BOOK REVIEW
THE MAKING
OF INDIAN ATOMIC BOMB
1. General Data
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a. Name of the Book
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The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb
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b. Editor
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Itty Abraham
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c. Chapters
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Five
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d. Pages
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166
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e. Published By
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Zed Books Limited Books, London
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f. Year of Publication
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1999
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g. Price
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Not Known
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h. Quality of Book
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Good Binding
Neat Paper
Fine Printing
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2. Comments
on the Contents
a.
The book covers the sensitive issue of Indian
preparation for the nuclear explosion since its inception which enabled her to
carry out nuclear explosion in 1974 and in May 1998. Because of the official
secrecy that cloaks this programme in India, most of the material has been
taken from the official records of the United Kingdom and the United States.
This is an interpretive study that provides a critical retelling of how India
grew to love the bomb.
b. The book
comprises of five chapters and covers the period from Indian nuclear ambitions
since its inception to Indian changing
stance on the nuclear proliferation from 1993 to 1998. It also covers the enthusiastic
Indian domestic response to the May 1998 explosion, the 1996 Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty negotiations and the underground test of 1974.
3.
Contents of the Book
a.
Chapter 1. This is the introduction portion and covers the start of atomic
age for India after the massive destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also
explains the link of atomic energy with national development and national
security. It highlights the international theories and proliferation studies
for the newly independent states and the political demands made upon it.
Finally it describes the postcolonial vision of India and its dependence for
its articulation on the idea of science.
b. Chapter
2. This chapter covers the
creation of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission, the state institution that
came to monopolise the production of atomic energy in India. It also describes
how the institutional foundations of the Indian atomic energy programme lay in
monoplising atomic energy and making tangibles the barriers between them,
domestic society and the state. It deals with the practice and institutions of
science in the West and India in order to understand the conditions under which
the physicist Homi Jehangir Bhabha returned to India from England in 1939, and
how science as experimental practice was inserted into the discourse of the
postcolonial state. It also explains that science and national security as
state practices were closely related even before independence. It carries an
analysis of the Indian constituent assembly debates on atomic energy (1948) and
further develops this theme. It demonstrates that atomic energy was understood,
from the outset, to be intimately related to the state’s national security
interests. It finally argues that, notwithstanding the close association of science
and national security, atomic energy was inserted into the state apparatus
through a sense of predicament events. The conclusion modifies a model of
scientific action proposed by Bruno Latour to understand the processes through
which atomic energy became enshrined as the epitome of science for the Indian
state.
c. Chapter
3. This chapter follows the
development of the civilian atomic energy programme through its first decade
and especially examines the Atomic Energy Commission’s obsessive desire to build
atomic reactors. This chapter also examines how the patterns internal to the
functioning of the atomic programme emerge in relation to a foreshortened
horizon of time within which to take action which is called ‘urgency’. This
sense of urgency was not merely latent. As we shall see, the foreshortened
horizon of time was noticed by the atomic scientists and constituted itself
reflexively as well as being an external, analytic condition basic to their
objective of building an atomic reactor. The chapter further unpacks the
problems that the still-forming atomic energy complex had to face and overcome
in the 1950s, to prevent coalitions forming against it, to engage different
audiences for its reproduction in other domains and forms, to keep a step ahead
of new meanings attributed to atomic energy and to mobilise them as in the
past.
d. Chapter 4. This
chapter covers the arguments that the next decade marks a crucial shift in the
relations between atomic energy, as institution and object, and the Indian
state. The contradictions emerged from the conditions of urgency that had
driven the atomic scientists were now resolved by a wall of secrecy, materially
derived from the Atomic Energy Bill passed by the Lok Sabha in 1962. Simply
stated, why did India not respond to the Chinese development of nuclear weapons
in the mid-1960s by building its own nuclear arsenal? We find that all the
preconditions for India’s (in)action were in place: public support, technical
ability, institutional desire, nuclear raw materials, and superpower
acquiescence. Yet India did not take the step of responding to the Chinese
‘threat’ in a currency the international system would have understood. Why?
This alleged paradox, it should be noted, emerges from a particular, but
consequential, way of thinking: the foundational presumptions of ‘realism’ in
international relations locate the ‘reason’ of a state in seeking security and
self-preservation above all else. According to that logic, a Chinese bomb
should have led to an immediate Indian response of some kind, It did not. But
India would eventually explode a nuclear device in 1974, nearly a decade after
it could/should have. This chapter seeks to explain both the initial inaction
of the Indian state to the Chinese threat and its later action, according to a
different logic.
e. Chapter 5. This
chapter explains the fetish attitude of the Indian after 1974 explosion and the
curiosity engendered by fetish which resulted into an ‘hold on to’ attitude.
The aspect of secrecy, which have been a corner-stone from the very outset, was
written into the fabric of atomic energy programme through the atomic energy
acts and ordinances has also been highlighted.
4. Recommendations. The book carries an in-depth study of the
author and is a reflection of his long research work spread over five to six
years. Although the author has portrayed Indian nuclear programme as a peaceful
venture, yet reading of this book is recommended for following reasons:-
a.
It provides Indian desire to go
nuclear since its inception.
b.
It explains Indian changing
attitude to nuclear non-proliferation and its desire to achieve the nuclear
nation status.
c.
It also provides the attitude of
Indian public to Indian nuclear explosion at 1974 and 1998 explosions.
d.
Its also deeply narrates the
role Indian scientists and their careful attitude after carrying out the first
nuclear explosion.
e.
It would also provide us the
chance to analyse the role played by different Indian governments in different
periods.
f.
It also displays the Indian
influence on the foreign media which has resulted to hide their intentions and
surprising the world by carrying out the nuclear explosions in May 1998.
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