The full text of the open letter sent by former military chiefs, bureaucrats and scientists to Members of Parliament:

Parliament is about to debate what is known as the Indo-US Nuclear ‘deal’. We, the undersigned, who venture to claim some experience in serving our country’s national security interests, venture also to suggest that, in considering the issues involved, you view them in the one perspective which we believe transcends all others: that of India’s evolution as one of the principal powers in the community of nations.

It has been generally expected ever since our Independence that India’s size, strategic situation, civilisation, not least the talents of its people, were bound to make us one of the most significant influences in the shaping of the modern world. A major obstacle to our full achievement of that position has been the denial of the high technologies, particularly those related to security needs, which have enabled some self-selected powers to forge well ahead of us. We will continue to be denied access to such technologies unless the international community agrees to remove the existing sanctions. In opening the way to such an outcome, what is formally a bilateral agreement between us and the USA is actually the basis for agreement with the international community.

That community, including friends who have previously helped us, combines to impose crippling constraints not only on our nuclear programme but, by withholding so called dual-use technologies, on a wide range of possibilities for improving the lives of our people. We cannot, for instance, get Russian reactors without proceeding with the Indo-US agreement. We are also left facing the question of how else to develop the nuclear energy which, howsoever small a percentage of our enormous needs, can meet them significantly. Existing constraints can only be removed through an agreement with those who impose them, which this accord makes possible.

... contd.