Nuclear weapons continue to fascinate the elites and general publics in South Asia, even as many external observers regard the use of nuclear weapons as a very real possibility in the region. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton had famously declared Kashmir as the most dangerous flashpoint in the world after India and Pakistan went overtly nuclear in 1998. It is remarkable how pervasive this view is among the scholars of international politics, some of whom do not seem to have even an iota of knowledge about South Asia or Kashmir in general. Equally remarkable is the insouciance with which this view is greeted in the corridors of power in New Delhi and Islamabad. No one in any senior decision-making position in either India or Pakistan seems to believe that a nuclear confrontation between the two nations is a serious possibility, even on the seemingly intractable issue of Kashmir. While the international community remains concerned about the potential for a nuclear holocaust in South Asia, the strategic communities in both India and Pakistan have always been extremely sanguine about the “rationality” of the decision makers in their respective countries to be able to prevent one.

Most of the scholarly literature on the topic of nuclear weapons in South Asia has focused on the causes and consequences of nuclearization in the region. South Asian Cultures of the Bomb takes a fresh look at this issue. This project emerged out of a desire to examine the shift in the relationship among academic scholarship, social movements, and antinuclear activism in South Asia, especially since May 1998. This volume takes aim at the conventional studies of nuclear power undertaken mostly by analysts of security studies and international relations. It aims to go beyond these studies, and to examine the role of nuclear power in the shaping of modern South Asia. As the editor argues, “to get at the heart of nuclear power in South Asia, at the very least we have to move beyond abstract models of non-proliferation, security studies, and deterrence and begin to ask different questions of this object, and to trace its connections with other forms of power and domination” (p. 3).

Zia Mian examines the role played by nuclear power in shaping elite perceptions in Pakistan about modernity and argues that the nuclear weaponization of Pakistan only exposes its fundamental vulnerabilities, exhorting the Pakistani antinuclear movement “to embed its prudential and moral critique of nuclear weapons and nuclear power in a broader challenge to prevailing ideas and practices of national security, development, and the politics of knowledge” (p. 37). Examining the Indian side of the equation, M. V. Ramana documents the way that the nuclear enclave in India has used secrecy as a weapon to avoid accountability that has, according to Ramana, resulted in a marked absence of a well-informed debate about India's nuclear pursuits.

Sankaran Krishna underlines the ontology of the Indian middle class and its preoccupation with intellectual achievement as factors primarily responsible for the emergence of India as a nuclear weapons state. His discussion accords primacy “to the anxieties and insecurities of a postcolonial middle class that is tired by being ignored and belittled in the world comity of nations” (p. 69). The need for nuclear weapons, according to this narrative, merely reflects the desire of the Indian middle class for prestige, influence, and recognition at the global level. Ammara Durrani examines the sociopolitical fallout of the controversy generated by the revelations about the A. Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network. Durrani analyzes a sample of Urdu and English newspapers' reaction to the Khan affair and presents interesting findings. The English daily Dawn took an editorial position largely supportive of Khan, whereas the Urdu daily Jang had a more nuanced approach to the question. The English press, because of its proximity to power, largely conformed to the establishment's views on national security.

Srirupa Roy addresses the reasons underlying the failure of an antinuclear movement to take root in India. Arguing that the specter of mass death and destruction do not have a significant actional force in postcolonial India, Roy concludes that mobilization against nuclear weapons alone is not sufficient to create a social movement against nuclear power. Haidar Nizamani's surveys across Pakistan's four provinces in nuclear issues bring to the fore considerable doubt among the Pakistani populace about the efficiency of nuclear weapons as instruments of security, thereby breaking the myth of consensus on the nuclear issue in Pakistan.

Going beyond the idioms of statecraft and civil society, Raminder Kaur's chapter provides a local perspective on the nuclear issue, a view grounded in the vernacular cultures of Mumbai. Kaur explores the various meanings attributed to the May 1998 nuclear tests in vernacular culture by focusing on spectacles and public displays during Mumbai's Ganapati festival. Similarly, Iftikhar Dadi provides an interpretation of nuclear power embodied in everyday objects of popular culture in Pakistan. Dadi argues that the nuclearization of public space in Pakistan created new opportunities not only for celebration, in line with the priorities of the state, but also “to contest and debate Pakistan's nuclearization program, which includes discursive critiques as well as spectral play between secrecy and visibility” (p. 193). Karsten Frey, in the final chapter, examines the domestic discourse in India on nuclear issues. He surveys the writings of the Indian strategic community as published in major Indian newspapers and underlines their role in attaching “symbolic values to the possession of nuclear weapons [that appeals] to their concept of India as a proud, modern, and peaceful nation” (p. 209).

This volume is important for a number of reasons. It is a genuine attempt to take the subject of nuclear power in South Asia beyond the narrow confines of strategic studies. As the editor suggests, this marks “the beginning of a critical engagement with the complexities of nuclear power and its atomic publics in South Asia” (p. 17). Use of visual motifs (e.g., pictures, models used in religious ceremonies in India) and audio narratives drawn from the popular culture in India and Pakistan is at times more effective in underlining the complexities of the nuclear issue in the region than the standard textual approach. Another significant attribute of this volume is the attempt to give equal coverage to both Indian and Pakistani nuclear issues, thereby facilitating a real intellectual dialogue between the two societies.

What is missing from the volume, however, is a wider debate and engagement with the literature that most contributors are keen to counter. This volume's explicit intention was to take the nuclear debate in South Asia beyond the domain of international relations and security studies. But unless the arguments of the much-maligned political scientists who dabble in “rationalist” explanations are properly accounted for, the debate has little chance of moving any further. Most chapters do not make any effort to underline the strongest arguments of their academic “rivals” and so end up attacking straw men. The last chapter by Frey, where the author's opinions are presented as widely accepted propositions, is a good example. Without circumscribing his argument in any way, Frey suggests that “India's security-related incentives to nuclearize, in any case, had been reduced by the end of the Cold War, the reduction of global stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and the ongoing process of Sino-Indian rapprochement” (p. 195). Almost all parts of the sentence can be strongly refuted, and many would argue that the end of the Cold War had in fact increased the incentives for India to nuclearize.

South Asian Cultures of the Bomb is an important book, but it could have reached a wider audience had it made a genuine attempt to engage those with whom it disagrees. The nuclear debate in South Asia continues unabated, and scholars of all persuasions should continue to examine the issues that this debate engenders. But they should also try to engage one another more substantively if a new more robust multidisciplinary research agenda is to emerge.