The refusal of the Indian Communists to endorse the deal is seen as classic anti-Americanism, helped along by China's influence over the Indian left, and the last thing the Chinese government wants to see is the emergence of a strong U.S.-Indian strategic alliance to challenge China's growing dominance in Asia.

There is enough truth in this explanation to be plausible, but it ignores two essential facts.

The first is that the nuclear deal is also being shunned by the main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which launched the strategic partnership with the United States when it was in power but is now rejecting it. One reason for that is the BJP sees this as a lever to force the Singh government out of power. But as Hindu nationalists, it also rejects the deal as constraining India's freedom of action.

The development of a nuclear weapon and of a network of home-built nuclear power stations providing nearly 4,000 megawatts of electricity has long been not simply a deep source of national pride, but also a potent symbol of Indian nationalism and of its aspiration to great-power status. And surrounded by nuclear power to the east (China), north (Russia) and west (Pakistan), there are understandable reasons for India's development of nuclear weapons.

The second key fact is that the opposition to the nuclear deal has not been led by the left, but by Indian's own nuclear scientists. Dr P.K. Iyengar, former chairman of India's Atomic Energy commission, told this reporter in an exclusive United Press International interview at his home in New Delhi in February that "the agreement would force us to stop reprocessing nuclear fuel, something we have been doing for 30 years."

"It would terminate our strategic program (India's nuclear weapons program) by exposing us to sanctions if we conducted nuclear tests. And it puts impossible barriers in our path to ongoing and future research, including our well-developed programs for fast-breeder reactors and to use thorium rather than uranium as a nuclear fuel," he said.

"By saying that India shall not reprocess fuel and not develop the fast-breeder reactors, this deal undermines our ability to produce energy in the future when uranium runs out," Iyengar said. "This is a question of national sovereignty, of India's right and ability to decide such things for ourselves."

It was the combination of the scientists, the left, the BJP opposition and a cleverly coordinated campaign by influential Indian nationalists that sank the deal. The key to their campaign was the claim the U.S. deal was designed to stop India from developing further weapons. The Hyde Act of the U.S. Congress says any nuclear supplies or technology from the United States should stop if India conducts another bomb test, which it would almost certainly need to do if it wants to miniaturize its warheads for deployment on missiles.

The American diplomat who negotiated the agreement claimed that every effort had been made to safeguard India's national pride.

"I can assure you that the U.S. is not going to suggest a similar deal with any other country in the world. We've always felt of India as an exception," argues Nicholas Burns, undersecretary for political affairs at the U.S. State Department, who also insists that India's nuclear weapons program will not be affected by the deal.

"We work with India on the civil side; that is safeguarded. What India does on the strategic side is India's business. This agreement doesn't aid that program and it doesn't have an effect."

Beyond this, the main advantage of the deal for India is that it opens the way for it to import nuclear fuel freely for its civilian reactors, which are currently operating at two-thirds capacity because of the shortage of uranium. Sanctions have prevented India from buying this fuel from the tightly controlled club of fuel suppliers (the Nuclear Suppliers Group) since it first tested a nuclear weapon and refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

According to Jyotiraditya Scindia, a member of Parliament for the ruling Congress Party, this means India can finally hope to address the massive challenge of energy supplies.

"Sustaining nine to 10 percent GDP growth in order to eliminate poverty requires us to expand our power capacity at nearly 20,000 megawatts a year," Scindia says. "With this agreement, we can now look forward to generating around 20,000 MW of nuclear power by 2020. The deal allows us to access the latest nuclear technology from anywhere in the world to build the latest generation nuclear power plants for civilian use. The argument that India would be dependent on U.S. technology is patently misplaced as we would be able to buy technology from many other countries, such as France, Japan and Russia."

The United States is now putting pressure on the Indian government to face down the opposition and move ahead with the deal anyway, warning that the next U.S. Congress and the next U.S. president after 2008 might not be so accommodating. But Indians know that the technicalities of the nuclear deal are just the tip of a much larger iceberg of growing U.S.-Indian cooperation in military affairs, intelligence-sharing, space technology agreements and above all in trade. The real prize of a close U.S.-Indian strategic partnership is already secured, despite the nuclear arguments.

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