WAIT, WE'RE PRO-AMERICAN TOO!:

BJP's rethinking on n-deal isolates the Left (Amulya Ganguli, August 30, 2007, Rediff)

Perhaps realising that the Bharatiya Janata Party was unnecessarily alienating the middle class by opposing the nuclear deal, L K Advani has now decided to change tack. It's not full support to the measure yet. That would have been too much of a climbdown, which would have left Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie high and dry -- the fate of all those who try to be more loyal than the king. So, a few caveats have been entered, such as ensuring India's strategic independence and an assurance of uninterrupted fuel supply.

But, even then, there is enough of a turnaround to confirm that the BJP had initially opposed the pact without much thought. Evidently, it was something of a reflexive action common to virtually all Indian Opposition parties, which take their task of opposing the government far too literally. The BJP's earlier grouses against VAT are a case in point. In the present instance, the party practically joined hands with the Left to create the impression, which the comrades conveniently exploited, that a majority in the Lok Sabha was against the agreement.

The BJP might have taken this unwise step because it felt that if the government succeeded in pushing ahead with the deal without too much difficulty, it would run well ahead of its opponents by winning over nearly the entire middle and upper classes. It would thereby deprive the BJP of large segments of what it had come to regard as its natural constituency. It is a loss which the party cannot sustain, especially in its present state of disarray, where the old order comprising Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani, is refusing to fade away while the new order -- Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Venkaiah Naidu, Sushma Swaraj -- is yet to take its place. So, if it let the government clinch the deal, the BJP will have to say farewell to any hope of returning to power in the foreseeable future.

However, before it could inflict too much damage on itself, the BJP decided to change course by saying it was all right for India to be a strategic partner of the US. How far this latest stance will help it regain lost ground is difficult to say, but at least the party can no longer be accused of hypocrisy. If it had laid itself open to this charge, it was because of the fact that for long periods in its history, starting from the Jan Sangh days, it was regarded as pro-American.