topics: |  history | india | nuclear | postcolonial

A social scientist takes us on a amazingly well-informed and coherently argued journey through international relations, the history of postcolonial science, and the various personalities involved in the runup to the indian nuclear tests of 1974 and 1998.

the cover design is by Bindia Thapar.

Excerpts

ch 1: Introduction

International Relations theory: dominated by the 'neo-realist' approach - too wrapped up in the particular interests of the status quo powers to be of much analytic use.

the peculiar historical reasoning that defines 1964 [China's nuclear test year] as the watershed date - anyone after 1964 is an official proliferator, but not the countries before this, all of whom happen to be permanent members of the UN Security Council.

among potential proliferators also, some states are treated differently than others. Countries like Japan and Germany easily have the means (and some may argue, even the desire) to develop nuclear weapons - but are not classified pas potential proliferators; as opposed to N Korea, Iran or Libya - habitual members of the suspected proliferator family, which are rather far in capability. 14-15

IR theory: search for national security is a negative-sum game
[in that the total sum goes -ve]
efforts to enhance one's own security is always at the cost of another - the
end result is that both are harmed, and the intl system is worse off (more
insecure) than before.  15

Not all states desire n weapons - brazil and s africa...

The standard explanation for the indian nuclear test of 1974 - at the cost of
a breakdown of relations with many countries:

   Indira Gandhi, following a huge electoral victory in 1971, was facing
   considerable dissatisfaction by 1973-4.  She decided, in a series of
   secret meetings w senior members of the Indian bureaucracy, to conduct a
   nuclear test to restore faith in her leadership...

possibly accurate upto a point, but leaves many q's open, e.g. why couldn't
the same event have happened earlier?  IG was even more desperate for
political support in the 1960s.

[moves on to consider why a nuclear blast would be perceived as beneficial to
the govt - also the nucl tests by the BJP in 1998...]

ch2: Creating the Atomic Energy Commission

George Basalla, The spread of western science, Science, 1967:
'diffusionist model',
growth of 'western' science in diff nations - three phases:
  1. spreads out from the west through western expansion and imperialism.
  2. colonial science : intermediate phase - some scientific activity took
     	place in the colonies, but was dependent on metropolitan institurions
     	and scientists.
  3. national science: national institutions acquire sovereignty over local
	scientific practices, academies and journals. 35

In the metropolis they 'do theory' and in the colony they gather data.
colonial scientists as derivative practitioners, not quite up to the
standards of their metropolitan colleagues.

see Deepak Kumar, Science and the Raj, 1857-1905f, OUP 1995 - for
a summary of critiques against the Basalla position.

   In august 1943, a brilliant young scientist who had returned to India in
   1939 in the middle of an outstanding academic career at Cambridge
   University to become a Reader and then a Professor at the Indian Institute
   of Science, Bangalore and on whom the coveted fellowship of the Royal
   Society of London had been converred at the age of 32... ' BV Sreekantan,
   TIFR, 1945-1970, p. ix

[Itty parodies this breathless style associated with hagiographies of Bhabha: ]
    HJB passed his engineering tripos with a First in June 1930.  He could
    now turn to his real love, physics [his father had urged him to study
    a practical subject such as engg rather than physics].
    This was an exciting time to be at Cambridge... in the Cavendish
    laboratory under Rutherford, Chadwick had discoverd the nutron, Walton
    and Cockroft caused light elements to transmute, Blackett and Occhialini
    demonstrated electron pairs and showers in a cloud chamber developed by
    HH Wilson...


Bhabha's life and career are so overdetermined in Indian narratives of
modernity that it is difficult to see him as a colonial scientist; he appears
as already fully formed.
This style presents his patriotism mounting through the 1930s, so he returns
to India, initially for a holiday but eventually for a lifetime. 37

Before his return to India in 1930, Bhabha had applied for position of Reader
at Liverpool, where James Chadwick, formerly of Cavendish, was setting up a
new dept of physics.  Bhabha was turned down. 41
Chadwick exlains that he felt that someone of B's calibre would be wasted in
a place like Liverpol...  But perhaps, a colonial scientist teaching physics
may have been confusing to liverpudlians - if B was good enough to teach them
physics, couldn't the Indians be good enough to run their own country?

Henry Casimir on Bhabha :
B had not learned much quantum physics due to lack of guidance in Cambridge
[Dirac took no students.]  Thus hhis only exposure was through Dirac's
Principles of Quantum Mecnahics - some of whose ideas were contested.
In an interview, Casimir says that Bhaba's discourse reminded him of the
character of the savage in Huxley's Brave New World - the savage, who has
taught himself english from the works of Shakespeare, speaks in an archaic
register.  Thus, Bhabha is more Caliban... 40

Itty: C needed to shore up the crumbling wall between reason and race - the
boundary that separated the metropolis from the colony - in order to ensure
that he was the civilised one.  41

So Bhabha went to India in 1939 where he was stuck by the outbreak of WW2.
Though he repeatedly claimed that he had a position waiting for him in
Europe, this was not the case.  42

Ch 3: Postcolonial Modernity

Saha had written about the potential of atomic energy in his popular science
magazine, Science and Culture, as early as 1939.  Nehru and Saha were also
close ideologically, both being socialists and votaries of large-scale
industrialization.

Yet, with Bhabha's return, close ties were forged between Nehru and Bhabha.

Robert Anderson, Building Scientific Institutions: Bhabha and Saha, 1975:
Indian physics community split into two factions:
  - the Calcutta-Allahabad axis - dominated by Saha and students
  - the Bangalore group, a preserve of the Nobel Laureate CV Raman, once a
    leading calcutta scientist himself, but who had since broken all ties
    to saha. 73

Saha's marginality from the centre of state power after independence meant
that he had little influence on the general direction of scientific policy.
But this changed after 1952, when Saha ran for the Lok Sabha from Calcutta
NW, supported by the left parties, and won.  As an MP, he became an
influential and widely regarded critic of the secrecy behind the Atomic
policy.  But Nehru was firmly in support of the AEC.  [73-76]