Ploughshares and swords : India's nuclear program in the global Cold War / Jayita Sarkar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sarkar, Jayita, 1986- author.

Contributor:

Rosengarten Family Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nuclear energy--India--History--20th century.

Nuclear energy.

Nuclear energy--Government policy--India--History--20th century.

Nuclear weapons--India--History--20th century.

Nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons--Government policy--India--History--20th century.

Technology and state--India--History--20th century.

Technology and state.

India--Foreign relations--1947-1984.

India.

Diplomatic relations.

Nuclear energy--Government policy.

Nuclear weapons--Government policy.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

xvi, 282 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Other Title:

India's nuclear program in the global Cold War

Plowshares and swords

Place of Publication:

Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2022.

Summary:

India's nuclear program is often misunderstood as an inward-looking endeavor of secretive technocrats. In Ploughshares and Swords, Jayita Sarkar challenges this received wisdom, narrating a global story of India's nuclear program during its first forty years. The book foregrounds the program's civilian and military features by probing its close relationship with the space program. Through nuclear and space technologies, India's leaders served the technopolitical aims of economic modernity and the geopolitical goals of deterring adversaries. The politically savvy, transnationally connected scientists and engineers who steered the program obtained technologies, materials, and information through a variety of state and nonstate actors from Europe and North America, including both superpowers. They thus maneuvered around Cold War politics and the choke points of the nonproliferation regime. Hyperdiversification increased choices for the leaders of the nuclear program but reduced democratic accountability at home. The nuclear program became a consensus-enforcing device in the name of the nation. Ploughshares and Swords is a provocative new history with global implications. It shows how geopolitical and technopolitical visions influence decisions about the nation after decolonization--Publisher's description.

Contents:

Introduction: Freedom of action

World War and Decolonization. Atomic earths and state-making, 1940s-1948

Radium to reactors, 1948-1953

Cold and Hot Wars. Nuclear marketplace opens for business, 1953-1962

Plutonium, power reactors, and space projects, 1962-1964

The plowshare loophole, 1964-1970

Unmaking and Making of India. Fractured worlds, 1970-1974

Explosion and fallout, 1974-1980s

Epilogue: The anti-dissent machine.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-273) and index (pages 275-282).

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Sarkar, Jayita, 1986- Ploughshares and swords

ISBN:

9781501765018

1501765019

9781501764400

1501764403

OCLC:

1265004045