Despite the habitual carping from the political margins here against the historic legislation on nuclear cooperation with India approved by the US Congress today, the Government is quietly savouring a very special moment for Indian diplomacy.

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.

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