After Pokhran II in May 1998, the saligh parivar in India wanted to distribute the radioactive sand of the Thar desert as the symbolic prasad of India's atomic deities. When some sensible scientists pointed out the dangers involved in the exercise, the scheme was quickly abandoned, and instead the idea of building a temple at the epicentre of the nuclear blast was floated. Better sense prevailed yet again, and the plan for the temple gave way to the enclosed open-air memorial that exists today.
In one memorable picture taken immediately after the Pokhran tests, APJ Abdul Kalam raises his hands along with fellow technocrats of India's atomic establishment accompanied by a jubilant George Fernandes and a satisfied-looking Atal Behari Vajpayee. The joy, alas, was to be short-lived for the Indian bhaktas of Nucleareshwar. Before long, the Chagai hills of Pakistan were trembling to Pakistan's own nuclear explosions. Pakistanis dutifully paraded on the streets, celebrating the arrival of Islamic science. The 'Hindu' bomb and the 'Islamic' bomb were now arrayed against each other, expressions of Indian and Pakistani boastfulness.
In reality, there is nothing 'Hindu' about the Indian Bomb, nor do the Pakistani nukes symbolise the cultural strength of Islam. These weapons of mass destruction are products of a pseudo-scientific mindset that is unconcerned about the ultimate effects of their obsessions. There can be no science without a sense of ethics and morality, but there will always be technicians who rush to fabricate weapons, ready to feed off the hubris of the ruling elite. It is the collective insecurity of the very small power elite in South Asia that transforms these purveyors of falsehood and fabricators of weaponry into angels of truth. But before getting into the messy business of exposing technofascism, I would like to debunk the myth of APJ Abdul Kalam, Republic of India's president-to-be, and the poster-boy Muslim of the likes of Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
The straw man