India's Nuclear Bomb - The Impact on Global Proliferation

Author: George Perkovich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 598
ISBN/UPC (if available): 019565207x

Description

A highly nuanced and sensitive narration of the complex interaction between domestic and external factors that led to the nuclear test of May1998 and shattering of a number of Indian and international myths about nuclear weapons and their role in global politics.

This book is a comprehensive, definitive history of how the world's largest democracy, the India of Gandhi, has grappled with the twin desires to have and to renounce the bomb. Each chapter contains significant historical revelations, drawn from scores of interviews with India's key scientists, military leaders, diplomats, and politicians and from classified US government documents and interview with US officials.
George Perkovich teases out the cultural and ethical concerns and vestiges of colonialism that underlie India's seeminly paradoxical stance. India's changing view of itself has as mush, or more, to do with its nuclear policy as any threat from outside its borders.