Articles by Achin Vanaik

Returning to Our Own Agenda Praful Bidwai Achin Vanaik AT the time of writing, it remains uncertain whether or not India will sign the CTBT, A significant section of those who have supported India going openly nuclear are now prepared to go along with the CTBT in return for a behind-the-scenes deal involving the effective lifting of sanctions and greater freedom for India to import dual-use technologies relevant for the continuation and upgradation of its nuclear and missile development programmer After all. accepting the CTBT does not prevent India from going ahead with its current plans to weaponise and deploy a nuclear delivery system or to set up the associated command, control, communications and intelligence networks. For this section of Indian pro-nuclearists. acceptance of the CTBT is the minimum price the Indian government will have to pay if it wants to end its current international political isolation and make some mark as a supposedly responsible de facto nuclear weapons power by involving itself in ongoing international arms restraint activities.

Achin Vanaik Writing Social History by Sumit Sarkar; Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1997; pp 390, hardback Rs 495, GIVEN Sumit Sarkar's stature as one of the best historians of modem India, a new book by him always carries the promise of being an event. The promise has not been belied. His latest hook, a collection of nine essays of which only two (in slightly different form) have been printed earlier, will reinforce the respect felt by his many admirers just as it will also anger others, especially those Strongly influenced by the application of post-modernist and deconstructionist fashions to history writing. Among the latter those most infuriated arc likely to be onetime marxists who have now become disillusioned with or indifferent (even hostile) to that tradition.

Three Misrepresentations Achin Vanaik India's nuclear elite and the members of its so-called strategic community carry on with the pretentious posturing that their negative and obstructive stand against such restraint measures as the CTBT and the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty are really sitnere courageous contributions to the struggle for greater nuclear sanity and against hegemony.

An Open Letter to the Left Praful Bidwai Achin Vanaik The mainstream left parties' position on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, either strongly and unreservedly supporting the conservative official stand of the government of India or acquiescing in it, is poorly differentiated from that of the right-wing, communal and militarist BJP. This is deeply distressing.

Achin Vanaik Analytical Marxism by T Mayer; Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1994; pp 371; hardback $ 48.
THIS is primarily an expository work by an admitted fan of what has been loosely called Analytical Marxism. About the only thing that is common to this school understood in the broadest sense of the term is a certain style of argument emphasising clarity and logical rigour. Otherwise not all who Mayer characterises as belonging to this camp would themsel ves accept this label, e g, Robert Brenner, Michio Morishima or (were he alive) Piero Sraffa. On the other side ttere is Jon Elster who is so critical and hostile to virtually every substantive proposition within the Marxist tradition that only his own idiosyncratic commitment to the label makes him a Marxist at all.