The crescendo of the orchestrated ‘Nura Kushti’ (phony shadow boxing) between the Communist party (& fellow travelers) and the Manmohan Singh-led ruling Congress party, about the US–India Nukes-for-Mangoes deal which has dominated the headlines of the Indian media for the past few weeks, maybe about to end in a whimper as L. K. Advani of the right wing Neo-Nazi BJP opposition has thrown a life line to the shaky Manmohan Singh-led government.

As we have mentioned many times in this column, when discussing the US-India ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal that the eyes of every Indian jingoist, and peace-loving Punjabi too, (worried about his survival under an Indian or Pakistani radioactive nuclear cloud) are on any discussions on this deal any where. We have also mentioned that Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act must conform in letter and spirit with the provisions of the Henry J. Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act 2006 which was signed into law, by President Bush, in December 2006. What the jingoistic Indian rulers do not want to understood is that, any modification of the requirements under the Henry J Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act 2006 cannot be brought about through merely word-engineering a cleverly drafted agreement to be settled between the two executive branches of government. As long as the Hyde Act remains what it is today, no Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act can be used to override its legal provisions. In case of an override, this new understanding will have to be presented to both Houses of U.S. Congress and approved by each before it becomes part of the overall US-India ‘Nukes for Mangoes’ deal. The US negotiators think that they have convinced the Indian side to agree to positions in conformity with the Act’s current provisions, rather than take the legal route of getting the Act amended (in the two chambers on the Hill) to accommodate the chameleonic Indian negotiators. The recent discussions in Washington DC, between the two governments, Delhi claims have helped to clarify the Indian ambitions to the right to Nuclear tests. Washington did not take very long to clear this misunderstanding promptly and has made it very clear that in case nuclear test the deals ends.

In the meantime according to a report headlined, ‘Congress gets company’ written by RADHIKA RAMASESHAN in yesterday’s Telegraph, a Kolkatta-based well-informed English language newspaper, “L.K. Advani has gifted the Congress the ‘climbdown’ it had been waiting for.” Leader of Opposition L. K. Advani is reported to have put forward  ( http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070828/asp/nation/story_8246216.asp ) his sympathetic view about the nuke deal in a discussion at the Indo-US Forum of Parliamentarians. The BJP too has carried the views enunciated by Advani. The Telegraph report goes on to say that, “Expecting no major retreat in the Left’s stand, Congress sources admitted that the party’s greatest fear was total isolation in Parliament if the BJP took a strident stand. A negative BJP stand would have underlined the Congress’s isolation before the country, all the more because the Left’s principal contention is that ‘if a majority of the MPs are opposed to the deal, what legitimacy does it have?’ Advani’s declaration that the BJP had no objection to a strategic partnership with the US so long as it served India’s interest took care of the Congress’s problem to an extent. BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad was quoted as having said that, “There is a whole big world in the Indo-US relationship which we should not overlook. Indo-US amity was initiated by the NDA government and if the Congress takes it forward, we are sure to support it. But, it needs to be pulled together. In this age of globalization, this deal opens doors, which will open more doors in the future.” (Like the door to a permanent seat at the UN Security Council!) The other cause for some cheer in the Congress party circles was the fact that the BJP’s Maharashtra ally, the right wing, Neo-Nazi, fascist Shiv Sena, openly backed the deal. So did the Biju Janata Dal. Its Rajya Sabha member, B.J. Panda, spoke glowingly of the deal at the forum and said it marked a “complete change of paradigm” by making available energy that had been “denied to us”.Statements in Parliament apart, the Congress feels that the BJP’s anti-deal postures had not gone down well with the Opposition party’s urban middle and upper class constituencies. The worldly aspiration of these classes are inspired by the US. ‘Industry, too, has been flummoxed by the BJP’s opposition to the deal’, according to a Congress source.

According to another report in the Telegraph the BJP has begun emphasizing that it has problems only with some aspects of the Indo-US nuclear deal as it is wary of being clubbed with the Left. Leader of the Opposition, L. K. Advani is ( http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070828/asp/nation/story_8246211.asp ) also reported to have suggested to newsmen in Hyderabad that his party would accept the 123 Agreement if the Hyde Atomic Energy Act is amended. He is quoted as having said that, “It is anti-Americanism which propels the Left to oppose a nuclear ship docked at Chennai port. As far as the BJP is concerned — and it is in national interest — we have no objection to a strategic partnership with the US. This includes the forthcoming joint naval exercises.’ These are the provocative naval exercises which are going to be held soon by the U.S., Australian, Japanese, Indian and Singapore navies in the Bay of Bengal off Indian-held Nicobar Islands from where all sea commerce to the Far East and China, passes through the very narrow Malacca straits – situated between the Indonesian Island of Sumatra and Malaysia. A choke off point a la Gibralter, Strait of Hormus in the Persian Gulf and Bab el Mandeb strait in the Red sea. China has made it known that it is aware of Indian/Japanese ambitions here!

Most jingoists in India ought not to forget that as soon as the US-India ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal is finalized China will be in a position to sign a similar ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal with Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. China understands India’s negotiating tricks and has called, and we quote verbatim, the US-India ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ legislation as, ”a contradiction to the obligations of Washington as a lead signatory to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT obligates its signatories NOT to provide assistance to the nuclear programs of states (like India, Pakistan and Isreal) that did not sign the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. The U.S. Atomic Energy Act also prohibits nuclear sales to non-NPT countries.” End quote.

A detailed reading of  the Henry J. Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act 2006 brings out clearly the Congressional thinking and motivation in passing the Hyde Act. The broad objectives of the Bush administration are no different, as confirmed by various statements of top US officials. Two principal US objectives stand out. The first U.S. objective, perhaps the more important one, is to ensure that India’s foreign policy is ‘congruent’ to that of the US, with this deal expected to ‘induce greater political and material support to the achievement of US goals. India’s growing economic and political role in the world is seen as a ‘new strategic opportunity to advance US goals. Iran gets a specific mention, with the US expecting India’s ‘full and active cooperation to dissuade, isolate and if necessary sanction and contain Iran.’ There is also talk of India as an ‘ally’ or at least a ‘strategic partner of the U.S..’ The second objective relates to non-proliferation, through strengthening and sustaining the implementation of the NPT. India remaining outside the NPT poses a ‘potential challenge to the goals of global non-proliferation.’ Maybe American objective to curb India’s nuclear weapons capability has been dropped as a semantic concession to the earlier U.S. policy of ‘cap, rollback and eliminate’

Diplomatic observers feel the hue and cry in New Delhi maybe just a Indian tamasha. Maybe the India rulers are engaged in a typical Indian ‘Nura-Kushti’ (shadow boxing) with a naïve United States – a haggling tactic of the proverbial ‘Hindu Trader’ - who at the last moment will agree to everything to seal the nuclear bargain. This column approached an old time-tested Pakistani friend of the Sikhs, a keen observer of South Asian geo-political developments, a senior citizen and an old soldier, a graduate of the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul, Mr. Ahmed Sheikh to comment on the US-India ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal. His ‘hawkish’ comment was shocking! It is repeated here verbatim for the benefit of the readers. He said, “Every nationalist Pakistani should be thankful to the jingoists in India who want to sign this ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal. That is why Pakistan has not opposed this US-India nuke deal. He further added that just as every Pakistani is eternally grateful to the Neo-Nazi Hindutva BJP government for its stupid act of testing a nuclear device, in May 1998, thus giving an opportunity to Pakistan to bare its nuclear fangs, two weeks later and changing the strategic scene. Without a provocative Indian Nuclear test Pakistan could never have dared to test its nukes. He further ridiculed the jingoist Indian rulers for being ignorant of geography and meteorology and how these two factors play a major role in a nuclear scenario. India’s Geographical depth is a disadvantage and lack of it is an advantage for Pakistan in a nuclear scenario. India cannot nuke Lahore or Karachi without destroying Jalandhar and Ahmedabad. A Pakistani nuclear missile, on the other hand, can make a parking lot out of the city of Chennai or Kolkatta without any radioactive danger to Pakistan. This situation on the ground is just like the American nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, in August 1945, when it did not have any negative effect on 100, 000 US troops who were occupying Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands less than 500 miles away. On top of that India has only a three month weather window, during the summer monsoons, when winds blow from India towards Pakistan. Shocking!

The three million strong Sikh diaspora (which includes half a million Sikh/Americans in the United States) are in with the non-proliferation lobby and continue to hope that the US-India ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal falls through. They hope the nukes just go away! The 3 million strong diaspora Sikhs fear for the 22 million Sikhs captive in their homeland of Punjab, under Indian occupation, living dangerously and unhappily in their South Asian homeland of Punjab, Khalistan, which is sandwiched between two nuclear armed South Asian rivals, India and Pakistan. ( http://khalistan-affairs.org/home/khalistancalling/2006/december13.aspx  ) As a result the Sikhs have been demanding, and will continue demanding and working for a nuclear/missile free South Asia as it is a question of survival of the Sikh people and their historic holy shrines located in both India and Pakistan. The Sikhs want a South Asia free of missiles and Nuclear weapons and nuclear tests – they want peace in order to survive. That is why the Washington-based Khalistan Affairs Center made a heroic effort in November/December last year to lobby against the U.S.-India ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal as the half million strong Sikh-American community senses grave dangers in the current situation, where India and Pakistan, have nuclear missiles pointed at each other with the Sikh Homeland of Punjab, Khalistan, (with its 22 million Sikhs and numerous holy shrines) sandwiched as it is, between the two. The November 2006 advocacy appeal to U.S. Law Makers by the Washington-based Khalistan Affairs Center, published in the Washington Times newspaper, against the Indo/U.S. ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal is appended below as it remains as relevant and valid today as it was then:-

Appeal to all U.S. Law-makers
Do Not Approve US-India nuclear deal
An Appeal from 25 million Sikhs

Honorable Law-makers:

The world’s 25 million strong Sikh nation has a hard time believing the alarming media reports that Senate Foreign Relations Committee is willing to approve, in the lame duck session, the US-India nuclear deal, under section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, without making it conditional on an end to fissile material production by India.

1. Apart from the fissile material issue, how is it possible that worldly wise and well-informed U.S. Law makers are planning to give a ‘wink and a nod’ to the U.S. nuclear deal with India without any powers of oversight in terms of requiring the usual annual certification of Indian good behavior? What if India tests a thermo-nuclear device, sometime in the future, at its’ Test site, which is being kept ready near Pokharan in Rajasthan, and repeats what it did in 1974, by pilfering from its safeguarded civilian nuclear reactors provided by the U.S. and Canada?

2. The latest U.N. Human Development Report-2006, released last week, reveals (Table 21;Energy:>
http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/pdfs/report/HDR06-complete.pdf <) that India’s electricity consumption demand projection – the raison d‘etre for the deal – is 594 Kilowatt hours per capita – a paltry increase of 421 Kilowatt hours per capita in twenty three years. Electricity demand per capita in India (where over seven hundred million human beings have no access to clean water and sanitation – no latrines) is increasing at a snail’s pace as compared to the galloping demand in countries like S. Korea (7,338 Kilowatt hours per capita), Saudi Arabia (6,749), South Africa (4,595), Malaysia (3,196), Argentina (2,543), Brazil (2,246), Mexico (2,108), Turkey (1,979), Thailand (1,896), Egypt (1,340) Algeria (929) and others. These countries having all signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT was also ratified and proclaimed by the U.S. on March 5, 1970) have a far stronger argument for a nuclear cooperation deal, to meet their energy needs, than hegemonic, dirt-poor, brittle, caste-ridden India, at war with its minorities and sinking under the weight of a thousand mutinies. India has not signed the NPT because its’ hallucinative rulers have always treated the treaty with contempt. The three million strong Sikh diaspora (including half a million Sikhs in the United States) fear for the 22 million Sikhs captive in India, living dangerously and unhappily in their homeland of Punjab, Khalistan, which is sandwiched between two nuclear armed rivals, India and Pakistan. Sikhs demand a nuclear free South Asia. It is a question of survival of our people and our historic holy shrines located in both India and Pakistan.

3. Ladies and Gentlemen, please DO NOT approve the U.S.-India Nuclear deal. Even Republican columnist, author and TV personality, Pat Buchanan, has rightly described it as a ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal about which, he says, the U.S. has, “traded a horse for a rabbit, and some of us are wondering as to the whereabouts of the rabbit.”