Accordingly, the party even organised training classes for its leaders and workers on what the nuclear deal is all about and how it is good for the country. The thrust of the party’s communication should be on nuclear power, everyone was clearly instructed. Party workers were reportedly told: son’t get into “technicalities” such as when the nuclear plants would be built, how much power they would generate by 2020 or 2030 or 2040, what percentage of India’s electricity needs would be met by nuclear power (whose share currently stands at a mere 3 per cent of the total) even after 30 years, etc. And, with imported plants and imported fuel, certainly don’t get into any discussion on the cost of nuclear power for the consumer.

Still, there was the unavoidable question about whether the nuclear deal would result in India’s nuclear nasbandi by disabling our country from conducting any further tests and thereby enhancing our atomic arsenal when national security considerations demanded such a step in the future. After all, the entire debate on the Hyde Act passed by the US Congress had focused principally on this question. There were—and continue to be—many sceptics within the Congress party harbouring serious concerns over this issue. Hasn’t the US retained the right to terminate nuclear cooperation and take punitive action if India conducted a fresh nuclear test? Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, addressing this concern in a meeting of the Congress Working Committee, came out with a peculiar formulation: “We have the right to test, the US has the right to react.”

Decode this formulation, and what it means is that the UPA Government has rushed into a deal that grants the United States the right to slap us if we exercised our sovereign right.

Meanwhile, Congress spokesmen have continued to maintain that, as far as India is concerned, the Hyde Act does not apply to us and the 123 Agreement, “in which there is no bar on nuclear testing”, is all that matters. If the promise of “Nuclear Bijlee for All” was one self-serving myth propagated by the Congress leadership, the other fib is its contention that India will continue to have the unfettered right to test. The latter claim, along with several other commitments the Prime Minister has given from time to time in Parliament, has been punctured once again by a bombshell report in The Washington Post earlier this week. The report reveals the contents of a confidential January 2008 letter from the Bush administration to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives.

The letter, whose existence was certainly known to Singh and his colleagues, leaves no one in any doubt that (a) in the event of a new nuclear test by India, America would abrogate the 123 Agreement; (b) the US does not guarantee perpetual fuel supply or lifetime stock of nuclear fuel to India; and (c) there would be no transfer of sensitive dual-use nuclear technology such as reprocessing technology. Tellingly, the letter also makes it clear that the Bush administration does not consider the 123 Agreement as the only document governing nuclear cooperation with India. Indeed, its actions would also be dictated by the provisions of the Atomic Energy Act and the Hyde Act, which explicitly prohibit further nuclear tests by India. Obviously, the Congress leadership is deluding itself and deceiving the Indian public by claiming that the US Government has entered into an international treaty with India that negates the provisions of America’s own laws. Gullibility too must have its limits.

Now, the very country, USA, which has circumscribed India’s sovereignty in matters of strategic defence, is also posing as our biggest ally in getting the Nuclear Supplier Group’s clearance for nuclear cooperation. The clearance might well come, but on terms that will hardly be more lenient than what the US has already written into law. There has been a lot of linguistic acrobatics to show that the Bush administration differs from the non-proliferation hawks both in the USA and in some of the NSG member countries. But the bottomline is simply this: India can have nuclear cooperation provided it accepts a second-class membership in the Nuclear Club (its five first-class members being USA, Russia, Britain, France and China) as a de jure Non-Nuclear Weapons State and provided, also, that it submits itself to nasbandi as far as nuclear testing is concerned.

And this is what is being touted by the Congress leadership as a “historic” achievement for India, something that promises, in the words of the Prime Minister, “nuclear renaissance”. Public memory is not so short as to forget that, the last time a Congress Government carried out forced nasbandi during the Emergency (1975-1977), it suffered a humiliating defeat. This time, India’s strategic programme itself is being subjected to the nasbandi operation, with the attendant lie that a new era of nuclear-powered prosperity would soon be born. The Prime Minister and the Congress president have misled the nation. They will pay the price for it.

Write to: sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com