Six days into power, Vajpayee made a call that changed India forever
On 19 March 1998, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was sworn in as India's Prime Minister. He had barely unpacked his office when, just six days later, he summoned two of the country's most trusted scientists — Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Dr R. Chidambaram.
The question he put to them was short and direct: "Are you both ready for a nuclear test?"
Both nodded. Vajpayee smiled quietly and said, "Then this time, the rituals of Buddha Purnima will be performed by you two."
The countdown had begun.
**A desert, a secret, and a very fragile government**
The site chosen was Pokhran — a dusty, unremarkable town sitting in the middle of the Thar Desert in Rajasthan. Flat, scorched, and far from prying eyes. More importantly, it was underground. And that mattered enormously.
Back in 1963, the world's major powers had signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty — a landmark agreement promising to stop nuclear testing in the atmosphere, underwater, and on land. The United States, the Soviet Union and Britain had all put their names to it. The key word, as India had noted carefully, was *partial*. Underground testing had never been banned. The gap was real, and it was legally solid.
India had used that gap once before. In May 1974, under Indira Gandhi, the country had detonated its first nuclear device at the very same Pokhran site — codenamed *Smiling Buddha*. The desert had shuddered, seismic sensors around the world had twitched, and India had coolly announced a "peaceful nuclear explosion." When the international community demanded answers, India's response was simple: we signed the treaty, we honoured it completely, and underground tests are not covered. It was, legally speaking, unanswerable.
Now, twenty-four years on, Vajpayee intended to go further.
**The most dangerous drive in India**
All the nuclear material was stored in Mumbai. Moving it to Pokhran was a nerve-shredding operation. At two in the morning, the material was loaded and transported to the airport. Defence Minister George Fernandes did not sleep a wink all night.
The risk was almost unthinkable. Had a single container gone wrong, the consequences for Mumbai would have been catastrophic. The materials were eventually flown to Jaisalmer and then driven through the desert to Pokhran.
Once on site, the team faced another problem — American spy satellites were watching. The scientists could only work for a few minutes at a stretch before having to stop and wait for the satellites to pass overhead. They wore heavy army uniforms in the blistering desert heat to avoid being identified from above. Scientists used to the air-conditioned labs of Delhi and Mumbai found the conditions almost unbearable. They got on with it anyway.
There was political pressure bearing down too. Vajpayee led a fragile coalition government. If it collapsed before the tests were carried out, the whole operation could be set back by years.
**The earth moved**
On 11 May 1998, everything came together. In Delhi, Vajpayee sat in near silence at his residence alongside L.K. Advani, Jaswant Singh and George Fernandes. No one said much. They waited.
Hundreds of miles away in the Rajasthan desert, the detonation was triggered. The earth shook. A crater the size of two football fields opened up in the sand. Kalam and Chidambaram, standing close to the blast site, were knocked dizzy by the impact and steadied each other as they walked outside.
When the rest of the team saw them emerge, someone shouted *"Bharat Mata Ki Jai!"* — Victory to Mother India. The cry went up again and again. Kalam and Chidambaram responded to every single cheer.
When word reached Delhi, the four leaders wept. Nobody congratulated anyone. They just sat there.
Two days later, on 13 May, two further tests were carried out. Vajpayee addressed the nation. His speech lasted fifteen minutes and forty-five seconds and went down in history. The message was clear and unambiguous.
"India is now a nuclear power."
**The world reacts — and India holds firm**
The fallout was swift. The United States slapped heavy sanctions on India. Japan froze Indian bonds. Canada considered recalling its diplomats. The matter was raised at the United Nations. Pakistan, rattled, responded with its own underground tests in Balochistan within weeks.
Britain and France publicly opposed India's move at the national level, but in the UN Security Council they stayed conspicuously silent — which, in diplomatic terms, amounted to a quiet form of support. Russia said nothing at all.
India's legal position, as it had been in 1974, was essentially bulletproof. It had not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it regarded as fundamentally rigged — existing nuclear powers could keep their weapons indefinitely, while everyone else was forbidden from developing them. And the Partial Test Ban Treaty still said nothing about underground tests.
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, drafted in 1996 specifically to close that loophole, would have banned all nuclear explosions regardless of location. India declined to sign that one too
**The loophole that changed everything**
The story of Pokhran is, at its heart, the story of a country that read the small print more carefully than anyone else and had the nerve to act on what it found. A treaty designed to contain the nuclear threat had left one door open. India walked through it twice — once in 1974, and again in 1998 — and emerged each time as a more formidable presence on the world stage.
Six days after taking office, Vajpayee had set the wheels in motion. Eighty-three days later, India was a declared nuclear power.
The desert had kept its secret. It would not need to again.