Description
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in an interview in May 2014, said that India’s nuclear doctrine is a reflection of its cultural inheritance. In making this statement, he was reflecting upon the conventional wisdom that holds that India’s nuclear doctrine’s origins lie in its strategic culture and civilizational tenets. This article suggests that such an understanding of the origins of India’s nuclear doctrine is mistaken as it overlooks the intellectual history of ideas that underlie India’s nuclear doctrine. Marshalling archival material from the discussions on India’s nuclear option from 1964 to 1974 and building upon the methodological directions offered by global intellectual history, this article argues that the origins of ideas that constitute India’s nuclear doctrine lie in the Western nuclear debates and literature on nuclear strategy. It shows that not only did the Western discourse on nuclear strategy shape India’s public debate during this period, but ideas such as minimum deterrence served as a rhetorical device for Indian intellectual elites to further their case for an independent nuclear deterrent for India. In doing so, they mirrored the Western debates on the utility and relevance of nuclear weapons for national security and adapted those ideas to their local circumstances and strategic context. In mounting their preference for an independent nuclear weapons program for India on nuclear strategic principles, they sought to legitimize the nuclear option in the face of opposition from disarmers, Gandhians, and Western proliferation skeptics, thus strengthening the case of militarisation of nuclear capabilities in India.
