India detonated its first nuclear device underground at the Pokhran Test Range in Rajasthan, a test the government described as peaceful in purpose. The test, conducted under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's government, shocked the international community, prompted Pakistan to accelerate its own nuclear program, and led to new global nonproliferation efforts.
India's nuclear program had roots in the vision of physicist Homi Bhabha, who saw atomic energy as key to national development after independence. But the 1974 test, conducted in secrecy beneath the Thar Desert, was unmistakably a demonstration of weapons capability, regardless of the government's careful 'peaceful nuclear explosion' framing.
The test used plutonium produced at the CIRUS reactor, which Canada had supplied for peaceful purposes—a diversion that infuriated Ottawa and led to the collapse of nuclear cooperation agreements. It also spurred the creation of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an international effort to control the export of nuclear technology.
The test's ripple effects were enormous: Pakistan's Zulfikar Ali Bhutto reportedly vowed his country would develop its own bomb 'even if we have to eat grass,' setting South Asia on a decades-long nuclear rivalry that culminated in both nations' overt weapons tests in 1998.