NEW DELHI - India's government survived a bruising political battle to win a confidence vote Tuesday, reviving a landmark nuclear energy deal with the United States that is at the center of an emerging partnership between the world's two largest democracies.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Congress party fought hard to secure victory and appeared to cut backroom deals when all else failed. An airport was named after one lawmaker's father, another was promised a high-level job and -- rival politicians allege -- many others received millions of dollars in bribes.

The dealmaking dismayed many in India, and the political hostility it fostered was on display during Tuesday's parliamentary debate, which repeatedly degenerated into an angry back-and-forth as opposition lawmakers heckled government supporters.

At one point, legislators from the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party pulled large bundles of cash out of bags they said contained tens of millions of rupees -- the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars -- alleging Congress and its allies had tried to bribe them to abstain.

The ruckus forced a temporary adjournment of Parliament -- but the stunt failed to stave off the opposition's defeat.

The government won with 275 votes for it and 256 against, a wider margin than many observers had predicted. Ten lawmakers abstained.

Afterward, Singh called the victory "convincing," telling reporters outside Parliament that it would "send a message to the world at large that India is prepared to take its place in the committee of nations."

The deal, on which Singh has staked his premiership, is seen as the cornerstone of a budding strategic partnership between the United States and India, which was officially neutral during the Cold War but had warm relations with the Soviet Union. But the communist parties that provided Singh's government with its parliamentary majority have denounced it as a ploy to make India Washington's pawn.

The pact would open India's civilian reactors to international inspections in exchange for the nuclear fuel and technology it has been denied by its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and its testing of atomic weapons.