For the 109th US Congress, in its very dying moments, not only freed India from three and a half decades of nuclear bondage, but also met two of India’s very important strategic objectives — breaking the nuclear parity with Pakistan and establishing strategic equivalence with China.

When the Senate unanimously cleared the nuclear bill at about 3 am this morning, Washington time, New Delhi knew that a new era in India’s nuclear relationship with the world has begun.

The Senate vote followed a brief stalling in the House of Representatives, where the opponents of nuclear cooperation with India took a last and losing stand. The House finally voted for the bill with a huge majority of 330 for and 59 against.

The approval of what is now called the Henry J. Hyde Act for Civil Nuclear Cooperation with India, heralded the beginning of the end to India’s long nuclear isolation.

For 36 years, Indian diplomacy has struggled to take the nation out of the nuclear no-man’s land that New Delhi found itself in after the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty came into force in 1970.

Under the NPT, India was neither a “nuclear fish” nor a “non-nuclear” fowl. As the NPT regime steadily tightened the restrictions on nuclear technology transfers to non-member states, India’s discomfort became an unbearable burden.

The NPT regime insisted that India could either have nuclear weapons or civil nuclear energy cooperation. The US Congress finally bought into the Bush Administration’s argument that India should have both.

In declaring that this exemption from global nuclear rules is only for India and a similar favour will not be extended to Pakistan, the US Congress broke the long-standing sense of nuclear parity between New Delhi and Islamabad.

In accepting that New Delhi is a nuclear weapon power, and making special rules for civilian nuclear cooperation with it, the US has also established a practical nuclear equivalence between India and China.No wonder then, that Pakistan so actively lobbied against the nuclear legislation in Washington, and China raised so many reservations against the Indo-US nuclear deal.

While the Republicans and Democrats came together after a divisive election that saw the former being ousted from the majority status in both houses, cynics might yet expect the opposition parties in India will poke the nation in the eye.

The opponents of the deal here hope that the BJP and the CPI(M) will grill the government on the final version of the legislation and its presumed differences with Singh’s assurances to the Parliament in the Monsoon session.

Having seen the tactic once, the Centre is in no mood to countenance the attempt to mar a long awaited national triumph. In ideal circumstances, the BJP would have been expected to take credit for laying the ground work for the nuclear deal with the US and later consummated by the Congress government.

If the BJP seeks to embarrass the government in the Parliament on Monday, Singh and the External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee have the option of revealing the truth on BJP’s negotiating record with the US.

After all, it is well known that the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had offered to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in return for civilian nuclear energy cooperation. In an account of his talks with the Vajpayee government, President Bill Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott says he angrily dismissed the Indian offer.

Having won where Vajpayee lost, Singh is unlikely to suffer BJP’s criticism in the Parliament on Monday. The Communist record is worse.

The CPI(M) had supported the Chinese nuclear programme and opposed the Indian tests. Those within the Government, who have sought to wreck India’s historic nuclear achievement by playing fast and loose with the political authority of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, might find the going rather tough this time around. For the political stakes in India’s nuclear liberation have become so very high today.