Homi J. Bhabha: A Life by Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by:

• Homi J. Bhabha: A Life by Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy
• Souvik Kar (bio)

Homi J. Bhabha: A Life By Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy. New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 2023. Pp. 723.

This biography of Indian nuclear physicist Homi Jehangir Bhabha (1909–66), the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India, places Bhabha at the center of an era straddling early twentieth-century Indo-European scientific exchange, the atomic age, Indian independence from British colonial rule, and the development of the Indian nuclear program.

Dadabhoy divides his biography into three sections, each detailing a phase of Bhabha's life: "Scientist as Researcher," "Scientist as Institution-Builder," and "Scientist as Administrator." A final section, "Coda," describes Bhabha's untimely and controversial death. Dadabhoy sketches a life of high drama: Bhabha's apprenticeship with European luminaries of physics in the 1930s, his decision to return to freshly independent India to build nuclear establishments from scratch—despite acute resource scarcity—and steer Indian nuclear policy amid Cold War pressures, and finally, his mysterious death in a plane crash near Mont Blanc in 1966. Bhabha's story, as a major Indian [End Page 410] nuclear historian has described, possesses the ingredients for a "modern fairy tale" for India (Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Nuclear Bomb, 1998).

Modern historiography of the Indian nuclear program demystifies such a fairy tale, especially calling attention to Bhabha's problematic fostering of a culture of authoritarian secrecy around the civil nuclear complex (Abraham, 1998; George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb, 1999; Janhavi Phalkey, Atomic State, 2013). On the other hand, a long hagiographic tradition represents Bhabha as a postcolonial hero, harnessing science to rejuvenate a people colonially stereotyped as technological laggards and rebuild a nation left impoverished by centuries of colonial plunder (Ganeshan Venkataraman, Magnificent Obsessions, 1994; Chintamani Deshmukh, Homi Jehangir Bhabha, 2010; Biman Nath, Renaissance Man, 2022).

Taking a middle path between the above traditions, Dadabhoy's biography commits to painting a complex portrait of a man emerging from Parsi society (Indian Zoroastrians, a wealthy, heavily Westernized minority community) and grappling with historical forces with some lasting achievements and some equally lasting problematic legacies. This translates into following a structure of oscillation between opposites in representing Bhabha's life and decisions: for example, Dadabhoy remarks on the theme of individualism animating Bhabha's policy of institution building—where talented individuals were first identified, and institutions were then built around them. Then, Dadabhoy follows up with a description of Bhabha's fostering of a strong collective identity for Indian scientists who identified with Indian nationalism but did not neglect international ties. Such a structure helps to reconcile what appears to be historical contradictions: the overambitious idealism of Bhabha's "three-stage plan" for Indian nuclear power generation—which envisioned nuclear reactors producing more uranium than they consume—becomes, in Dadabhoy's analysis, a pragmatic response to the desperation of an impoverished India lacking uranium reserves and easily being outbid in the international uranium trade during Bhabha's lifetime.

Unlike the existing nuclear historiography, Dadabhoy's biography is also intensely personal in nature, demonstrating how Bhabha, as a scientist-statesman, both at home and abroad, tapped into a dense patchwork of friendships, culminating in his triumphant presidential speech at the first Atoms for Peace Conference (1955). Dadabhoy analyzes the speech as preemptively revealing the secret research on nuclear fusion on both sides of the Cold War and encouraging international transparency and cooperation (thus contributing to the formation of the International Atomic Energy Agency).

Simultaneously, Dadabhoy uses the biography to layer Bhabha's more problematic decisions. For example, he triangulates Bhabha's hypercompetitive egotism, his close friendship with Jawaharlal Nehru (the first prime minister of India), and his authoritarian use of secrecy to insulate himself from democratic accountability. Dadabhoy observes that this served to smother scientific and political critique of the nuclear program and concentrate [End Page 411] nuclear policymaking between only a handful of scientists and the prime minister, setting in motion the transformation of the Indian nuclear complex from a scientific institution into a power bloc: "Bhabha became the state with respect to nuclear energy" (p. 4; my emphasis). Dadabhoy updates the existing critique of Bhabha by...