Monday May 12 2008 00:00 IST
MUMBAI: Former President A P J Abdul Kalam was today all praise for the "courage" shown by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in deciding to go for Pokhran tests within weeks of assuming office in March 1998."Vajpayee gave us the permission within a week of assuming the political office, to establish India's expertise," Kalam said at a function at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 'Shakti' series of tests at Pokhran in Rajasthan.Kalam, who had supervised the Pokhran-II explosions as the chief of the Defence Research and Development Organisation camping in the Thar desert for over a fortnight, said the testing was a "defining moment" in the country's history, next only to adopting the path of economic liberalisation in 1991.Another core member of the team that carried out five tests and then chairman of Atomic Energy Commission R Chidambaram reminisced, saying, "We recall the pleasure and excitement of May 11, 1998.It was just a coincidence that this day too was Buddha Purnima (just like the day on first test at Pokhran in 1974)." The BARC presented Kalam with a memento of a banyan tree bonsai which had a statue of a smiling Buddha under it at the function."The Buddha has smiled" was the code used by scientists in 1974 to declare that the nuclear test has been successful.Commenting on the memento, BARC Director S Banerjee quipped, "The smile on the Buddha's face means a lot of things."
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