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India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a pacifist who has long been ambivalent about his country's nuclear program, especially its weapons component. According to some of his Cabinet colleagues, it was Singh, while in the role of finance minister, who steered Prime Minister Narasimha Rao away from conducting four nuclear tests in 1995, warning him that the economy would suffer a "meltdown because of the international sanctions that would follow."

Had Rao held his nerve and tested, he may have gained sufficient political traction to stave off defeat in the 1996 polls, where his perceived weakness on national security was exploited by the Bharatiya Janata Party to ensure that party's debut as the single largest party in Parliament, a status that it lost only during the 2004 polls.

Although most within the Indian policy establishment share Manmohan Singh's view that a robust partnership with the United States is key to India's future prosperity, the difference is that to the prime minister, such an alliance implies complete accommodation to the demands of a U.S. administration, rather than a more nuanced mix of policy confluence along with occasional divergences that nevertheless keep within the national security boundaries of both countries.

Small wonder that he has succumbed to the demands of non-proliferationists in the U.S. Congress by agreeing to place 70 percent of India's nuclear reactors under permanent and intrusive international safeguards, as against the current level of 40 percent. He has also refused permission for Indian officials to source uranium from non-Nuclear Suppliers Group suppliers such as Niger, for fearing of provoking a hostile reaction from Washington, and has soft-pedaled efforts to extract more of the ore domestically.

Signing the nuclear deal would result in India having a much smaller than optimum stock of nuclear weapons. In the absence of further testing, these bombs would mostly be restricted to the 100-140 kiloton range, rather than the desired level of 1 megaton of explosive power.

Aware of the way in which the proposed deal hobbles India's strategic capability, it is small wonder that International Atomic Energy Agency Chairman Mohammad Al-Baradei has backed an India-specific international agreement. In contrast, those who regard civilizations other than those of European origin to be unworthy of the privilege of being entrusted with nuclear technology, such as non-proliferationists Darryl Kimball and David Albright, call for India to be denuded of all nuclear technology, something feasible only should the country be defeated in what would certainly be a nuclear war.

To many in Asia, the objections raised during last week's IAEA meeting by Ireland, Switzerland and Austria to the Indian deal reek of ethnic prejudice, given that all three cozy up to the United States, which has almost twice as many nuclear warheads as the rest of the world put together. As China has become too big to contain, those comfortable with a world where technology is the monopoly of a single ethnic group are seeking to emulate Canute in rolling back the Indian nuclear tide, although they have failed thus far.

Since 1974 India has been subjected to sanctions more severe than those applied to North Korea or Iran. Despite this, the country's scientists have created an arsenal of nuclear weapons and the missiles needed to transport them to their final destinations, and no government in democratic India would survive any serious effort at dismantling this program.

Those – surprisingly including U.S. columnist Fareed Zakaria – that equate the Indian and Israeli programs with those of Iran and Pakistan omit the fact that the latter two states have programs controlled by religious zealots. In the case of Pakistan they are conducting a proxy war against two neighbors – Afghanistan and India – and in the case of Iran, doing the same via Lebanon with Israel, a country that its president says should be "wiped off the face of the earth." It would be a leap away from logic to equate this duo with India and Israel, which are both democracies that have never proliferated nuclear technology outside national boundaries.

Should the NSG follow the IAEA later this month in accepting New Delhi's request for a "clean and unconditional" exemption to the Non-Proliferation Treaty rules in order to facilitate global nuclear trade with India, a successor government may find it difficult to go ahead with further nuclear tests, absent a fresh provocation from China or Pakistan.

However, should the NSG block the Indian request for a "clean and unconditional exemption" to the restrictions on nuclear trade with itself, this would be taken by domestic hard-liners as proof that the country's record of good behavior since the 1974 tests has been a policy mistake. According to them, the country could have made billions of dollars through the sale of missiles and nuclear technology, money that could have been spent to fast-track the thorium-based energy program.

Paradoxically, although India's program is a reaction to China, such an NSG-inspired breakout by India from the proliferation regime would bring New Delhi geopolitically closer to Beijing and Moscow. In contrast, the acceptance of the Indian proposals by the NSG, followed by their endorsement by the U.S. Congress, would go a long way toward ensuring that New Delhi would team up with Washington in confronting the security challenges of the 21st century.

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(Professor M.D. Nalapat is vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University. ©Copyright M.D. Nalapat.)