As the debate over India’s nuclear deal with the United States heats up, a totally new angle has been added to the controversy: Whether the deal is “anti-Muslim” and if the Muslims, India’s largest minority and the world’s largest Muslim population, support or oppose the accord with the US. So the poor Indian Muslim, who keeps his head down and is ever grateful for the empty rhetoric and promises of calculating politicians, finds himself yet again at the heart of petty vote bank politics.

Frankly speaking, who gives a damn what Indian Muslim thinks? But many in the Muslim community have been alarmed by the Indian media’s dangerous attempts to give a religious spin to the issue. The other day NDTV hosted a lively debate on the US deal and how Muslims look at the whole business. And everyone involved obsessed over the so-called Muslim stance on the issue as if it was crucial to the success or failure of nuclear arrangement with the US. No wonder the Muslims are concerned. Given the long history of such innocuous issues turning into explosives in the hands of militant anti-Muslim organizations such as Shiv Sena and RSS-VHP-BJP combine, their concern is not unjustified.

Alarmed by the dangerous direction the whole debate has taken, and even as the Congress-led government fights for survival, Muslim organizations and groups are trying hard to distance themselves from the issue. Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind, a staunch Congress ally, has passed a resolution dissociating the Muslim community from the controversy. The organization, which played a leading role in the independence struggle, has condemned politicians for using the issue for Muslim vote bank.

What has a nuclear agreement between India and the US got to do with the Muslims and their religious convictions? And why those opposed to the deal are doing so in the name of Muslims? That said, I believe the Muslims as well as other communities in India must oppose this unholy nuclear alliance with the neocons. Not because this accord is against the Muslims, as some of our politician friends in their excessive enthusiasm seem to suggest, but because this is against India’s long-term interests. I am no expert on nuclear energy or finer points of strategic cooperation between the two nuclear weapons states like India and US. I don’t know if this will help India meet its growing energy needs, as some enthusiastic supporters of the arrangement claim. All I know is this is a well-calibrated plot by big powers to ensnare and use the world’s largest democracy to promote their own agenda.

The enterprising Muslim community does not have to withdraw itself into its defensive shell if it is being dragged into this debate. Indian Muslim does not have to be apologetic in opposing this deal because this country belongs to him as much as it does to the next Indian. In fact, anyone who cares for this great country should and would oppose this dubious deal. We must oppose this arrangement for two reasons:

First and foremost, this deal will undermine and compromise India’s historical independence and political sovereignty. I am not suggesting that by inking this pact, India will become a US colony and White House will station its viceroy in Delhi. But by offering this carrot, the reigning superpower is seeking to enlist Gandhi’s nation as a client state and as a junior cop to police this part of the world.

Having given up on an increasingly unpredictable Pakistan, the US badly needs India to contain emerging China on the one hand and the Islamists of Iran and Central Asia on the other. More importantly, there’s now evidence to suggest that the US neocons and the Zionists are trying to form an axis of the US, Israel and India to check the rising force of Islam.

It’s a grand conspiracy against the Muslim world as well as India. I call it a conspiracy because India and Muslim world have been historically close allies and friends. These are ties that are as old as Islam. In fact, they go way back in time — long before the advent of Islam. And India has been a home of Islam and Muslims for more than a millennium. This is why the inimitable Iqbal called India “saare jahaan se achha” (best in the whole world). And the neocons and Zionists want to sabotage this historical relationship.

Secondly, this opportunistic alliance goes against everything that secular and democratic India has believed in and championed — ideals like peace, nonviolence, nonalignment and always, always standing with the disadvantaged, oppressed and the vulnerable people everywhere. This is why the world looked to India for leadership even when it was not a nuclear power and half of its population lived below the poverty line. Which is why it’s a tragic irony that the party that once led the independence struggle should now be seeking to enslave this great land once again. It is time for the Indians to decide whether they want to continue leading the world as a peaceful and progressive nation of Gandhi and Nehru or want to end up as yet another Third World colony of Pax Americana.

— Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Dubai-based commentator. Write to him at aijazzsyed@aol.com