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