This is not merely an India-US agreement and the fallout of this is not merely nuclear. If India plays it right, it could be the beginning of a process of breakout from the ‘lower middle class’ status in the community of nations to which it had been consigned for half a century, some of it a conspiracy of circumstances, and some of it self-inflicted.

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In the name of non-alignment we tilted too far the other way, as our voting record on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan shows. Our politicians tried to exploit this sloganeering foreign policy through domestic politics, embracing Castro one day, and naming a major avenue in New Delhi after Tito, on another. Incidentally, do a google search for how many cities in the world, even in former Yugoslavia, still have a street named after that dictator our school history textbooks taught us to admire! You can mail me the results and your views on this, as well as on the argument of this column, and we will publish a selection of responses.

We shifted a bit as the ground shifted under our feet after the end of the cold war, but we never abandoned the notion of the non-aligned movement, or our having a permanent abode in that comity of the “lower middle classes” in the international power game, led by some of the world’s most dictatorial regimes and despots. In cricketing terms, we wanted to bat on the pitch, but with our backfoot planted firmly behind the crease, and we suffered the fate of a leaden-footed batsman. We scored little and, in the international pecking order, continued to be an also-ran.

I WAS among those who had grave doubts over the NDA’s Pokharan II (although I did not think it was as disastrous an idea as many in the Left, and in the intellectual community now opposing the deal, thought). In hindsight, it was a bold gamble that worked. It could have led to sanctions in perpetuity. But if it did not, it is partly because of the shrewd follow-up work done by Jaswant Singh and Brajesh Mishra (Strobe Talbott’s Engaging India — Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb is a must-read for anybody wishing to understand this phase). The change 9/11 brought about in terms of how the world looked at terrorism under any guise was a fortuitous development. But then three years of eight per cent growth was something that the people and the governments of India worked hard at achieving, in spite of unstable politics, confused coalitions, warlike years (’01-’O3, Operation Parakram) and almost annual natural calamities (the Gujarat quake ’02, tsunami ’04, floods in the south-west and the Kashmir earthquake ’05). The so-called nuclear deal, and India’s new place in the world, is a consequence of all this. It is not pure luck and coincidence. We lambast our political leaders and foreign policy establishments all the time. But we must also give them credit where it is due.

If you forget the words ‘nuclear’ and ‘Bush’ for a moment, the picture looks less fuzzy. Over the past half-decade, the level of India’s engagement with the world has risen several notches, whether it is Europe, China, Japan, the Asean, or even the Arab world. The significance of the first-ever India visit by a king of Saudi Arabia is never to be overlooked. Manmohan Singh understood this fully and so he broke protocol to greet him at Palam on arrival — mercifully nobody accused him of undermining India’s sovereignty by breaking protocol then. With China, India now has frequent summit-level dialogue, and chances are we will see Hu Jintao in New Delhi this summer. We are a long way from being a big power yet. But our place in the world is a lot better than it ever was in the so-called, Soviet-included non-aligned movement. And how terrific was that non-aligned “solidarity”? Please check out the way most members of that “movement” voted at international forums on issues of India’s vital security interest, not just Kashmir but also on both series of Pokharan tests. On each occasion, ’74 and ’98, they were firmly “aligned” with the big powers, against us. India, who so stupidly arrogated to itself the leadership of that motley group, continued naming its streets after international thugs and despots.

IN one way the Left is right. With the nuclear deal India is signalling the willingness to bat on the front-foot, to reach out for the ball. That opportunity, that confidence, has come about because a combination of our own secular politics, economic growth and stability has given us a uniquely new moral stature in the world. We must not delude ourselves into believing we are in the same league now as China and Russia (listed in that order deliberately). But if we continue to act with sense and maturity, we can form the third point of a new triangle of stability in a vast Asian region, stretching from Korea to Israel, Kazakhstan to Sri Lanka. Or, if you don’t like triangles, you can look at it as an opportunity for India to join — along with China, Russia and Japan — a new arc of strategic calm. That is the new slot that the world wants India to occupy in its new batting order. The beauty of it all is, you can do it while being perfectly non-aligned, and running a foreign policy enormously more independent than it ever was when we were exposed as a totally client state so stunningly once every decade: the invasion of Hungary in the ’50s, Czechoslovakia in the ’60, Cambodia in the ’70s and Afghanistan in the ’80s. Then, if the Soviets got upset with you, they would refuse to veto the Security Council resolutions on Kashmir and we would be isolated, with the entire — I repeat the entire — world against us, except Bhutan (check out the Security Council proceedings during the 1971 war). Today, if for your own reasons, you decide not to vote against Iran at IAEA, and the Americans really get furious, what will they do? Drop the nuclear deal? Big deal!

In any case, that deal is done. Its real significance would now lie in the way India is able to build on it. For decades, India has been hobbled by three foreign policy issues. Its nuclear status was one. It is not settled yet, but things are moving in that direction. The border disputes with China and the blood feud with Pakistan are the other two. The time to deal with both, decisively, is now because you can only settle chronic issues like these, that require give and take, from a position of strength, and when the global balance of power, the combination of circumstances are both aligned favourably. So the time to move with Musharraf is now. The Chinese, the way they are, would probably set their own pace, but we have to be open-minded. Such a propitious combination of factors to settle eternal problems comes rarely more than once in a generation. For India, these issues have cursed two generations. We owe it to the third to leave them a cleaner slate.

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