Recasting history in South Asian nuclear showdowns
The opening episode of Saare Jahan Se Accha wastes no time in staging a conspiracy. A plane explodes mid-air, assassinating the father of India’s nuclear program, Homi Bhabha. Framed in the show as a CIA plot to halt India’s atomic progress, the event serves as a narrative entry point to explore the birth of the bomb in South Asia and the strategic contest it ignites. Bhabha’s 1966 death in an Air India crash over Mont Blanc had long remained a subject of speculation, though never proven sabotage. Yet the dramatisation captures a real Cold War era-anxiety: even in its infancy, India’s nuclear program was perceived by Washington as destabilising. The U.S. sought to monitor and curb proliferation in the region, wary of how atomic capabilities might reshape the balance of power.
From this opening scene, the series signals its approach—melding documented history with espionage fiction to illuminate how nuclear ambition, covert operations, and geopolitical tension coalesced into an almost theatrical game of national survival.