Summary
This study examines the evolution of India’s approach to nuclear weapons from the country’s independence in August 1947 to its detonation of a nuclear explosive device in May 1974. There are two main objectives of this work. The first goal is to explain how the Indian government managed to develop an indigenous capability for producing nuclear explosives in the face of tremendous technical, financial and political constraints. The second aim is to develop a general model for analyzing the process of nuclear proliferation in any country.
 
The model developed here emphasizes the creation and diffusion of normative and causal beliefs, or myths, about the political and military uses of nuclear force; and it calls attention to the methods by which individual myth makers work to legitimate and popularize these beliefs inside domestic political and military institutions. Whereas other scholarly approaches portray security, prestige or technology as the main cause of nuclear proliferation, and thus have difficulty in accounting for anomalous cases, the myth making model enables observers to examine how nuclear technology becomes associated with national security and status in some countries but not in others. This approach illuminates the processes shaping the pace, scope and timing of nuclear weapons acquisition.
 
The myth-making model is used to show how India’s nuclear program took shape in the late 1940s and evolved over four distinct phases. In particular, I explain why the Indian government decided to acquire the infrastructure required to build nuclear weapons but then stopped short of actually producing them. The study clarifies the puzzling nuclear behavior of one of the world’s emerging military powers. It also offers a fresh perspective for analyzing the patterns of nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation elsewhere in the world.
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