India is being responsible

Your editorial “Rethinking India” (March 1) expresses a noble idea but draws some wrong conclusions.

As you mentioned, India is in a strategically important but troubled neighborhood. If Bush wants to strengthen relationships with India, it is as much to strengthen a friendship and reward responsible behavior as to ensure American interests in the world.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is a nonstarter. Most countries who signed it are increasing their own nuclear weapons arsenals. Some are proliferating nuclear weapons to the most irresponsible states. India, which did not sign the treaty, is being totally responsible. Since it became independent, India has been in the forefront in asking for total disarmament. Only when this did not happen, and India itself had been threatened by a strange combination of totalitarian and fanatically fundamentalist regimes, did India develop its own weaponry on a limited scale. I would think consummating the deal agreed to last July between the Bush administration and India sends the right message to the world -- that responsible behavior has its rewards.

PRABHU NARUMANCHI

Houston