In the 1940s, when freedom struggle leaders were formulating their strategy to get country out of the clutches of the British colonial masters, few top scientific brains were drawing up a roadmap for the nuclear future of the country.

“I do not think that any one acquainted with scientific development in other countries would deny the need in India for such school as I propose,” Dr Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the father of India’s nuclear programme wrote in a letter to Sir Dorab Tata of Tata Trust on March 12, 1944, referring to opening school of research in fundamental physics in Mumbai.

This was the first steps towards building the country’s nuclear capabilities. Bhabha wrote in the same letter, “When nuclear energy has been successful applied for power production in say a couple of decades from now, India will not have to look abroad for its experts but will find them ready at hand.”

The letter is a record of how Bhabha had a blue print for mainstreaming nuclear energy. “It is one’s duty to stay in one’s country and build schools comparable with those that other countries are fortunate in possessing,” he wrote.

The collection of India’s nuclear ambitions, thought processes that laid to its shaping, challenges and other aspects were released by New Delhi based defence think tank Institue for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in association with Tata Institue of Fundamental Research (TIFR).

Within few months of independence, Bhabha proposed the structure of the organisation, which he called Atomic Energy Commission in a note to the then prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru on April 26, 1948. He also emphasised the need for a body which could develop atomic energy and research on a bigger and more effective scale in India.

Letters were exchanged between Bhabha and another top scientist Dr S S Bhatnagar who later became the first director-general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

However, whatever Bhabha and Bhatnagar had intended to do to nurture a scientific atmosphere was not that easy. Bhatnagar explains in a confidential letter to Bhabha on June 21, 1949, “The post I hold is one of the difficult ones. The provincial campaign, the anonymous letter campaign and many other maligning methods are in vogue…With no word of praise or encouragement from those in authority, our prestige has been hit by jealous persons.”

Bhabha and Bhatnagar’s effort bore fruit on May 28, 1948 when Nehru decided to create new ministry of scientific research. The government also decided to form the Atomic Energy Department and allocated the required funds for it on the basis of recommendation from Bhabha and Bhatnagar. Bhabha became the first chairman of Atomic Energy Commission. 

In one of the letters, Nehru even admonished Bhabha when in he wrote in a newspaper on some controversies related to India’s stand on the nuclear issue. “You as a scientist, can express your opinion from the scientific point of view on suitable occasions. But, to do so in a newspaper would not, I think, be appropriate.” This was written on May 16, 1956.

There were also several letters exchanged between Nehru and Bhabha. In one of the letters, Bhabha sought permission from Nehru to go to Pakistan on attend a lecture on science congress in Lahore on February, 1953, “It will give me an opportunity to see how science is developing in Pakistan and report to you on it.”

IDSA has released 43 such documents in its website some of them being these notable correspondences, notes, resolutions of governments. “We are planning to increase the nuclear history project in extensive way. In the process, we will be gathering more information and talking to several scientists who have worked in India’s nuclear projects. Some of them are not known in public,” Rajiv Nayan, senior research associate of IDSA and one of the advisers of nuclear history project told Governance Now.

India’s nuclear history has been a matter of oral telling so far and needs to be archived, Nayan added. “It is high time that India should have some concrete documents at one place to show how the nuclear project was nurtured,” he pointed out.