DURING the Cold War the United States spent more than $45bn to protect senior government officials and the general public in the event of a nuclear war.

Like any familiar upstart India and Pakistan, on the other hand, have been screaming from rooftops about their ill-gotten nuclear capabilities. But as far as the public’s safety is concerned neither of them has spent five paisa. A few leaders and senior officials may have been provided for with nuclear shelters but the rest of us can go to hell — or heaven, as some claim to be deserving of the privilege.

In 2002 when nuclear tensions were dangerously high in South Asia, chanceries in the diplomatic enclave of Chanakaypuri were deserted, the families and non-essential staff in most embassies having been sent home protectively. India of course claimed there was no risk of a war, but the last straw in the spiral of global mistrust of its assurances came when the UN also ordered its international staff to leave the vicinity of New Delhi. (As far as I know similar evacuation was effected in Pakistan.)

After the stand-off was over, largely peacefully, India continued to sulk with the international community, particularly the United Nations, for what it thought was something of a betrayal because fleeing diplomats affected the bourses and tourism etc.

In other words, India wanted the world to be subjected to the terror of nuclear brinkmanship that it has forced on its ignorant and helpless citizens since at least May 1998. There are two other aspects to this nuclear cretinism in both countries that remain a source of worry. The first of these concerns is that people in both countries are mostly clueless, or worse they are cavalier, about how a nuclear catastrophe, accidentally triggered or deliberately induced, would affect them directly.

The second source of worry should be tracked closely by the new Obama administration because it concerns the emergence of a virulent tendency for mass suicide that was hitherto identified with major monotheistic religions via the Raptures and the arrival of the Mahdi etc. to deliver the faithful to paradise. Now a new virus seems to have mutated in the form of high Hindu nationalism if that is what is preached by the rightwing group, the RSS.

In Iran the shadowy group of Hojattiyeh believed that the Mahdi would deliver them to paradise. So they plotted a Third World War to precipitate the promised event. They decided they would throw incendiary bombs into the Soviet Union, which would instigate Moscow to send its troops into Iran. The United States would intervene on Iran’s behalf and there would global calamity with nuclear bombs destroying the planet, including of course its heathen and apostate inhabitants. The faithful would then rejoice in heaven. It goes to Ayatollah Khomeini’s credit that he had the group disbanded and its leaders locked up.

Now in a novel peep into his deepest thoughts, Mr K.S. Sudarshan, the head of India’s RSS, which is believed to model itself after Mussolini’s Fascists, has pronounced a few core benefits to India of a nuclear war with Pakistan or even a wider Third World War.

Mr Sudarshan, who is a virtual patron saint of the main opposition BJP and has pockets of influence even within the ruling Congress, said in a rare interview last month that a conflict (including a nuclear conflict) becomes inevitable when aasurs (literally demons, but philosophically all the opponents of the Hindu dharma) become a dominant force. In this case the aasurs were evidently Pakistanis. It would be useful to quote him directly, since the utterances could imply a new Indian nuclear doctrine should Hindu nationalists represented by the RSS take power on their own in India.

Mr Sudarshan was asked if India should go to war with Pakistan over the Mumbai carnage. He said war should be the last option because it wouldn’t stop there. He also said when “aasuri powers” start dominating the planet there is no other way but war.

“It will be nuclear war and a large number of people will be perished. In fact, not me but many people around the world have expressed their apprehension that this terrorism may ultimately result in a Third World War. And this will be a nuclear war in which many of us are going to be finished. But according to me, as of now, it is very necessary to defeat the demons and there is no other way. And let me say with confidence that after this destruction, a new world will emerge which will be very good, free from evil and terrorism.”

We know that several of the Bush presidency mavericks who played a hand in bringing the world to the brink of an ominous crisis believed in the Raptures. Many Muslim groups seek inspiration from similar beliefs. Now there is a Hindu variant, one that doesn’t seek a paradise in another world but hopes to build one here, by defeating the aasurs in a nuclear war (and surviving).

The world needs to sit up and listen closely. The virus is not confined to the RSS alone. The other day a highly regarded Indian TV channel asked me why India should not do with Pakistan what Israel has done with Hamas. I said Pakistan was not Gaza Strip. But my warning about how such insane ideas could result in the death of millions of Indians and Pakistanis was cleverly deleted from the programme.

Unlike the West, where the media have been at the forefront of educating their people about the risks of nuclear conflict, the Indian and Pakistani media have mostly worked in the opposite direction, brandishing their country’s nuclear prowess as a weapon for ready use.

In the United States, for example, the government funded everything from production and distribution of films and pamphlets instructing citizens how to mitigate the effects of a nuclear blast and fallout to the secret construction of massive underground facilities to allow the government to continue to operate during and after a nuclear war. These facilities, and a highly classified plan concerning their use, were justified by an official doomsday scenario, written by the US government. An American TV channel made The Day After, a docudrama about the day a Soviet missile hit Kansas City.

In South Asia, all that Pakistanis have been told is that they are lucky to have got the weapons without having to eat grass. Thanks to Mr Sudarshan, Indians can now celebrate a weapon that will decisively crush all the aasurs. Another lesson for President Barack Obama as he hits the ground running.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

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