Customer Reviews

New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament (Voices & Visions)

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The book starts off as a good historical narrative of the issues involved; however, the writers extreme left wing tendencies soon become apparent

The book is basically a rebuke of India's nuclear weapon programme. The book would have been much better if the authors did not spend so much time criticising India for what is essentially an act of self defence. the writers fail to take into account India's security problems, as well as the problems it faces against terrorism. it also fails to speak of hostile comments made by Pakistani and Chinese officials thratening India

Arundhati Roy and Praful Bidwai are well known anti Hindu, anti India writers with prolific track record of biased vitriolic outbursts.

The central theme of the book is to take a few facts and put an overdose of fringe left opinions. The net result is to make India seem responsible for nuclear proliferation in the world.

The writers have tried to equate India with Pakistan. The fact that Indian nuclear program started as an Indian response after Indian defeat in Indo China war of 1962 and Chinese nuclear program has been very conveniently discounted.

This flaw alone seriously discounts any scholarship of the work. This book is suitable for preaching to the converted. If you are looking for another view point to the Indian nuclear program, you will be sorely disappointed.

Having used this text for University, I highly recommend this book for understanding what is happening in South Asia's nuclear arms race, particularly since it was printed after the nuclear test detonations by India and Pakistan in May 1998. Though the content is sometimes personal opinion, there is enough verifiable information in regard to the leadup, execution and aftermath of May 1998's tests.

This book hits hard. While some of us anti-nuclear activists can rationalize that we have done something for the world, these two writers stir within me a feeling of back-burner status. This book is a call to action, to re-kindle the fires that drove so many europeans, asians, south africans, americans (north and south), and others into the emotional fanatacism that the anti-nuke movement so desperately needed. But i must watch my tences, as the threat is once again looming large. The threat has never really gone away. A key element in this book is that the process of global nuclear disarmament, has been significantly altered. The '98 tests were not only displays of false bravado but also anti-good faith approaches to the security of this troubled region. This book is easy to read, save the first-print editing mistakes, which, as in most copy mistakes, do not make the authors points any less clear. These writer/activists have returned the sadness in my heart, but with a different wrapper. This is a perfectly whelming book. The subject is a hard one to feel good about, but feel about it we should. As a north american, i must admit to the complacancy of our supposed "victory" in the cold wars. This book is the second alarm for me on the nuclear issue, i will not hit the snooze-button again. I encourage all teachers and students to read this book, as the dissemination of powerful ideas are contained within. It is time to start acting like a grown-up world, and stop running away from difficult problems. It is time for action in defiance of the status-quo, the very one that has duped societies into the false security of deterrance through strength. It is time to examine our commitment to global peace. It is time to put up, not keep our ideas and energies shut-up in our safe societies. This book looks at the medias role in shaping public opinion, something that has not fully been exposed as the controller of public opinion. To borrow an idea from N. Chomsky, it is the media that manufacures our consent. In india it is a particularly sad problem. Too many people (mostly women) cannot read, let alone understand the physics (dangers) of nuclear weapons. It is obsurd then, to rely on these opinions as it regards the expansion of nuclear capabilities on the sub-continent. But the spin doctors whip-up feverish support (for the bomb) based not on an educated calculation of regional security, but on nationalist and religious biases. READ IT!

India and Pakistani are both nuclear powers with an active nuclear arsenal. They have also engaged in both declared and undeclared states of war with each other since achieving statehood and independence from colonial control. Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik are two of India's respected and experienced journalists, and long-time anti-nuclear activists who in New Nukes: India, Pakistan And Global Nuclear Disarmament examine the causes and consequences of the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests. They provide a sound and informative framework for understanding the global context in which these two nuclear nations operate and map out a new approach to nuclear abolition, in which not only South Asia's newest nuclear states, but the oldest and mightiest Western nuclear powers would begin serious efforts toward full and complete nuclear disarmament. The trigger to nuclear holocaust is no longer the tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, but rather between the two poverty stricken, overpopulated, resource depleted, religious intolerant, border disputing nations of India and Pakistan. The disarmament proposals laid out in New Nukes, may be their, and our, last best hope of avoiding a nuclear holocaust and the extinction of the human race.

Bidwai and Vanaik are the spokesmen of Indian fringe left -- a group which, unfortunately, wields much more influence than it deserves. Their argumentation is reflexively driven by what is to the advantage of China (the darling of Indian Marxists even though its economy is unabashedly capitalist and its prisons churn out goods for export to the West) and what will lead to India's fragmentation. It is still a worthwhile book to read to get to understand the extreme left in India.