IN AN IMAGE CAPTURED BY the documentary photographer Chinky Shukla, a nine-year-old girl stands in front of a fence and gazes into the camera. Her head looks slightly enlarged and disproportionate to her body. The photograph is from “A Curse in Disguise,” Shukla’s series on people who experienced adverse health conditions following a nuclear test, code-named Operation Shakti, that was held at Pokhran, Rajasthan, in 1998.
The test involved five nuclear-bomb detonations, and was the second of the two nuclear tests India has conducted at the Indian army’s test range in Pokhran. The first, code-named Smiling Buddha, was held in 1974. At the time, people from villages surrounding the range were largely unaware of the explosion until it was announced on the radio. But the 1998 test was carried out on a much larger scale, and army personnel instructed villagers to evacuate before the explosion. Despite these precautions, the scale and severity of the test affected villages located between two and five kilometres from the range, including Khetolai, Loharki, Odhaniya and Chacha.
“At around 3 pm on 11 May 1998, we felt tremors of an earthquake,” Nathu Ram Bishnoi, the village head of Khetolai, recalled to Shukla. “A gigantic cloud of dust went up in the air at the Pokhran firing range.” Mud huts developed deep cracks, and rainwater tanks and wells were damaged. According to Shukla, a study conducted by the former joint director of medical and health services in Jodhpur found traces of nuclear radiation in the soil, underground water and even trees in the villages near the testing ground.
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