Ploughshares and Swords: India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War

India's nuclear program is often misunderstood as an inward-looking endeavor of secretive technocrats. In Ploughshares and Swords, Jayita Sarkar challenges this received wisdom, narrating a global story of India's nuclear program during its first forty years. The book foregrounds the program's civilian and military features by probing its close relationship with the space program to show how India's leaders concurrently served the technopolitical aims of economic modernity and the geopolitical goals of deterring adversaries.

Jayita Sarkar is Associate Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow. Her research and teaching areas are global and transnational histories of decolonisation, capitalism, nuclear infrastructures, and South Asia. Her book, Ploughshares and Swords. India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022), is a finalist for the ISA Global Development Studies Book Award. She is currently writing, Atomic Capitalism. A Global History, for Princeton University Press.

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is organized jointly by the American Historical Association and the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks its anonymous individual donors and institutional partner (the George Washington University History Department) for their continued support.