Nuclear weapons testing: India
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From the archives of The Times of India
April 10, 2013
They are hostile neighbours widely seen by many as competing to have a bigger nuclear arsenal. However, after its first nuclear test in 1974, India offered to share nuclear technology with Pakistan. In her statement to Parliament after the tests on July 22, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi said she had told her Pakistani counterpart, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, that New Delhi would be ready to share the relevant technology with Islamabad. Quoting her statement, the US embassy reported, as revealed by Wikileaks, “I have explained in my letter to Prime Minister Bhutto the peaceful nature and the economic purposes of this experiment and have also stated that India is willing to share her nuclear technology with Pakistan in the same way she is willing to share it with other countries, provided proper conditions for understanding and trust are created. I once again repeat this assurance.”
Sanjay, Rajiv vied to bag IAF deals
Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi may have, during the Emergency, vied with each other as representatives in at least one of the most rewarding IAF contracts, US Embassy cables released by WikiLeaks suggest. While Maruti, controlled by Sanjay, was negotiating for British Aircraft Corporation to land two IAF contracts, Rajiv was working for Saab-Scania, whose Viggen aircraft was in the fray with Jaguar for one of the two projects.
Gandhi was bemused by int’l fallout after Pokhran
Indira Gandhi’s offer to share nuclear technology with Pakistan was extraordinary in its audacity, but equally in its foresight. The Indian offer came as her Pakistani counterpart Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto termed as insufficient Gandhi’s assurance that tests were not meant to harm Pakistan. In his response to Gandhi, Bhutto said, many past assurances from India “regrettably remain unhonored”. Testing a nuclear device is no different from detonation of a nuclear weapon, he wrote.
Pakistan first tested a nuclear weapon in May 1998 — a fortnight after India conducted its second nuclear test. But Gandhi’s offer to share nuclear technology with Pakistan was not the move of a potential nuclear proliferator. Instead, it showed the confidence of a leader who probably believed that India, after the test, could seamlessly become part of the international nuclear system, where New Delhi could become a legitimate nuclear supplier. Gandhi’s confidence, as it turned out, was misplaced. India was immediately placed under a tough technology denial regime. In fact, the Nuclear Suppliers Group was created as a result of the test precisely to keep countries like India beyond the pale. It took a hard-fought nuclear deal with the US to open that door for India in 2008.
But on July 22, 1974, Gandhi was looking ahead, and wanted to ensure that the craters formed by nuclear explosions could be used for strategic storage of oil and gas or even shale oil extraction. In her statement to Parliament, she seemed bemused by the international reaction to the first Pokharan test. “It was emphasized that activities in the field of peaceful nuclear explosion are essentially research and development programmes. Against this background, the government of India fails to understand why India is being criticized on the ground that the technology necessary for the peaceful nuclear explosion is no different from that necessary for weapons programme. No technology is evil in itself: it is the use that nations make of technology which determines its character. India does not accept the principle of apartheid in any matter and technology is no exception.”
Pokhran I/ 1974
The events
Pokhran I: India's first ever hands-on with nuclear technology, May 18, 2016: India Today
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From: Pokhran I: India's first ever hands-on with nuclear technology, May 18, 2016: India Today
From: Pokhran I: India's first ever hands-on with nuclear technology, May 12, 2018: India Today
The day was May 18 in the year 1974. On this day, the Indian government conducted its first nuclear test in the deserts of Pokhran, Rajasthan making it a peaceful nuclear explosion. Smiling Buddha (MEA designation: Pokhran-I) was the assigned code name of India's first successful nuclear bomb test.
With the Smiling Buddha, India became the world's sixth nuclear power after the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, France and China to successfully test out a nuclear bomb.
Here is the history and aftermath of the nuclear test:
India started its own nuclear program in 1944
Physicist Raja Ramanna expanded and supervised scientific research on nuclear weapons and was the first directing officer of a small team of scientists that supervised and carried out the tests The name Pokhran came from the place it was tested which is a city of the same name located in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan.
A team of 75 scientists and engineers, led by Raja Ramanna, PK Iyengar, Rajagopala Chidambaram and others had worked on it from 1967 to 1974 The test was a success but the aftermath of the nuclear test was not an encouraging one
The test became the center of attention as there was widespread outrage and concern over the move since this nuclear bomb was tested by the country, which was outside the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and the experiments took place without any warning to the international community
As a result, the US took offense to India barging into the nuclear society without any warning and then, blocked aid to India and imposed numerous sanctions
The device tested was a fission device and there had been no release of radioactivity in the atmosphere Although, India has still not joined the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty, claiming that the nuclear tests were for peaceful reasons, the nuclear deal between India and the United States showed that India's status as a responsible nuclear power has been accepted by the rest of the world.
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Nixon Caught Off-Guard By the 1974 Nuclear Test
From: Srinivas Laxman, Declassified: Nixon Caught Off-Guard By India’s 1974 Nuclear Test, December 7, 2011: Asian Scientist
The Nixon administration in the 70s was caught off-guard by India’s first nuclear weapon test on May 18,1974, say declassified intelligence documents made public by the American National Security Archive.
The Nixon administration in the 70s was caught napping while India was making preparations to conduct its first nuclear weapon test at Pokhran in Rajasthan on May 18,1974. This startling revelation has been made in declassified intelligence community staff post mortem documents which were made public on December 5, 2011 by the American National Security Archive and the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project.
“India’s peaceful nuclear explosion on 18 May, 1974 caught the U.S. by surprise in part because the intelligence community had not been looking for signs that a test was in the works,” the documents state. According to the documents which number more than 20, Nixon administration policy makers had given a low priority to the Indian nuclear weapon program, with intelligence production (analysis and reporting) “falling off” during the 20 months prior to the tests. The first Indian nuclear weapon test – codenamed “Smiling Buddha” – was conducted at 8.05 a.m. on May 18, 1974 at Pokhran. Its key players were Raja Ramanna who lead the atomic bomb team, R. Chidambaram, and P. K. Iyengar.
The documents state that in early 1972, two years prior to the test, the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) had predicted that India could make preparations for an underground test without detection by the U.S. intelligence. The INR report warned that the U.S. government had accorded a “relatively modest priority to relevant intelligence collection activities,” which suggested that a concerted effort by India to conceal such preparations may well succeed.
According to the documents, the Nixon White House was focused on the Vietnam War and a grand strategy towards Beijing and Moscow. The documents also suggest that Nixon’s trip to China during that time may have also prompted India to conduct the nuclear weapon test. Significantly, the INR had prepared its India report at a time when secret sources were telling U.S. intelligence that New Delhi was about to test a nuclear device. The small spate of reports about a nuclear weapon test had such “congruity, apparent reliabity and seeming credibility” that they prompted a review of India’s nuclear intentions by INR and other American government offices. “In the end government officials could not decide whether India had made a decision to test although a subsequent lead suggested otherwise,” the documents state. Relations between New Delhi and Washington were already cool during the Nixon administration which treated India as relatively low priority.
“That India refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was a non-issue for Nixon and Kissinger, who had little use for the NPT and treated nuclear proliferation as less than secondary. While the State Department cautioned India against nuclear tests in the late 1970, concern did not rise to the top of the policy hill,” the documents stressed. ——
Source: The National Security Archive.
Pokhran-II
The objectives
Indrani Bagchi, Tests that made world see India in different light, May 13, 2018: The Times of India
From: Indrani Bagchi, Tests that made world see India in different light, May 13, 2018: The Times of India
Twenty years ago, a sudden late-afternoon announcement by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his national security adviser, Brajesh Mishra, shook the world. On 11th and 13th May, India conducted a set of five nuclear tests, setting the country on the road to not merely being a nuclear power, but a country deserving of a space at the global high table.
Rakesh Sood, former diplomat and someone who was involved in the post-nuclear tests diplomacy, said India had three objectives. “First was to validate new designs to ensure credibility of the nuclear deterrent as the data set from the 1974 test was limited. Second was to declare that India was now a nuclear weapon state and modify the terms of our engagement with other states accordingly. Third was to generate an acceptance of India as a responsible state with an impeccable nonproliferation record.”
The nuclear tests announcement was followed closely by a massive global outreach by India, starting with the United States.
The first response was outright condemnation issued from every multilateral platform. But in a counter-intuitive action, then foreign minister Jaswant Singh and US deputy secretary Strobe Talbott began a conversation — that led to a whole new relationship being built between US and India. As Raja Mohan, director Carnegie India says, the tests “were needed to end India’s international isolation. They provided the basis for reconciliation with the global nuclear order, and redefined our relationship with the US”.
Former NSA, Shivshankar Menon believes the tests “shook loose our relations with all major powers, US, China, even Pakistan. The world had got used to a certain kind of India. That was challenged, successfully”. Former foreign secretary S Jaishankar says the tests created one of the prerequisites for India’s aspiration to become a leading power. “The actions we took 20 years ago ensured our national security. Our responsible record and subsequent engagements ensured global understanding of our policies. That is also shown by our nuclear collaborations around the world.”
The 1998 nuclear tests began the process for the world to acknowledge India as a responsible nuclear power. It was something Indian strategists said ad infinitum, that from 1974 despite decades of economic and technological sanctions, India had remained true to the highest NPT standards despite being an NPT outlier. While harmonising itself with the global nuclear order, the tests and their aftermath ironically destroyed the prevalent “nuclear superstructure”.
Ironically, with Pakistan, the 1998 tests — Pakistan followed soon after — gave Islamabad-Rawalpindi a sense of a ‘threshold’ below which they could continue to wage a proxy war, most spectacularly during Kargil. Since then, Pakistan has taken the riskier path, developing tactical nuclear weapons, while India separated its civil and military programmes and put a nuclear doctrine in place.
Two decades on, Pokhran-II culminated in the India-US nuclear deal, membership of three of four global non-proliferation regimes and a waiver from the NSG, doors that had been closed to India.
Taking the long view, Ashley Tellis, senior fellow at Carnegie, who helped to negotiate the nuclear deal for US described the tests as “a turning point in India’s engagement with the world — long overdue, but still incomplete, investment in assuring Indian security”.
The events
India Today.in , Building up a nuclear muscle “India Today” 15/12/2016
1998
Pokhran-II
On May 13, 1998, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announced India's new status as the world's sixth nuclear weapons armed power. Two days before the prime minister's announcement, on May 11, 'Operation Shakti' had been initiated. India had stunned-and somewhat alarmed-the world community with a series of five nuclear weapons tests. The weapons were of three different kinds-one fusion or thermonuclear weapon, two fission devices and two sub-kiloton devices-which indicated the flexibility and range of India's nuclear arsenal, slowly built up over the years. Pokhran-II was the first Indian test of a nuclear weapon since 1974. Post-1974, bomb technology had been placed on the backburner, until Pakistan came close to acquiring a nuclear weapon with Chinese assistance. Faced with the twin threats of a Chinese and Pakistani nuclear weapons arsenal and a closing global window-the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was opened for signatures in 1996-the strategic community was left with no other option but to hit the test button.
2017/ number of nuclear weapons tested
From: November 6, 2017: The Times of India
See graphic:
Nuclear weapons tested by India, Pakistan and other countries, till Nov 2017
See also
Pakistan- India economic relations
Pakistan- India: Cease-fire and its violations
Nuclear weapons testing: India- Pakistan
Nuclear arsenals: India, Pakistan
and many more articles, especially about the 1965 and 1971 wars, The Kargil war of 1999, 1947...
