At home in the world

Deep and internal divisions, more than external threats, often set India back in the past. Nearly three years of domestic political contestation on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh8217;s nuclear deal with US President George W. Bush suggested that India was reverting to form 8212; that its internal wrangling might convert a rare diplomatic triumph into an incredible political defeat.

In overcoming the ideological obduracy of the communists and the mendacious opportunism of the BJP, the Congress has demonstrated that India will no longer shortchange itself. That the Congress leadership took the most tortuous route to implementing the nuclear deal does not in any way diminish the consequences of the messy but successful resolution of the crisis on Tuesday night.

The political blood that flowed from the Congress8217;s divorce with the communists and the muck spread over the floor of the Lok Sabha in the final hours of the nuclear debate merely underline the sweeping change that Manmohan Singh has wrought upon India8217;s worldview.

How India8217;s nuclear sausage was made is less important than the fact that it was assembled against great domestic political odds. And it was entirely appropriate that the man who has engineered a decisive transformation in India8217;s worldview was also the one who had launched the nation on the path of economic globalisation 17 years ago.

Unlike in the early 8217;90s when economic reforms were forced on a bankrupt India 8212; the gravity of the crisis somehow making the task of kick-starting liberalisation easier 8212; the redirection of the country8217;s foreign and nuclear policies was a deliberate choice for the Congress-led UPA government.

Heavens would not have fallen if the prime minister had kicked the nuclear can down the road. After all, no Indian government before had allowed the imperatives of a foreign policy initiative to overwhelm the instincts of political survival at home.

It is in demanding that the nation take a call right now on this issue and prevailing on the floor of the Lok Sabha that Manmohan Singh has transformed himself from a technocrat to a political leader with both courage and conviction.

The national debate on Manmohan Singh8217;s deal with President Bush was never about the textual trivia of India8217;s nuclear separation plan, the Hyde Act, the 123 agreement, and the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards agreement. At issue was India8217;s readiness to replace the ingrained pessimism about the nation8217;s global prospects with a new sense of strategic optimism and confront the many demons in its own mind.

In winning the nuclear argument, Manmohan Singh has dealt a decisive blow to the xenophobia that has enveloped the Indian political classes over the last few decades. The fear of the foreign has been projected for long as 8220;anti-imperialism8221; by the communists and paraded as 8220;ultra-nationalism8221; by the BJP. In defeating the professional pessimists of the security community and the political scare-mongers on the left and the right, Manmohan Singh has reclaimed the Congress8217;s legacy as the consistent champion of India8217;s national interest. Far more important, the prime minister has returned two of India8217;s important national projects to the mainstream.

Since the Shakti series of nuclear tests in May 1998, under the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the nation8217;s atomic project was identified with the colours of the BJP. Thanks to the bitter opposition of the BJP to the Indo-US nuclear deal, despite it being a logical outcome of Vajpayee8217;s political legacy, India8217;s atomic project is now a part of the mainstream agenda. The communists, in any case, were always opposed to a nuclear India.

India8217;s attempts to improve relations with the United States since the end of the Cold War too have been identified, wrongly, with the Indian right. After Tuesday8217;s vote, India8217;s America project is also under the ownership of the nation8217;s political centre.

For decades, the fear of being tarred with 8220;pro-American8221; or 8220;pro-Western8221; labels made India8217;s centrist leaders shun any political cooperation with the US. That a Congress prime minister chose to defy this iron law of Indian politics underlines the emergence of a self-assured India that no longer jumps out of its skin at meaningless slogans from the past.

In the last few months, the UPA government had repeated ad nauseam that the nuclear deal was not just with the US, but with the entire international community; that factoid was not enough to end the argument with the communists. What the Congress needed to do, and finally did, was to put faith in the emerging India that is not apologetic about engaging the US and is capable of pursuing the national interest with self-confidence.

Significant as the nuclear deal has been, it is not an end in itself. It was simply a means to put behind a long-standing dispute with the world on nuclear issues. Nor is India8217;s new foreign policy about merely building a strategic partnership with the US.

As it integrates itself into the global nuclear order and finds itself at ease with the US and other great powers, India has other ambitions to chase. These include leading the subcontinent towards peace and prosperity, resolving the boundary dispute with China and building a cooperative relationship with its great northern neighbour, deepening the engagement with the Islamic world, and taking a bigger responsibility in reshaping the global order. In bringing the great nuclear debate to a close Tuesday night, the prime minister has launched India on an exciting international course.

The writer is a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

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