Unlike in the early ’90s when economic reforms were forced on a bankrupt India — the gravity of the crisis somehow making the task of kick-starting liberalisation easier — the redirection of the country’s foreign and nuclear policies was a deliberate choice for the Congress-led UPA government.

Heavens would not have fallen if the prime minister had kicked the nuclear can down the road. After all, no Indian government before had allowed the imperatives of a foreign policy initiative to overwhelm the instincts of political survival at home.

It is in demanding that the nation take a call right now on this issue and prevailing on the floor of the Lok Sabha that Manmohan Singh has transformed himself from a technocrat to a political leader with both courage and conviction.

The national debate on Manmohan Singh’s deal with President Bush was never about the textual trivia of India’s nuclear separation plan, the Hyde Act, the 123 agreement, and the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards agreement. At issue was India’s readiness to replace the ingrained pessimism about the nation’s global prospects with a new sense of strategic optimism and confront the many demons in its own mind.

In winning the nuclear argument, Manmohan Singh has dealt a decisive blow to the xenophobia that has enveloped the Indian political classes over the last few decades. The fear of the foreign has been projected for long as “anti-imperialism” by the communists and paraded as “ultra-nationalism” by the BJP. In defeating the professional pessimists of the security community and the political scare-mongers on the left and the right, Manmohan Singh has reclaimed the Congress’s legacy as the consistent champion of India’s national interest. Far more important, the prime minister has returned two of India’s important national projects to the mainstream.

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