Inaugurating an international seminar on `Europe and South Asia: 500 years' on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the landing of Vasco da Gama here, Krishan Kant said the nuclear explosion India conducted at Pokharan was to assert the country's rightful position as a major power in a unipolar world.

He said the nuclear power was acquired not with any aggressive intentions, and pointed out that the country has always stressed on the peaceful use of nuclear power.

The Vice-President made these observations diverting from his prepared speech at the seminar while reacting to a comment made by U R Ananthamurthy, eminent writer who presided over the meet, that the way US President Bill Clinton was ordering a country like India about its nuclear programmes made him feel it was the right thing we did at Pokharan.

Ananthamurthy pointed outthat despite the 500 years of contacts between India and the West, this country's culture and its civilisation had not been swept aside by the colonial influences unlike ther countries where such impact had catastrophic effect. India has stood its ground in all these turbulence and it broke the myth that all science and knowledge was Euro-centred, Ananthamurthy said.

The Vice-President, in his address, said the encounter between the Indian and Western civilisations has been largely non-antagonistic, which was unique in comparison with what happened elsewhere.