The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb

Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State

By: Itty Abraham

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Paperback | 1 September 1998 | Edition Number 1

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208 Pages

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19.68 x 13.34 x 1.27

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In 1974 India exploded an atomic device. In May 1998 the new right-wing BJP Government set off several more, encountering in the process domestic plaudits, but also international condemnation and possibly sparking a new nuclear arms race in South Asia. What explains the enthusiasm of the Indian public for nuclear power? This book is the first serious historical account of the development of India's nuclear programme and of how the bomb came to be made. The author questions orthodox interpretations implying that it was a product of international conflict. Instead, he argues that the explosions had nothing to do with national security as conventionally understood and everything to do with establishing the legitimacy of the independent nation-state. He demonstrates the linkages that exist between the two apparently separate discourses of national security and national development.

The result is a remarkable book that breaks new ground in integrating comparative politics, international relations and cultural studies. It is also a pioneering exploration of the sociology of science in a Third World context and offers a radically new argument about the Indian state and its post-colonial crisis of legitimacy.

Industry Reviews

'Uses Western archival sources brilliantly to tell a story that can?t be told from India because of the huge secrecy that surrounds the subject' - Partha Chatterjee, author of Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse

'With sparkling intelligence and exemplary interdisciplinary learning, Itty Abraham offers a penetrating account of the cultural politics of atomic energy in postcolonial India.... A thoughtful and original understanding of science and the state as fetishes of postcolonial modernity' - Gyan Prakash, Dept of History, Princeton University.

'A succinct and penetrating analysis of India's nuclear policy since independence' - Pacific Affairs

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