BY the start of May 1974, India was in the grip of a scorching summer of discontent though worse was to follow a year hence. The afterglow of Indira Gandhi’s tremendous triumph in the 1971 general election and the country’s brilliant victory in the Bangladesh war the same year had vanished. Monsoons had failed again. The economy was in a shambles. However, it was the corruption and arrogance of her inner circle that had fed popular anger. Gujarat’s Nav Nirman, followed by the more formidable J.P. movement (so named after its sponsor, the highly respected Gandhian, Jayaprakash Narayan), was climaxed by a nationwide railway strike with the avowed objective — in the words of its leader, maverick Socialist George Fernandes — of “starving the country”. Indira Gandhi decided to crush it ruthlessly.

It was in this sombre atmosphere that in the city of Bombay (now Mumbai) on May 18 something startling happened. A huge, restive crowd at a bus stop, vainly waiting for transport of any kind, suddenly burst into cheers. News had just come in that India had conducted an underground nuclear test that morning at a place called Pokhran in distant Rajasthan. This reaction was symptomatic of the ecstatic welcome most Indians gave their country’s entry into the Nuclear Club.

The sensational news was a complete surprise to everyone, including the peeved nuclear powers that had failed to detect the underground explosion. India insisted that the event at Pokhran was a peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE) — both the United States and the Soviet Union had been conducting several of these — although there is no difference in the PNE technology and that for exploding a nuclear weapon.

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