New Delhi: With all eyes on Op Sindoor, most would have missed the significance of the today’s date – May 18. It was on this date, 51 years ago, that the the ground first shook in Rajasthan’s Pokhran. The silent explosion that shook the world spiralled India into the select league of nations that possessed the capability of using nuclear energy as a weapon.
Om May 18, 1974, India successfully detonated her first nuclear device, stunning the world and reshaped the global nuclear order. India had become the first country outside the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to demonstrate nuclear capability.
The Operation was codenamed ‘Smiling Buddha’ as it was Buddha Jayanti on May 18, 1974. Just as during Operation Sindoor, Smiling Buddha established India’s technological prowess, strategic autonomy and national resolve on the world stage.
Officially, it was known as Pokhran-I and was conducted in extreme secrecy under the leadership of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
“Dr Ramanna, please go ahead. It will be good for the nation,” Indira Gandhi said on May 17, 1974. This was two years after she greenlighted the project during a visit to Bhabha Atomic Research Centre or BARC on September 7, 1972.
As many as 75 scientists and engineers, led by Raja Ramanna, P K Iyengar, Rajagopala Chidambaram and others had worked on the project from 1967 to 1974.
The Ministry of External Affairs described the test as a “peaceful nuclear explosion”, as several countries raised concerns about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was formed in response to India’s nuclear test. This group of 48 nuclear supplier countries collaborated to regulate the export of nuclear-related equipment and technology apart from the material provided to non-nuclear powers.
Ramanna, who was then the director of BARC, is known to have communicated to Indira Gandhi that “The Buddha has finally smiled.”
According to experts, the nuclear device tested in 1974 used an implosion-type design, similar to the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki. It worked by using high explosives to compress a plutonium core until it triggered a nuclear explosion. About 6 kg of plutonium from the CIRUS reactor was used, and a polonium–beryllium initiator, codenamed Flower, helped start the chain reaction. The implosion system was developed in Chandigarh, and the detonation system in Pune.
Indian engineers at BARC fully assembled the bomb, which was hexagonal, about 1.25 meters wide, and weighed around 1,400 kg. It was mounted on a metal tripod and transported to the test shaft using a rail system, which the army kept camouflaged with sand to maintain secrecy.
The device was detonated at 8.05 am and scientist Pranab Rebatiranjan Dastidar was the one who pushed the firing button. Ramanna, in his autobiography, ‘Years Of Pilgrimage’ recalled that on the day of the detonation, there was some argument about who would press the button.
“I put an end to it by suggesting that the person who had been responsible for fabricating the trigger should, in a manner of speaking, pull it. Dastidar was chosen to press the button’’ Ramanna wrote.
Padma Shri awardee Dastidar was the group director at BARC and went on to become the director at the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He also contributed to the development of the reactor for India’s first indigenous nuclear submarine, INS Arihant. He passed away on February 11, 2022, in California.
While India officially maintained that it was a “peaceful nuclear explosion,” the reality was more complex. In a 1997 interview, Ramanna clarified: “The Pokhran test was a bomb, I can tell you now. An explosion is an explosion, a gun is a gun, whether you shoot at someone or shoot at the ground I just want to make clear that the test was not all that peaceful.”
India refrained from further nuclear testing for over two decades. Then, in May 1998, India conducted a second series of tests under Operation Shakti (Pokhran-II), using advanced indigenous technology developed over the previous 24 years.
