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Sethna backs Santhanam

What does Kalam know about physics, asks former AEC chief

Mumbai: The former Atomic Energy Commission Chairman, Homi Sethna, on Tuesday backed the former DRDO scientist, K. Santhanam’s assessment that the 1998 Pokhran nuclear test was not a full success and criticised the former President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, for rubbishing the claim.

“I fully support Mr. Santhanam and I stand by his statement that India needs to conduct more nuclear tests,” Dr. Sethna, the guiding force behind India’s first nuclear test in 1974, told PTI.

Dr. Sethna, now in his eighties, suggested that Mr. Kalam, who headed the Defence Research and Development Organisation when Mr. Santhanam was coordinating Pokhran-II, was no qualified authority to rubbish his former colleague’s claim.

The comments by Dr. Sethna, who was AEC Chairman in 1974, came notwithstanding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Mr. Kalam setting at rest the controversy over the 1998 nuclear tests.

Mr. Kalam said the only thermonuclear device (hydrogen bomb) tested produced the “desired yield.”

But Dr. Sethna said: “Mr. Kalam was not a scientist and Mr. Santhanam is a physicist and he knew what he was talking. What does Mr. Kalam understand about physics? He can say anything as he was the President and a politician. What Mr. Santhanam said was absolutely correct.” “What did he [Mr. Kalam] know about extracting, making explosive grade? He didn’t know a thing. By being a President, he appeared to wear the stature. He relied on atomic energy to gain additional stature,” Dr. Sethna told a TV channel.

“I don’t like politicians to interfere, specially lay politicians to interfere any more. I firmly believe that they should stay out. When we did the test ... [in] the first test there was no politician. It was a raw one. We were lucky that the whole thing collapsed,” said Dr. Sethna.

On August 27, Mr. Kalam said Pokhran II was a success, rubbishing Mr. Santhanam’s claim that the tests were a “fizzle.”

Simultaneously, another former AEC Chairman, P.K. Iyengar, said the 1998 tests were done in haste at the bidding of the government. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee had just assumed office when India conducted the tests.

Dr. Iyengar, who was among the three top atomic scientists who oversaw the 1974 tests, has already shared Mr. Santhanam’s assessment and questioned official claims of success.

Dr. Iyengar suggested that in March 1998, two months before Pokhran-II, India’s intelligence must have found out that the Pakistanis were about to test and that they were serious.

“Therefore, they [the new government in India] asked these people [scientists] to hurry up, do as fast as possible in all this extra pressure to be one up politically because the BJP had just come to power,” he said.

“If Pakistan fired an explosion before India what a common man in India would have thought,” Dr. Iyengar asked.

The Principal Scientific Adviser to Government of India, R. Chidambaram, who led the team of scientists for Pokhran-II, denied Mr. Santhanam’s statement and said he had to explain scientifically why the tests were not fully successful.

Several scientists, including Dr. Iyengar, said this controversy had been there for the last 11 years and there was nothing new in it.

However, they said, “Dr. Chidambaram should explain the whole thing to the country scientifically if the tests were fully successful.” — PTI

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