Recall the national fury when the then external affairs minister, Jaswant Singh, welcomed US President George W. Bush’s controversial plans to develop the missile defence in May 2001. Six years later when our own Defence Research and Development Organisation announced its first missile test in November 2006, there was not a whimper of protest from any political party or a peace group.

Truth be told, New Delhi’s attitudes towards a range of nuclear issues have evolved since May 1998. And rightly too. The problem has been the lack of an orderly transition within the government. In oral cultures like ours, once the mantra is memorised, it is rather hard to replace it with another.

India is not just a nuclear weapon power, but it is also a naval power of some consequence. The Nimitz hypocrisy looks a lot worse when you see it in the context of India’s new naval activism in the Indian Ocean. In the summer of 2005, India sent its aircraft carrier on one of its rare visits to foreign shores. It visited Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.

Earlier this summer, a large Indian naval contingent was operating far from our shores and exercising with many Southeast Asian countries, the US, Japan, China and Russia. Last summer when the Indian navy was ordered to evacuate

Indian citizens from war-torn Lebanon, India got the badly needed assistance from the US warships in the Mediterranean. India in turn extended the favour to Nepal and Sri Lanka by picking up their citizens stranded in Lebanon.

... contd.