E= mc^2, the story of 1998

The year is 1995. In the sandy terrain of the region in Rajasthan known as Pokhran, India carry out a poorly executed nuclear blast, which causes everybody to take notice, but not in a good way. And thus, India end up receiving flak from the then President of the United States of America, Bill Clinton, the very ostensible reason being Bill Clinton’s declaration (after the failed 1995 tests) in which he stated that extreme action would be taken against India if India did not stop its nuclear activities (that is, namely nuclear detonations).

And indeed, for until 3 years after the failed detonations we remained silent and did not move even a finger. Yes, we did suffer but only because our detonations failed back then.

However, in 1998, we had a new PM at the helm, Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who, in his election speech had mentioned and stated that we would definitely be carrying out nuclear tests and detonations. And so, it was after this very green light that preparations began in earnest to detonate and therefore test the nuclear bombs, only this time, as history states, we would be successful and leave the world reeling.

Now, preparation for the detonation had started quite some time before or earlier.

However, this mission was not without its fair share of difficulties; with one of the major reasons being the spy satellites, specifically, the Lacrosse satellites, which had keeping a very strict gaze on India, mostly on Pokhran, since that was precisely where we had conducted nuclear tests 3 years ago.

Now I shall not be going into specifics here, but suffice to say that there were a lot of things (materials) which needed to be procured for the mission such as, say for example, air pressure detonators, altimeters etc which needed to be procured and also, there were quite a few of our agencies involved, such as the DRDO, BARC, AMDER, etc.

The entire operation had to be carried out in utter and complete secrecy, because of the reasons I have mentioned above, and trust me, it was. From laying the wires (for the electrical connections naturally) to the digging and sealing up of the shafts required for keeping or storing the nuclear bombs, everything was achieved in about 3 hour shifts; yes, that was the initial number of hours they contributed because that was the exact time the satellites (spying on Pokhran that is) took to change their positions and thus, in this manner,  that is, using the so-called ‘blind-spots’, for ‘blind-spots’ were what they were, in their most basic essence, we ultimately completed the final preparations, and thus, on the 11^th of May, 1998, at 15:45:00 hours (3.45 pm), India finally became a nuclear state, all because of the dedication of the scientists as well as the Engineer’s regiment of our Army.

This incident was also labeled as one of America’s biggest intelligence failure since they had failed to detect even a hint of the faintest signs of activity. Yes, we did have a slightly rough time after that, because of the many sanctions imposed upon us by Japan, America, China etc but we found 0ur way and so today, we stand with our head held high and hearts strong, only because of the efforts of those people, who dared to do the impossible. Jay Hind!.