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India Targets China's Satellites -- Peter J. Brown -- Asia Times -- January 22, 2010
The goals for India's anti-ballistic missile (ABM) and ballistic missile defense (BMD) programs may be shifting to accommodate an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon more quickly than previously planned, and this could radically alter the agenda of US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is currently in the middle of a three-day visit to India. [ Quotes (2) ] [ Comments (0) ]
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India Determined not to let Arms Control Measures Restrict their Ability to Deploy Space Weapons
 
"Memories in New Delhi run deep about how India's relative tardiness in developing strategic offensive systems [nuclear weapons] redounded in its relegation on 'judgment day' [when the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in 1968] to the formal category of non-nuclear weapons state," said Sourabh Gupta, senior research associate at Samuels International Associates in Washington, DC.

"With its early support of the former US president George W Bush's ballistic missile defense program and its current drive to develop anti-ballistic missile/anti-satellite capability, New Delhi is determined not to make the same mistake twice," added Gupta. "If and when globally negotiated restraints are placed on such strategic defensive systems or technologies - perhaps restraints of some sort of ASAT testing/hit-to-kill technologies - India will already have crossed the technical threshold in that regard, and acknowledgement of such status [will be] grand-fathered into any such future agreement."
Brown, Peter J. "India Targets China's Satellites." Asia Times. January 22, 2010.
India Closely Following China on Missile Defense / Anti-Satellite Weapons Policy
 
In early 2010, India's objectives are very clear.

"From a political/diplomatic angle, the guiding principle of India's missile defense/ASAT policy is not much different from China's - ie, maintain a basic political commitment to the non-weaponization of space, or, at minimum, the non-deployment of space-based offensive capabilities in global disarmament talks while assiduously cultivating the domestic technical capability to use space-based resources for strategic missile defense purposes," said Gupta.

At this point, nobody believes that some sort of magic firewall separates ongoing work on ABM and ASAT systems in a growing number of countries around the world.
Brown, Peter J. "India Targets China's Satellites." Asia Times. January 22, 2010.