Purified by opposition

No one would have been shocked if the UPA government, which seemed so eager to please all comers, had yielded to the insidious attempt by the CPIM and the BJP to tie its hands on sensitive nuclear negotiations with the United States and the world.

No one doubted that it would be a cakewalk for the government to defend its nuclear negotiating position with the Bush administration. For its record has been impeccable in the conduct of nuclear negotiations with the United States.

The government, well before the CPIM woke up to the new conditionalities in the draft nuclear legislation in the US Congress, had already taken up the question at the highest political levels with the Bush administration. It needed little more than common sense to see that the government has retained the right to reject unacceptable modification of an agreement that has been negotiated with great care.

It is clear that, for all the huffing and puffing by the CPIM and the BJP on India8217;s nuclear sovereignty, the debate in Rajya Sabha was never about the costs and benefits of the nuclear deal. The nuclear question was only an excuse for the opposition to ambush the government and rob it of whatever authority and political dignity that remained.

At issue was not merely the political pride of the government or the constitutional question of who conducts India8217;s foreign policy. It was about not letting Parliament make yet another disastrous intervention on foreign policy based on emotion and narrow political considerations.

All those who are familiar with the history of Indian foreign policy are aware that parliamentary interventions on sensitive diplomatic issues have had terrible consequences in the past.

In 1962 piling on to a demoralised Jawaharlal Nehru after the unfortunate war with China, Parliament passed a resolution that demanded India get back every square inch of territory 8220;occupied8221; by China. That one single resolution has had the effect of boxing in India8217;s negotiating position on the boundary dispute in an impractical mould for decades. It required all the political courage of a Rajiv Gandhi and an Atal Bihari Vajpayee to depart from that presumed national consensus on the China policy.

Parliament8217;s more deliberate intervention on the Kashmir question in 1994, at the BJP8217;s initiative, was equally problematic. While the parliamentary proclamation that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part of India seemed a sensible proposition, no negotiation with Pakistan based on that premise would ever succeed.

Much like the 1962 resolution the 1994 one too was put aside by none other than the BJP prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in his engagement with China and Pakistan.

More than anyone else, the Communist parties, which still adhere to a contrarian narrative about the Sino-Indian border conflict, should have known that whipping up jingoism would only weaken the country8217;s negotiating position over the longer term.

Yet today the communist parties, which in fact opposed the nuclear tests of May 1998 conducted by the BJP, are willing to join the right wing in stoking ultra-nationalism and nuclear belligerence.

That the Communist parties have two different standards in judging India8217;s relations with China and the United States is an entirely different matter. Nor is it any longer news that the BJP8217;s political opportunism has touched new political depths in its U-turn on the nation8217;s nuclear diplomacy. Yet the UPA government must take considerable responsibility for allowing the Indo-US nuclear deal 8212; one of India8217;s most successful diplomatic negotiations ever 8212; to become an object of combined attack from the BJP and the CPIM.

Once the government caved in to pressure from the Department of Atomic Energy earlier this year, it signalled an unprecedented weakness. In demonstrating that a narrow department could brow-beat an elected political leadership, the UPA made itself politically vulnerable.

The good news from Rajya Sabha8217;s nuclear debate can be sustained only if the prime minister and the UPA government can show that they have the political will to initiate and defend new directions in India8217;s foreign policy.

Despite his many good intentions and the articulation of the creative possibilities for Indian diplomacy, Manmohan Singh has allowed the opposition and various governmental agencies to come in the way of purposeful diplomatic initiatives.

Thanks to a recalcitrant bureaucracy, which almost wrecked the nuclear deal with the US, talks with Pakistan and China have stalled. Unlike the nuclear negotiations with the US, where the Bush administration picked up the slack, it is India that will need to show political imagination to change the dynamics of relations with China and Pakistan.

As the UPA government nears the half-way mark of its tenure, there will be no shortage of considered advice for the prime minister to do nothing on foreign policy. If he chooses to disregard such advice and finds the political courage to make some bold moves towards our neighbours, his gains could be two-fold.

It would help demonstrate that India8217;s foreign policy is not just about improving relations with the US. Creative moves towards China and Pakistan will divide the opposition and keep the grass burning under their feet.

As the PM told the Rajya Sabha, reform is about taking risks. India could do with more risk-taking and controversy on the diplomatic front. If the objective, as in the nuclear deal with the US, is to transform India8217;s standing in the world, it would necessarily invite opposition from the encrusted bureaucracy as well as an opportunistic political class.