Atomic Mumbai

Raminder Kaur is Professor of Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex.

• List of Plates. List of Abbreviations. Acknowledgements. 1. Atomic Mumbai 2. The Dawn of the Atomic Age in India 3. Atomic Schizophrenia 4. The Wavering Spell of the Atom Bomb 5. Nuclear Truths and Cracks in the Surface 6. City of Smoky Quartz 7. A Patchwork of Portraits 8. Observing the Instruments of Armageddon 9. Atomic Comics 10. A Thousand Suns. Bibliography. About the Author. Index

Raminder Kaur gives us a brilliant and compelling account of Mumbai as the maximum atomic city. She leads us through the myriad pathways of nuclear lifeworlds with which she is intimately familiar, illuminating the aspirations, anxieties, desires, and nightmares that saturate everyday existence. Incarnated as science and religion, the material and immaterial, and both poison and cure, Kaur provides a memorable and vividly realised analysis of a key element in the imaginary of modern India.— Christopher Pinney, Department of Anthropology, University College LondonRaminder Kaur’s survey of all things atomic in India is very welcome, and indeed urgent . . . That popular, traditional and vernacular culture become bound up with ideologies of science and militarism should be no surprise, but the relentless alignment of comic book heroes and the atomic nation simply underlines the overdeterminaton of an iridescent field. In general, a great read, an explosive text, of seismic importance.— John Hutnyk, Department of Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London