Source: The New Republic Online

Lost amidst news of war in the Middle East, last week the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation that could transform the future of American foreign policy. By approving the U.S.-India nuclear pact, which would allow India to purchase reactors, American technical expertise, and nuclear fuel on the international market, even though it has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the bill seems to cement Washington's tilt towards New Delhi as its partner of the twenty-first century. Even arguments by nonproliferation specialists that the pact would threaten a landmark proliferation treaty did not sway the House. "This is no ordinary vote. Historians will regard what we do today as a tidal shift in relations between India and the United States," said Tom Lantos, one of the sponsors of the nuclear legislation. President Bush, who first proposed the deal with the Indian prime minister last year, applauded Congress. "I want to applaud the House of Representatives for passing an important piece of legislation," Bush said.

Some Indian leaders and commentators agreed. After all, what would be more natural than the world's two largest democracies becoming closer partners, especially at a time when both face threats of terrorism and when an increasingly powerful China is able to exert greater influence in Asia, a region vital to both New Delhi and Washington?

In a meeting last summer, Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said as much, agreeing to a new U.S.-India "global partnership." This partnership will include not only nuclear cooperation but closer economic ties, and joint efforts to promote democracy in other nations. What's more, by cooperating more closely with India, the United States might be able to wean India away from some of its traditional, dangerous allies, like Iran.

But all this celebrating of the future of a U.S.-India relationship ignores one problem--many educated, liberal Indians leaders, raised during years of Indian antipathy to the West and to free-market capitalism, still do not feel comfortable with warm ties to the United States. As the House debated the bill, many of India's left-wing parties, including the powerful Communist Party of India (Marxist), blasted Singh's government. CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat told reporters he had "serious apprehension" over the nuclear agreement, while other leftist parties raged against India's new willingness to join international efforts to censure Iran's nuclear program, part of the promises New Delhi has made to Washington.

The Indian government cannot just ignore the leftist parties. Singh's group of parties, which won a shock victory in 2004 over the favored BJP, relies on the backing of four left-wing parties to hold together its tenuous coalition.

Average educated Indians share some of these mixed feelings about the United States and worries about India giving up any of its sovereignty, especially at a time when it finally seems poised to take its place as a world power and when it needs to find energy supplies wherever they lie, even in rough neighborhoods like Burma or Iran. Of course, many Indians realize the power of the growing U.S.-India economic relationship and have links to the prosperous Indian-American community. Even in Dharamsala, a remote hill town in the far north of India, near Kashmir, I see students packing into computer courses, and magazines highlight hot new jobs like language trainers who help call-center workers lose their accents. Overall, opinion polling shows Indias have a higher opinion of the United States than many other nations.

But Indian intellectuals over age 40, who came of age in the cold war, a period of tense U.S.-India relations, still rule many Indian elite universities. India also has a large Muslim minority--some 150 million Muslims--and they are becoming increasingly opposed to U.S. foreign policy. And, says Tenzin Tsundue, a prominent Tibetan-Indian writer, younger Indian intellectuals often associate the United States with some elements of globalization and materialism they dislike--French elites may be the closest parallel. It is no accident that many of the world's anti-globalization celebrities, like Arundhati Roy, and major anti-globalization groups, stem from India.

Similarly, India remains crippled by massive strikes opposing privatization or just broad free market reforms. In one enormous strike last year, some 40 million Indian workers walked off their jobs, completely shutting down some Indian states.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, when President Bush visited India earlier this year, he faced enormous protests in New Delhi. Meanwhile, according to The Guardian, the chief minister of West Bengal, one of India's most important states (home to Kolkata, its intellectual capital) described Bush as head of an "organized pack of killers." As Bush now knows, Tom Lantos may indeed be right about India and America's future, but the two nations have not yet overcome their past.

Joshua Kurlantzick is a special correspondent for The New Republic.

This article originally appeared in The New Republic Online, and is available here.