The comedy was overwhelming as the Lok Sabha woke up to the war in Iraq. The choice for the angst-ridden House was between ninda (deplore) and ghor ninda (deplore strongly), and after much soul searching it settled for just ninda. And the timing? Oh no, it is pretty embarrassing to think of it; suffice to say that the condemnation and the call for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq come at a time when the war is almost over. Certainly, India could have done better or it could have kept quiet. It was not, by any stretch of imagination, as claimed by the House, an "expression of national sentiments". Rather, it was a resolution of national irrelevance. Even anti-Americans like the French and Germans, who can make a difference to the international balance of power, are coming to accept the reality that the moment is for making the best use of a bad situation. What they want today is a role in the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq. Idealism has run its course and pragmatism has taken over. But Delhi seems to have taken leave of both realism and idealism, in spite of Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha's assertion that India's foreign policy will be guided by pragmatism and national interest.

Ideally, in this war, India should have been the moral companion of the US. The war in Iraq, after all, was the second stage, and more decisive, of the post-9/11 war on terrorism. India is one country that was, and still is, living through terror, supervised and sponsored by a dictatorship. Thanks to India's post-Kargil diplomacy, there was an international consensus on the country's case against cross-border terrorism. True, despite the BJP Government's path-breaking engagement with America-a historical foreign policy shift-Washington is too selective in its morality to fully endorse India's rage against the next-door terrorist. Then why should the Indo-US relationship be entirely conditioned by Pakistan? Ultimately, India will have to deal with its tormentor on its own terms, guided by nothing but national interest. That should not, however, prevent it from seeing the larger reality-and the moral imperatives of the victim state, in this case the US. India, the other big victim state, should be the natural ally of the US in the war on terrorism-and the fall of Baghdad is not the end of it. Through one badly timed, badly worded resolution, India has achieved nothing and lost an opportunity to be on the right side of history.