The politics of splitting the atom: An exclusive excerpt from Atomic State

Science historian Jahnavi Phalkey’s book explores how imperialism, independence and war altered equations between science and politics, reactors and varsities.

Following the use of atomic bombs at the end of the Second World War, it was impossible not to connect nuclear research with global power and weaponry. Unlike the United Kingdom or the USSR, the realization for India of a nuclear programme was a remote possibility for the country’s interim political government. There was the atomic bomb and there was wishful thinking. Which is why what many have thought of as an outstanding technological and scientific accomplishment has cast a