When Indians left their footprint on Antarctica

After the Second World Warfare, as Antarctica witnessed an upsurge in scientific exploration, a number of nations asserted territorial claims on the continent, based mostly on their discoveries and expeditions.

India’s engagement with the ‘White Continent’ started as early as 1956 when India proposed an merchandise titled ‘The Query of Antarctica’ on the agenda of the eleventh UN Common Meeting, stating that the huge areas and assets of Antarctica be used solely for peaceable functions and for normal welfare.

Amid issues over mining and international locations organising army bases, in 1959, 12 international locations signed the Antarctic Treaty. India wasn’t among the many preliminary signatories. The Treaty prohibited army exercise, nuclear testing and disposal of radioactive waste and underlined that Antarctica can solely be used for peaceable functions and for scientific investigation and analysis. Mineral exploitation, apart from scientific analysis, was prohibited.

In 1960-61, an Indian biologist, Dr Giriraj Singh Sirohi, spent 100 days in sub-zero temperatures of the South Pole at McMurdo Station as a part of the US Antarctic Analysis Program. The identical 12 months, an Indian meteorologist, Lt Ram Charan, went south to the Wilkes Station, as an Indian authorities observer with Australian Nationwide Antarctic Analysis Expeditions.

However it was one other Indian who grew to become the primary from the nation to circumnavigate Antarctica and winter-over the South Pole. Below a joint Indo-Soviet settlement, Dr Parmjit Singh Sehra, then a younger researcher on the Bodily Analysis Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, spent 18 months in 1971-1973 because the Mission Scientist, “finishing up the higher atmospheric meteorological rocket soundings from the primary Soviet station Molodezhnaya (in Antarctica)”.
In his diary notes, which he later revealed as A go to to the South Pole, Dr Sehra recounted his odyssey to probably the most distant station in Antarctica.

On the “harsh winter” and the meals shortages the staff needed to endure, Sehra wrote, “…an emergency was declared at our station as a result of acute scarcity of meals and different important provisions… Our tinned meals additionally received exhausted through the extraordinarily chilly and stormy polar night time. As a consequence, we needed to stay on Antarctic seals, penguins and fish. I keep in mind my days in Antarctica once we additionally needed to eat the meat of our favourite huskies [that pulled sledges] to be able to survive,” he wrote.

Whereas his voyage might have sparked curiosity in a deeper scientific exploration of Antarctica, the plan to ship an expedition solely took form below former prime minister Indira Gandhi, who arrange the Division of Ocean Growth in Could 1981.

Operation Gangotri was saved below wraps, amid uncertainties concerning the final result and the potential of sabotage. Over the subsequent few months in 1981, a chartered vessel from Norway was employed, with backchannel diplomacy with NATO nations guaranteeing that the information didn’t leak.

A crew of 21, together with oceanographers, meteorologists, biologists, geologists, a geophysicist, a radio communication knowledgeable and a number of other navy personnel, have been drawn up from seven totally different establishments throughout the nation. They have been led by marine biologist Dr S Z Qasim.

“The complete operation, ranging from conception to us lastly crusing off from Goa…was completed in simply over 4 months. Our preliminary conferences have been held behind closed doorways. Individuals just like the Cupboard Secretary, Defence Secretary and the Chief of Naval Employees…they have been addressing us and we have been discussing technique…and we weren’t allowed to inform any of this exterior. We couldn’t inform our wives. We felt like we have been in a James Bond film,” Dr Amitava Sengupta, radiophysicist, a member of the primary expedition, instructed The Indian Categorical.

In October, the crew was despatched to Gulmarg for acclimatisation coaching. “We have been additionally taken across the Bay of Bengal for seven days. There have been six-seven of us who needed to be skilled, and since this was high secret, the trainers weren’t allowed to know what we have been going to be skilled for. So, he (the ship’s captain) gave us every kind of coaching, even tips on how to use a pistol. They thought we have been being skilled for some secret offensive operation,” mentioned Dr Sengupta.
On December 6, 1981, the staff set sail. It was 10 days later that the information broke. And when that occurred, the operation was seen as India’s bid to mark its presence as a rising energy, particularly below the management of Gandhi. The British journal ‘New Scientist’, in its February 1982 version, reported the story below the headline, “Indians quietly invade Antarctica”. The overseas press, too, raised political questions relating to India’s ‘intentions’ in Antarctica, amidst tensions over management of the icy continent’s assets.

Sengupta mentioned the preliminary few makes an attempt to discover a secure method to land the vessel have been unsuccessful. “We have been all getting impatient. We thought they may simply take us again. However lastly, we landed. I nonetheless keep in mind the solar was out and climate had cleared. We have been greeted by penguins. We took a photograph in entrance of the ship,” he added.