The Bharatiya Janata Party would not be itself if it stopped playing politics with history. As the real intentions of the BJP in raking up a controversy about an American “mole” in P.V. Narasimha Rao’s PMO become clear, Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must stand up and defend the Congress Party’s proud nuclear record.

The BJP’s opposition to the current Indo-US nuclear deal is no longer about the personal egotism of either Jaswant Singh or Brajesh Mishra, the two principal interlocutors with the US and the world on India’s nuclear policy after Pokharan II in May 1998.

There is no doubt that Jaswant Singh and Brajesh Mishra would have been more than happy to sign the nuclear deal with the US that was negotiated by Manmohan Singh. History, however, does not stop when individuals, even exceptional ones like Jaswant Singh and Brajesh Mishra, move out of government. It marches on, even if it means disappointment for some.

The July 18, 2005 deal between India and the United States is a logical conclusion of the nuclear negotiations conducted by Jaswant Singh and Brajesh Mishra during 1998-2004.

The BJP’s latest line of attack is not merely about the natural opportunism of a party in opposition. Nor is it about picking nuclear nits. The NDA’s negotiating record will show that Jaswant Singh was proposing that India sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. And Brajesh Mishra was willing to put a large number of nuclear reactors under safeguards in return for only uranium supplies from the US. Today both of them are making outlandish charges against the government, which has got a far better deal than Jaswant Singh or Brajesh Mishra did.

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