India’s Soft Power

Soft Power in foreign policy is about winning the hearts and minds of people. It is a people-centric approach to foreign policy and helps in promoting links with countries and people around the globe. The soft power of a country is when its cultural assets become a subject of aspiration and admiration by the global community.

• Though it is a newly coined term, it has existed as a practise over centuries. In the globalized and interdependent world, cultural diplomacy is critical to national interest as a part of foreign policy. India has recognized the importance of Cultural Diplomacy as a part of its soft power strategy in promoting its national interest and establishing itself as a dominant regional and global power.

Components of India’s Soft Power

• Religion: India boasts an amazing variety and wealth of soft power resources. India, which is also called the land of gods, has given birth to several of the world’s great religions, namely Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Christianity reached India before it reached Rome and Islam is also widely practiced, due to the historical presence of Islamic powers in the country.
  • The peaceful propagation of Buddhism is a multi-millennia old bond that India shares with the rest of the Asian continent. The propagation of Buddhism from India is a testament to the power of its civilisational pull.
• Knowledge Hub: India is a global hub for education and healthcare. India is regarded as a knowledge-producing machine with its doctors, engineers, scientists, and software professionals being the first preference of the international community.
• Arts and Heritage: Music, dance, art and architecture of India are an important component of soft power. The Taj Mahal is the most famous monument of India and millions of foreign tourists around the world discover thousands of other historical and archeological sites all over India.
• Healthcare: The Indian healthcare industry also seems to be growing at a rapid pace and is expected to become a $280 billion industry by 2020. India is quickly becoming a hub for medical tourists seeking quality healthcare at an affordable cost. The spiritual forms of healthcare such as Yoga, Unani, Ayurveda etc. makes India an attractive destination with medical tourist pouring from Developed countries for seeking spiritual healing experience.
• Film Industry: India’s film industry is probably the largest and farthest-reaching medium for spreading Indian culture, surpassing Hollywood with an annual output of over 1000 movies. Although India produces over 1,500 films annually, the country’s share in global cinema revenue is a mere 1%. But India’s film industry and the government have done little to leverage the power of Bollywood and other regional cinema industries globally.
• Indian Diaspora: The biggest instrument of India’s soft power is the large diaspora, which comprises of 18 million people, across different continents, which can support the policies of the Indian government through the influence and respect they command in the countries in which they live.

India’s initiatives in promoting its Soft Power

• Separate Ministry: In 2004, India established a separate Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA). Its mandate was to bring onboard all interested stakeholders to work on matters relating to overseas Indians. It was dissolved in 2016.
• Pravisiya Bharati Divas: India continuously engages with Indian Diaspora through government programs such as Pravisiya Bharati Divas.
• Incredible India: India has embraced public diplomacy initiatives to enhance its brand image as an attractive destination for economic investment, trade and tourism. Incredible India campaign started in 2007 promotes the same.
• Sufism: The ideas of Sufism have been highlighted in several instances to strengthen links with Central Asia.
• Buddhism: We have been reaching out to East Asian and South East Asian countries through historic Buddhist links. India has resurrected the Nalanda University by the Nalanda University Bill passed in 2020. It has Buddhist roots which attracted scholars from Korea, Japan, China, Tibet, Indonesia, Persia and Turkey.

Challenges

• Limited Reach: Soft power has not been given much attention as a tool of governance and has only recently understood the relevance of ‘cultural diplomacy’. Despite having rich cultural capital, India is not even amongst the top 20 on the Global soft power Index. India’s soft power seems to have limited geographical outreach as most of the foreign students studying in India come from the Middle East and neighbouring South Asian countries.
• Way behind from Contemporaries: According to international experts, India’s soft power resources are over-exaggerated, it does not have enough hard power to match its soft power, and finally, India is unsure about the type of power it wants to become. The cultural outreach initiatives of India are unattractive when compared to the British Council, Alliance Francaise, the Japan Institute and perhaps even the recently launched Chinese Confucius Institute.
• Narrow Approach: Government’s main focus has been to raise India’s profile as the home of yoga. While getting the United Nations to designate June 21 as International Yoga Day was a good start, the government has not done anything further to promote yoga-related tourism. India’s film industry participates in only a few international film festivals.
• Reduction in Credibility: India needs to tackle its domestic issues such as religious conflicts, gender-based violence, poverty, intolerance, violence against minorities etc. to improve its perceived goodwill on the global platform.

Soft Power is a necessary condition for achieving national goals, but it is not a sufficient condition. It must be complemented with other forms of diplomacy to fulfill national interests. Soft power can be used to lubricate the wheels of foreign policy.