Atomic Postalgia: Antiquity, Modernity and the Origins of the Nuclear Program in India
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This paper examines the origins and motivations for the nuclear program in India. It focuses particularly on the inception of the program in the early 1940s—a period of Indian nuclear history that is often overlooked in favor of analyses of the later nuclear missile tests of 1974 and 1998. These later analyses, although well-intentioned, are either too limited in their historical scope or too vague to be of much use in understanding the initial motivations for a nuclear program. As an alternative, this paper finds that an in-depth historical investigation of the program’s early formation, and especially that of its two main instigators, Jawaharlal Nehru and Homi Bhabha, is essential to understanding the deeper motivations and perceptions shaping the program as it developed in later years. By tracing the intellectual journey of these ‘two fathers’ of Indian atomic power across their writings and letters, this paper brings out a uniquely Indian sense of modernity, derived from the vision of a morally and socially advanced ancient India. This blend of modernity and antiquity is then used to coin the concept of postalgia—the nostalgia for a past that may never have existed—that, as a form of constructive history, can be used to explain the subsequent evolution of the nuclear program in India. The result is a model that not only helps to provide insight into the Indian case today, but also has the potential to be used in other similar cases that rely on the intersection of intellectual history with policy.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 2014 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Dimri, Keshav |
|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Holloway, David |
| Primary advisor | Vardi, Gil-li |
| Advisor | Manuel, Anja |
Subjects
| Subject | India |
|---|---|
| Subject | Homi Bhabha |
| Subject | Jawaharlal Nehru |
| Subject | nuclear |
| Subject | postalgia |
| Subject | nostalgia |
| Subject | constructive history |
| Subject | antiquity |
| Subject | modernity |
| Subject | Indian |
| Subject | Peaceful Nuclear Explosion |
| Subject | Indira Gandhi |
| Subject | Center for International Security and Cooperation |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- Use and reproduction
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- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
Dimri, Keshav. (2014). Atomic Postalgia: Antiquity, Modernity and the Origins of the Nuclear Program in India.
Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/mx444dg2669
Collection
Stanford University, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies, Theses
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- Contact
- kdimri@jd17.law.harvard.edu
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