Good evening to all of you!
I am extremely happy and immensely grateful that the Nuclear-Free Future Awards family that includes Beyond Nuclear, IPPNW and the international jury have chosen me and our struggle for the 2025 “Nuclear-Free Future” Award in the resistance category.
Tens of thousands of people including children, youth, women and men are struggling against the Russian-supplied Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project near the southernmost tip of India. Several people have sacrificed their lives, scores of people have gone to prison, so many of us have braved police harassment, State surveillance, court cases, property losses, income deprivation, and umpteen number of various difficulties.
Lots and lots of religious leaders, community leaders, political leaders, lawyers, film personalities, intellectuals, writers, publishers, poets, artists, media persons, international human rights activists, even some conscientious government officials, police officers and the general public from all over Tamil Nadu and the larger India have contributed significantly to this 2011-2014 phase of a much longer struggle.
I know that you cannot honor all the people who have taken part in our struggle and that I have been chosen as a representative of all of them. On behalf of all those thousands and thousands of fellow protestors, I humbly accept this great award. Thank you!
Although I am disappointed that I could not be with you all this evening and accept this award in the hall where the ‘Great Emancipator’ President Abraham Lincoln’s voice had once reverberated, I am glad that my sons, who had to undergo so much suffering, are receiving this award from you and celebrating this timely and important recognition of our people and the struggle.
The struggle against the Koodankulam nuclear power project began back in 1988 right after the Chernobyl accident in April 1986. The government of India has adopted the 4-I strategy of Ignore, Insult, Intimidate and Incinerate. We were totally ignored when we asked for the basic information about the project, such as the detailed project report, environmental impact assessment, site evaluation study, safety analysis report etc. When we persisted with our campaign, we were called all kinds of names, that we were anti-Indian, anti-national, foreign-funded, American stooges, left-wing radicals and so forth.
When we still pressed ahead with our campaign, the State came down upon us heavily with 349 cases with very serious charges, including sedition, waging war on the state, attempt to murder and so on. We are attending court hearings even now. Our passports have been impounded, bank accounts frozen, ‘Look Out Circular’ issued, our properties vandalized, and we are still being treated as dangerous criminals.
We were physically attacked when we went for a dialogue with government officials, several of us were imprisoned for months together, and a few of us were shot to death by police, and killed by low-flying coastguard planes, and prison negligence etc.
Because of all this highhanded behaviour of the State, the concerted campaign was ended in 2014 but we have been propagating our anti-nuclear messages to the people of India through peaceful and democratic means.
Our messages are simple and straightforward:
Nuclear power is NOT cheap, or safe, or clean, or climate-friendly.
Nuclear power and nuclear bomb are both sides of the same coin. Nuclear reactors are stationary bombs and nuclear bombs are moving reactors.
Nuclear power is not suitable for a country like India that is highly and densely-populated. As you all know, the world’s worst industrial disaster took place in the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal in December 1984. The debilitating chemical waste of the Bhopal gas disaster has just been removed after 40 long years.
Both nationally and internationally, the nuclear hawks and hawkers promote nuclear power as THE answer for climate destruction. But consider the amount of carbon-emitting power that is used for uranium mining, milling, reactor construction (with thousands of tons of steel and cement over 20-30 years of construction), reactor operation for 40-60 years, decommissioning, waste management and so forth! Can anyone honestly claim that nuclear power is the answer for climate destruction? Even if it was, can poisoned Earth be the answer for polluted air? How are we going to deal with the dangerous nuclear wastes for the next 48,000 years?
Nuclearism is part and parcel of profiteering globalism. The India-US nuclear deal is not about India’s energy security, or national security or safeguarding India’s growth and development. This deal is a naked corporate business deal which will bring humongous profits to a few American corporate houses. Similarly, the nuclear deals that India has signed with Russia, France, Kazakhstan, Namibia, Argentina, and others will bring profits and prosperity to these countries’ corporate houses but will result in disaster and destruction for the poor in India. Yes, desire for profit, power, and prominence drives the nuclear industry.
On the other hand, it is hate, fear, anger, and recklessness that fuel this very industry. Some countries’ revision of their nuclear doctrines, refusal to extend nuclear arms treaties, rising weapons count, continuing Uranium enrichment, constant testing, actual threat to use nuclear bombs, and several wars around the world poised to reach a “nuclear threshold” foretell the precarious situation of our global society today. Yes, Nuclearism and Fascism are inter-related. Fascism is the ideology behind Nuclearism and Nuclearism is the penultimate expression of Fascism.
When all is said and done, this beautiful planet of ours, the Earth, can be likened to a humongous commercial airplane with clear class divisions, limited supply of resources, lopsided opportunity structures, and unbalanced entitlement arrangements, etc. And this plane of ours has been hijacked by the P-5 and the other nuclear States such as Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea and who knows who else?
The great poet, Robert Frost had predicted back in 1920:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
The delegates of the Third Meeting of States Parties (3MSP) to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) who are meeting in New York City right now have a tough task ahead. We wish them all the best!
And let us continue to strive for a nuclear-free future that will have No Deals, No Mines, No Reactors, No Dumps, and No Bombs! Nowhere in the world!!
To quote my favourite Robert Frost again:
Woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But we have promises to keep!
And miles to go before we sleep,
And miles to go before we sleep!
Thank you!
