On the eve of the Parliament session, several top scientists and former military chiefs have written an open letter to MPs asking them to support the Indo-US nuclear deal asserting it would help remove crippling constraints on the country's atomic programme.
Contending that the deal was an instrument to make India a stronger power, the 23 signatories including former civil servants and diplomats, argued that the deal did not negate India's sovereign right to carry out nuclear tests or curb its freedom to produce weapons.
The two-page letter pointed out that India cannot get Russian reactors without proceeding with the Indo-US nuke agreement. 'Nobody can claim the deal in perfect, or gives us everything we would have liked. But all international agreements require movement away from one's first preferences,' said the letter endorsed by M R Srinivasan, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.
'The agreement has given us as much as it has because of a most particular combination of circumstances which hardly can come again,' they cautioned.
'To the contrary, there are forces at work internationally that will only complicate our position,' they said citing 'growing pressure for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or growing potential of American opponents of the agreement.'
The signatories include former air chiefs Arjun Singh and O P Mehra, former army chiefs V N Sharma and V P Malik and former naval chiefs Ram Tahiliani and Madhvendra Singh. Former Cabinet secretaries B G Deshmukh and Naresh Chandra, former foreign secretaries K S Bajpai, K Raghunath and Lalit Mansingh are other signatories to the letter.
The letter, timed ahead of the debate in Parliament on the nuclear deal, asked the lawmakers to view it with one perspective - that of India's evolution as one of the principal powers in the community of nations.
Noting that denial of high technologies, particularly those related to security needs, posed a major obstacle in India emerging as one of the most significant influences in shaping the world, they pointed out that existing constraints could only be removed through an agreement with those who impose them. 'This accord makes that possible,' they said.
On concerns raised by Left parties that the deal binds India not to test and puts caps on nuclear arsenal, they argued that even under the Non-Proliferation treaty from which India is exempted, a State can opt out and conduct a test if it feels that is vital to its security-provided it is prepared to face the consequences. 'Nothing in the Indo-US agreement prevents us from doing likewise,' the letter said stressing, 'The fear that the agreement negates our sovereign right to test is to overlook our sovereign right to abrogate'.
The international community has for long sought to stop India's testing by threatening penalties. 'We faced those when we thought necessary, we can do so again. The point of relevance is that if we ever decide to end our unilateral moratorium on testing, the international reactions can be no worse if we complete this deal than if we forego it,' they said.