Context: 

Recently on 11th May, India celebrated the 25th anniversary of Pokhran-II. India successfully conducted three nuclear bomb test explosions at the testing site in Pokhran on May 11, 1998.

Pokhran-II:

• The Pokhran-II tests were a series of five nuclear bomb test explosions conducted by India at the Indian Army’s Pokhran Test Range.
• These nuclear tests were codenamed as Operation Shakti (literally, “strength”).
• These tests displayed India’s capability to build fission and thermonuclear weapons with yields up to 200 kilotons.
• It helped  India enter the highly guarded club of countries with capability to deploy nuclear weapons.
• Pokhran-II was also the culmination of a long journey that began back in the 1940s-50s.

Reasons behind going Nuclear:

• Nuclear China: 
  • A pivotal moment in India’s nuclear journey came after it suffered a crushing defeat in the 1962 Sino-Indian War and China’s subsequent nuclear bomb test at Lop Nor in 1964. 
  • China had acquired its nuclear weapon to address Beijing’s own insecurity in relation to the US and the former USSR. 
  • Concerned about India’s sovereignty and the looming might of an unfriendly China, India’s mood towards nuclear weapons was slowly shifting. 

• Nexus between hostile neighbours: In the mid 1960s, China and Pakistan entered into an opaque strategic partnership focused on nuclear weapons to advance their shared security interests that were inimical to India.
• Rejection of nuclear guarantees: The new Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri first tried to attain nuclear guarantees from established nuclear weapons states, when such guarantees did not emerge, a different route had to be taken.
• 1965 war with Pakistan: 
  • India went to war with Pakistan, with China openly supporting Pakistan. 
  • Effectively, India was surrounded by two unfriendly nations, and needed to take steps towards building self-sufficiency.

• Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): 
  • In 1968, the NPT came into existence. The treaty defined nuclear-weapon states as those that have built and tested a nuclear explosive device before January 1, 1967 – the US, Russia (formerly USSR), the UK, France and China 
  • It effectively disallowed any other state from acquiring nuclear weapons.

• Loss of nuclear umbrella: 
  • With the fall of the USSR in 1991, India lost one of its biggest military allies, since Indira Gandhi had signed a 20-year security pact with it in 1971. 
  • Furthermore, the US continued to provide military aid to Pakistan despite its own misgivings with its nuclear weapons programme

Consequences of Pokhran-II:

Foundation and evolution of India’s nuclear programme

• Foundational phase: 
  • India’s nuclear programme can be traced to the work of physicist Homi J Bhabha- ‘the father of India’s nuclear programme’.
  • In 1945, after Bhabha’s successful lobbying of India’s biggest industrial family, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research was opened in Bombay. TIFR was India’s first research institution dedicated to the study of nuclear physics.
  • In 1954, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) was founded, with Bhabha as director.

• Beginning of nuclear weapon programme: 
  • During Lal Bahadur Shastri’s premiership, after the nuclear test by China, Homi Bhabha, is believed to have received the green signal to pursue India’s nuclear weapon option
  • A small group was set up to study Subterranean Nuclear Explosions for Peaceful Purposes.
• Pokhran-I: 
  • By the 1970s, India was capable of conducting a nuclear bomb test. Bhaba’s successor at the DAE, Vikram Sarabhai, had worked to significantly broaden India’s nuclear technology
  • Indira Gandhi sanctioned the first nuclear test in May 1974. 
  • Pokhran-I, codenamed Operation Smiling Buddha, would be billed as a “peaceful nuclear explosion”, with “few military implications”.
• Atomic Energy Commission: In 1988-89, Rajiv Gandhi gave the go-ahead to the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Defence Research and Development Organisation, to begin creating an Indian nuclear deterrent. 
• Pokhran-II- Last phase of nuclear weapons programme:
  • By 1990, India had a fully developed nuclear weapons programme, which every subsequent Prime Minister had approved of. 
  • In 1995, then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao permitted the preparations for carrying out a nuclear test in 1995.
  • The Vajpayee government decided to go for the historic Shakti tests and  declared India as a state possessing nuclear weapons following Pokhran-II.

News Source: Indian Express