It’s India, stupid

After his negotiators had delivered a very credible nuclear agreement with the US last month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had an easy case to defend. The impressive part of the PM’s statement to Parliament on Monday was its complete political self-assurance. He declared the readiness to let history judge his huge accomplishment in the nuclear liberation of India. The PM is aware that the debate on the nuclear deal has long ceased to be a technical one. For quite some time, the BJP and the CPM have made it plain they will attack the 123 Agreement, irrespective of its contents. The PM confronted this challenge head on when he declared over the weekend that there will be no renegotiation of the nuclear agreement and told his opponents to either accept the deal or pull down his government. The PM’s new robustness should rub off on the Congress when parliamentary debate begins in a few days.

To be sure, as the main opposition party, it was BJP’s responsibility to question the government’s negotiating positions. But from the very moment the PM and George Bush unveiled the nuclear initiative two years ago, the BJP painted itself into a corner with its unremitting opposition to the deal. Has BJP begun to see itself as a party in permanent opposition? Worse still, the BJP seemed ready to abandon its own rightful claim of making India a real nuclear weapon power and transforming India’s relationship with the US. It is also understandable that the CPM finds it hard to get over its ideological opposition to engaging the US and wants to retain the option of challenging the government’s conduct of foreign policy.

What is tragic, however, is the failure of the BJP and the CPM to see the line that separates the natural calculus of self-interest among contending parties and the broader commitment to national interest. Beyond all the technical abracadabra of the nuclear agreement, the world fully understands that the deal is about ending the atomic symmetry between New Delhi and Islamabad and putting India on par with nuclear China. If India chooses to forgo the nuclear deal at hand, under pressure from the BJP and the CPM, no two nations will be happier than China and Pakistan at seeing India poke itself in the eye.