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Abstract
A half-century after their completion, India’s Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) stand out as unchallenged architectural advertisements for ‘nuclear nationalism’. Elsewhere, Atoms for Peace reactors made no pretence to architectural refinement. In the right hands, however, ‘Cold War Modern’ could express the hard power of the nuclear age. For India and Pakistan, these nuclear laboratory complexes became the public faces of the peaceful atom that held out the promise, and masked the peril, of the atomic age at home and abroad, and deliberately deflected attention away from clandestine nuclear weapons programmes. BARC and PINSTECH, envisioned as cornerstones for self-confident and self-reliant programmes of nuclear physics, embodied the paradox of postcolonial science, necessarily borrowing from the West but determined to break the cycle of dependency, in defiance of Western expectations.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Mian, “Fevered with Dreams of the Future.”
2. Crowley and Pavitt, Cold War Modern.
3. Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace; Drogan, “Atoms for Peace”; DiMoia, “Atoms for Sale?”; and Krige, “The Peaceful Atom as Political Weapon.”
4. Krige, “Atoms for Peace, Scientific Internationalism, and Scientific Intelligence,” makes a convincing case for ‘a dependence reinforced for the less developed countries by coupling U.S. economic aid with the acquisition of reactors using enriched uranium fuel and built by firms such as General Electric and Westinghouse’, though the cases of Indian and Pakistani suggest the limits of this policy.
5. Salam, “Renaissance of Sciences in the Arab and Islamic Lands.”
6. Library of Congress, Glenn Seaborg Papers, Box 687. Seaborg to Lyndon Johnson, draft, January 1967. f. 1, January 3–14 trip to Australia, Thailand, India and Pakistan.
7. Library of Congress, Glenn Seaborg Papers, Box 687. H.N. Sethna, Speech at dedication of BARC, January 10, 1967.
8. Greenstein, Portraits of Discovery, 70–74.
9. Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb, 40–41.
10. Mian, “Homi Bhabha Killed a Crow.”
11. Anderson, Nucleus and Nation, 169–182 details the early history of the TIFR. For a parallel study of nuclear physics, see Phalkey, Atomic State.
12. Venkataraman, Bhabha and His Magnificent Obsessions, 114–5.
13. Anderson, Nucleus and Nation, 177–8.
14. Lee, “Constructing a Shared Vision: Otto Koenigsberger and Tata & Sons” describes Koeingsberger’s project in detail.
15. Chowdhury and Dasgupta, A Masterful Spirit, 104.
16. Menon, “The Invention of the Modern Indian Architect.” For an overview of the first Indian modernists, see Ashraf and Belluardo, An Architecture of Independence.
17. Greenstein, Portraits of Discovery, 82.
18. Chatterjee and Lal, The TIFR Art Collection, 11.
19. Chowdhury and Dasgupta, A Masterful Spirit, 11.
20. Greenstein, Portraits of Discovery, 78.
21. Chatterjee and Lal, The TIFR Art Collection, 14.
22. Brown, Art for the Modern India, explores the paradoxes of art intended to be modern and Indian.
23. Ibid., 9.
24. Venkataraman, Bhabha and His Magnificent Obsessions, 121.
25. Anderson, Colonial Pathologies, 116–120, has a parallel discussion of ‘The Toilet in the Tropics’ and US efforts to compel the natives to abandon traditional sanitary practices and adopt western ones.
26. Anderson, Nucleus and Nation, 105.
27. Krige, “Techno-Utopian Dreams, Techno-Political Realities,” 152.
28. Shyamasundar and Pai, Homi Bhabha and the Computer Revolution.
29. Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb, 60–61 and Venkataraman, Bhabha and His Magnificent Obsessions, 145–8.
30. Venkataraman, Bhabha and His Magnificent Obsessions, 166.
31. Irving, Indian Summer, offers a model study of the architectural symbolism built into the Viceroy’s House.
32. Ibid., 194–197.
33. Anderson, Nucleus and Nation, 181.
34. Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, explores that nuclear future in some detail, with attention to Bhabha’s role in India’s emerging nuclear weapons program.
35. DOE Archives, A.A. Wells, “Memorandum for Chairman Seaborg,” April 19, 1961.
36. On Abdus Salam as director of ICTP, see de Greiff, “The Tale of Two Peripheries.”
37. Frazer, Cosmic Anger is the only full-length biography, though it barely mentions PINSTECH. Imperial College colleague Kibble’s, “Muhammad Abdus Salam” highlights its subject’s scientific contributions.
38. Fraser, Cosmic Anger, 164–7.
39. Hasnain, “Dr. I.H. Usmani and the Early Days of PAEC,” 13–20.
40. DOE Archives, “AEC Signs Trilateral Fuel Supply Contract with IAEA and Pakistan.”
41. DOE Archives, Glenn Seaborg, “Comments on Topics Raised by Professor Salam of Pakistan,” April 19, 1961.
42. Hasnain, “Dr. I.H. Usmani and the Early Days of the PAEC,” 16.
43. Hunting, Edward Durell Stone and Stone, Edward Durell Stone cover the embassy in some detail.
44. University of Arkansas, Special Collections, Edward Durell Stone Papers, MC 236, Box 36, f. 31, H. Usmani to M.W. Abbasi, February 17, 1964.
45. University of Arkansas, Special Collections, Edward Durell Stone Papers, MC 236, Box 78, f. 40, E.D. Stone to I.H. Usmani, August 11, 1961.
46. S.A. Husnain, “Dr. I.H. Usmani and the Early Days of PAEC,” 16.
47. University of Arkansas, Special Collections, Edward Durell Stone Papers, MC 340 Box 82, f. 7.
48. Scott, “Experimental Physics,” 6.
49. Kapur, Pakistan’s Nuclear Development, 149–51.
50. Hoodbhoy, “The Man Who Designed Pakistan’s Bomb” details Riazuddin’s contributions, to physics and to the Pakistani bomb.
51. Quoted in Rehman, Long Road to Chagai, 39, which includes lengthy and sometimes contradictory interviews with many of the principals in the Pakistan nuclear weapons program conducted shortly after Pakistan’s first nuclear test.
52. Khan, Eating Grass, 106–7. Khan, a general with access to key documents is the best source on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.
53. Khan, Eating Grass, 58.
54. Brown, Plutopia astutely compares the experiences of two of these secret cities.
55. University of Arkansas, Special Collections, Edward Durell Stone Papers, MC 340, Box 36, f. 30, Usmani to Stone, December 5, 1970.
56. Prakash, Another Reason, 234.
57. Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire considers how postcolonial modernism deliberately signaled ‘a reorientation of India’s relation to the world’, 12.
58. Salam, Ideals and Realities, 262–95.
59. http://www.hbni.ac.in/about/hbnidc.html (accessed February 16, 2015).