India conducts its first nuclear test, code-named 'Smiling Buddha'

On May 18, 1974, India detonated its first nuclear device beneath the Pokhran test range in the Rajasthan desert. The operation’s code name, Smiling Buddha, nodded to the day’s place on the Buddhist calendar; the reported signal back to Delhi was simply, “the Buddha is smiling.”

The plutonium implosion device, built by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre with the Defence Research and Development Organisation, yielded an estimated 6 to 10 kilotons. India officially described it as a “peaceful nuclear explosion” intended for civil engineering.

Few were convinced — and in 1997, test leader Raja Ramanna conceded, “the Pokhran test was a bomb.”

The blast made India the first nation outside the five permanent UN Security Council members to test a nuclear weapon. International fallout followed: Canada and the United States curbed nuclear cooperation, and the world founded the Nuclear Suppliers Group to police proliferation.