Vaanathai Pola 415
Cell, Nucleus, Nuclear and Global Conspiracies-3
Accident, Co-incidence or deliberate
China's first nuclear test was called Project 596 conducted on 16 October 1964, at the Lop Nur test site. Operation Smiling Buddha,Pokhran-I was the assigned code name of India's first successful nuclear bomb test on 18 May 1974. A ten years gap between two rivals and aspiring third world nations who had achieved their Independence within a few years of each other.
India and China took different routes on their climb up to the world stage and recognition as a super power. China went the hard and ruthless way in which democracy, civil rights and freedom of the common man was cast out into the four winds by adopting Communism and was aided by the then Soviet Union who so conveniently happened to be their neighbours and gave them complete support in all fields of development. But, the Soviet's most important aid to China was in the field of Nuclear weapons and which concluded in Project 596. China's first nuclear device explosion.
In 1951, China signed a secret agreement with Moscow through which China provided uranium ores in exchange for Soviet assistance in nuclear technology. China began developing nuclear weapons in the late 1950s with substantial Soviet assistance.
When Sino-Soviet relations cooled in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviet Union withheld plans and data for an atomic bomb, and began the withdrawal of Soviet advisers. Despite the termination of Soviet assistance, China committed itself to continue nuclear-weapons development.
China made remarkable progress in the 1960s in developing nuclear weapons. The first Chinese nuclear test was conducted at Lop Nur on October 16, 1964. It was a tower shot involving a fission device with a yield of 25 kilotons. Uranium 235 was used as the nuclear fuel. In less than 32 months, China detonated its first hydrogen bomb on June 14, 1967.
India's entry into the elite nuclear club was 10 years later than China and in 1974.
Conspiracy 1 Death of Homi Jehangir Bhabha
Not many know that India had started dabbling in the world of Nuclear Physics even before getting its independence and as early as in 1944.
On 12 March 1944, a proposal was despatched from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) at Bangalore to the Sir Dorab Tata Trust in Bombay. The letter read ‘I have for some time past nurtured the idea of founding a first-class school of research in the most advanced branches of physics in Bombay... when nuclear energy has been successfully applied for power production in say a couple of decades from now, India will not have to look abroad for its experts but will find them ready at hand’. The letter would set in motion events of great historical consequence.
The author of these momentous tidings, whose birth anniversary was a dashing, young Indian physicist who whilst in his 30’s enjoyed a European reputation. Professor Homi Jehangir Bhabha, then head of the cosmic ray research unit at IISc, was a most unusual man. He was a brilliant experimental physicist, with a keen mathematical mind and a taste for music and arts. In the firmament of world physics, he was one of the brightest stars.
We now hail him as 'the father of Indian nuclear programme'. That he was able to orchestrate the creation of a world-class nuclear enterprise in a third world country itself is a tribute to his genius. His visionary enterprise was born of a composite vision. There was the influence of the scientific west, Indian nationalism, the birth of ‘big science’, decolonisation and the marriage of science with state building.
Homi Bhabha was born into an affluent Parsi family in Bombay in 1909. His parents, Jehangir and Meheren Bhabha were a very enlightened and remarkable couple and young Homi and his younger brother Jamshed grew up in a charming home with books and music as their companions. He blossomed into youth breathing in a rarefied air that created in him a sense of the sublime and absolute. At school, he mastered French, Latin and had read Einstein’s theory of relativity even before he sat for his Senior Cambridge exams.
In 1927, he arrived at the famous Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge for a BA degree in mechanical engineering. Cambridge at that point of time drew the most gifted sons of the world’s elite. There were aspiring prime ministers, spies, scientists, aesthetes, avante garde artists and writers droning in and around this cathedral of genius. The famed Cavendish laboratory was then the Mecca of physics and attracted eager young minds from across the globe. Rutherford, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Yuli Khariton, Cockcroft, Blackett had all passed through its hallowed portals.
It was all too dazzling for the impressionable young Indian, who now proceeded to junk the mechanics of engineering for the metaphysics of frontier science. Exciting new discoveries had been made in atomic physics in recent years and with sufficient hard work and talent, a young researcher could do path-breaking and original research in the field. Bhabha proceeded to study cosmic rays and electron showers, a field in which he made his name during much of the 1930’s. He also travelled to other temples of science in continental Europe and struck friendships with its high priests like the legendary Neils Bohr.
Though he continued to entrench himself in his field, he had developed a panoramic vision that saw emergent forces beyond the immediate horizon and was able to appreciate their significance. Nuclear physics came into its own in 1932 when James Chadwick discovered the elusive neutron. It opened up a fertile field of discovery for scientists often working independently in Russia, Germany, the United States and France.
He returned to India in 1939 and found congenial employment at IISc, then headed by the formidable Sir C.V. Raman. Here his ardent spirit melded with the nationalistic and anti-imperialistic politics of the times. Though anglicised by his upbringing and education, he constantly looked for avenues to promote scientific research in India. Indeed much later, while he was helming the nascent nuclear programme, though he promoted foreign collaboration, he always laid emphasis on building indigenous capability. ‘If Indian industry is to take off and be capable of independent flight it must be powered by science and technology based in the country’.
Bhabha’s famous letter of 1944, got a favourable response and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) was born. As its director, he was a keen and assiduous administrator who paid attention to the tiniest details while maintaining a far-sighted view of the future of his institution. Several generations of Indian researchers would hone their talents at this institute.
Jawaharlal Nehru, who had first met Bhabha in 1937, embraced this vision of a vanguard nuclear enterprise to propel a backward nation into modernity and an independent future. The world over, governments were scrambling to harness the energy and destructive potential of nuclear fission.
With Nehru’s support, the Atomic Energy Commission was set up in 1948 with Bhabha as its head. His vision entailed an autonomous body answerable to the prime minister of India and exercising a broad mandate in its domain. He was wise enough to insist on cutting out the generalist civil service and as well as the new body being run by technocrats and manned by specialists. Secrecy was also embraced as a paramount virtue as any such state activity will attract hostile foreign interests determined to wreck it.
On the 24th of January, 1966, the great man met a tragic end when Air India Flight 101 crashed near Mont Blanc while he was travelling to Vienna for a conference. Many believe that the crash wasn’t an accident but premeditated assassination carried out by American intelligence agencies to thwart India’s nuclear programme.
Such conspiracy theories received a major boost when an alleged conversation between journalist Gregory Douglas and a top CIA operative Robert T. Crowley was made public by a news media called TBRNews.org in a book titled ‘Conversations with the Crow’. The transcript of the conversation hinted at a CIA role in the ‘accident’.
The CIA officer was quoted as saying: “We had trouble, you know, with India back in the 60’s when they got uppity and started work on an atomic bomb…the thing is, they were getting in bed with the Russians.” Referring to Bhabha, he said, “that one was dangerous, believe me. He had an unfortunate accident. He was flying to Vienna to stir up more trouble when his Boeing 707 had a bomb go off in the cargo hold.”
Conspiracy 2 death of Vikram Sarabhai
Vikram Sarabhai popularly known as the Father of the Indian Space Program was an Indian physicist and astronomer who initiated space research and helped develop nuclear power in India. It was his tireless work that helped launch India's first satellite Aryabhatta into space. Alas, he would not be there to witness it for he had died four years earlier and in a mysterious manner.
Newspapers on December 31, 1971 screamed Dr Vikram Sarabhai Dead!
On December 30, 1971, Vikram Sarabhai, the father of India’s space programme, was found dead in a hotel room at the Halcyon Castle in Kovalam. He had shown no signs of illness the previous evening. Rather, he had been meeting scientists and holding discussions with them. The next morning, however, he was dead.
Conspiracy 3
Unfortunately, there appears to be a trend of top Indian scientists ending up as victims of a tragic fate. Between 2009-13, 11 Indian nuclear scientists died unnatural deaths. The frequency was so high that the Bombay High Court in 2017 asked the Central government to take care of scientists.
In November 2013, Vice reported that two high-ranking engineers, KK Josh and Abhish Shivam, working on India’s first nuclear-powered submarine were found dead on railway tracks by workers. They were clearly not hit by a running train as no marks were found on their bodies. It was widely speculated that they were poisoned elsewhere and left on the tracks to make it look like an accident or a suicide.
In 2009, there was the suspicious death of nuclear scientist Lokanathan Mahalingam. The 48-year old went missing from his morning walk only for his body to be recovered five days later at the Kali river. Only a few weeks earlier, another scientist who worked at the Nuclear Power Corporation, was found dead in the same forest.
It’s not just our nuclear scientists who appear to be dying under mysterious circumstances. In a 15-year period, the ISRO lost 684 personnel. The greater concern appears to be the fact that a lot of these mysterious deaths are simply clubbed as ‘unexplained’ or ‘suicides’ without proper investigation. Replying to a question on the matter, the government said in 2017 that 71 suicides were reported between 1995 and 2015 and 2 murders. The problem is we cannot be sure of the authenticity of the classification as they have repeatedly questioned by relatives and others due to the mysterious nature of the circumstances and allegations of an improper investigation by the Police.
In October 2013, The Sunday Guardian reported on the lack of attention paid by the then UPA government at the Centre to the mysterious deaths of India’s top scientists. In an article titled ‘PMO unconcerned about scientist deaths’, the author wrote, “What is surprising is the inattention of the Government of India towards what many believe to be a systematic outside effort to slow down India’s march towards nuclear excellence by killing those involved in the process.” The author also mentions that the deaths of Josh and Shivam were dismissed by the Ministry of Defence as well as the media as a routine incident despite the circumstances.
In any other country, the 11 unnatural deaths between 2009-13 would have created a storm in the media. However, with the media firmly in the pockets of the establishment, it hardly created even a flutter. Iran, for instance, executed a man over the deaths of 4 scientists between 2010 and 2012 after claiming that it was a series of assassinations aimed at sabotaging its nuclear energy program. Iran has often accused the United States and Israel of such assassinations.
The lives of a great many top Indian scientists certainly appears to have come to an end under very suspicious situations. Or in the case of scientists like Dr Narayanan, their names were dragged through the mud and careers ended.
Dr. Nambi Narayanan, a former ISRO Scientist (who received Rs. 50 lakhs compensation from the government of Kerala on the order of the Supreme Court in 2018 for being wrongfully accused of spying and being harassed in the 1994 ISRO spy case), has an opinion that international powers were involved in Dr. Sarabhai’s death.
In his biography “Ormakalude Bhramanapadham”, Dr. Narayanan wrote, “The challenges and questions raised by his [Dr. Sarabhai’s] death are many. If he was eliminated, it is likely there was an international conspiracy behind it. Or else, how did such a scientific talent like him die in such an unnatural manner?’’
Dr. Narayanan had worked closely with Dr. Sarabhai as a junior scientist at ISRO. He further wrote (in his biography), “A man who had never smoked in his life, a teetotaler… Then how was he led to such a death? Why was the cremation performed without even an autopsy despite the fact the dead man was such a great scientist? All these remained questions.”
No signs of illness before death. No autopsy.
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