NUCLEAR BOMB TESTS, 1998 - ATOMIC INTENT TO REALITY

India declared itself a nuclear weapons state with Operation Shakti, a series of nuclear tests at Pokhran in 1998. It set off a chain reaction—the emergence of strategic forces, a nuclear submarine and civilian nuclear deals

- BY AMARNATH K. MENON

The “peaceful nuclear test” on May 18, 1974, broke a global status quo and made India the first country to have conducted a test outside of the UN Security Council members. That nuclear fission type bomb gave India entry into the elite nuclear club, and established a much-required deterrent capability. But the real deal for which nuclear scientists and engineers had striven hard came 24 years later, on May 11 and 13, 1998, at the same place—the Army’s Pokhran Test Range in Rajasthan. A series of five nuclear tests, Operation Shakti demonstrated India’s ability to design and develop advanced nuclear weapons (fission and thermonuclear weapons with yields of up to 200 kilotonnes) and came as the culmination of years of indigenous research in nuclear technology. Behind its success also lay the decisive political leadership provided by PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It provoked Pakistan to conduct tests, weeks later, on May 30. Though Operation Shakti evoked a sense of pride among many Indians, it triggered instant sanctio