“YOU’VE all heard of Allan Octavian Hume, I presume,” Prof S. Gopal scowled through his glasses. His Oxbridge accent failed to mask a faint smile, which slightly diluted the acid of his Tamil Brahmin humour. The rhyme too was as intentional as the insult he had flung at the MA students of history.

Jawaharlal Nehru University was India’s premier institute of higher learning. And here, the charismatic professor of British policies, attired in his dark blue corduroy jacket, indifferent trousers and Kolhapuri chappals on a freezing January morning was asking a kindergarten question. Kumud M. fell for the bait.

The twin-plaited earnest girl may have been unaware that in a departure from his otherwise winsome rapport with the class, Prof Gopal could rudely discourage inattentive students.

His was the first class during that winter semester. That’s when most students would crawl out of hostel beds to grab a cold rubbery omelet along the way to their class, and so were not at their brightest.

“Wasn’t Hume the father of the Indian National Congress, sir?” intoned Kumud helpfully, repeating a cliché she had picked up at school. “Not quite the father, really” boomed Prof Gopal, knitting his eyebrows in mock annoyance. The gentle reprimand paved the way for an erudite commentary on peasant turbulences of the 1920s.

As Pakistanis went viral recently over a controversial interview by the country’s nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan who they lionise as the father of Pakistan’s bomb my mind strayed back to Prof Gopal’s withering comment: not quite the father, please. I mean any average science student from the Maldives to Bhutan can assemble the bomb if he or she is given the ingredients and the budget. Could they not?

Or had Mr Khan made a discovery that had eluded Oppenheimer? Strange that on the one hand we are daily warned against nuclear technology slipping into the hands of non-state actors, on the other hand every new country seeking a bomb claims one or two scientific geniuses exclusive to it.

Let’s remember the mayhem in the early 1990s when the Americans had nearly succeeded in pressuring the Russians against transferring cryogenic engine technology to build India’s missiles.

Former Indian president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam won his spurs as the country’s missile man. Would he have got the thrust to propel ready-to-use rockets without borrowed cryogenic technology?

North Korea is an impoverished country on food dole. We don’t know much about its nuclear scientists. Or should we call them fixers, more truthfully — resourceful people who get things done by defying the system. In which case aren’t we confusing fixers for scientists? James Watt probably did more original work by discovering the power of steam in a simple kettle.

India’s first national security adviser Brajesh Mishra passed away last week. He was my good neighbour leading a quiet life before being pulled out from retirement to play a huge role in the Vajpayee administration.

I knew him as someone with an enormous sense of purpose though he was hardly the father of India’s nuclear deterrent he is made out to be. If anything he bungled so badly that the diplomatic enclave in Delhi wore a deserted look as never before.

In May 2002 nearly all the foreign staffers and their families had fled for dear life after India under Brajesh Mishra indulged in irresponsible nuclear sabre-rattling with Pakistan. He is credited with supervising the 1998 Pokhran tests, which his political bosses blamed on the threat they saw from China.

The episode stands out as a truly damning diplomatic faux pas. The triad proposed by him between India, Israel and the United States threatens to make India party to the bloodbath in the Middle East. Kargil, the attack on the Indian parliament and the Mumbai terror nightmare happened after Mr Mishra’s Pokhran adventure if also despite it.

The search for father figures may pander to an induced psychological need in certain countries but it really is a form of self-deception. I haven’t known too many Indians or Pakistanis observing a few minutes of silence on Hiroshima Day. Though in theory and also by the law of probability they are at greater risk than most others on the planet facing an unthinkable nuclear disaster, be it by accident or by design.

Anti-nuclear protesters around India’s Kaiga and Koodankulam plants are thus giving early warning. In a country where daily refuse piles up unattended for weeks in cities and towns, any thought of keeping the nuclear waste secure seems laughable.

A country where lessons remain to be learnt from the enormity of the Bhopal gas tragedy it would be gung-ho to imagine a safe nuclear future straddling the military as well as the supposedly civilian facilities.

Going by an online opinion poll in 2002 as many as 92 per cent of the people wanted India to attack ‘terrorist camps’ across the LoC. The situation may seem to have improved today but preparations to annihilate each other are unobtrusively on at full throttle.

India’s alleged doctrine of Cold Start accompanied by a bevy of missile tests and Pakistan’s introduction of tactical nuclear weapons in the future battlefield are ominous signs, which no cult hero or father figure in either country can wish away. Nor are the countries honest with their citizens about the actual human costs involved in their nuclear one-upmanship.

It was only in 1998 that the American military’s apocalyptic scenario was accidentally released to the National Archives.

In one place, the US scenario says: “Air Defence operations in North America and overseas have destroyed a substantial portion of the attacking aircraft, but half of those destroyed had reached the bomb release lines and had released their weapons ... Severe firestorms have occurred in heavily built-up cities and many rural fires were started involving growing crops and forests ... The general level of casualties throughout the United States is extremely serious.”

I think Messrs A.Q. Khan and A.P.J. Abdul Kalam should be asked to share their insights on how and if the horrific scenario projected by the US military’s Emergency Plans Book was any different from the calamity they factored for their own countries. An honest answer should show up their feet of clay. And Prof Gopal’s scowl would not go in vain.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.