Because new Delhi has never officially disclosed the size of its nuclear weapons stockpile, but the true figure remains known only to a tiny circle within the Indian establishment. A new study by four leading nuclear weapons researchers estimates that India may now possess up to 190 nuclear warheads, providing the most detailed public assessment yet of the country’s atomic arsenal in 2026.
For decades, India has maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity. Unlike some nuclear powers that periodically release broad data about their arsenals, New Delhi prefers silence.
Importantly, the report repeatedly notes the opacity surrounding India’s strategic arsenal. The authors state that the Indian government does not publish numbers about the size of its nuclear weapon stockpile and that India has never disclosed the size of its arsenal. For decades, India has maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity. Unlike some nuclear powers that periodically release broad data about their arsenals, New Delhi prefers silence. This has led outside researchers to rely on satellite imagery, government statements, missile test data, budgetary information and open-source intelligence to estimate India’s stockpile. The BAS study represents one such effort. For India, however, nuclear weapons have never been merely about numbers. Abdul Kalam famously described nuclear weapons as “weapons of peace. His argument was that a credible nuclear deterrent would prevent coercion and war rather than encourage it. More than a quarter century later, that phrase continues to shape India’s strategic thinking and public perception of its atomic arsenal. The regional context is equally important. The confrontation once again raised international concerns about escalation between two nuclear-armed neighbours. Indian military needs to be applauded for this huge restraint.
Following the Pokhran II nuclear tests in May 1998, former Indian President and renowned scientist Dr A.P.J. Five decades before Kalam called nuclear bombs ‘weapons of peace’, India’s Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, famously, in a way, had echoed what Kalam emphasised much later in 1998 after the Shakti series of atomic tests. In 1946, Shri Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi said: “non-violence… is the only thing that the atom bomb cannot destroy. He wrote this famous nuclear disarmament statement in the February 10, 1946 issue of the Harijan magazine. It still holds that the only country to use atomic bombs in war was the United States of America in 1945 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Gandhiji is considered the ‘apostle of peace’ as we celebrate his 157 th birth anniversary. The report notes that tensions with Pakistan remain one of the world’s most significant nuclear flashpoints and specifically references India’s Operation Sindoor in 2025. India’s strategic restraint resulted in Operation Sindoor lasting a mere 88 hours, as other wars of the world continue to linger for years, like the Ukraine and Iran conflicts.
The operation followed a terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir and involved Indian strikes against targets in Pakistan, according to the study.
