13 May , 2025 By : Debdeep Gupta
In his first address to the country after Operation Sindoor, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 12 said India is a country of peace but it will hit back and hit back hard if Pakistan tries another misadventure.
The fact that he chose to speak on Buddha Purnima, the day Buddha was born, and invoked his message of peace while spelling out the new red lines for the neighboring country, was heavy on symbolism.
Buddha Purnima marks a turning point in India’s strategic choices. It was on this day in 1974 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi received a message: "The Buddha is smiling".
It was a code message flashed to Gandhi after India successfully detonated its first nuclear bomb at the Pokhran Test Range in Rajasthan on May 18, 1974, three years after it went to war with Pakistan.
Twenty-four years later, the NDA government led by late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the first BJP leader to be the PM, too, chose Buddha's birthday to conduct nuclear tests at Pokhran.
Though the 1998 tests, five of them, were code named Operation Shakti, they also came to be known as “Buddha Smiles Again”.
‘The Buddha is smiling’
India's first successful nuclear test, codenamed Smiling Buddha, marked the country's entry into the exclusive club of nuclear-armed nations.
Its code name was a symbolic and strategic way to convey the outcome without making a direct reference to the test itself.
Over the years, "Buddha is smiling" has acquired a cult status in Indian military and geopolitical parlance and history, representing a moment of significant scientific and strategic achievement.
The operation was described by the Gandhi government as a "peaceful nuclear explosion".
Half a century later, Modi spoke of Buddha’s message of peace, as he hailed the forces for the success of Operation Sindoor, which began with early morning strikes on terror camps in Pakistan on May 7, but backed it up with a message of strength.
"If Pakistan wants to survive, it will have to destroy its terror infrastructure. There is no other way to peace," he said. "India will not tolerate any nuclear blackmail. India will strike precisely and decisively at the terrorist hideouts developing under the cover of nuclear blackmail."
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