Science, civilisation and the state: the developmental fetish in the making of Indian nuclear policy

This article examines the developmental logic underlying the early evolution of India’s nuclear programme. Existing accounts often interpret the origins of India’s nuclear policy through a retrospective security lens, viewing early investments in nuclear research primarily as a precursor to eventual weaponisation. This article challenges such teleological interpretations by examining the centrality of atomic energy within the developmental imagination of the postcolonial Indian state during its formative years. Focusing on the role of Jawaharlal Nehru, it situates the pursuit of nuclear technology within a broader vision of science and technology as instruments of postcolonial reconstruction in which large-scale technological projects were seen as essential tools for overcoming colonial legacies of underdevelopment and achieving national transformation. Within this framework, nuclear science functioned less as a military project than as a symbol and institutional pillar of postcolonial development and a potent marker of civilisational progress, technological autonomy and state sovereignty. By situating India’s early nuclear programme within the broader politics of postcolonial development, the article highlights how technological modernity was imagined as a pathway through which the newly independent states of the Global South sought to assert autonomy and claim membership in the global hierarchy of industrial nations.