Isn’t just about n-trade, it’s about a rising India

Over the last three years, as India endlessly argued with itself the entry-price into the elite nuclear club that was outlined in the July 2005 agreement with the United States, its chattering classes refused to appreciate the kind of strategic readjustment that was being asked of the rest of the world — recognise India’s nuclear exceptionalism, discard the notion of nuclear parity between New Delhi and Islamabad, and accept India’s strategic equivalence with China.

All governments in New Delhi in recent decades have pursued these seemingly impossible national objectives. It is the Manmohan Singh government, however, that finally provided the long-awaited geopolitical breakthrough for India in partnership with US President George W. Bush.

The NSG was also asked to do this at a time when non-proliferation has emerged as one of the principal international security concerns and rules on high-technology transfers are being tightened against other countries.

Since its first atomic test, Pokharan I, in May 1974, India has been trapped in a no-man’s land or a ‘nuclear trishanku’ under international law. India was neither a weapon-state nor a non-nuclear weapon state. India could either keep its nuclear weapons or develop a substantive atomic power programme. It could not have both. The NSG waiver now allows India to have its weapons programme and expand its civilian atomic power generation in cooperation with the rest of the world.

That there was little applause in the room in Vienna when the consensus was finally forced on the NSG is a reminder that the group, set up in 1975 to counter the systemic challenge posed by Pokharan I, had to reverse itself today to accept the reality of India’s nuclear weapons programme and agree to renew high technology civilian cooperation with India.

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