Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Homi J. Bhabha" in English language version.
As early as April 1944, Bhabha remarked in a letter to astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar that his vision included not just an institution that did science but also one that was similar in atmosphere, both culturally and intellectually, to the places he had known in Europe. He intended to "bring together as many outstanding scientists as possible … so as to build up in time an intellectual atmosphere approaching what we knew in places like Cambridge and Paris."
The International Atomic Energy Agency, a specialized branch of the United Nations, was created in 1955, and its headquarters was placed at Vienna. Bhabha certainly had some part in the choice of Vienna. He wanted to combine his scientific duties with the opportunity of hearing fine music.
[I]n 1962, TIFR expanded to include two new fields: molecular biology and radio astronomy. Significantly, the presence of biologists in a physics institution enabled interdisciplinary engagements. Fume hoods and facilities for microbiology had to be added to what was essentially a space for physics, but Bhabha's control over budgets made those additions possible. The radio astronomy group first built an interferometer at Kalyan, a town near Mumbai, and soon afterward built a radio telescope in Ooty, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. As TIFR expanded, its groups went on to found the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore in the south of India and the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics in Pune in western India.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)As early as April 1944, Bhabha remarked in a letter to astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar that his vision included not just an institution that did science but also one that was similar in atmosphere, both culturally and intellectually, to the places he had known in Europe. He intended to "bring together as many outstanding scientists as possible … so as to build up in time an intellectual atmosphere approaching what we knew in places like Cambridge and Paris."
[I]n 1962, TIFR expanded to include two new fields: molecular biology and radio astronomy. Significantly, the presence of biologists in a physics institution enabled interdisciplinary engagements. Fume hoods and facilities for microbiology had to be added to what was essentially a space for physics, but Bhabha's control over budgets made those additions possible. The radio astronomy group first built an interferometer at Kalyan, a town near Mumbai, and soon afterward built a radio telescope in Ooty, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. As TIFR expanded, its groups went on to found the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore in the south of India and the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics in Pune in western India.
Bhabha was acquainted with India's first Prime Minister Jawarhalal Pandit Nehru, having met him on the voyage home in 1939. After Nehru became the new nation's first leader Bhabha was entrusted with complete authority over all nuclear related affairs and programs and answered only to Nehru himself, with whom he developed a close personal relationship. All Indian nuclear policy was set by unwritten personal understandings between Nehru and Bhabha.
This test was declared at the time to be for "peaceful purposes". Although this assertion can be dismissed (especially in light of Raj Ramanna's recent admissions), the bomb was certainly an experimental test device, not a weapon in deployable form.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, a specialized branch of the United Nations, was created in 1955, and its headquarters was placed at Vienna. Bhabha certainly had some part in the choice of Vienna. He wanted to combine his scientific duties with the opportunity of hearing fine music.
As early as April 1944, Bhabha remarked in a letter to astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar that his vision included not just an institution that did science but also one that was similar in atmosphere, both culturally and intellectually, to the places he had known in Europe. He intended to "bring together as many outstanding scientists as possible … so as to build up in time an intellectual atmosphere approaching what we knew in places like Cambridge and Paris."
The International Atomic Energy Agency, a specialized branch of the United Nations, was created in 1955, and its headquarters was placed at Vienna. Bhabha certainly had some part in the choice of Vienna. He wanted to combine his scientific duties with the opportunity of hearing fine music.
[I]n 1962, TIFR expanded to include two new fields: molecular biology and radio astronomy. Significantly, the presence of biologists in a physics institution enabled interdisciplinary engagements. Fume hoods and facilities for microbiology had to be added to what was essentially a space for physics, but Bhabha's control over budgets made those additions possible. The radio astronomy group first built an interferometer at Kalyan, a town near Mumbai, and soon afterward built a radio telescope in Ooty, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. As TIFR expanded, its groups went on to found the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore in the south of India and the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics in Pune in western India.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)This test was declared at the time to be for "peaceful purposes". Although this assertion can be dismissed (especially in light of Raj Ramanna's recent admissions), the bomb was certainly an experimental test device, not a weapon in deployable form.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)As early as April 1944, Bhabha remarked in a letter to astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar that his vision included not just an institution that did science but also one that was similar in atmosphere, both culturally and intellectually, to the places he had known in Europe. He intended to "bring together as many outstanding scientists as possible … so as to build up in time an intellectual atmosphere approaching what we knew in places like Cambridge and Paris."
One should remember that many other changes were achieved through negotiation with specific ministries and ministers, changes that did not need formal approval of the whole cabinet; for example, Prime Minister Shastri and Bhabha referred very few questions about atomic energy to the cabinet. Bhabha clearly kept his colleagues favorably informed about the DAE and AEC, except when they wanted to talk about the scale of his budget increases. … The finance member of the AEC during Bhabha's last four years (1962–66) informed me that he could only check the cost and feasibility of DAE projects, and nothing more—Bhabha set the priorities, and for most of that time there was no other scientific member.
Perhaps the most telling feature of India's early nuclear policymaking is the absence of real debate after the brief Saha-led skirmish in 1954. Bhabha articulated and undertook his ambitious plans with no effective opposition. Nehru echoed and supported him. Indeed, in a 1957 Lok Sabha discussion of the Department of Atomic Energy budget, Nehru pointed out that from 1954 through 1956, the budget for atomic energy work "increased twelve-fold." He informed the House that "nobody in the Government of India—neither the Finance Ministry nor any other Ministry—anxious as we are to have economy to save money, has ever refused any urgent demand of the department." … Few Indian politicians or journalists had the independent expertise to criticize the charismatic, internationally recognized physicist. India's scientists for the most part lacked reasons or standing to critique Bhabha's plans or the powerful Department of Atomic Energy.
Though constructed and designed by Indian scientists and engineers, the UKAEC provided the entire load of enriched uranium fuel. The generosity of the UKAEC is explained by two factors. First, in December 1953, President Eisenhower had announced the Atoms for Peace programme. Under the programme, the US offered to assist other states in peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Being the leader of the Western bloc, this also inspired other technologically advanced states such as the UK and Canada to share their technological progress in nuclear sciences with other countries. The second factor was much more personal. Sir John Cockcroft, the head of the UKAEC, was friends with Homi Bhabha since their Cambridge days in the UK.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)In 1955, when Canada offered India the design and construction of an NRX nuclear reactor with full technical and financial assistance under the Colombo Plan, the offer was 'too good to be ignored'. Again, Bhabha's personal friendship with W.B. Lewis, the head of the Canadian Atomic Energy Agency, was instrumental in the smooth negotiations of the deal.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)The Indian position was that no safeguards on equipment should apply, and only those on special materials supplied by the USA or produced in the reactor were justifiable. But the Americans were adamant. The issue was finally resolved in a manner in which the policy positions of both India and the USA remained unaltered, according to Dr. M. R. Srinivasan, former Chairman, AEC. He further says that Bhabha's achievement in the Tarapur negotiation would have been a feather in the cap of a seasoned professional diplomat.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)If Bhabha was emphatic in declaring India's nuclear capabilities in public, in private he acknowledged India's constraints. By early 1965, as a top-secret correspondence now available in the Indian archives suggests, Bhabha had revised his earlier estimate of the time period to produce a nuclear explosion from 18 months to at least 'five years'.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)With no capacity to evaluate these numbers, the ensuing cost debate [in the Parliament] simply reflected the speakers' predilections. Those who argued against a bomb program cited the higher cost figures; those who argued for a bomb program cited Bhabha. Indeed, Bhabha became an important subtext of the debate. A number of speakers, led by Krishna Menon, implicitly or explicitly questioned both his cost figures and the appropriateness of his seeming to advocate a bomb program. Others, led by Harish Chandra Mathur, defended Bhabha's honor and expertise.
[Bhabha's] cost projections became central in the subsequent Indian debate. They were grossly misleading insofar as they neglected the major costs of the reactors and reprocessing facilities required to produce the explosive materials and the associated costs of other infrastructure to design and produce weapons. The U.S. government soon sought to correct this mistaken cost estimate, and other Indian scientists warned the leadership that Bhabha's numbers were highly unreliable. Still, as the debate went on, Indian bomb advocates seized on Bhabha's argument about the utility and affordability of these devices.
Then the question came to Parliament in the last week of November, where Bhabha's position and cost estimate were the evidence for much of the debate in the Lok Sabha.
Shastri agreed to Bhabha's demands to explore the possibilities of a nuclear explosion; yet it had to only be a theoretical enterprise. Given the government's public disavowal of a nuclear weapons programme and the global concerns over proliferation, Shastri declared in the Parliament that India will explore nuclear explosion technology only for peaceful purposes. Thus was born India's policy of developing a 'nuclear option'.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)By bringing Bhabha onto his side, Shastri could ward off criticism on the nuclear issue, which in any case was understood superficially and debated hypothetically and/or symbolically compared to more pressing and familiar domestic issues.
Bhabha's apparent denial focused on being "18 months away from exploding a bomb or a device." Yet, this was a red herring. Despite his earlier claims of being this near to conducting an explosion, Bhabha knew that more time actually was required to stockpile the necessary plutonium, design a device, build and test the necessary nonnuclear components, and prepare a test site.
[T]he United States rebuffed India's dual efforts-for guarantees or technical assistance-to seek international help in countering China's gains in prestige and potential political and military power. Instead, the United States launched a drive to draft and negotiate a nonproliferation treaty. India would be a primary target of this campaign, but it remained unclear how the effort to stop the further spread of nuclear weapons would solve the problem that China's nuclear weapons posed for India, militarily and politically. India would be left to its own devices.
The location of IAEA was also a contentious issue. It had to be a place on which the major powers had to agree, particularly the USA and the USSR. In the end Vienna in Austria was chosen, and it has been mentioned by many participants that Bhabha had a major influence in tipping the scale towards Vienna for obvious political reasons, and also because he himself adored Vienna as the capital of European music with its opera and the concerts.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, a specialized branch of the United Nations, was created in 1955, and its headquarters was placed at Vienna. Bhabha certainly had some part in the choice of Vienna. He wanted to combine his scientific duties with the opportunity of hearing fine music.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)[I]n 1962, TIFR expanded to include two new fields: molecular biology and radio astronomy. Significantly, the presence of biologists in a physics institution enabled interdisciplinary engagements. Fume hoods and facilities for microbiology had to be added to what was essentially a space for physics, but Bhabha's control over budgets made those additions possible. The radio astronomy group first built an interferometer at Kalyan, a town near Mumbai, and soon afterward built a radio telescope in Ooty, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. As TIFR expanded, its groups went on to found the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore in the south of India and the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics in Pune in western India.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)One should remember that many other changes were achieved through negotiation with specific ministries and ministers, changes that did not need formal approval of the whole cabinet; for example, Prime Minister Shastri and Bhabha referred very few questions about atomic energy to the cabinet. Bhabha clearly kept his colleagues favorably informed about the DAE and AEC, except when they wanted to talk about the scale of his budget increases. … The finance member of the AEC during Bhabha's last four years (1962–66) informed me that he could only check the cost and feasibility of DAE projects, and nothing more—Bhabha set the priorities, and for most of that time there was no other scientific member.
Perhaps the most telling feature of India's early nuclear policymaking is the absence of real debate after the brief Saha-led skirmish in 1954. Bhabha articulated and undertook his ambitious plans with no effective opposition. Nehru echoed and supported him. Indeed, in a 1957 Lok Sabha discussion of the Department of Atomic Energy budget, Nehru pointed out that from 1954 through 1956, the budget for atomic energy work "increased twelve-fold." He informed the House that "nobody in the Government of India—neither the Finance Ministry nor any other Ministry—anxious as we are to have economy to save money, has ever refused any urgent demand of the department." … Few Indian politicians or journalists had the independent expertise to criticize the charismatic, internationally recognized physicist. India's scientists for the most part lacked reasons or standing to critique Bhabha's plans or the powerful Department of Atomic Energy.
Though constructed and designed by Indian scientists and engineers, the UKAEC provided the entire load of enriched uranium fuel. The generosity of the UKAEC is explained by two factors. First, in December 1953, President Eisenhower had announced the Atoms for Peace programme. Under the programme, the US offered to assist other states in peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Being the leader of the Western bloc, this also inspired other technologically advanced states such as the UK and Canada to share their technological progress in nuclear sciences with other countries. The second factor was much more personal. Sir John Cockcroft, the head of the UKAEC, was friends with Homi Bhabha since their Cambridge days in the UK.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)In 1955, when Canada offered India the design and construction of an NRX nuclear reactor with full technical and financial assistance under the Colombo Plan, the offer was 'too good to be ignored'. Again, Bhabha's personal friendship with W.B. Lewis, the head of the Canadian Atomic Energy Agency, was instrumental in the smooth negotiations of the deal.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)The Indian position was that no safeguards on equipment should apply, and only those on special materials supplied by the USA or produced in the reactor were justifiable. But the Americans were adamant. The issue was finally resolved in a manner in which the policy positions of both India and the USA remained unaltered, according to Dr. M. R. Srinivasan, former Chairman, AEC. He further says that Bhabha's achievement in the Tarapur negotiation would have been a feather in the cap of a seasoned professional diplomat.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)If Bhabha was emphatic in declaring India's nuclear capabilities in public, in private he acknowledged India's constraints. By early 1965, as a top-secret correspondence now available in the Indian archives suggests, Bhabha had revised his earlier estimate of the time period to produce a nuclear explosion from 18 months to at least 'five years'.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)With no capacity to evaluate these numbers, the ensuing cost debate [in the Parliament] simply reflected the speakers' predilections. Those who argued against a bomb program cited the higher cost figures; those who argued for a bomb program cited Bhabha. Indeed, Bhabha became an important subtext of the debate. A number of speakers, led by Krishna Menon, implicitly or explicitly questioned both his cost figures and the appropriateness of his seeming to advocate a bomb program. Others, led by Harish Chandra Mathur, defended Bhabha's honor and expertise.
[Bhabha's] cost projections became central in the subsequent Indian debate. They were grossly misleading insofar as they neglected the major costs of the reactors and reprocessing facilities required to produce the explosive materials and the associated costs of other infrastructure to design and produce weapons. The U.S. government soon sought to correct this mistaken cost estimate, and other Indian scientists warned the leadership that Bhabha's numbers were highly unreliable. Still, as the debate went on, Indian bomb advocates seized on Bhabha's argument about the utility and affordability of these devices.
Then the question came to Parliament in the last week of November, where Bhabha's position and cost estimate were the evidence for much of the debate in the Lok Sabha.
Shastri agreed to Bhabha's demands to explore the possibilities of a nuclear explosion; yet it had to only be a theoretical enterprise. Given the government's public disavowal of a nuclear weapons programme and the global concerns over proliferation, Shastri declared in the Parliament that India will explore nuclear explosion technology only for peaceful purposes. Thus was born India's policy of developing a 'nuclear option'.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)By bringing Bhabha onto his side, Shastri could ward off criticism on the nuclear issue, which in any case was understood superficially and debated hypothetically and/or symbolically compared to more pressing and familiar domestic issues.
Bhabha's apparent denial focused on being "18 months away from exploding a bomb or a device." Yet, this was a red herring. Despite his earlier claims of being this near to conducting an explosion, Bhabha knew that more time actually was required to stockpile the necessary plutonium, design a device, build and test the necessary nonnuclear components, and prepare a test site.
[T]he United States rebuffed India's dual efforts-for guarantees or technical assistance-to seek international help in countering China's gains in prestige and potential political and military power. Instead, the United States launched a drive to draft and negotiate a nonproliferation treaty. India would be a primary target of this campaign, but it remained unclear how the effort to stop the further spread of nuclear weapons would solve the problem that China's nuclear weapons posed for India, militarily and politically. India would be left to its own devices.
The location of IAEA was also a contentious issue. It had to be a place on which the major powers had to agree, particularly the USA and the USSR. In the end Vienna in Austria was chosen, and it has been mentioned by many participants that Bhabha had a major influence in tipping the scale towards Vienna for obvious political reasons, and also because he himself adored Vienna as the capital of European music with its opera and the concerts.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)