India Tests Nuclear Bomb
In 1974, India detonated its first nuclear device in an underground test in the Rajasthan desert, near the army range at Pokhran. The government called it a "peaceful nuclear explosion," but the test showed that India had mastered the core technology of nuclear weapons. It made India the first country outside the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to demonstrate such a capability, and it reshaped debates over nuclear proliferation for decades.
India's nuclear program began soon after independence. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru backed atomic energy for development, and the physicist Homi Bhabha led the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1948 and later the Trombay research center near Bombay. Early progress relied on foreign help: Canada supplied a research reactor, and the United States supplied heavy water. Strategic pressures grew in the 1960s. China tested its first nuclear weapon in 1964, shortly after its border war with India in 1962, and India felt the great powers offered it little security guarantee. Many historians also point to the 1971 war with Pakistan and the Cold War context as shaping Indian thinking.
The test took place in the spring of 1974 (commonly given as 18 May) under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. A small group of scientists and engineers from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre worked in great secrecy. The device used plutonium produced in the Canadian-supplied CIRUS reactor. It was code-named "Smiling Buddha." The yield is disputed; Indian officials gave a figure at the lower end of estimates, while some outside analysts suggested a higher one. India insisted it had no plans to build weapons and that the explosion was meant for research and possible uses such as mining or earth-moving, though most foreign observers doubted that justification.
The reaction abroad was sharp. Canada ended its nuclear cooperation, arguing that its reactor had been used in ways it never intended. The United States and others tightened export rules, and the test helped prompt the creation of the Nuclear Suppliers Group in 1975 to restrict the transfer of sensitive technology. Pakistan, already wary, accelerated its own nuclear efforts. At home, the test was widely popular and gave Gandhi's government a boost during a period of economic difficulty.
India did not test again for 24 years. In 1998 it carried out a new series of explosions at Pokhran and openly declared itself a nuclear-weapon state, and Pakistan soon followed with tests of its own. The 1974 explosion remains a turning point, both for South Asia's security and for the global effort to control nuclear technology. India has never joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it has long criticized as discriminatory.