IT’S a lesson the Vajpayee government can do without. It may be basking in the national euphoria following the five underground tests at Pokhran, but Congressmen point to the similar burst of pride that had come with the first nuclear test in 1974 and which had seemed to brush all problems of the ruling government under the carpet. Except that Indira Gandhi’s troubles returned only too soon and proved to be the nemesis of that government.
Domestic political compulsions rather than defence considerations had probably weighed heavily on Mrs Gandhi’s mind when she gave the go-ahead for the underground nuclear test at Pokhran on May 18, 1974. Then too the news that India had made it to the nuclear club had evoked national pride. For a few weeks at least, the nation forgot about the acute food shortages and the rising prices that were behind the Gujarat and Bihar uprisings. It also brought to a halt, temporarily, bickerings within the Congress.
By June 5, Jayaprakash Narayan had given the call for a total revolution which eventually culminated in Mrs Gandhi’s promulgating the Emergency on June 25, 1975. The nuclear test also failed to take the sting out of Morarji Desai’s Gujarat movement. It was a mass uprising the government found difficult to contain. There were people defying the CRP and even the army in thousands, posing a grave threat to the Congress government which had come to power riding the Indira wave after the 1971 war.
It was the levelling of the Indira wave that, according to senior Congressmen, set the alarm bells ringing at the party headquarters. The Congress High Command realised the Gujarat scenario was indeed grim and that the party would lose the elections should the governor dissolve the assembly. The deteriorating law and order had already culminated in President’s Rule on March 15.
So while Morarji Desai and Jayaprakash Narayan rallied support in their campaign against the "corrupt and authoritarian Congress regime", Mrs Gandhi could smell the conspiracy that was brewing against her in her own party. At the same time she realised the need to curb the development of alternate power centres within the Congress. Hence, her move to marginalise leaders like H.N. Bahuguna and Y.B. Chavan and her sidelining of Jagjivan Ram as party president. Instead, it was Dev Kant Baruah, who coined the slogan ‘India is Indira and Indira is India’, who was promoted.Fearing that the party was slipping from her grip, Mrs Gandhi also decided to keep organisational elections on hold.
It was against this backdrop that the 1974 test was conducted. It was described as the explosion of a "peaceful nuclear device" but in retrospect can be seen as a move to bolster Mrs Gandhi’s sagging image. Points out Achin Vanaik, who’s written extensively against India exercising the nuclear option: "There’s no doubt Mrs Gandhi gave the go-ahead for the 1974 test to garner domestic support."
Except the bomb didn’t help her. Nor did the launch of India’s first satellite Aryabhatta in April 1975. Or the successful testing, five months later, of Rohini 300, a single-stage rocket. Science, obviously, could not be a political saviour.
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