'India's role abroad has diminished'

Q&A: Jaswant Singh

Jaswant Singh

Political direction in the navigation of the nuclear deal is missing, former Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh tells ADITI PHADNIS

It is now clear that the civil nuclear energy agreement was not about energy alone but a peg by which to further Indo-US strategic relations. Is this your reading?

This agreement is the outcome of a certain concept, theme, even dream of India and its position in the world. I don't say this in self-adulatory mode but when I was invited to Oxford as a visiting professor, someone asked a similar question. He then remarked: What the NDA government's foreign policy achieved was an actual expansion of India's power. I use 'power' not in the military sense but in terms of global influence. He felt that we inspired in the citizens of India internally, a sense of self-confidence that he had not seen earlier. I was struck by this observation.

This was the background against which the civil nuclear agreement was signed between India and the US. This itself comes from that confusing acronym, NSSP (Next Steps in Strategic Partnership). The details of the NSSP are precisely what the agreement put on paper as an announcement. It reiterated what the Republican government had already executed with the NDA in January 2004. In that period, the political leadership in the US remained constant. In India, it underwent a change.

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh returned to India after his trip and was queried in Parliament, and outside, about the civil nuclear agreement, he kept repeating that the centrality of the July 18 agreement was India's quest for "energy security."

I'm sorry to say that this was disingenuous, prevaricative and totally misleading. I've said repeatedly to friends in the US that two very serious errors of management of foreign policy in a democracy were committed by both the US government and the American establishment and by this Indian arrangement at governance and the establishment.

And these were?

Just as in the US, neither the Congress nor the Senate knew the details of the agreement, neither the partners of the UPA government under the "good doctor" nor the Cabinet colleagues of the "good doctor" knew what was happening.

There has been one beneficial fallout of the 1998 nuclear tests. A large cross-section of India "" and not just the newspaper-reading public "" has got a basic grasp of the essentials of the total nuclear question. As a participant in the 1998 event, I find that an extremely rewarding benefit. For one, I hold that no government, not even the subsequent ones, can keep Indian citizens in the dark about what it is doing on the nuclear issue.

Subsequently, the dishonesty of the arrangement began to pull it (the nuclear deal) down""dishonesty on the part of the USA for its own reasons and on India's part for its own reasons.

The sad part is that on the Indian side, there is no political direction or leadership. Under pressure, while our prime minister kept singing the energy tune, Condoleezza Rice kept switching between non-proliferation, arms control and strategic partnership. The US President committed himself to improving the shared strategic partnership but did mention, as a PS (post script), alternative energy sources, presumably because of climate change considerations.

This major disconnect has created conceptual difficulties. Because of this fracture, we now have different national purposes (for the agreement) coming to the surface. How do you reconcile them?

Nicholas Burns is quoted as having said the ......

I cannot comment on that. Frankly, I don't know what is happening. I do have access, but regrettably, the source of my information is the United States. I am saddened that the government, even now, does not deem fit to keep us informed.

I've said repeatedly that a strategic partnership with the US is in India's national interest. But don't make the nuclear deal an icon or symbol of Indo-US relations and fly only this on the top mast of the great Indian battleship called India. Under strategic partnership there is space, there is technical and scientific cooperation... This was only a question of time. This agreement would have come. It needed to be evolved in time, not hustled through in a garb that is so clearly not its true attire.

What now?

Even now, we need to recognise the essentials, some of which stare us in the face. From the US viewpoint, some political changes that have taken place on the non-proliferation front are very central and high in the larger US consciousness. Also, as things are going, there could be more political changes in the near future. In that situation, the same priorities will not obtain. Both sides have to change tack without abandoning essentials. We have to recognise realities and rearrange priorities. We have to take on board other concerns, of the representative of the people and the people themselves. The prime minister says, "I cannot conduct diplomacy in public." I find this an offensively naive remark.

Schedules have to be rearranged. The template on which the deal has been struck is not an ecclesiastical inscription. It has to be managed with dexterity and patience. Why not have a larger, fuller discussion on the entire nuclear question? The country is far more knowledgeable about these issues than the government thinks. How can India give up those integrals of power which were achieved in 1998 ?

Suddenly and sadly, globally, India is diminished. I hate saying this but it is a reality. Our sphere of influence spreads nowhere. Internally, citizens are no longer filled with self-assurance, not arrogance, but a certain pride in being Indian. This is a great loss, for nothing.

Do you see possibilities for a U-turn?

That would be putting the clock back. But the government has to readdress...

Who is handling the matter politically? Is it a technical question only ? Even among technical opinions, there are divisions. The diplomatic element of the agreement has to be managed.

Personally, I feel officers serving or retired, must be careful of the system of special emissaries because the rest of the service begins to feel redundant. This is a very big theme, difficult to encapsulate our concerns.