Table Of ContentThe Making o f the
I n d i a n At o m i c B o m b
Sc ience, Sec recy and the Postcolonial State
ITT Y ABRAHAM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Itty Abraham was trained in economics at Loyola College, Madras and
received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. He spent the academic year 1995-96 as a post
doctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Arms
Control, Stanford University. He is currently Program Director for South
Asia and Southeast Asia at the Social Science Research Council in New
York. He is the coeditor of Southeast Asian Diasporas, a special issue of
Sojourn: Journal of Sodal Issues in Southeast Asia. This is his first book.
POSTCOLONIAL ENCOUNTERS
A Zed Books series in association with the International Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Research (ICCCR)
Series editors: Richard Werbner and Pnina Werbner
This series debates the making of contemporary culture and politics in a post
colonial world. Volumes explore the impact of colonial legacies, precolonial tra
ditions and current global and imperial forces on the everyday lives of citizens.
Reaching beyond postcolonial countries to the formation of external ethnic and
migrant diasporas, the series critically theorises:
• the active engagement of people themselves in the creation of their own
political and cultural agendas;
• the emerging predicaments of local, national and transnational identities and
subjectivities;
• the indigenous roots of nationalism, communalism, state violence and politi
cal terror;
• the cultural and religious counter-movements for or against emancipation and
modernity;
• the social struggles over the imperatives of human and citizenship rights within
the moral and political economy.
Arising from the analysis of decolonisation and recolonisation, the series opens
out a significant space in a growing interdisciplinary literature. The convergence
of interest is very broad, from anthropology, cultural studies, social history, com
parative literature, development, sociology, law and political theory. No single
theoretical orientation provides the dominant thrust. Instead the series responds
to the challenge of a commitment to empirical, in-depth research as the motiva
tion for critical theory.
Other titles the series:
in
Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger, eds, Postcolonial Identities in Africa (1996).
Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood, eds, Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural
Identities and the Politics of Anti-Radsm (1997).
Tariq Modood and Pnina Werbner, eds, The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New
Europe: Radsm, Identity and Community (1997).
Richard Werbner, ed., Memory and the Postcolony: African Anthropology and the
Critique of Power (1998).
THE MAKING OF THE
I N D I A N ATOMIC BOMB
SCIENCE, SECRECY AND THE POSTCOLONIAL STATE
ITTY ABRAHAM
ZED BOOKS
London & New ¼rk
The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb was first published by
Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK,
and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA,
in 1998.
Copyright© ltty Abraham, 1998
The moral rights of the author of this work have been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Designed and typeset in Monotype Bembo by
Lucy Morton & Robin Gable, Grosmont
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by Biddies Ltd,
Guildford and King's Lynn
All rights reserved
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Abraham, I tty, 1960--
The making of the Indian atomic bomb : science, secrecy and the
postcolonial state / Itty Abraham.
p. cm. - (Postcolonial encounters)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-85649-629-5 (hb). - ISBN 1-85649-630--9 (pb)
1. Atomic bomb-India-History. 2. Nuclear weapons-India.
3. Nuclear proliferation-India. 4. Nuclear weapons-Testing-Law and
Legislation-India. I. Title. II Series.
QC773.A27 1998
355.8'25119'0954 dc21 98-27616
CIP
Distributed exclusively in the USA by St Martin's Press,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA.
ISBN 1 85649 629 5 (Hb)
ISBN 1 85649 630 9 (Pb)
- -- - - - -- -- - - - - - - - - - -
-
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ••
V 11
PREFACE I
The problem
I
Problems of studying the Indian nuclear establishment
4
I INTRODUCTION 6
Atomic energy as a world historical moment 6
National development and national security
11
International relations theory and proliferation studies 4
I
Keys to the argument: conjuncture, postcolonial, fetish 17
Autonomy, crisis, and legitimacy in the postcolonial state
21
Postcolonial visions and science 26
2 CREATING THE INDIAN ATOMIC ENERGY
COMMISSION 34
'Colonial' science 34
Metropolitan science and colonial scientists 36
Colonial science and the national question 43
Jawaharlal Nehru and science 46
Atomic energy and national security 48
The Indian state and science 54
Territory, resources, and the Atomic Energy Commission 57
Monopolising science 61
3 POSTCOLONIAL MODERNITY:
BUILDING ATOMIC REACTORS IN INDIA 69
Urgency: fending off domestic conflict 70
Urgency: searching for a reactor 77
Urgency assuaged? The British connection 82
Other international suppliers 86
Power reactors and national development
91
A conclusion and an interpretation 98
LEARNING TO LOVE THE BOMB:
THE •PEACEFUL' NUCLEAR EXPLOSION OF 1974 I I 3
The 1962 Atomic Energy Act
114
U nsafeguarded fissile material
120
International conflict 24
I
The uncertainty within 7
12
Non-proliferation struggles 13 7
Demonstration, or, the nuclear explosion of 1974
141
]aldi Yeh Hai? 4 5
I
S FETISH, SECRECY, NATIONAL SECURITY 155
Fetish 155
Secrecy 158
Postscript
164
BIBLIOGRAPHY 167
INDEX 175
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have a number of individuals and institutions to thank for allowing me
to complete this work. The bulk of it was written at the Center for
International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) at Stanford University
in 1995-96, a perfect setting for this kind of project. The Center is
particularly interested in the intersection of science and politics, and seeks
to generate conversations between visiting scientists and social scientists
across their respective specialisations. For a scientific novice like me to
be able to walk down the corridor and talk to experts in nuclear physics
about the most trivial of physical problems aided my work in so many
ways. I know this would have been a very different book without the
generosity of my fellow residents at Galvez House. I have particularly to
thank Scott Sagan, who first invited me to spend a year at the Center,
and who was the most gracious of hosts at a time when he had so many
other important issues making demands on his time. Gabrielle Hecht
was kind enough to share her knowledge of the French nuclear industry
and a lot of her ongoing work with me. My thanks also to CISAC's
former director, David Holloway, and also to Lynn Eden and Dean
Wilkening for asking tough questions, keeping me on track, and for
putting up with a 'postie' in a place where there had been none before.
Two presidents of the Social Science Research Council, David Feather
man and Kenneth Prewitt, were kind enough to grant me an unusually
long study leave to allow me to spend nine months in Palo Alto. With
out their generosity, completing this book would not have been possible.
I want to record my appreciation to the following institutions: the
Carnegie Corporation, for providing the funds that supported me at
CISAC; the Social Science Research Council; and the MacArthur
Foundation, who paid for my first foray into the arcane world of nuclear
politics as a graduate student at the University of Illinois, when I first
vii
viii T H E M A K I N G O F T H E I N D I A N AT O M I C B O M B
began to think through a number of the issues that appear in this work.
My thanks to Virendra Singh, Govind Swamp, and Ravinder Kumar for
generosity at short notice. Lorna Arnold saved me months of effort as
she helped me find my way through the British archives. Thanks also to
the staff at the many libraries and archives who helped me and granted
permission to use their materials. These include the Niels Bohr Library
at the American Institute of Physics (formerly in New York City, now in
Maryland); Columbia University libraries; Hoover Institution archives in
Stanford, California; Bancroft Library at the University of California,
Berkeley; Stanford University libraries; Library of Congress; US National
Archives; National Security Archive, Washington DC; UK Public Records
Office, Kew Gardens; India Office Library, London; Royal Society of
Great Britain, London; Tata Institute of Fundamental Research library,
Bombay; Tata Archives, Bombay; and the Nehru Memorial Museum and
Library, Delhi. My thanks also to the editors at Zed Books, Robert
Molteno and Louise Murray, for all their help.
Bits and pieces of this work have been presented at seminars over the
last two years. I learnt a lot while being grilled at the Center for Cultural
Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, South Asia/Middle
East seminar at the University of Chicago, South Asia seminar at Cornell
University, political science department at the University of Hawai'i,
School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, CISAC
Wednesday seminar at Stanford University, the Rethinking South Asia
conference at Tufts University, and of course at the annual South Asia
conferences at the University ofWisconsin at Madison. My deep gratitude
to Anna Tsing, Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph, Shelley Feldman, Sankaran
Krishna, Kanti Bajpai, Lynn Eden, and Sugata Bose for inviting me to
present my ideas and for the many conversations with participants at
these seminars who unfortunately are too numerous to name.
A number of individuals have been crucial in shaping the way the
arguments here have been formed, strengthened, and sometimes com
pletely revamped. In many ways, Ashis Nandy is responsible for making
me think about this problem and for showing me how to proceed, often
through the provocation of just a sentence in one of his many essays on
science and modernity. David Ludden and Arun Elhance led me to think
very differently about space. Gyan Prakash has been a great help in talking
through the complications of poststructural theory and science in colonial
India. Ron Suny was always willing to stop and talk about nationalism
in all its guises and the follies of the postcolonial. Anna Tsing took a
great interest in a subject far from her own specialisation and made me
· think through issues I had taken for granted. The first draft of this work
1
was read and commented upon by Amrita Basu, Stephen P. Cohen, and
-,I
