Our good Indian friend Sandhya Jain and his site
www.vijayvaani.com carry out uphill struggle for Indian nuclear
independence against the US attempts to cage India in. Somehow, only
Israel and the US are supposed to have nuclear weapons, all the rest
should be disarmed – according to the Torah from Capitol Hill. Here we
offer you three articles from Sandhya’s site, explaining why it is
important to keep India free from American interference.
http://www.vijayvaani.com/article_26au.htm
Indo-US Nuclear deal: Road to
serfdom
Virendra Parekh
26 August 2008
In an ultimate irony, only foreigners ( NSG , US
Congressmen) can save us from our own leaders. A great fraud is being
perpetrated on the people of India in the form of the Indo-US nuclear
deal. Even as vital national interests - commercial, strategic and
diplomatic - are being bartered away in return for vague promises of
selective cooperation, our leaders try to soothe us by bland assertions
and self-serving opinions.
In the millions of words expended on the Indo-US
civil nuclear cooperation deal, there is no convincing answer to a
simple question: If the deal is of such a great benefit to India , if it
is indeed a great diplomatic triumph for India , why have all the pulls
and pressures, pushes and shoves come from America ?
Each time the deal has shown signs of falling
through, American pressure has revived it. Every time it looked like
missing a deadline, Americans generously extended the deadline… They
passed a special law (the Hyde Act) 'for our benefit' and promised to
help us out at global forums like International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
and Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG). Throughout the tedious negotiations
between the UPA and the Left and between India and IAEA, the Americans
steadily maintained relentless pressure on everyone to move faster. Why
is a superpower, which has never favoured us on life-and death issues
like terrorism, Pakistan or Kashmir , so keen to oblige us in this
particular matter?
For those familiar with the actual contents of the
deal (as opposed to official propaganda), the answer is no secret: the
deal is loaded so heavily in favour of America and so heavily against
India, that Americans will be willing to sign it any time India agrees.
For once Americans cannot be accused of duplicity.
They have been clear in setting forth what they want us to do before we
could expect anything from them. The subterfuges, half-truths and plain
lies came from Indian leaders and officials. Americans want business
worth billions of dollars for their defunct nuclear power industry; they
want India never again to explode a nuclear device; they want it to stop
producing fissile material that can be used in making bombs and they
want India's foreign policy to be in line with their own. The deal is
designed as an instrument to achieve these objectives, without giving
India anything substantial in return.
Over the three years since it was first mooted, the
deal has been transformed from a key to power (in every sense) into a
road to bondage in perpetuity. At every stage, there were voices of
caution and protest from nuclear scientists, strategic analysts, defence
experts – all were brazenly ignored.
The doors of international nuclear trade were shut on
India after it conducted its first nuclear test in 1974. Washington led
the nuclear apartheid regime and is the only country to have written the
nuclear blockade of India into laws. Now that it has relaxed its laws
with the India-specific Hyde Act, New Delhi , despite not being a
signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) can buy
much-needed nuclear fuel, equipment, components and technology to feed
and upgrade its under-performing and undernourished civilian nuclear
energy sector, if certain conditions are met.
This is touted as a great diplomatic achievement. The
Prime Minister insists every patriotic Indian must support it. But
American cooperation is reversible, conditional on India 's good
behaviour on America 's non-proliferation concerns and comes at a huge
cost -commercial, diplomatic and strategic.
India will be sinking billions of dollars in nuclear
power plants totally dependent on imported fuel. The fuel will be
America 's handle for ensuring India 's good behaviour. There is no
guarantee of uninterrupted fuel supply for imported reactors. Nor will
India be allowed to stockpile enough uranium supplies for the lifespan
of these reactors. And US will cut off all cooperation, including fuel
supply, if India oversteps the line on the strategic side. It will also
persuade other members of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) to do the
same. This could act as a severe deterrent in considering strategic
options.
If fuel is the instrument to keep India on a leash,
the requirement of the US President to submit reports to Congress is the
mechanism to accomplish it. The US President has to keep a close watch
on all nuclear activity in India and send his assessments to appropriate
Congressional committees to keep them fully informed of the facts and
implications of any significant nuclear activities of India . These
reporting requirements are fairly exhaustive, ranging from the amount of
uranium mined in India to whether India is cooperating with US on Iran .
Hyde Act asks India to desist from nuclear testing, to throw open its
reactors to intrusive international inspection, to kowtow American line
on non-proliferation initiatives, and to keep its foreign policy
congruent with that of the US , or else…
Notice that the onus is on India to convince the US
President and lawmakers that it is indeed fulfilling its obligations. If
for his own reasons, the US president refuses to certify India 's
compliance with terms of the deal, there is nothing India can do. Under
the 123 Agreement, India has no legally enforceable rights, while its
obligations are extensive and perpetual.
When the US House of Representatives passed the Hyde
Act and the fact could no longer be denied that its provisions would
jeopardize our strategic interests, we were told, 'But this is just the
House Bill. Our concerns will be taken care of in the Senate bill.' When
the Senate passed the bill and it could no longer be denied that its
provisions made even deeper inroads into our strategic interests, we
were told, 'But we have to wait for the Joint Conference of the two
Houses to hammer out a final version. That will take care of our
concerns.' When the final version was passed, and it could no longer be
denied that it contained the harshest features of each version, we were
told, 'But India is not bound by laws made by any other country. We have
to wait for the 123 Agreement. That will take care of our concerns.'
We then had the 123 Agreement, so-called because it
is made under Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. And it
nailed, inter alia, the brave assertion that we are not bound by
the laws of any other country. The agreement explicitly states that
'each party shall implement this Agreement in accordance with its
respective applicable treaties, national laws, regulations, and license
requirements concerning the use of nuclear energy for peaceful
purposes.' In the case of the US, the relevant 'national laws' include
the original Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the Nonproliferation Treaty Act,
and the Hyde Act of December 2006.
To operationalise the Indo-US deal, India has to sign
a safeguards agreement with the global NPT watch dog IAEA specifying
what kind of inspections and controls our nuclear reactors will be
subjected to. This will have to be followed by a waiver from the NSG,
before US Congress ratifies the 123 Agreement.
We now have the safeguards agreement with the IAEA.
We were told this will be an India-specific agreement, that it will
grant us special status, setting us apart from the non-nuclear weapon
states and tacitly accord us a status similar to that enjoyed by the P5.
But the fine print of the agreement shows it strongly resembles accords
with non-nuclear weapons states, and does not acknowledge India as a
nuclear power. Like them, India will be putting its entire civilian
nuclear programme under permanent, legally irrevocable international
inspections, and also pay for their enforcement.
What is particularly galling is that India will be
undertaking these onerous obligations forever without getting any
legally enforceable right on any core issue. There are four issues of
great importance to India . Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured
Parliament categorically that the final agreement would take into
account India 's concerns on these issues. On each issue, the Agreement
makes mincemeat of his solemn assurances.
Uninterrupted supply of fuel for reactors
Dr. Singh pledged in Parliament to link perpetual
IAEA inspections to perpetual fuel supply. But no such right has been
secured from IAEA and we shall be totally at the mercy of fuel
suppliers. The preamble to the IAEA agreement carries a perfunctory
cosmetic reference to "corrective measures" India "may" take in the
event of disruption of foreign fuel supplies. The agreement does not
define these corrective measures and does not give India any right to
take such measures. The use of the word 'may" instead of "shall" in this
context means India has no legal entitlement.
The earlier 123 agreement with the US, instead of
granting India the right to take corrective measures in response to a
fuel-supply disruption, merely recorded that New Delhi will seek such a
right in the IAEA accord. But in the India-IAEA accord, no such right
has been secured in definable terms.
The Hyde Act which governs the 123 Agreement clearly
stipulates that 'any nuclear power reactor fuel reserve provided to
India should be commensurate with reasonable reactor operating
requirements.' So India will not be able to stockpile fuel reserves for
the lifetime of reactors, and should US stop fuel supplies, for
instance, in the event of India testing a nuclear device, US would
ensure that no other member of the NSG shall supply fuel to India .
Reprocessing of spent fuel
The 123 Agreement and the Hyde Act which governs it
deny India the unfettered right either to reprocess spent fuel or ship
it back to US for disposal. Right to reprocessing is crucial to India 's
three-stage nuclear programme:
Stage I: Construction
of reactors run on natural uranium and heavy water. Spent fuel from
these reactors is reprocessed to obtain plutonium.
Stage II: Construction
of Fast Breeder Reactors fuelled by plutonium produced in Stage I. One
variant of the FBR uses plutonium with U-238 to produce energy and more
plutonium. Plutonium made available from fast breeder reactors goes into
India 's atom bombs and is crucial to develop our nuclear arsenal.
Another variant uses a mix of plutonium and thorium to produce energy
with uranium 233 (U-233) as a byproduct.
Stage III: Construct
power reactors which use U-233 / thorium as fuel and produce energy and
more U-233.
India is currently working at Stage II and our
scientists have been able to put together a prototype fast breeder
reactor. A second reactor is being built.
The three-stage nuclear programme conceived by Dr.
Homi Bhabha in 1950 emphasises greater use of thorium (which we have in
abundance) and minimum dependence on uranium, on which we are short. The
US , for its own commercial and strategic interests, wants us to take a
route where we shall be permanently dependent on imported uranium. That
explains its foot-dragging on giving reprocessing rights to India .
Hence, India will have to depend on uranium supplies
from a cartel notorious for resorting to price manipulations. In recent
years, the price of uranium has risen six times from the usual average
of about $25 per kg. With demand in India and China expected to rise,
the price of uranium, already increasing faster than oil, will rise
further.
Worse, Americans have been saying categorically that
all future fast-breeder reactors, which can yield material for bombs,
will be covered by safeguards. This means that the fast breeder
programme, a key link to our strategic programme, will be stymied. In
brief, our military nuclear programme, dependent on fissile material
from facilities not covered by safeguards, will be capped as a prelude
to an ultimate rollback. As a foretaste of things to come, under
American pressure, Manmohan Singh has already ordered permanent closure
of our fast-breeder reactor Cirus, one of India 's two reactors
producing bomb-grade plutonium.
Nuclear Test
Several scientists have pointed out that India needs
many more nuclear tests before it can refine its arsenal into a credible
nuclear deterrent.
Nothing in the 123 Agreement prohibits India from
conducting fresh tests. But the US has made it explicit that if India
carries out a nuclear test, all N-cooperation will be terminated and US
will have the right to demand return of any nuclear materials and
equipment transferred under the agreement. Thus, the 123 agreement
converts what has till now been a voluntary moratorium on further
nuclear tests into a binding bilateral legal obligation; once NSG
gets into the act, it will become a multilateral obligation.
India will be technically free to test, but the
consequences will be swift and heavy, involving such colossal economic
costs as to be impossible. China and Pakistan do not have to worry about
such fetters.
Transfer of nuclear technology and materials
India expected the complete and irreversible removal
of existing restrictions on all aspects of a complete nuclear fuel cycle
‑ ranging from nuclear fuel, nuclear reactors, to re-processing spent
fuel. What it got is cooperation on aspects of the associated nuclear
fuel cycle. This arrangement is not about full cooperation but selective
participation to the extent that it serves American commercial and
non-proliferation interests.
The contention that the nuclear deal will open the
floodgates of technology transfer to India is largely wishful thinking.
Article 5.2 of the much vaunted 123 Agreement categorically states that
transfers of "sensitive nuclear technology" would require an amendment
and that transfers of "dual use items that could be used in enrichment,
reprocessing or heavy water production facilities will be subject to the
parties' respective laws, regulations and licence policies". This means
that under the nuclear deal India has not even secured full civil
nuclear cooperation, and transfer of technology from the US in this area
will be less than complete.
The UPA Government has led India into a binding
commitment that has little to do with production of civilian nuclear
energy and everything to do with bringing us within the restrictive
framework of nuclear non-proliferation. The 'deal' is not about
liberating India from the clutches of wayward oil-producing nations and
the vagaries of fossil fuel, but binding us to the interests of the
non-proliferation lobby and the business interests of the nuclear power
industry.
Having sunk billions of dollars into importing
nuclear power reactors and even more in industries dependent on power
from those reactors, India will be compelled to think twice before
annoying the US on any count. That is the American strategy behind the
strategic partnership with India .
This is the deal that in which the Prime Minister has
invested so much of his meagre political capital. It is a tragedy that a
person who got the prime ministerial chair fortuitously, whose party has
only around 150 MPs in the Lok Sabha (and he is not one of them) is all
set to foist this deal on the country without any further discussion to
meet the deadline set by his American masters — sorry, friends.
India will be making a grave mistake - like the ones
Nehru made in Kashmir and Tibet - if it continues to pursue the deal in
terms of the 123 Agreement and IAEA pact. The consequences will haunt us
for generations.
The author is Executive Editor, Corporate India, and
lives in Mumbai
http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=98
Manmohan outsources political sovereignty
by Sandhya Jain
09 Sep 2008
Some things are scandalously evident in the current
nuclear tamasha in the capital, even to a non-specialist like this
writer.
One, the drama over India getting the so-called
waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group was totally engineered by the
West. The purpose was to heighten tensions in New Delhi and make it
agree to script changes which would not be taken to the Union Cabinet,
the Parliament where votes had to be purchased for the Government to
survive 22 July in order to clinch the Indo-US nuclear (slave) treaty,
or made known to the people of India. The waiver now will mean whatever
the Americans say it means, and we can dismiss the verbosity of UPA
spokespersons with the contempt they deserve.
It is still unclear what has been waived, other than
the American self-imposed embargo on n-reactor and uranium sales to
India, which its own nuclear lobby was chafing at. Yet it is pertinent
that the day the waiver came through, NDTV sought the views of Daryl G
Kimball, Executive Director, Arms Control Association of America.
Reacting to the brouhaha over the "letter leak," he said there was
clarity in Washington about the deal and he was compelled to admit that
the Indian criticism that Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh) had been
telling lies to the nation was true! He was, of course, quickly cut off,
and Mr. Salman Khurshid of the Congress made a brief statutory denial!
If only it was that simple.
Two, the Manmohan Singh regime completely surrendered
India’s political sovereignty to the United States at a major
international forum by letting Washington take over the negotiations
with Western countries opposing the waiver, and forcing Beijing to
withdraw the unexpected hand revealed at Vienna.
This should be a matter of deep shame to all Indians,
but sadly the matter has not got the attention it deserves. Why did the
UPA government not let the waiver decision be postponed till Indian
diplomats could persuade all member-countries to come on board? In what
way did this regime’s survival depend on the nuclear deal ˆ this
question deserves an answer.
Worse, to analysts who understand the Chinese psyche,
the momentary retreat does not demonstrate the superior diplomacy of
President George Bush. It, in fact, signals Beijing’s intention to
seriously unravel the current nuclear architecture of the world, which
may not be a bad thing.
As of now, Beijing has hinted that Pakistan deserves
a similar deal. It would be difficult for an Indian nationalist to agree
with this. Yet anyone with half a brain can see that Pakistan has
demonstrably more friends who will de facto help it in its nuclear
quest; indeed, it got there thanks to the United States and China!
Iran will now find a friend in Beijing, especially if
New Delhi persists in its suicidal servitude towards Washington.
Finally, what has gone totally unnoticed in Indian media in recent weeks
is the fact that North Korea was withdrawn its decision to rollback its
nuclear programme! In other words, there is going to be proliferation in
Asia.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not even begun to
think that if Korea acquires the bomb (which it will, thanks again to
China), then Japan cannot lag behind. Tokyo already has enough fissile
material to do the needful – it needs only to rediscover its Samurai
ethos. More pertinently, it is being quietly wooed by both its Russian
and Chinese neighbours! Does New Delhi even know? South Block is totally
unable to see the emerging trends in the neighbourhood and to discuss
Euro-Central-and-Asian security and prosperity in a paradigm guaranteed
by Russia, China, India and Japan.
Third, surrender does not pay. It is a fitting
humiliation – and divine justice for grovelling before the White House –
that Australia has refused to sell uranium until India signs the Nuclear
Non-proliferation Treaty! And why not – if New Delhi can stoop so low,
why not a little bit lower?
Fourth, BJP president Rajnath Singh is right when he
says that the Indo-US nuclear deal has no benefits for India. Regardless
of the price at which the waiver was secured at Vienna, no atomic fuel
will be available before 2020 – a good twelve years away! Then, the
investment of several thousand crores of rupees will not yield nuclear
energy amounting to more than 6% the national energy requirement, so the
deal is to divert tax-payers’ money for other purposes.
Fifth, the Bush Administration’s "secret letter" made
it clear that the real motive behind Washington securing the NSG waiver
for India was the "likely economic benefits of this partnership" to the
American private sector! Yes, just as the Army has a country in
Pakistan, so the Corporate Sector has a Government in America – the
people do not count in either country, notwithstanding the forms of
government. The nuclear deal is the brain-child of the dying nuclear
industry of America which needs the Indian market to rejuvenate itself.
So, some years down the line, we can expect kickbacks scandals in this
area as well.
Rather than bank on a regime proved to be lying to
the Indian people, I would rely upon nuclear scientist Dr. P.K. Iyengar,
who unequivocally states that nuclear tests are imperative to maintain a
credible nuclear deterrent. Dr Iyengar refutes the view that computer
simulation is enough to test the validity of an atomic weapon, pointing
out that when we carry out tests of new aircraft before handing it over
to users, we cannot deliver a nuclear bomb without testing! India can’t
rely upon computer simulation after just six tests. America can do it as
it has conducted over 2000 nuclear tests; Russia has made 1000 tests and
France nearly 300. Dr Iyengar rightly queries the voluntary moratorium
on n-weapon testing by former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee after the May 1998
tests, when Pakistan and China made no such moves.
As of now, it seems the only genuine opposition to
the nuclear surrender is by the Left parties; the BJP’s dominant faction
has been speaking from both sides of its mouth. It has supported New
Delhi’s utterly undesirable hostility towards friendly Teheran,
supported a strategic alliance with Washington (which means shameful
subordination of the type witnessed at Vienna where America took over
New Delhi’s job), and failed to tell us what it is supposed to be
opposing in the deal.
It is inexplicable why BJP chief ministers were not
present to manage their state MPs on 22 July, when it was known that
money was flowing around. Why did the party not do its own sting
operation and release the tapes directly to the media, as it did once in
Chattisgarh? Finally, the party must explain why it let the trust vote
be held the same evening, when common sense dictated that it should have
stalled the House till investigations in the cash-for-votes were over or
the tapes telecast by all channels.
CPM general secretary Prakash Karat is right that the
task ahead is to see that a new government comes to power and terminates
the 123 Agreement. The truth is that the full picture has still not
emerged regarding the "continuous concessions" India made in Vienna over
the past three days, which virtually amount to secret clauses in a
treaty. What we do know is that India has accepted restrictions on
transfer of sensitive technology, including technology for reprocessing
and enrichment. Thus, we have indirectly entered the non-proliferation
regime without any commensurate benefits.
Worse, India has agreed to abide by an Additional
Protocol with the IAEA which is yet to be finalised, as part of the
basis for the waiver. This also is without the knowledge of the Union
Cabinet, the Parliament, and the people. In other words, Washington is
now going to screw all the nuts-and-bolts necessary to stop India
developing state-of-the-art missile technology and permanently capping
the nuclear weapons programme. The "clean and unconditional" waiver is
nothing but an unconditional surrender of India’s self-esteem and
political independence.
http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=103
Left must reinvent itself to defeat US hegemony
Sandhya Jain
12 Sep 2008
If CPM general secretary Prakash Karat seriously
hopes to derail the Indo-US nuclear deal, he would know that the only
way to do this is through the political process.
This involves conceiving a gigantic war strategy,
which in turn involves seeking a spectrum of allies. In the Mahabharata
war, no tribe was too humble to be wooed by the ultimately successful
Pandavas. Yet the most astonishing aspect of current CPM thinking is an
inability to negotiate new political friendships and break the
stranglehold of sterile ideological paradigms.
Two silent, but staggering, ideological mutinies have
taken place in our neighbourhood, but have gone almost unnoticed because
the West has kept quiet and India’s imitative elites can’t think for
themselves. I speak, of course, of the once Communist China and the
former Soviet Union.
Both have lessons for the Left Parties and
left-of-centre chattering classes, which have been penetrated by the
American establishment to the chagrin of the Left. That is why the
solitary, but singularly devastating, defection from the ranks of the
Left was Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who resigned his controversial
Office-of-Profit only on the day of the Confidence Vote on 22 July 2008.
He proved invaluable to the ruling dispensation when he refused to
postpone voting after the cash-for-votes scam was reported to him, and
persuaded the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. L.K. Advani, to play ball.
Another unpleasant surprise (for the Left) was Harvard Master Amartya
Sen coming all the way to a Delhi television studio to support the
nuclear deal, though it is quite outside his area of expertise.
To return to the mutinies, witness the re-emergence
of Russia under then President Vladimir Putin. In a nutshell, what Mr.
Putin has done is to carry the moral kernel of the communist vision into
a new Russia rising on the strength of sovereign (national) wealth,
married to nationalism and the traditional religion and spirituality of
the Russian people. The horrors of Leninism-Stalinism are not replaced
by the bestial Corporate Tyranny of the West, but the individual pursuit
of material stability allowed under the moral authority of the Russian
Orthodox Church and the physical strength of the Russian State.
The case of China is less apparent, but will manifest
more overtly in coming months. China, of course, is one of the greatest
purveyors of sovereign wealth funds. Less well known is the fact that it
has woken up to the dangers of moral sterility and cultural vacuum – a
dangerous historical experiment that eroded its civilisational
foundations and made it prey to dangerous foreign intrusions, especially
after it opened up its economy. That China has learnt its lessons shows
in the successful Olympics – I don’t mean the gold medal tally, but the
success in preventing hordes of evangelists slipping into the country by
confiscating all imported Bibles and making some strategic arrests!
Confucius Centres are now being opened all over the world, and China is
atoning for the folly of treating religions alien to its soil and ethos
at par with its natal faith.
That brings us to the vapid Indian elite that peddles
slogans while obsessively striving for wealth available-for-free (i.e.,
for which others will pay the price). There is growing jubilation in
this crowd – which cuts across party lines – that the Italian-born Sonia
Gandhi has succeeded in getting a lame duck regime to compromise India’s
nuclear capability. Worse, a regime clearly on its way out has promised
Washington that it will NOT examine the best nuclear deals available
when making purchases, but will wait till America is legally enabled to
make a deal with India. Even the East India Company never had it so
good!
If Mr. Prakash Karat looks at our neighbourhood, he
would realise the importance of foreign origins and foreign allegiances
in subverting nations. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, product
of a US-sponsored coloured revolution, has a Dutch or American wife. The
President of Ukraine is also married to an American, and the Polish
Defence Minister who signed the recent controversial missile defense
shield with the US is an American citizen who was born there in the
famous helicopter-making Sikorski family. It is widely known that many
other members of East European governments have American citizenship or
have been educated and trained there.
This is significant, and probably explains why the
World Bank babu who “accidentally” became Prime Minister of India
promptly undertook “administrative reforms” (sic) that involved opening
the entire IAS to American penetration via the American universities.
Any new dispensation in New Delhi must immediately put an end to this
infiltration. We should also put in place a system that monitors serving
bureaucrats who send their children abroad, and particularly see if
there is any connection between the jobs held by children and the posts
occupied by their parents in New Delhi.
To go back further, it should now be evident why the
Vajpayee Government was sold a lemon and instigated to open India to a
dangerous concept called ‘dual citizenship,’ which mercifully, only the
blooming menace of Islamic jihad prevented from becoming a reality. The
twin-lemon sold at this time was the myth that the Indians who migrated
to America and London in quest of Mammon constituted a ‘valuable
resource’ that India should pay heed to. Many skillfully-groomed public
intellectuals (whatever that means) now descend on India several times a
year to tutor the chattering classes and New Age cultists about how to
re-craft Hindu society to conform to the comfort and convenience of
Christian America. They are ably abetted by an army of retired
government servants.
Sonia Gandhi’s Quattrochi-Bofors saga is well-known,
but her stranglehold over the UPA is not even whispered about. Mr. Karat
should know that the legendary Soviet dissident, late Alexander
Solzhenitsyn warned that a nation must always guard itself against
foreigners seeking its wealth or wanting to invade (or dominate). Any
regime that disarms the nation is immoral and illegitimate – and this is
what Sonia Gandhi has made the UPA do by de facto attacking our nuclear
capabilities.
The way out – and the way forward – is for the Left
to shed the burden of Nehruvian Secularism and its arid anti-Hindu bias,
to manfully embrace Sanatan Dharma as the civilisational ethos of India,
to admit it provides honour to religions born elsewhere, to end the
offensive baiting of the Hindu community when its fights for cultural
survival in its native land, and to invite all well-meaning individuals
and groups to face the external threats and internal fifth column
undermining the nation.
If Mr. Karat is serious that if the Left has a say in
the next Government it will scrap the 123 Agreement, then he must know
that it is his responsibility to ensure that the Left has sufficient
intellectual and moral leverage with the next set up in New Delhi. This
means a working relationship with the entire political spectrum, to work
out a viable Action Plan for the immediate and not-so-immediate future.
There is an immediate need to galvanise the nation –
to demonstrate that the UPA has betrayed the nation by compromising its
strategic security and failing to meet its energy needs (the last lie
being repeatedly made by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Amethi MP
Rahul Gandhi). The people should be told that energy is decades away,
will come at a prohibitive cost, and will not cover more than 6% of
total needs!
More pertinently – people should be told that if
India buys multi-billion dollar reactors and is DENIED Uranium because,
say, it signed the gas pipeline deal with Iran – then the famous 123
Agreement can be invoked, and it DOES NOT HAVE AN ARBITRATION CLAUSE!
Yes, it is a one-sided slave treaty.
It may be pertinent to add that while India agreed to
clauses stipulating the return of fuel in the event of a nuclear test,
there was NO attempt to negotiate a return of Indian investment in
buying the reactors thus rendered useless. Surely this was the first
question a self-respecting regime should have raised?
The Left should ask the entire range of non-Congress
political parties to commit in advance of the elections that no matter
what the Lame Duck Manmohan Singh regime promises to the Lame Duck
George Bush regime – the next Indian Government will ensure that there
is NO NUCLEAR COMMERCE with AMERICA! At any price.
No effort must be spared to make it clear to
Washington that the Indian Parliament and people dislike the deal.
Political parties may also like to commit in advance that they will move
in concert to bring about appropriate Constitutional Amendments to
ensure that no future government can commit the nation to such serious
constraints without honest information, debate, and consent.