S4E2: Homi Bhabha and The Travancore Diplomacy | Atomic India | 2

Indian scientists and politicians carried out vigorous discussions on how to organize advanced scientific research on an industrial scale in India as a means of development between 1938 and 1948.

This episode revisits some of those conversations about the management of scientific research.

At the same time, it looks into the politically charged process of the integration of princely states into the Indian union with particular reference to Travancore. Travancore had been planning to build an independent economy on the strength of its reserves of radioactive Thorium. Since 1945, when its utility as an atomic fuel was revealed, the value of Thorium shot up in the international market.

However, Nehru and the nationalist Indian scientists virtually forced Travancore to surrender its entire reserve to India’s absolute control.
Control over all material related to nuclear research thus emerged as a necessary attribute of the sovereignty of the new Indian state.

 

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