NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION IN THE THIRD

WORLD:
THE HEART OF WHITENES

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Introduction

Monday, May 10, 1998 marked a day that will not soon be forgotten. It was the
day India began nuclear testing, much to the horrified shock of the U.S. and Western
European superpowers. For Arundhati Roy, a widely and extensively lauded and
criticized Indian author, it is a day that will live in infamy.

"The End of Imagination (the Bomb and Me)", Roy’s response to the rebirth of
nuclear proliferation, criticizes India and the Western superpowers, who Roy feels are
responsible for the dawn of nuclear testing in third world nations. Roy also criticizes
India for actions that she saw as foolhardy and that signify "dreadful things. The end of
imagination. The end of freedom, actually, because that’s what freedom is. Choice." The
choices that India made in testing nuclear weapons, Roy feels took away the very
freedom it was intended to reinforce. Nuclear testing was India embracing and condoning
the horrors of the very western culture it was trying so desperately to defy.

According to Roy, nuclear proliferation signifies a new and diabolical form of

colonization; for this, she criticizes colonized and colonizer alike: "however many
garlands we heap on our scientists, however many medals we pin to their chests, the truth
is that it’s far easier to make a bomb than educate 400 million people."

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The Heart of Whiteness

Roy writes in her essay "The End of Imagination (The Bomb and Me)" that
"Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than
any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness." It is in saying this Roy
juxtaposes her sentiments with those ideologies behind Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of
Darkness, which is a commentary on the horrors of being uncivilized as seen through the
eyes of Western European civilization. Roy’s response, "the heart of whiteness," is a
commentary on what horrors civilization has brought to the "uncivilized"; it is a
colonization which has taken on a new color and is multi-valant.
Technocolonialism

Technocolonialism is the fusion of technology with the institution of colonialism,

resulting in a more dynamic form of extraterritorial bondage.

Technocolonialism manifests itself in numerous ways, such as with the nuclear

proliferation Roy criticizes extensively in her essay "The End of Imagination (The Bomb
and Me)." The advent of nuclear proliferation has also jump-started an international race
in many other developing technologies. The most competitive technologies that have
been and continue to be at the forefront of technocolonialism are those involved with
communication, namely movies, television, radio and, more recently, telecommunication.
Roy makes mention of these technologies, including a pointedly sarcastic statement about
telecommunication: "and what about our newest toy—the mobile phone? Can we live
without it…?"

In her essay, Roy continues to rage against the technological spin put on
colonialism, remarking on the near-fascist existence that the Indian people lead, basing
their reality on, and emulating such western innovations as radio, television talk shows
and MTV. Consequently, this emulation produces mimicry almost identical to that seen
in colonies of the pre-war era. These former colonies’ relative success or lack thereof,
reinforces the boundaries set by the technocolonialists' "be like me, don’t be like me"
mentality.

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Identity

Exploitation and mimicry experienced by developing countries throws national

identity into flux; however, India’s own "identity crisis" is not only a function of
imperialist and western European influences, but also a function of the internal political
strife it has experienced, and continues to experience. The nuclear testing that India
underwent was part of a political campaign that India’s Bharata Janata Party (BJP)
embarked on to encourage Hindu nationalism and create an identity for India, one that
failed to recognize and include 120 million of the country’s citizens (Muslims and other
non-Hindus).

Roy’s criticism of India’s, and other third world countries’, identity crisis is more
severe and analytical. Roy explores not only the history leading up to the incident, but
also the implications:
We in India are an ancient people learning to live in a recent nation. The nuclear bomb
and the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya are both part of the same political
process. They are hideous byproducts of a nation’s search for herself. Of India’s effort
to forge a national identity. To define what being Indian means. The poorer the nation,
the larger the numbers of illiterate people and the more morally bankrupt her leaders, the
cruder and more dangerous the notion of what that identity is or should be. ("The End of
Imagination")

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Hypocrisy

Nuclear proliferation results in a great deal of fallout, literally as well as

figuratively. Another multi-faceted issue that is an element of such fallout is hypocrisy,
upon which Roy has commented extensively.

One of the purported reasons behind India’s nuclear tests was to "expose western
hypocrisy." Based on this fact, Roy begins her critical examination of the nature of and
culprits behind hypocrisy:
Exposing Western Hypocrisy--how much more exposed can it be? What decent human
being on earth harbors any illusions about it? These are people whose histories are
spongy with the blood of others. Colonialism, apartheid, slavery, ethnic cleansing, germ
warfare, chemical weapons--they virtually invented it all. They have plundered nations,
snuffed out civilizations, exterminated entire populations. They stand on the world's stage
stark naked but entirely unembarrassed, because they know that they have more money,
more food and bigger bombs than anybody else. They know they can wipe us out in the
course of an ordinary working day. Personally, I'd say it is more arrogance than
hypocrisy.
Roy then addresses the nature of both accusation and accuser (India):
The jeering, hooting young men who bettered down the Babri Masjid are the same ones
whose pictures appeared in the papers in the days that followed the nuclear tests. They
were on the streets, celebrating India’s nuclear bomb and simultaneously ‘condemning
Western Culture’ by emptying crates of Cokes and Pepsi into public drains. I’m a little
baffled by their logic: Coke is Western Culture, but the nuclear bomb is an old Indian
tradition?
Roy then extensively details the nature of India’s own hypocrisy in their efforts to
be authentic. Roy points out that many elements of "Indian culture" have, in fact, been
imported, from cuisine to much-valued education to medical care.
From a political standpoint, Roy’s point is very pertinent and valid. In February 1998,
the BJP became head of the leading coalition in India. The platform they took includes
the rejection of western cultural imperialism, including the public condemnation and
denunciation of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pepsi. However, it is this same political
party that encouraged, hypocritically, the development and testing of the nuclear bomb, a
western innovation.

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Power

For a country to produce and test nuclear weapons is not considered a small feat.
Nuclear capabilities suggest empowerment. Roy’s essay, "The End of Imagination (The
Bomb and Me)," quickly delves into issues of power, highlighting the means as well as
the ends:

Here we are, all of us in India and in Pakistan, discussing the finer points of politics, and
foreign policy, behaving for all the world as though our governments have just devised a
newer, bigger bomb, a sort of immense hand grenade with which they will annihilate the
enemy (each other) and protect us from all harm. How desperately we want to believe
that. What wonderful, willing, well-behaved, gullible subjects we have turned out to be.
According to Roy’s commentary, nuclear proliferation is the means for the intended end
of power. The ends the means actually achieved, however, fell short—India was the
gullible eunuch its Prime Minister vociferously maintained it wasn’t; the end was that
India was proven to be as much at the mercy of colonization as before.

Roy goes on to question the implications of the intended ends:

India and Pakistan have nuclear bombs now and feel entirely justified in having them.
Soon others will too. Israel, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Nepal (I'm trying to be
eclectic here), Denmark, Germany, Bhutan, Mexico, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Burma, Bosnia,
Singapore, North Korea, Sweden, South Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Afghanistan,
Uzbekistan--and why not? Every country in the world has a special case to make.
Everybody has borders and beliefs. And when all our larders are bursting with shiny
bombs and our bellies are empty (Deterrence is an exorbitant beast), we can trade bombs
for food. And when nuclear technology goes on the market, when it gets truly
competitive and prices fall, not just governments but anybody who can afford it can have
their own private arsenal--businessmen, terrorists, perhaps even the occasional rich writer
(like myself). Our planet will bristle with beautiful missiles. There will be a new world
order. The dictatorship of the pro-nuke elite.
Roy successfully accomplishes the task of belittling not only the intent behind
India’s nuclear empowerment, but also what came to pass; namely the total loss of
control.

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Conclusion

The emergence of nuclear proliferation in third world and developing countries

has left many stunned, particularly those with the greatest global power. Simultaneously,
the very countries that are now causing waves of global unrest are laughed at for not only
their attempts at empowerment and attempts to forge national identities, but also for
proving, in Roy’s analysis, how unstable and in need of guidance they are; the extent to
which they are what they protest most: "We storm the heart of whiteness, we embrace the
most diabolical creation of Western science and call it our own. But we protest against
their music, their food, their clothes, their cinema and their literature."

Nuclear proliferation, for Roy, signifies not only that which it was intended to
eliminate, but also, ironically, a re-entry into colonialism: "[O]n August 15 last year we
celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of India’s independence. Next May we can mark our
first anniversary in nuclear bondage."