50 years of Pokhran I: Revisiting India's peaceful nuclear explosion

2024 marks the 50^th anniversary of the Pokhran-I nuclear test in 1974—the test that was a turning point in Indian history, signalling the beginning of India’s nuclear trajectory. The ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’ (PNE) marked India's entry into the elite group of countries with nuclear capabilities, despite facing resistance from the global non-proliferation order. The Pokhran-I test brought India technology-denial regimes that left India grappling with technological challenges, sanctions, and heavy costs to raise a nuclear option on its own. Fast forward to five decades later, assessing this unprecedented step and later the shifts in India's nuclear policy in the years that followed provides a window into the interplay of geopolitical tensions, technological ambitions, and ethical dilemmas that defined India's nuclear journey through the latter half of the 20^th century.

The Pokhran-I test brought India technology-denial regimes that left India grappling with technological challenges, sanctions, and heavy costs to raise a nuclear option on its own.

As the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) took shape in the 1960s, India fundamentally opposed joining what it saw as a discriminatory regime that took away India’s right to explore its nuclear options. Although initially supportive of several non-proliferation initiatives like the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), India believed that signing of the NPT would forever establish an unfair nuclear norm of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” by the middle of the 1960s. Within India, there was an emerging divergence of views on the question of nuclear weapons. Scientists like Homi Bhabha, who played a critical role in nuclear testing, advocated retaining at least the option of developing Peaceful Nuclear Explosives (PNEs) for civilian purposes like mining and earth-moving projects. However, PNE work could also conveniently provide cover for advancing weapons capabilities.

Even among the political leadership, there existed divergence on how India should progress in its nuclear path. Then Prime Minister Nehru remained ambivalent about weaponising despite the growing security concerns, especially after the war with China and China's nuclear test in Lop Nur in 1964. Nehru's successor Lal Bahadur Shastri also resisted domestic pressure to go nuclear after the Chinese test, seeking alternative security assurances from the nuclear powers during his visit to the United Kingdom in 1964. However, during the period of Indira Gandhi in 1966, she charted a strikingly different course. Unlike her predecessors, Gandhi took a hard-line realpolitik stance against the discriminatory NPT. She authorised extensive efforts by the Indian nuclear establishment to achieve a functional nuclear explosive capability over the next several years, in pursuit of the peaceful option if needed.

After intensive work by Indian nuclear scientists through the late 1960s, the programme was finally ready for its big moment. On 18 May 1974, the Pokhran-I, codename “Smiling Buddha” , was detonated through underground testing in the remote Rajasthan desert. Though officially termed a "peaceful nuclear explosion" (PNE), Pokhran-I was a de facto display of India’s nuclear technology that gave India entry to the elite nuclear club. The successful underground detonation provoked immense national pride, but also global condemnation and concerns over nuclearisation of the subcontinent.

Although initially supportive of several non-proliferation initiatives like the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), India believed that signing of the NPT would forever establish an unfair nuclear norm of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” by the middle of the 1960s.

Rather than gaining respect as a nuclear weapons state, India faced harsh penalties against the test. In early 1975, the United States (US) rallied major nuclear suppliers to establish the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)—an export control cartel to regulate transfer of nuclear materials and technology to non-NPT states. The NSG imposed highly restrictive safeguards and export controls that amounted to effective technology denial for India's nuclear programme. New Delhi lost access to critical nuclear fuel supplies and equipment from the US, Canada, and others. Within America itself, the Pokhran-I detonation spurred the passage of the landmark Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act (NNPA) of 1978 by the Carter administration. The NNPA imposed sweeping sanctions against any state engaging in nuclear enrichment or reprocessing-related activities—key chokepoints in weapons development that India had crossed.

The actions taken by the US and several others imposed heavy restrictions on India, making the latter an outcast within the global non-proliferation order for decades to come. The test had demonstrated India's nuclear capabilities but at the price of provoking severe technology denial from the established nuclear powers. New Delhi's peaceful nuclear option came at immense economic and political cost, and an isolation that would only be shed after further nuclear tests in 1998.

The 1980s witnessed India dabbling with the idea of testing nuclear devices again, especially following Indira Gandhi’s return to power in 1980. In 1981, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi initially approved an additional nuclear test only to reverse her decision within 24 hours. The consequences of economic sanctions loomed large if India were to resume atomic testing at a time when New Delhi was heavily dependent on external aid. This was one of the most significant legacies of India's 1974 PNE to the extent that sanction-related threats and potential aid cut-offs fettered India from testing, apart from triggering a whole slew of technology-denial regimes through export control restrictions such as the NSG and NNPA.

The debate about testing would continue into the next decade, the 1990s, when nuclear non-proliferation assumed considerable importance and topped the international community’s agenda.

Indira Gandhi’s successor, Rajiv Gandhi, was never a nuclear weapons enthusiast; he did, however, allow for the refinement and improvements in the design of nuclear devices and permitted lab-based technical work to continue apace during his tenure. The pressure to resume nuclear testing in the 1980s surprisingly emerged with the acceleration in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme. Ironically, this, again, was another significant development and legacy of the 1974 PNE—it had an arresting effect on Pakistan to the point that the latter acquired a weaponised capability even before India did. Whereas India ended up tying itself in knots, which involved a painstaking and tortuous debate about whether to test or not test and what its commitment to nuclear disarmament would be in the event New Delhi acquired a nuclear weapons capability. The debate about testing would continue into the next decade, the 1990s, when nuclear non-proliferation assumed considerable importance and topped the international community’s agenda. Yet, by March 1989, even the anti-nuclear bomb Rajiv Gandhi, thanks to Chinese assistance, decided he had seen enough regarding the growth and strength of the Pakistani weapons programme and the threat it posed to India, compelling him to authorise the weaponisation of India’s nuclear programme without testing further.

The 1990s saw India continuing to refine and improve its nuclear capabilities as well as the missile delivery capabilities necessary to launch them, but it still exercised restraint on the conduct of atomic tests. Nevertheless, with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the erstwhile Soviet Union (SU), as noted, nuclear non-proliferation with an intense drive to “cap, freeze, and rollback” India’s weapons programme gathered momentum. By 1995, the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) was indefinitely extended confirming to India that the five designated nuclear weapons states would retain their nuclear capabilities even as they sought to prevent India from acquiring atomic weapons of its own. India came close to conducting a nuclear test only to be thwarted by US intelligenc,e which detected preparations of the test by the Indian government under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. The consequences of sanctions also weighed heavily on the Rao government as was the case with earlier Indian governments that led to a demurral, especially when India was recovering from a period of considerable economic stress. In 1996, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was negotiated with India, leaving New Delhi more pressured to resume testing. Ironically, the very non-proliferation regime geared to prevent the resumption of nuclear tests since the 1974 PNE occasioned the five nuclear tests of May 1998.

The consequences of sanctions also weighed heavily on the Rao government as was the case with earlier Indian governments that led to a demurral, especially when India was recovering from a period of considerable economic stress.

Following the atomic tests of 1998 conducted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, India announced a moratorium on nuclear tests. Post-Pokhran II, New Delhi engaged in a nuclear dialogue with Washington under the Clinton Administration; and its successor, the George W. Bush Administration, was open to concluding an agreement that would allow New Delhi to resume nuclear commerce without giving up its nuclear weapons programme, albeit with India placing a part of its civilian nuclear estate under the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) full-scope safeguards. This culminated in the 123 Agreement concluded on 18 July 2005 between the G.W. Bush Administration and the Manmohan Singh government. Three years later, India secured a clean waiver from the NSG, which ironically was established to prevent and punish countries like India from acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities. Today, India is also pressing for membership in the NSG. The 1974 PNE not only challenged the global nuclear order with the international community treating India as a pariah and revisionist state, but, decades later, it also led to the international community accepting India as a de facto nuclear weapons state that could enjoy all the benefits of nuclear commerce.

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Ankit K is New Delhi-based analyst who specialises in the intersection of Warfare and Strategy. 

Kartik Bommakanti is a Senior Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation

• Nuclear Security
• India
• 1974
• Cold War
• IAEA
• India
• Indira Gandhi
• NPT
• NSG
• nuclear capabilities
• Nuclear Commerce
• nuclear test
• Pakistan
• peaceful nuclear explosion
• PNE
• Pokhran-I
• Rajiv Gandhi
• sanctions
• Smiling Buddha
• Vajpayee

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