Shodh Prabha: A Multidisciplinary Journal

India, Democracy and Nuclearization: Amitav Ghosh’s Countdown

By dealing with anecdotes, interviews, field survey, the Sahitya Akademi Award-winning writer Amitav Ghosh in his non-fiction Countdown (2010) offers a bitter critique of India’s engagement in the experimental nuclear explosion in 1998 which the-then statesmen calculated as ‘harmless icons of empowerment’. Such attempt to be designated as a ‘global player’ in the world-wide power game has been criticized by Ghosh as nothing but a ‘primal scream for self-assertion’. The content of the book, being tossed between argument and counter-argument, empowerment and conflagration, projects the-then government’s involvement in nuclear game as nothing relevant for the nation but a ‘personal aggrandizement’ at the mammoth sacrifices of citizens. Ghosh in his socio-political narrative captures the ironies and paradoxes that the largest democratic country of the world i.e., India keeps herself busy with nuclearization while the leaders of the democracy are ignoring the simple facts that could give the basic necessity to the people of the nation. This article will engage in an academic discussion on India’s ‘vaulting ambition’ of nuclearization and its futile effects on the democracy – a word that celebrates the notions of ‘for the people’, ‘by the people’ and ‘of the people’.