With no parliamentary détente in sight concerning the contentious US-India nuclear agreement, proponents of the deal in Washington are perplexed at its portrayal in India as a Faustian bargain. Philip Zelikow, counselor at the US state department during the unveiling of the nuclear deal in 2005 and a key American figure in its development, dismisses concerns harboured by Indian critics of the agreement. “India won a great deal,” Zelikow, now at the University of Virginia, told The Washington Post. “If [the Indians] back out, they are looking a gift horse in the mouth — there has never been a hidden agenda to try and control India’s foreign policy. Any problems with this deal are domestic and political posturing for a future election. Maybe this is something that India’s democracy and civil society has to work through.”

Many India supporters in the academic and policy-making communities have also noted how favourable the deal is to India. They are also concerned that its rejection could, on the whole, be a setback for India’s international reputation. The stagnation of the nuclear agreement in Parliament, they worry, will make key decision-makers in Washington and other major capitals question India’s readiness to be a great power.

Historically, the deal represents, with the possible exception of the Kargil War, the first major instance of the United States ‘tilting’ in favour of India, demonstrating a leniency that Indians craved for decades. Over the years, generations of American diplomats and policymakers faced accusations — sometimes deservingly so — of leaning towards Pakistan. Many of those same diplomats have expressed an element of frustration that the reversal, finally, of unfavourable American policy towards India, has not been accepted wholeheartedly by the Indian political establishment. In the words of one longtime India analyst, the controversy “leads people to wonder whether India is a country that cannot take yes for an answer.”

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