'Foundational pillar of India's nuclear establishment': Jairam Ramesh hails Raja Ramanna on birth centenary

New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday paid homage to nuclear physicist Raja Ramanna on his birth centenary and hailed him as the foundational pillar of the country's nuclear establishment.

In a post on X, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Ramesh said Ramanna, while serving as scientific adviser, personally laid the groundwork for the induction of APJ Abdul Kalam as Director of the Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL), Hyderabad to boost India's missile development.

"Today is the birth centenary of a true colossus. For four decades, Dr. Raja Ramanna was the foundational pillar of the country's nuclear establishment. He was responsible for Pokhran-1 in May 1974 and for being the mentor of those responsible for Pokhran-2 in May 1998," he said.

Between 1978 and 1981, Ramanna gave new direction to the DRDO, he recalled.

"While serving as Scientific Adviser, he personally laid the groundwork for the induction of APJ Abdul Kalam as Director of DRDL, Hyderabad to boost India's missile development - a debt that Dr. Kalam has handsomely acknowledged in his memoir 'Wings of Fire'," Ramesh said.

"But Dr. Ramanna was more than a distinguished nuclear physicist. Like all great European physicists of the 20th century, Dr. Ramanna was steeped in Western classical music throughout his life and was a fine, professionally trained pianist," he said.

"In his slim, circumspect, but yet hugely educative book published in March 1991 he writes: '..the title of my autobiography is borrowed from a series of musical works written in the nineteenth century by the great Hungarian pianist-composer Franz Liszt.

Thus by calling my autobiography Years of Pilgrimage, I only show my appreciation to the great master'. He also writes that when he was nineteen he first met, in what was then called Mysore, the man who determined the course of his life thereafter," Ramesh said.

"This was none other than Dr. Homi Bhabha, himself a fine artist and violinist (and pianist). Dr. Ramanna doesn't say so but for sure they must have talked about music before getting on to the question of his higher studies in physics, which Dr. Bhabha facilitated in the UK a year later," he said.

After his retirement in January 1987, Dr. Ramanna built up the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bengaluru and immersed himself in the study of Indian philosophy which had always interested him even as he was fascinated with Western classical music, the Congress leader said.

His enduring contribution in this area is the English translation published in 1997 of the famous 11th century Sanskrit Bhakti poem Mukundamala, Ramesh recalled.

"During January-November 1990, Dr. Ramanna was Minister of State of Defence in the VP Singh government. His parliamentary career was unique. He is the only person to be first elected to the Rajya Sabha in March 1990 from UP for a two-year term and later nominated to the Council of States by the President of India when I K Gujral was PM for a six-year term beginning August 1997," Ramesh said.