Since its independence, India could count itself among the few nations with strong cards in the arena of soft power like its culture, civilisation, democratic credentials, secular values, pluralistic society, professional expertise, free media, independent judiciary, dynamic civil society and so on. Ironically, India did not use this soft power strategy rigorously to achieve its national interest. In the 1990s, India has been pro-active in pursuing its soft power strategy than ever before to achieve its strategic interest. India, to a certain extent, has been successful in strengthening its ties with Southeast Asia, Africa, US and European countries through its soft power tools like promotion of culture, support towards democracy and involvement with the diaspora, increasing aid and investment and so on. However, India’s soft power strategy in South Asia had mixed results. In this context, the article attempts to identify the need for India to engage in more such tactics rather than hard power in South Asia. India’s plans to use soft power in South Asia and its limitations in achieving her foreign policy objectives in the region will be critically analysed too.
The key writings on international relations have been dominated or are centred around ‘power politics’, making the discourses hard power-centric.
Against the backdrop of scholars like E.H. Carrr (1939) who stressed on ‘power over opinion’, Gramsci (1988) on ‘cultural hegemony’, Bourdieu (1989) on ‘symbolic power’ and Foucault (2000) on ‘disciplinary power’ thereby highlighting on the need for both material and non-material power resources,
The definition of soft power and its features have expanded over the years. Joshua Kurlantzick provides a broader definition: “anything outside the military and security realm, including not only popular culture and public diplomacy, but also more coercive economic and diplomatic levers, like aid and investment and participation in multilateral organisation”.
Joseph S. Nye identified culture, values, and foreign policies as the core of soft power, however, other aspects such as economics, politics, development assistance, transnational investment, and peace keeping operations have been also vital soft power tools.
In the process, soft power has emerged as a vital tool to achieve foreign policy goals. The reason for this is the fundamental differences between soft and hard power: (a) soft power is more human (b) the hard power can be measured and easier to be used
With regard to the limitations in the effectiveness of soft power, scholars like Ogoura, Gallarotti and Bilgin reiterate about the “difficulties in measuring soft power, obscurity in the differentiation between hard and soft power”.
As one of the oldest civilisation, a land of spirituality, spices, gold, diamond, languages, and a country where religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism have originated, India has been a soft power since ages. Dalai Lama attests these traits by observing, “India’s long tradition of religious tolerance can be a role model for rest of the word”.
Ironically, in recent times, the upholding of Hindu culture at the cost of religious minorities, including instances of lynching (particularly Muslims/Dalits), increasing number of caste and gender-based violence, restriction of foreign funds for selected NGOs (primarily Christians), implementation of Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 and National Register of Citizens (NRC), which are not necessarily inclusive policies and undermine human rights, have been detrimental to India’s image at the international arena.
Nevertheless, India’s democratic institutions, vibrant civil society, multi-ethnic society and polity, secularism, pluralism, large English-speaking population and IT professional, rich handicrafts, Yoga, Ayurveda, and so on, illustrates the utility of India’s tools of soft power worldwide. Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, observed, “India’s non-threatening posture to the international community is a key factor in Australia’s decision to sell uranium for India’s nuclear power reactors”.
India’s folk culture, classical and modern music and dance, Bollywood, television shows are gaining popularity in the West and the East in general and amongst the Indian diaspora, in particular. The Indian television serials (Hindi and regional language) have larger audience in South Asia and Southeast Asia. Bollywood movies, along with movies of other languages like Tamil and Telugu, have moved beyond South Asia in terms of its reach. Moreover, Bollywood produces the highest number of films [than Hollywood] and has worldwide releases in the US, UK, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Middle East. At the same time, India is emerging as one of the popular film shooting destination for Hollywood films like Slumdog Millionaire, Million Dollar Arm, The Hundred Foot Journey, Life of Pi, Mission Impossible-IV and so on.
Indian cuisines like the Italian, Japanese and Chinese have made their mark globally, particularly in the UK, the US, Thailand, South Korea, Germany, France and Japan.
Since independence, successive governments of India despite efforts to incorporate soft power effectively in its foreign policy, have failed to maximise soft power potentials to strengthen bilateral ties with immediate and extended neighbours, and enhance India’s image globally. Publications on the relevance, importance and utility of soft power in foreign policy, remains insignificant as well. In this regard, Harish Pant, argues that although previous (prior to Modi’s regime) Indian governments “understood and recognised the value of soft power to further India’s foreign policy goals, … attempts have been largely ad hoc”.
Nevertheless, the rigorous push for soft power in its foreign policy began since the 1990s due to the economic crisis of 1991; collapse of the Soviet Union, which was India’s reliable partner since its independence; and the end of a bipolar world, leading to a unipolar world, dominated by the US. Moreover, as Ian Hall argues, since the beginning of early 2000s, Indian public diplomacy also saw changes like reaching out to the diaspora, wooing and building foreign business interest, increasing foreign aid and development programmes, showcasing brand India, and utility of new social media to reach out to the younger generations.
Apart from this, successive governments also have brought about structural changes and ensured soft power as a critical component of India’s foreign policy. For instance, in 2006, under the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), the Public Diplomacy Division was established with four officials, along with a joint secretary and around 40 supporting staff, with a budget of US$5 million.
In recent times, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been successful in effectively using the social media; he has more than 50 million followers on Twitter and prior to his visit to Beijing, China (May 2015), he used public diplomacy in a way, projecting soft power, to connect with Chinese citizens through Sina Weibo. Modi has always addressed the Indian diaspora during his foreign visit, hosting foreign leaders in different locations in India like Xi Jinping and Donald Trump in Gujarat, Shinzho Abe in Varanasi. Moreover, Modi government’s flagship programmes like Make in India, Digital India, First Development India (FDI), make use of the Indian culture.
As India has been able to use its soft power strategy to achieve its foreign policy goals reasonably well, it is important to understand her soft power policy towards South Asia and the extent to which the bilateral ties have strengthened and her image in the region has boosted.
Though there has been strong historical and cultural links between India and South Asia, since the 1990s the successive governments in India emphasised on incorporating the region in India’s foreign policy calculations and extend soft power to achieve the foreign policy goals. The reasons using soft power actively can be identified as: India’s growth and prosperity is considered to be connected with the development of the region {South Asian}. A significant policy initiative towards the neighbours was proposed by the then Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, whose ‘Gujral Doctrine’ (1997) emphasised the need for India to engage with South Asian countries on a ‘non-reciprocity’ principle. Former Prime Minister A. B Vajpayee reached out to Pakistan and even attempted to resolve the longstanding bilateral disputes. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went one step forward and stated, “We can choose our friends but not our neighbours,”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is no different in this regard, as he rightly pointed out: “a nation’s destiny is linked to its neighbourhood”,
Second, despite giving due importance, India has not been successful in sustaining its ties with most of the countries in the region. For instance, except India’s ties with Bhutan and Afghanistan, its relations with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Maldives and Sri Lanka have remained unstable. Moreover, the bilateral ties are also affected due to the frequent political instability in our neighbours. In this regard, S. D. Muni summarises India’s approach towards its neighbours as “lack of balanced political perspective; the power differentials; India’s economic clout; extra regional powers and mindset, diplomatic styles and personalities”.
Third, rather than pushing soft power, India relied more on hard power till the end of the twentieth century as evident from her military intervention in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, exertion of economic pressures on Nepal, Maldives and Bhutan and her decision to hold virtually no talks with Pakistan. Such policies have damaged India’s image in the region considerably. Fourth, China’s increasing influence—strategic, political, military, economic - in the region and also usage of its soft power had really compelled India to rethink its strategy and about the need to deploy more soft power to counter China’s footprints.
Hence, the Indian government has been using certain soft power tools, as discussed subsequently, thereby trying to engage with her neighbouring countries positively.
Tourism is one of the vital tools for promoting India’s soft power, as it tends to connect people and several religious places. Portland’s “The Soft Power 30”: a global ranking of soft power in its report (2018) uses tourism an indicator of soft power in addition to music and sporting power.
The tourism sector received a further boost with the creation of the exclusive Ministry of AYUSH in November 2014, to develop and propagate the AYUSH system of health care including Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Naturopathy, Siddha and Homeopathy. In March 2018, the ‘Incredible India 2.0’ campaign was launched, which aimed at a “shift from generic promotion undertaken across the world to market-specific promotion plans and content creations”.
As a result of these measures and initiatives, India is successful in attracting a large number of tourists across the globe and the total international tourist arrival is 6.33 million (2020) with a good annual growth rate, but it slow downed (-76.9%) due to Covid-19 pandemic. Post-Covid period, India received 6.19 million foreign tourists during 2022 (1.52 million in 2021).
To attract more tourists from the South and Southeast Asia, the government has being pushing for the ‘Buddhist Circuit’ and Buddha Express (Indian railways’ Mahaparinirvan express), to connect the Buddhist destinations in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, with the intention to attract the Buddhist from neighbouring countries such as Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan. The Ministry of Tourism has also produced two films ‘The Land oaf Buddha’ and ‘Following the Path of Buddha’. In addition, the government has conducted events such as the Fifth International Buddhist Conclave (2016) at Varanasi, which was attended by 240 delegates from 39 countries and ‘Buddhism in Twenty-first Century’ (2017) at Rajgir. India also organised Two-day Global Buddhist Summit in April 2023.
At the same time, according to the FICCI Report 2019, medical tourism is expected to touch US $9 billion by 2020 and the major source of visitors for this form of tourism is from the Middle East, Southeast Asia and South Asian nations, the majority of whom come from Bangladesh.
India, being the largest democracy in world and also successful in sustaining the democratic norms, continues to be the model for many countries turning to democracy, particularly in Asia and Africa. This was well articulated by the former prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in 2011 “a democratic, plural and secular India can contribute to tolerance and peaceful co-existence among nation”. Apparently, India do not have any doctrine on ‘democracy’, but continues to support any democratic movement in the region, particularly encouraging inclusive democracy.
Thus, from time to time, India has always extended support to South Asian countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Afghanistan and so on. It has also provided necessary support/assistance for the establishment of democracy like Panchayat Raj in Nepal and Bangladesh and pushed for inclusive democracy in Sri Lanka and Bhutan. India has also been pro-active in strengthening democracy in Afghanistan by constructing Afghan Parliament, providing the expertise in drafting its constitution, sending observers for the conduct of free and fair elections and so on. Several delegates from the SAARC countries have visited India to understand the constitution and functioning of Elections Commission of India.
India is also the founding member of United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) in 2005 and has contributed around US$ 32 million (as of 2022) and is the Fourth largest contributor to UNDEF and a recipient of the funds. India has contributed US$150,000 for the year 2022.
In the initial years of India’s independence, the Nehru government was only concerned with tracking Indian citizens abroad. However, in 1950, the government established the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), to “establish, revive, and strengthen cultural relations and mutual understanding between India and other countries”.
Although, both ICCR and ICWA was not necessarily targeted towards South Asia, over the decades, the region has significantly benefited. For instance, the ICCR has sponsored Indian chairs in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. It also has cultural centres in Colombo (1998), Kabul and Kathmandu (2007), Dhaka and Thimpu (2010) and Male in 2011. Thus, India has culture centres in all the SAARC countries, except Pakistan. The centres have facilities like library and information; offers courses and conducts classes on yoga, Indian dance and music. It is also responsible for conducting/organising cultural events, film and food festival, seminar and workshops. In addition, ICCR has been providing scholarships for SAARC students to pursue their studies in India. Scholarships are not provided to Pakistani students due to the prolonged unstable Indo-Pak ties. The ICCR awards annually thousands of scholarships, of which the majority goes to SAARC countries, particularly to Afghanistan in recent times.
Although since independence, India was the aid receiver, in the past few decades, it has also emerged as key provider of foreign aid and assistance to South Asian and African countries and beyond. It allocated approximately US$ 1.14 billion in the 2019-2020 budget, with an increase of 26 per cent (US$ 0.95 billion) compared to the 2018-2019 budget.
Generally, India gives aid/grant and concessional Line of Credit (LoC) to South Asian and African nations with the aim to ensure mutual interests and benefits. Most of Indian foreign aid goes to SAARC countries, followed by the African nations. Apparently, the largest aid recipient in the last decade in South Asia includes Bhutan (approx US$ 4.61 billion), Afghanistan (approx US$ 0.69 billion), Nepal (approx US$ 0.59 billion), Sri Lanka (approx US$ 0.33 billion) and the Maldives (approx US$ 0.26 billion). In February 2022, Sri Lankan government signed an agreement, which under negotiation since August 2021, was finalised with India for US$ 500 million credit line to overcome its present financial and energy crisis.
Some of the significant development projects undertaken by India in the region, includes the Raxaul-Kathmandu rail link and the 900MW hydropower project in Tumlingtar. When Nepal was hit by earth quake in 2015, India extended 1.6 billion aid for rebuilding earthquake-hit houses and other buildings.
The development projects in Sri Lanka include the restoration of Jaffna library; construction of Omanthai-Jaffna railway line (US$ 800), Kanaksenthurai port and harbour Pallai Airport and 50,000 houses for war-displaced people. In May 2019, the Sri Lankan government signed a deal with India and Japan to develop deep Sea Container Terminal or East Container Terminal in Colombo port.
In October 2019, both the governments inaugurated three new projects (in New Delhi)— import LPG from Bangladesh, Vivekananda Bhavan at Ram Krishna Mission in Dhaka and Bangladesh-India professional institute at the Institute of Engineers in Khulna in Bangladesh. India’s aid and assistance programme to Afghanistan has been a significant show of soft power with the focus on humanitarian assistance, infrastructure, community, education and capacity development projects. Some of the infrastructure projects include Zaranj-Delaram highway, Pul-e-Khumri transmission line and the restoration of telecommunication facilities in most of the provinces.
Given that the South Asian region is vulnerable to natural calamities, India’s humanitarian assistance is largely directed towards the South Asia. Moreover, India continues to be the first responder to all the humanitarian disasters (natural/man-made) that have happened in the region like 2004 Tsunami in Sri Lanka and Maldives, earthquake in Pakistan (2003) and Nepal (2015), floods and cyclone in Bangladesh (2007) and Sri Lanka (2003 & 2016), civil war in Sri Lanka and Nepal, refugee crisis in Bangladesh (2017) and Sri Lanka (2009), water crisis in Maldives (2014), drought in Afghanistan (2018) and so on.
India’s neighbours continue to regard her as a ‘big/elder brother’ and look forward to the ‘India first policy’. However, India’s relations with her neighbours have witnessed ups and downs, and irritants have intensified in the recent times. In addition, according to Pew Global Attitudes Survey 2012, both Pakistan and China’s perceptions of India were declining since 2006–2012. Though Afghanistan and Bhutan thought positively about India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka complained of trust deficit and Pakistan and Nepal was critical of India’s hegemonic disposition, acting like a big brother.
India’s soft power strategy in South Asia is not free from limitations, which have curtailed the former in achieving its foreign policy goals vis-à-vis its neighbours.
Although, successive governments have made efforts to use ICCR as a soft power tool to project its image, but with regard to South Asia, it is still lacking. For instance, the ICCR has 69 chairs of Indian studies at various universities abroad, but in the South Asia region, it has only three chairs in Dhaka University (Bangladesh) and one at University of Kelaniya, Colombo (Sri Lanka).
From time to time, the ICWA has conducted several seminars/conferences/workshops on the theme concerning South Asia, and also has invited speakers from SAARC countries to participate at academic events in India, but has not organised much joint programmes/events with SAARC countries to promote academic and research works/networks. Although most ICCR programmes are generally targeted towards the West and few to the South Asian region, nevertheless, it is vital for ICCR to also give priority to the South Asian region, if it intends to emerge as a major power. Thus, both ICCR and ICWA need to give priority to the region to achieve India’s foreign policy goals.
India is attracting more and more foreign tourists in the recent times, but it needs to be more proactive in terms of marketing and promotions, establishing connectivity and upgrading tourist spots to boost India’s tourism sector and India’s global image further. Apparently, India is planning to set up a regional tourist office in China on a similar line and the same can be done in all SAARC countries.
India’s diaspora is the largest in the world, with two-thirds of them living in Europe or Asia. Over the decades, the diaspora population has been increasing. As per the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA), in 2012, there were more than 21 million Indians living in 205 countries around the world (Mohan and Chauhan 2015: 4), but by December 2018, the Indian diaspora has spread to 208 countries and the strength is around 32,100,340, with 13,459,195 Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and 18,683,645 People of Indian Origin (PIOs) (MEA 2020). The government has also merged two cards issued to the PIO and Overseas Citizen of India in 2002 and 2005, offering dual citizenship and, in recent times, have issued them Aadhar cards as well. In addition, unlike the earlier governments, Prime Minster Narendra Modi is being pro-active in engaging with the diaspora. Thus, the diaspora has emerged as one of the vital tools in shaping India’s foreign policy.
The diaspora is vital not just from remittance and economic point of view, but to a certain extent they uphold the Indian culture and tradition, like they follow and adhere to their norms, values, culture and prefer their own cuisine, observe national festivals and watch Indian movies, in way boosting India’s image abroad. In South Asia, the Indian diaspora are fewer in number, but can be a vital soft power tool.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Afghanistan |
3,087 |
19 |
3106 |
|
Bangladesh |
10,385 |
9 |
10,391 |
|
Bhutan |
60,000 |
0 |
60,000 |
|
Maldives |
25,000 |
108 |
25,108 |
|
Nepal |
600,000 |
0 |
600,000 |
|
Sri Lanka |
14,000 |
1,600,000 |
1,614,000 |
|
Pakistan |
--- |
--- |
--- |
|
|
|
|
|
Source: MEA 2021
The diaspora population in the region is more than 8 lakhs, but the successive government have not given due importance, as it gives to its diaspora in the West. The reasons could be that the diaspora are not politically influential in the host countries and most of them being unskilled and semi-skilled labourers, are also socially and economically weaker, which gives them less scope in contributing to India’s national interest. As a result, Prime Minister Modi, who has always addressed the Indian diaspora during his foreign visits, has not done even one rally in the region.
At the same time, neither are the successive Indian government gestures encouraging for the diaspora. For instance, the major share of the recipients of the Pravasi Bhartiya Samman Award (PBSA), which is the highest honour given to overseas Indians since 2003, until 2015 has gone to residents of the US, Europe, Southeast Asia, but the recipients from South Asia is just one (of 179) from Sri Lanka (2011); in 2019 of the 30 PBSA awards, only one recipient was from Bhutan and similar is scenario in 2021, with only one recipient from Maldives.
Although, India continues to inspire her neighbours as a democratic country, she lacks in other fronts. In the UN Human Development Index 2022 her rank is 132 and in the 2021 Democracy Index, as prepared by the Economic Intelligence Unit, her rank is 46 (was 39 in 2012), with a score of 6.90, due to the erosion of civil liberties in India.
This is aptly pointed out by a well-known academician C. Rajamohan that the Modi government’s efforts towards the projection of soft power has taken a hit due to “free run to groups that seek to anchor India’s rich cultural inheritance on a narrow and religious basis and inflect India’s democratic culture with the virus of majoritarianism”.
Although, India has undertaken several development projects, there has been a prolonged delay in the execution of some of the vital ones, which has affected India’s push for soft power in the region. For example, the Rampal Power plant (a.k.a. Maitri), a 50–50 joint venture with Bangladesh’s state-owned Power Development Board and India’s National Thermal Power Corporation was signed in 2010, and supposed to be completed by 2016, but as of now only 60 per cent of the project has been completed.
It has been more than a decade that India had promised assistance to build the Nepal Police Academy, but it has yet to take off; the Transnational Petroleum Pipeline was proposed in 1986 and concluded only during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Nepal in 2014 and finally launched in September 2019. In April 2019, Bhutan signed the tariff protocol with India for the output of Mangdechhu hydroelectric project, which is a 720MW run-of-river power plant; it was funded by India and was initiated in 2010, but concluded only in 2019.
At the same time, the delay is not just from the Indian side, but also from the host countries. For instance, in some of the highway and power projects, Nepal government is struggling to acquire land. In October 2018, Prime Minister Modi directed the Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe to expedite the Indo-Sri Lanka projects which were signed in 2017; the key projects included LNG terminal in Kerawalapitiya, near Colombo; Solar Power Plant in Sampur, Oil Tank Farm in Trincomalee and Container terminal in Colombo port.
Apparently, the deploying of soft power is to exert influence, but in India’s case it is mixed baggage of success. Despite India being successful in pushing soft power in the region, it is yet to exert influence in getting what it wants. For instance, in the case of Sri Lanka, the demand for devolution of powers in the northeast region remains a distant dream and Sri Lanka continues to tilt towards China at the cost of India. Both the countries are yet to successfully negotiate
Bhutan is always regarded as a close ally of India, but it is reluctant to sign the Motor Vehicle Agreement (MVA) since 2015, under the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN), despite India’s request. Now Bhutan, for the first time, has imposed Visa fees for Indian tourist, i.e., levying a daily ₹1,200 (US$ 17) fee (Sustainable Development Fee) for regional tourists since July 2020. In spite of the goodwill for India in Afghanistan, the latter’s strategic and security concerns remain unaddressed. In Nepal, the plight of the Madeshi community and the playing of the China card continue to be a concern for India. Subsequently, Nepal’s new political map which included territories of Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura (335 sq km), as claimed by India as well, on 2 November 2019, has been a major issue that remains unresolved in the bilateral ties. India and Pakistan’s ties are presently at an all-time low; unilateral and tit-for-tat actions are now a common scenario; without high commissioners, diplomatic activities have shut down and the Indian government’s decision to reduce the staff strength in the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi by 50 per cent has hit new low owing to bilateral ties. Moreover, owing to ‘no talks’ since 2015, India has withdrawn MFN to Pakistan, though there has been ceasefire violations and Pakistan has been building up more troops across borders, escalating tensions on both sides of the border. The deepening of the ties between the Maldives and Bangladesh with China at the cost of India, indicates the limitations of India soft policy.
Thus, many of India’s foreign policy goals are not achieved, despite the push for soft power in the region. In addition, Christian Wagner highlights the limitation of India’s default and defensive soft power, which does not promote its political model abroad and uses it to attract foreign investors rather than exert influence elsewhere.
In a nutshell, India’s soft power strategy in the region is yet to contribute significantly in deepening her ties with her neighbours. At the same time, India’s commitment and enthusiasm in deploying its soft power tools in the US, EU and Southeast Asian region, is not visible in the South Asian region. Joseph S. Nye emphasises on the need for “Smart power” and states that “it is a mistake to rely on hard power or soft power alone, the best situation is when the two are effectively combined as smart power”. In this regard, India has to come up with a broader soft power policy, exclusively for the region with the focus on building infrastructure, attracting more tourists across the region, utilising the diaspora as strategic assets (including PIO), effective use of public diplomacy, adhering to the policy of non-interference and more importantly putting its own house in order on human right issues. Interestingly, at this juncture, there is greater need for deploying India’s soft power tools in Pakistan to improve the bilateral ties, as it is a gateway towards growth and prosperity of region in general and the world in particular.