The Spanish election wasn’t the only one that threatens to undermine President Bush’s idea that democracies are natural allies in the war on terrorism. The new Indian government comes to power promising to limit New Delhi’s cooperation with Washington.

The new coalition government also relies on the support of the Communist Party of India, which is even more openly disdainful of democratic solidarity. That party’s manifesto demands the withdrawal of Anglo-American forces from Iraq and “cancellation of all arrangements of military cooperation between India and the US and India and Israel, withdrawal of US military bases and all other forms of strategic intervention from South Asia.” The Communists denounce the outgoing Bharatiya Janata Party for “forging a special relationship with Israel.”

Like its coalition partner, the Congress Party seems to prefer other “special” relationships. The Iraqi newspaper Al-Mada reported last January that the Congress Party received vouchers for 1 million barrels of crude oil from Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Saddam has at least one very good friend in the new Indian Cabinet. Mani Shankar Aiyar, a longtime leader of the Congress Party and India’s new petroleum minister, served at the Indian Embassy in Baghdad during the late 1970s. Evidently, he admired what he saw. As American forces prepared to liberate Iraq in April 2003, Mr. Aiyar publicly praised Saddam’s Baathist regime as a constructive force in the region. “It was Saddam’s revolution that ended Iraqi backwardness,” Mr. Aiyar wrote then. “Education, including higher and technological education, became the top priority.” Moreover, continued Mr. Aiyar, “the most dramatic achievement of Saddam’s regime” was the “liberation of women”—though “liberation” is a curious word to use to describe Iraqis’ status under the Baathist dictatorship. Mr. Aiyar is also impressed by the “astonishing revolution wrought by the Baath Party in health care.” In short, wrote Mr. Aiyar, “Iraq under Saddam had everything going for it— except democracy.”

But Mr. Aiyar wasn’t much bothered by the lack of political freedom, for “it was, of course, the absence of democracy that accounted for Saddam brushing aside all vested interests: his instant liberation of women, his instant dismantling of feudalism, his instant caging of the priesthood, and, therefore, his instant — and, yes, brutal — exclusion from Iraq of all forms of religious fundamentalism and religion-based terrorism.” Despite the crimes committed by Saddam’s brutal dictatorship, Mr. Aiyar insisted, “there are very good reasons” for the Iraqi people to feel “gratitude or loyalty to President Saddam Hussein.”

Mr. Aiyar reserves particular wrath for Israel, even though India and Israel now formally cooperate on counterterrorism and regional security. Mr. Aiyar wrote in the Indian Express last year that “the Zionists who founded Israel were the original terrorists” and that, for Ariel Sharon — the first Israeli prime minister ever to visit New Delhi — “Orchestrating blood-baths is legitimate politics.”Mr. Aiyar even questioned Israel’s political legitimacy — throwing in a jab at the United States to boot. “The only parallel in history to the establishment of Israel,”he wrote,”is the genocide and rapine which robbed the American Indians of their country to set up the United States of America.”

To the outgoing BJP government, Israel was India’s natural regional friend and ally. To Mr. Aiyar, however, Israel is an “alien state,” imposed by force on the region. The previous government’s position on Israel and America was powerfully expressed in an address by the BJP’s national security adviser, Brajesh Mishra, to the American Jewish Committee in May 2003. He said: “India, the United States, and Israel have some fundamental similarities. We are all democracies, sharing a common vision of pluralism, tolerance, and equal opportunity. Stronger India-U.S. relations and India-Israel relations have a natural logic.”

India’s BJP government responded to September 11 by pledging support for the American-led campaign against terrorism, sharing intelligence on terrorist training camps used by Osama bin Laden’s supporters inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, and offering logistical help to American forces.

It’s too early to determine whether India’s solidarity with the Western democracies will dissipate or continue. One positive sign is that India’s new foreign minister, Natwar Singh — also known for his acerbic anti-Americanism — seems lately to have toned down his invective. But the Congress Party has promised to revive India’s ties with “non-aligned” nations in the Middle East and elsewhere. Most of all, that Mr. Aiyar’s moral blindness has been allowed to thrive in India’s governing coalition makes us suspect that democracy alone may not be enough to promote solidarity. America still looks hopefully to India as a fellow democracy — but the voters and leaders of our own democracy here will have limited enthusiasm, if any at all, for strengthening ties with a government that includes the likes of Mr. Aiyar.