India

If India had presented the world with a nuclear fait accompli, the eminent Indian journalist Amalendu Das Gupta mused in 1987, “the Americans and their allies would have been angry; the Russians would have been unhappy." His choice of words succinctly expressed the ambivalent attitude the Soviet leadership had toward India’s nuclear weapon program.

Author Swapna Kona Nayudu discusses the development of Indo-Soviet relations in conjunction with the evolving positions of the Communist Party of India, and the effect of the Prague Spring on Indian domestic politics.

In India’s Latin American dealings, pragmatism and idealism collided.

How marginalia on union government orders allowed Tamil Nadu to resist Indira Gandhi's Emergency.

Swapna Kona Nayudu surveys a wealth of archival materials relating to India's Cold War era history that are readily available online.

Despite hurdles, New Delhi offers a trove of Cold War records.

When Nehru visited the USSR in 1955, he was feted with roses. Personal visits like this cemented India’s relations with the Soviet Union.

"Ideas of India" is a newly launched database that makes a broad swathe of historical Indian periodicals accessible, sources that show the roots of Indian diplomacy during the Cold War.

In May 1998, India and Pakistan conducted the twentieth century’s last nuclear tests.

India’s “peaceful nuclear explosion” on 18 May 1974 caught the United States by surprise in part because the intelligence community had not been looking for signs that a test was in the works. 

In the last months of 1995, U.S intelligence agencies detected signs of nuclear test preparations at India's test site in Pokhran, but the satellite photos that analysts studied were "as clear as mud."

Researcher Martand Jha explores the origin and history of India's Department of Atomic Energy.

Indian archival sources on China’s successful 1964 nuclear test clarify the origins of India’s nuclear weapons program.

A recent article in The National Interest (TNI) presented archival evidence to argue that India intended to develop a full-spectrum nuclear weapons capability as early as 1969. However, other archival sources related to Indian nuclear history raise doubts about the purported provenance and significance of this source.

Jayita Sarkar explores technological collaboration between the French and Indian Atomic Energy Commissions, using new archival documents to expose how shared opposition to U.S. information censorship and the desire to preserve foreign policy independence fostered nuclear collaboration between the two nations.

Through extensive use of newly available materials from the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, this working paper helps demystify India’s nuclear decision-making between 1973 and 1976.

Binay Prasad reflects on the archives of the Ministry of External Affairs and area studies in India.

What did the overthrow of the Chilean President Salvador Allende have to do with Indian nuclear weapons? More than you might suspect.

Brandon Kirk Williams introduces the Nehru papers, a trove of invaluable evidence on decolonization and the global Cold War.