The 1960s were a tumultuous time for India. Nearly a decade following independence from the British, the stage was set to build a nation that adhered to the ideals of its freedom fighters. And then came China.Shortly after India offered asylum to the Dalai Lama – the highest spiritual leader and former head of state of Tibet who fled in the face of Chinese suppression in 1959 – border skirmishes between India and China became dangerously commonplace. This eventually culminated in the Sino-Indian War of 1962.
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At the same time, two Indian nuclear scientists, Homi J. Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai, acknowledged as the fathers of the Indian space programme, were hard at work against all odds to develop India’s very own nuclear arsenal. Now, a new web series by SonyLIV, Rocket Boys, starring Jim Sarbh and Ishwak Singh, captures their illustrious and inspiring lives.Created by Abhay Pannu, the series attempts to strike a fine balance between honouring their genius, patriotism and complex relationship.
The Sino-Indian war exacerbated the arms race in the region, and the pressure to create India’s first atom bomb naturally fell heavy on their shoulders. The perils of the arms race, and the frequent disagreement between Bhabha and Sarabhai over the ethics of it, also form a crucial portion of the series.
According to Satyanarayan Acharya, a nuclear physicist and scientific officer who has worked for over 30 years at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) named after Homi Bhabha, the show manages to fill a yawning gap in pop culture. “Their work needs to be understood because it is often forgotten with the passage of time,” he told VICE. “Particularly, the conditions and the pressures they worked under need to be brought to public awareness.”We asked Acharya, who has helped develop particle accelerators for India during his career at BARC, to share what he thinks about the show – whether it does justice to the lives of Sarabhai and Bhabha, and how much creative license it ended up taking. Here’s what he had to say.
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