ties. On this inter­na­tion­al day for the elim­i­na­tion of nuclear weapons, we ask you to revis­it the inapt sense of secu­ri­ty nuclear weapons have brought us as indi­vid­ual coun­tries and as mis­un­der­stood neigh­bors.

Voic­ing the con­cerns of hun­dreds of young activists, vol­un­teers, and lead­ers from India and Pak­istan, we urge you to real­ize that amass­ing nuclear weapons will only lead to dis­as­ter, not mil­i­tary tri­umph. Some four decades ago, these weapons were acquired with the vision to enhance secu­ri­ty and bring well-being to the peo­ple of India and Pak­istan. How­ev­er, ever since we have faced each oth­er mul­ti­ple times, be it in 1987, 1990, 1998 (Kargil Cri­sis) or Decem­ber 2001. All these instances have been peri­ods of extreme ten­sion between our coun­tries, always shad­owed by the impend­ing doom of a nuclear war. Each time, a cat­a­stroph­ic nuclear exchange between our two coun­tries was nar­row­ly avert­ed. . Four decades lat­er, with a new gen­er­a­tion, new ideas and new per­spec­tives in place, we must ques­tion how safe these weapons real­ly make us. We now have nuclear weapons that could cause 100 times the dam­age caused by the atom bombs used in Japan, which killed more than 200,000 in a blink of an eye. These shat­ter­ing tragedies are not just his­tor­i­cal events but por­tents of a pos­si­ble future for any city, any­where. Mean­while, we spend less than 10–12% of our bud­gets on improv­ing social wel­fare indi­ca­tors like edu­ca­tion, yet we spend bil­lions devel­op­ing weapons to try­ing to devel­op ways to prospec­tive­ly destroy each oth­er. We are a gen­er­a­tion that does not need to cling to weapons that drain pre­cious resources and assure our own anni­hi­la­tion. We ask you to lead the path to a nuclear-free world, which is a safe haven for our com­ing gen­er­a­tions.

We are a group of vol­un­teer lead­ers, advo­cates and con­cerned cit­i­zens who have all come togeth­er under the inter­na­tion­al move­ment for the elim­i­na­tion of nuclear weapons, called Glob­al Zero, fight­ing for a nuclear-free world by 2030. Sup­port­ed by world lead­ers like Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ban Ki Moon and many oth­ers in the same stride, we want you two to also com­mit to this call for glob­al nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment.

We both are nations with mis­placed pri­or­i­ties, but we are also nations with an upcom­ing gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers that tru­ly believes that they can shift men­tal­i­ties, break bar­ri­ers and most impor­tant­ly build bridges-not more nukes.

Yours Sin­cere­ly,
Glob­al Zero lead­ers from India and Pak­istan