Smiling Buddha: India's First Nuclear Test
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 11 July 2018
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The inside story of how India secretly developed and exploded an atomic device in 1974. India called it a Peaceful Nuclear Explosion, though the experimental device was in effect a plutonium bomb. The test was seen as a triumph of Indian science and technology, but it led to the suspension of international nuclear co-operation with India, and spurred Pakistan to speed up development of its own nuclear bomb. Alex Last spoke to S.K Sikka, one of India's leading nuclear scientists, about his role in the secret project, code-named Smiling Buddha.
Photo: A crater marks the site of the first Indian underground nuclear test conducted 18 May 1974 at Pokhran in the desert state of Rajasthan. (PUNJAB PHOTO/AFP/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
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| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more watching. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.2 | Hello and |
| 0:35.0 | today we take you back to 1974 |
| 0:38.0 | when India stunned the world |
| 0:41.0 | by carrying out its first ever nuclear explosion, cod named Smiling Buddha. |
| 0:47.0 | Everybody was almost unanimous that we should have a nuclear weapon at our hand. |
| 0:58.0 | On the 138th day of the year, at 8 hours, 0, 8 minutes, 20 seconds in the morning, |
| 1:03.7 | Indian Standard Time, the graph went haywire. |
| 1:07.0 | They didn't expect that we'll have the capability. |
| 1:10.0 | And then when we did it, everybody had to open their eyes on our science and technology. |
| 1:17.0 | In 1969, Dr. Ske Sika was a young nuclear scientist employed at India's main nuclear research |
| 1:24.6 | establishment, the Bubba Atomic Research Center near Mumbai. He was finishing |
| 1:29.6 | his PhD under the supervision of one of the country's leading nuclear scientists, |
| 1:34.0 | Dr. Chiramburam. Little did Dr. Seika know, but his supervisor had been recruited to a secret |
| 1:40.6 | project to build a nuclear device by one of the center's top directors |
... |
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