One Day After Bush Deal, Indians Hold Nuke War Practise

Guess what the Indian Army was doing on the day after Bush offered their nation a massive deal on nuclear technology, equipment and fuel?

Holding a huge "WMD warfare simulation exercise" in the Punjab area (which borders a Pakistani province also called Punjab and the disputed Kashmir region - here's the map).

From India DefenceLink:

Western Sector, Undisclosed Location: Simulated conditions were created for training the troops to handle nuclear biological and chemical warfare somewhere in the western sector today.

Wearing special clothing ensuring protection from nuclear and chemical troops in the modern day conflicts, which are going to be of short duration and the battles would be fought with all intensity, the Army had been trained to prove their mental and physical superiority to achieve the motto - fight to win. Amidst shouting of slogans Bole so Nihal and Har Har Mahadev, the troops under nuclear and biological attack fought brilliantly to capture the initiative was the highlight of the mock exercises involving the Panther Division of the Vajra Corps in pursuit of operational excellence.

A spokesman of the fighting division said highly motivated troops, professionally trained synergied the force to ensure all-round victory. He said historical battles had hardened the troops responsible for the operations in the highly developed terrain of Punjab.

The "historical battles" referred to are undoubtably those with Pakistan in 1947-48, 1965, and 1971 (and almost 2002). It doesn't fill you with confidence, does it?

Update Srirangan, who lists his URL as "india-defence.com", points out in comments that I got the date wrong. It was the day before the Bush visit. He also points out that the exercise was to test the Army's capability when under a nuclear/chemical/biological attack. He thinks I "hardly understood the report".

I think he is wrong. The date thing was a genuine mistake and I apologise for it. I'm from the UK where we list dates day/month/year not month/day/year. That it was the day before rather than the day after doesn't change the political ramifications of holding such an exercise so close to Bush's visit though.

As to the second point, I am unclear what Sri thinks India would be doing if it was attacked with WMD - not retaliating in kind maybe? And who would be attacking India with MWD that lives close enough that the conventional army would be mounting a land counterattack? My point remains that the date of the exercise and the choice of location was undoubtably meant to send a message to Pakistan (and to China) but that the same message will ring very harshly in the ears of those in the U.S. who may have misgivings about this nuclear deal or about arming both sides of a potential war.