India as a Soft Power

Author(s): Shashi Tharoor

Source: India International Centre Quarterly , SUMMER 2008, Vol. 35, No. 1 (SUMMER
2008), pp. 32-45
Published by: India International Centre

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/23006285

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lie QUARTERLY

India as a
Soft Power

geographical expression. It is no more a united country

than the equator.' Churchill was rarely right about
India,'
India, butWinston Churchill
it is true that there hadin once barked, 'is merely a
is no other country
the world that embraces such an extraordinary profusion of ethnic
groups, mutually incomprehensible languages, topography and
climate, religions and cultural practices and levels of economic
development. And yet, as we all know, India is more than the sum of
its contradictions.
On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of India's independence,
I wrote a book called India: From Midnight to the Millennium in which I
focused on India as a country standing on the cusp of four important

* Adapted and abridged from the 25th Dr. C.D. Deshmukh Memorial Lecture, 'The
Soft Power of India' delivered at the IIC, New Delhi, on 14 January 2008.

By Shashi Tharoor

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 INDIA AS A SOFT POWER

debates that faced the world at the begin

century. The first of these is the 'bread vers
The second debate is the 'centralization versus federalism' one.
Then, there is the 'pluralism versus fundamentalism' debate. The
fourth debate is the 'globalization versus self-reliance' one. Linked
to this question of whether India ought to open itself further to the
world economy is what I like to call the 'coca-colonization' debate.
There was a fifth debate that I did not discuss in the book in
deference to the restraint expected by my then employers, the
United Nations. I call this the 'guns versus ghee' debate, which
involves the case for expenditure on defence against spending on
development. Amid new threats of terrorism and renewed talk of
nuclear confrontation, there is an ideological battle looming between
advocates of military security, freedom from attack and conquest and
those of human security, freedom from hunger and hopelessness. It
is difficult to deny that without adequate defence a country cannot
develop freely. Yet, it is equally impossible to deny that without
development there will not be a country worth defending.
These are not merely academic debates. They are being enacted on
the world stage and as Indians now account for a sixth of the world's
population, our choices will resonate throughout the globe. Since I
do not have time to do justice to all these debates, I will leave them
as the backdrop before I focus on one aspect of India's potential as
it seeks to resolve these debates in our globalizing world. This is the
soft power of India and what it could mean for the country's future
in the twenty-first century.

Many thinkers and writers I respect have spoken recently of India's

strategic advantages, economic dynamism, political stability, proven
military capabilities, nuclear space and missile programmes and so
on, as ensuring that India will have great power status as a world
leader of this new century. As an Indian, I am a little concerned
about those who speak of India in these precincts as the next
superpower because the notion of world leadership is a curiously
archaic one. To me such aspirations belong to the world of Kipling's
ballads and James Bond's adventures.

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I believe India must determine where its real

to make the twenty-first century its own. M
analyses rely on the familiar indices of GDP,
and the undoubted skills and entrepreneurial
1 do not undersell the importance of any of
least in GDP terms - of India perhaps even m
before the century is much older, mark an i
for more than four decades, India suffer
economics of nationalism, where we had b
the international economics system. The p
successive Indian governments meant that w
of the commanding heights of our economy
and spent 45 years subsidizing unproductivit
and distributing poverty. So we have a lo
beginning to overcome by the economic refo
governments looking constantly over the ele
I began my last book, The Elephant, the Tige
a Panchatantra style fable about an elephan
and mud and covered in flies, slow to mov
recent years, this lumbering, slumbering,
to be acquiring the stripes of a lithe, agile
third part of the title - the cellphone - is
experience growing up in independent In
transformation. Many will remember the In
to find a phone with a dial tone. Often, whe
you were lucky if you found the number yo
stumbled onto other people's conversations
connections', and rightly so, for these con
cross! You may also remember the intermina
a trunk call connection. Indeed, there wer
a trunk call in the morning, cancel all the
day and sit by the phone not knowing wh
come. On top of it all, the government had
to provide better service.
In April 2007, India established a new world
cellphones in one month than any country in
just a transformation of numbers but of an
progressed from a time when telephones w
installing a Telecom Regulatory Authority th

Shashi Tharoor

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 INDIA AS A SOFT POWER

of its kind in the world. Today even the ne

with his little cart and coal-fired steam iron has
orders. If fact, the cellphone revolution has em
in India in ways that 45 years of socialist rhetor
We all know there is a long way to go for w
infrastructure: airports, ports, roads. We h
in India than any country in Asia, but we
people living below the poverty line. We ha
largest pool of trained scientists and engin
more children who have never seen the inside of a school. So the
paradoxes still exist. And that is why I would not want to rest my
case for today's India or twenty-first century India on an economic
transformation that is still, in many ways, incomplete. Rather, if there
is one attribute of independent India to which increasing attention
should now be paid around the globe, it is not economics or military
or nuclear strength, but the quality that India is already displaying in
ample measure today. And that is our soft power.

• • •

The term 'soft power', coin

new notion in international discourse. It was used to describe the
extraordinary strengths of the United States that went well beyond
American dominance. Power is the ability to alter the behaviour of
others to get what one wants. As Nye put it, there are three ways to
do that: coercion (sticks); inducement (carrots) and attraction (soft
power). If one is able to attract others, Nye wrote, one can economize
on the sticks and the carrots. Traditionally, power in world politics
was always seen in terms of military or economic power. Yet, the U.S.
lost the Vietnam war, the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan,
and - even after becoming the world's sole superpower - the U.S. has
been discovering in recent years in Iraq, the wisdom of Talleyrand's
old adage: The one thing you cannot do with a bayonet is to sit on it'.
To quote Joseph Nye,

The soft power of a country rests primarily on three resources: its

culture in places where it is attractive to others; its political value
when it lives up to them at home and abroad; and its foreign policies
when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority.

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For Nye, the U.S. was the archetypal exponen

as it is to Boeing, Intel, Ford, the Ipod, the I
Hollywood and Disneyland, McDonalds, Sta
major products that dominate daily life gl
of these assets and emblems of the Ameri
permit the U.S. to maximize its soft power a
to attract and persuade others to adopt the A
Nye feels that its subtly deployed soft powe
U.S. as its hard power.
In his next book, The Paradox of America
analysis of soft power beyond the United
he suggested, could acquire it. In today's info
three types of countries are likely to gain so

Those whose dominant cultures and ideals are

global norms which now emphasize liber
autonomy; those with the most accessed m
communication and thus more influence over how issues are

framed, and those whose credibility is enhanced by their domestic

and international performance.

At first glance this seems to be a prescription for reaffirming U.S.

dominance. It is clear that no country over the last few decades has
scored more highly on all three categories than the United States.
But Nye himself admits it is not so. Soft power has been pursued
with success by other countries over the years.
When France lost the War of 1870 to Prussia, one of its most
important steps to rebuild the nation's shattered morale and enhance
its prestige was to create the Alliance Francaise to promote French
language and culture and literature throughout the world. French
culture, as we all know, has remained a major selling point for French
diplomacy ever since. The U.K. has the British Council; the Swiss have
Pro Helvetia and Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal have respectively
Institutes named for Goethe, Cervantes, Dante Alighieri and Camoes.
Today, China has started establishing Confucius Institutes to promote
Chinese culture internationally. But soft power does not rely on
governmental action alone. Hollywood and MTV have done more to
promote the idea of America as a desirable, admirable society than
governmental initiatives such as the Voice of America or the Fulbright

: Shashi Tharoor

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 INDIA AS A SOFT POWER

Scholarships. Soft power, as Nye has poin

governments and partly in spite of govern
For India, this means giving attention
support to the aspects and products of
that the world would find attractive not
others to support India, but rather
intangible standing in their eyes. At one
more than joining in the celebration at
Nano, which has turned the automobi
demonstrated India's ingenuity, innovativ
and its ability to improvize on a shoestrin
soft power demands more. So at a broad
with complicated issues of Indian culture.
I have been musing about the nature of
distinguished foreigner said to me almo
have allowed yourselves to forget that th
civilization and we are its last outpost.'
me in 1982 by the Khmer Nationalist p
Minister Son San, when lamenting Ind
and its conquest of Cambodia in 197
figure already in his late '70s, Cambod
being overrun by the forces of a Sinic sta
that India, the fount of his country's h
with people as distinctly un-Indian as t
Vietnam's invasion had put an end to th
the Khmer Rouge, I was more inclined
than in terms of civilizational heritage.
Son San's words came back to my min
Angkor Vat, perhaps the greatest Hindu t
in the world, including India. To walk p
recounting tales from the Ramayan
have my Cambodian guide tell me abou
symbols protecting the shrine, the Nag
corresponding to today's navy, army a
at the epic scale of the Hindu temple
cathedral or mosque anywhere in the w
experience. I could only marvel at the
culture beyond its own shores. Hinduism
by merchants and travellers more than

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long since disappeared supplanted by Buddh

Indian export. Yet at its peak it profoundly in
music, dance and mythology of the Cambodia
my Cambodian guide spoke with admiration
in the sixteenth century saw Hindus and Budd
side in adjoining shrines within the same tem
we could do that in Ayodhya, I found myself th
Perhaps Son San was right. Cambodia is ind
of Indie civilization. At a time when the nort
under waves of conquest and cultural stagnation
the south were exporting Indianness to South
anonymous task carried out, not by warrior her
land bearing swords of conquest, but by indiv
in peace to trade, teach and persuade. Their i
To this day, the kings of Thailand are only crow
of Brahmin priests. The Muslims of Java still sp
despite their conversion to Islam, a faith whose
bear names originating in Arabia. Indonesia'
called Garuda and Ramayana is its best selling
Even the Philippines have produced a pop dan
quest for his kidnapped queen. But contemp
politics has rendered all this much less significa
indices of strategic thinking, economic inter
affinities. India is far less important to the cou
the stamp of Indie influence than, say, China
contemporary rather than civilizational.
No great civilization can afford to be indifferen
it is perceived by others. So today, can we affor
in a purely atavistic view of ourselves hailing the
heritage of our forebears without recognizing t
ourselves have changed? The examples I have cit
all from the Hindu tradition, but Indian civilizat
hybrid that draws as much from the influence
and Sikhism, not to mention two centuries of Br
When an Indian dons national dress for
wears a variant of the shervani, which did n
Muslim invasions of India. When Indians vot
numbers in the cynical and contrived comp
new seven wonders of the modern world, th

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 INDIA AS A SOFT POWER

Mahal constructed by a Mughal king,

most magnificent architectural produc
Indianness come ahead of the classicall
that India offered refuge and religious an
Parsis, several varieties of Christians an
came through traders, travellers, mission
Zamorin of Calicut was so impressed by
Muslim community that he issued a decre
family to bring up one son as a Muslim t
The India where the wail of the muezzi
chant of mantras of the temple and wh
bells accompanies the gurudwara's reading
Sahib, is an India that is worth depicting
The British historian E.P. Thompson w
diversity is what makes India:

.. .perhaps the most important country for t

All the convergent influences of the world r
There is not a thought that is being though
that is not active in some Indian mind.

The Indian mind has been shaped by remarkably diverse forces, by

ancient Hindu tradition, myth and scripture, by the impact of Islam
and Christianity, by those centuries of British colonial rule and the
result is unique. Many observers in the '50s and '60s were astonished
by India's survival as a pluralistic state, but pluralism is a reality that
emerges from the very nature of our country. It is a choice made
inevitable by India's geography and reaffirmed by its history. It is
part of who we are.
The Indian mind produces various kinds of culture, including
Bollywood films, now reaching ever wider international audiences.
As a writer, I always believe that the book is better, but Bollywood
has brought its brand of glitzy entertainment even to the screens of
Syria and Senegal. In fact, an Indian diplomat friend in Damascus
told me that the only publicly displayed portraits in Syria that
were as big as those of then President Hafez al-Assad were those of
Amitabh Bachchan. Indian art, classical music and dance have the
same effect. So do the work of Indian fashion designers striding the
world's ramps. Even Indian cuisine spreading around the world

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raises our culture higher in people's recko

Indian restaurants employ more people than
and ship-building industries combined.
Yet many Indians seem to fear that econ
globalization will bring with it a particu
cultural imperialism and that Baywatch a
Bharatanatyam and bhelpuri. This is absur
western consumer products has demonstra
can drink Coca-cola without becoming coc
culture has proved resilient enough to compe
and McDonald's. There will always be mor
Big Macs. For millennia, the strength of I
country's ability to absorb foreign influence
a peculiar Indian alchemy into something t
the soil of India. So when India's cricket team
players claim Grand Slams, when a Bhang
western pop record or an Indian choreogra
Kathak and ballet, when Indian women sw
Miss Universe contests or when Monsoon W
and Lagaan claims an Oscar nomination, when
Booker or Pulitzer prizes, India's soft power
Ask yourself how many Chinese novelis
American reader can name or how many
can claim a presence today in the occiden
India's? And when Americans today speak
reverence they used to accord MIT, and th
and software developers is taken as synony
and scientific excellence, it is India that is g
the world. The old stereotype of Indians
sadhus lying on beds of nails has now b
Indians as software gurus and computer geek
In this information age, Joseph Nye himsel
the side which has the better story that win
land of the better story: a society with a free
media, where the people whose creative ener
to express themselves in a variety of appe
extraordinary ability to tell stories that are
attractive than those of its rivals. Now this

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 INDIA AS A SOFT POWER

Indeed it will not work if it is directed from

government but its impact, though intangib
Let me give you the example of Afghani
for India's national security as it is for t
telephone an Afghan at 8.30 pm, becaus
dubbed Indian television soap opera Kyu
thi is telecast on Tolu TV and no one wishes to miss it. It is the
most popular television show in Afghan history. With an audience
penetration rate of over nine per cent, it is considered directly
responsible for the enhanced sale of generator sets, even for absences
from religious functions that clash with its broadcast times. In fact, it
has so thoroughly captured the public imagination that in this deeply
conservative Islamic country where family problems are literally
hidden behind the veil, it is now an excuse for open discussions
on family issues. I have read reports of wedding banquets being
interrupted so that guests could huddle around the television for half
an hour. A Reuters despatch recounted how during this prime time,
robbers in Mazar-e-Sharif stripped a vehicle of its wheels, mirrors,
windshield wipers, hub caps, and wrote in the car in an allusion to
the show's heroine, 'Tulsi zindabad!' That is soft power!

Let us now examine how India is consciously seeking to leverage its

soft power in Europe. Take 2006, when India dominated discussions
in the creative imperative at Davos. It was partner country for the
Hanover Trade Fair in May. It was theme country at the Bonn Biennale,
a cultural festival for theatre lovers. It then starred at the Frankfurt
Book Fair in October where it was the country of honour. November
saw Brussels host the Festival of India, a classic exhibition highlighting
Indian art, performances by some of India's world renowned artistes in
music, dance and theatre, a food festival, a fashion show and a whole
section on business opportunities in India.
While complimenting the ICCR for organizing it, 1 would argue
that we could pour far more resources and energies into our cultural
diplomacy to promote the richness of our composite culture into
lands which already had a pre-disposition for it. The government
must provide the basic infrastructure and let the private sector get on
with actual ventures. In other words, the government must provide

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the roads, Tata can make the Nano. So too

promotion, the government has to create
individual Indians can then proceed to ful
London is a great asset for India but the C
Institutes in the U.S. alone and they are
Confucius Institutes around the world. We should have Nehru
Centres and their equivalent in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand,
Malaysia and for that matter in Pakistan, South Africa, Nigeria, Brazil
and Canada and in every country that has an Indian population. I
am sure that the private sector and the Pravasis themselves will help
finance, sponsor and support the establishment of such centres once
the government establishes the basic framework for them.
Clearly such centres can serve as a catalyst for locals and visiting
Indians to perform, speak, sing, argue and display or screen their
work thus enabling foreigners to see the products of our civilization.
This must instead proudly reflect the multi-religious identities
of our people, our linguistic diversity, the myriad manifestations
of our creative energies, only then can we speak of a civilization
that is Indie in its heritage, Indian in its contemporary relevance
because, of course, soft power is not just what we can deliberately
and consciously exhibit or put on display. It is rather how others see
what we are, whether or not we are trying to show it to the world.
In May 2004 after the largest exercise in democratic franchise in the
history of the planet, to see the result where the election is won by
a woman leader of Italian origin and Roman Catholic heritage, who
then makes way for a Sikh, to be sworn in as prime minister by a
Muslim president, in a country 81 per cent Hindu. I was travelling on
behalf of the United Nations in the Arabian Gulf at that time and my
interlocutors were full of astonishment and admiration for what had
just happened in India. I loved boasting of this to Americans, who after
220 years of being the world's oldest continuing democracy haven't yet
managed to elect a president or a vice-president who is anything but
white, male and Christian. No strutting nationalist chauvinism could
ever have accomplished for India's standing in the world what that
one moment did. It was simply India being itself. After all Mahatma
Gandhi won us our independence through the use of soft power,
because non-violence and satyagraha were indeed classic uses of soft
power before Joseph Nye was a gleam in his mother's eye.
Pandit Nehru was also a skilled exponent of soft power. He
developed a role for India in the world based entirely on its

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 INDIA AS A SOFT POWER

civilizational history. This gave us briefl

prestige across the world as we stood, pr
the world stage. However, the great flaw
that his soft power was unrelated to any
and as the humiliation of 1962 demonstr
credible when there is hard power behind it
been able to make so much of its soft powe
no guarantee of security.
Soft power is one arrow in a nation's sec
all-purpose panacea. And we have to acce
suggested that our soft power can solve a
are wrong. When we speak of leveraging
ensure that we do enough to keep our peo
secure from, not just from jihadi terrorism
poverty, hunger and ill-health. At the same
to take care of these basic needs. We have
pluralism that is such a civilizational asset. O
free media, contentious NGOs, energetic
the repeated spectacle of our remarkable ge
have made India a rare example of the s
diversity in the developing world.
But every time that there are reports o
pogrom like the savagery in Gujarat in
setback to our soft power. It is shameful
Husain, lives in self-imposed exile because
object violently to his nude depictions at
living amidst love and honour in his nati
elements are allowed to get away with their
and intimidation, we are allowing them to d
profoundly vital to our survival as a civiliza
by definition, tolerate plural expression
That is the Indian culture that gives Indi
the culture we must defend, assert and pro
intolerance and bigotry inside and outside o
of Myanmar is receding from the headlines
in our eastern neighbour, and our gov
response, have raised an uncomfortable
face this evening. Can India, the land of sof
foreign policy? For many years after Ind
that question seemed an obvious one: Ne

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in particular, relished doing so, on issues

African apartheid and Suez. They gave vo
of the developing world, against the grea
policy pronouncements were regularly co
transcendent moral principle. Nehruvian N
greater satisfaction in being right than in b
The land of Ashoka, Akbar and Mahatma Gandhi seemed
to have earned the authority to speak from an elevated ethical
podium. But even in those early years some wondered whether it
was wise to transform the conduct of international relations into
a kind of moralistic running-commentary on world affairs. Our
moral superiority began to grate on many otherwise well-disposed
foreigners even when our positions were unexceptionable. Then,
when we strayed from our own professions of virtue at home,
according to our critics in Kashmir or Goa, they found it easy to
dismiss our foreign policy as posturing humbug.
As time began to tarnish the glow of our independence struggle
and the hard realities of national interest became the principal
yardstick for both the conduct and the expression of our foreign
policy, we quietly abandoned many of our ethical formulations. The
gap between profession and practice was in any case becoming more
and more glaring. Silence, or at least discretion, was clearly preferable
to moralizing - at least in a world in which the inventors of non
alignment had signed a treaty with the Soviet Union, the advocates
of democracy had suspended it in a state of Emergency, the vocal
opponents of international capitalism had gained the most from
globalization, and the leading advocate of disarmament had become
a nuclear power. We were now less ethical in our pronouncements,
but we were also less hypocritical.
But it has always been difficult for a pluralist democracy to
entirely overcome its own instincts in favour of democratic
pluralism. So, in Nepal we worked to democratize the monarchy,
and facilitated the country's transition from a state of rebellion to
one of constitutionalism under UN auspices. In Bangladesh we
spoke up for democratically-elected civilian rulers, even when
they pursued policies that were inimical to us and we have done
so again when they are in jail. And in Myanmar, when the generals
suppressed the popular uprising of 1988, overturned the results
of a free election of 1991, shot students, arrested democratically
elected leaders, our government initially reacted as most Indians

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 INDIA AS A SOFT POWER

would have wanted it to. India gave asyl

allowed them to operate their resistance
of the border (with some financial he
supported a newspaper and a radio st
the democratic voice. For many years,
democracy, freedom and human rights in M
And then reality intruded. China and Pa
the generals. Major economic and geop
offered to both suitors; the Chinese even
on the Burmese coast, far closer to Calcutta
generals of Myanmar, well aware of the u
of the barrel of a gun, began providing
motley assortment of anti-Indian rebel mov
havoc in the north-east and retreat to sanct
was troubling enough, but the clincher cam
natural gas were found in Myanmar, which
an India deemed hostile to the junta. Our ri
in our backyard and we were losing out
moral foreign policy simply became too hig
So, when General Musharraf travelled t
minister followed. The increasingly forlo
from Indian soil were shut down. From stan
we went to aiding and enabling an unsav
When monks were being mown down on t
government called for negotiations, mutter
reconciliation, and opposed sanctions. We als
negotiate an energy deal, making it clear wh
All of this, I should stress, is perfectly
agree that New Delhi needs no ethical les
or a London that has long coddled m
neighbourhood. But what are we doing to ou
Our policy may be governed by the head ra
in the process we are losing a little bit of o
I would like to end by stressing that India'
been an immeasurable asset for our country
we must not allow the spectre of religiou
opportunism, to undermine it if we wish
in the world.

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