Awards

• Commended for Global Development Studies Book Award 2022 (United States)
• Runner-up for Global Development Studies Book Award 2022 (United States)
• Short-listed for Global Development Studies Book Award 2022 (United States)
• Winner of Bernard S. Cohn Prize (United States).
• Winner of Bernard S. Cohn Prize 2024 (United States)

Overview

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. Thanks to generous funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

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9781501765018

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Reviews

This book provides not only a compelling history of India's nuclear program, but also new insights into decolonization, independence movements, and the Cold War in developing nations. It's an engrossing, well-researched history of India's nuclear ambitions. * Kirkus Reviews * Ploughshares and Swords is a provocative new history with global implications. * New Books Network * Sarkar skillfully shows how Indian institution builders consistently made polyvalent technopolitical choices to keep the nuclear weapons option perpetually open through their ambiguity about whether nuclear development advanced civilian or military purposes. * Choice * Drawing on extensive interdisciplinary research, this book is a useful addition to the literature on India's nuclear programme that powerfully underscores the importance of its subject matter. * LSE Review of Books * The book is an essential reference to understanding the complex nuclear histories of India and its regional competitors. * Arms Control Today *

This book provides not only a compelling history of India's nuclear program, but also new insights into decolonization, independence movements, and the Cold War in developing nations. It's an engrossing, well-researched history of India's nuclear ambitions. * Kirkus Reviews * Ploughshares and Swords is a provocative new history with global implications. * New Books Network *

This book provides not only a compelling history of India's nuclear program, but also new insights into decolonization, independence movements, and the Cold War in developing nations. It's an engrossing, well-researched history of India's nuclear ambitions. * Kirkus Reviews *

This book provides not only a compelling history of India's nuclear program, but also new insights into decolonization, independence movements, and the Cold War in developing nations. It's an engrossing, well-researched history of India's nuclear ambitions. * Kirkus Reviews * Ploughshares and Swords is a provocative new history with global implications. * New Books Network * Sarkar skillfully shows how Indian institution builders consistently made polyvalent technopolitical choices to keep the nuclear weapons option perpetually open through their ambiguity about whether nuclear development advanced civilian or military purposes. * Choice * Drawing on extensive interdisciplinary research, this book is a useful addition to the literature on India's nuclear programme that powerfully underscores the importance of its subject matter. * LSE Review of Books *

Author Information

Jayita Sarkar is Senior Lecturer in Global History of Inequalities at the University of Glasgow. Follow her on X @DrJSarkar.

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