Over 110 countries have reached an agreement today to ban cluster bombs. A single package bomb that is air-dropped opens to release numerous cluster bombs that are carried with small parachutes in and surrounding the area where it is dropped. While the bombs are expected are detonate on landing, most of them don’t because of the soft-landing owing to parachutes and remain potent long after wars leading to civilian casualties. Therefore, there has been a lot of activism against the use of cluster bombs in wars, which has ultimately resulted in today’s treaty to ban them.

It is very sad that the country that boasts of Mahatma Gandhi as the father of the nation and won independence on the policy of non-violence (ahimsa) was not even part of the talks held in Dublin. India holds large stockpiles of cluster bombs and might use them in wars. Further disappointing is the fact that India has sided with irresponsible countries such as Pakistan, China, USA and Russia in not signing the treaty.

The principles and policies on which India got independence from Britain are being forgotten. Not that India is pacifist, it is a nuclear power and has got one of the largest military in the world. It spends billions of dollars on purchasing arms every year. But at least it has a declared policy of no-first-use with nuclear weapons.

Not that India should not have or use bombs in wars, how else are wars fought! It is that, bombs that are useful during war should be used. Not cluster bombs and landmines that lay buried long after wars have ended to detonate one day killing innocent civilians.

Don’t you agree?