It did not take the treaty that President Bush signed yesterday with Indian Prime Minister Singh amid much fanfare and pageantry in New Delhi for India to be ushered into the world’s nuclear club. India has possessed nuclear weapons for more than 30 years. And long before the late Indira Gandhi – one of Mr. Singh’s socialist predecessors – approved the production of missiles that could strike not only neighboring Pakistan, India’s longtime rival and enemy, but also another hostile neighbor, China, Indians had set up reactors to generate nuclear energy to provide power for its rapidly burgeoning population.

President Bush agreement yesterday was historic, nonetheless. By agreeing to a treaty – and overriding protestations from Congressional Democrats, including self-styled friends of India – he validated the use of nuclear systems by the world’s biggest democracy. He obtained from the Indians an assurance that the use of nuclear technology would be distinctly separated, a guarantee that no other country – and certainly not from the 135 states of the Third World – has given to America, and, by extension, to the world. Prime Minister Singh told Mr. Bush that of India’s 22 nuclear facilities, only 8 would be used to continue its military program. Mr. Bush, in turn, committed to share American technology, fuel and expertise.

The significance of the agreement goes beyond the nuclear issue. India has declined to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But so has Pakistan, an ally in Mr. Bush’s global campaign against terrorism. What news reports yesterday did not mention is that Prime Minister Singh gave his word to President Bush that India would not undertake a nuclear first strike against Pakistan. Mr. Bush, who makes a stop in Pakistan today, is believed to have relayed private word from Pakistan’s strongman, President Musharraf, that Pakistan would also refrain from a first strike.

This is opens up at least the possibility of American engagement in resolving the Kashmir crisis that has preoccupied India and Pakistan, both of whom claim the mountainous territory. It is a safe bet that Mr. Bush will emerge as a peacemaker for this most volatile of regions, a potential theater for a nuclear exchange. India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir, and previous American presidents have been frustrated in their efforts to broker a lasting peace. The United Nations was left to deal with the task, with predictable failure each time that Secretary General Annan and his diplomatic forebears tried to get the antagonists to the talking table.

Mr. Bush also opened the gates for American private-sector investment in the Indian economy. More than 15% of Indian’s annual budget goes into its conventional military program, and another 10% goes surreptitiously into its nuclear weapons development. For Pakistan, the percentile figures are even higher. Both countries were part of the same Subcontinental and cultural womb until 1947, when the departing British colonialists capriciously partitioned Mother India into theocratic Pakistan and secular India. The struggle over Kashmir started the moment the British left, and both countries have expended billions on mutual hostilities – or preparations for hostilities. Much less has been spent on the Subcontinent’s real need – economic growth to bring prosperity to impoverished masses. Foreign investors have held back not only because of the socialism that infected India’s political system, but also on account of uncertainty over the end-use of their funds.

Now Mr. Bush has signaled not only to the American business community, but also to investors everywhere, that India has now been welcomed into the global nuclear club. And yes, Mr. Bush said, let the money and technology flow – and what you will soon see is an infant nuclear creature transformed into a worldclass economic power. “I’m trying to think differently, not stay stuck in the past,” Mr. Bush said yesterday. He launched India into a new growth phrase where national poverty will be diminished, eventually, one can hope, vanquished. He has reduced the chances that India will be a renegade nuclear state. And he has won the gratitude of more than a sixth of the world’s population. Not a bad days work.