Arming without Aiming: India's Military Modernization

by Stephen Philip Cohen

To make a fresh start on military and defense affairs, Nehru hired British scientist and Nobel Prize–winning physicist P. M. S. Blackett to advise him on how the Indian state could leverage science for defense.5 Blackett had been at the center of the Allied war effort. He was privy to Ultra codebreaking, the development of nuclear weapons, and other major military technology programs. In 1946 the United States gave him the Medal of Honor for his service during the war, and in 1948 he won the Nobel Prize for physics for his prewar work. Blackett's 1948 report went beyond the role of science in military affairs to address both India's strategic position and its military spending. It recommended that India limit its military ambitions and pursue a policy of nonalignment with both superpowers to escape a potentially debilitating arms race. He proposed that military spending should not exceed 2 percent of Indian GDP. Blackett also argued against India's acquisition of nuclear and chemical weapons. Instead, he emphasized India's need to develop an industrial and technological base.