The soft power of India

India’s soft power is on the rise, in parallel with its economic power as one of the fastest growing major economies in the world. This chapter discusses India’s soft power within four domains: firstly, the democratic strengths of India, a particular distinction among the BRICS countries. As the world’s largest democracy, India has retained and arguably strengthened democracy in a multi-lingual, multi-racial and multi-religious society. The second domain examines the diasporic dimension of India’s international presence, increasingly viewed by Indian government and corporates as a vital resource for its soft power. As the world’s largest English-language speaking diaspora, the Indian presence is visible across the globe. The third domain focuses on the emergence of an Indian internet – part of the Indian government’s ‘Digital India’ initiative, launched in 2015 and its potential for becoming the world’s largest ‘open’ internet. The chapter argues that, with the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi the push for digital commerce and communication is likely to increase. Already home to the world’s second largest internet population, its creative and cultural industries, notably Bollywood, have the potential to circulate across various digital domains, resulting in globalized production, distribution and consumption practices. However, the chapter argues that these three domains of soft power will remain ineffective until India is able to eliminate its pervasive and persistent poverty, afflicting large number of its citizens.


Introduction
While India's global influence has a long and complex history, this chapter suggests that, as India emerges as a major economic power (on purchasing power parity terms, it is the world's third largest economy), the country's cultural power will also grow. This process is also underpinned by its 25-million strong diaspora, seen by Modi government as a key strategic resource for promoting the country's soft power. From mobile telephony to online communication, India has witnessed a revolution in the production and distribution of its cultural products, as well as a steady growth of Indic ideas -ranging from sustainable living and alternative lifestyles to celebratory religiosity and multilingualism -and now reaching all corners of an increasingly digitized globe. The chapter argues, however, that the populist streak in policy restricts the potential of a global India, especially since the pluralism for which India is known, is increasingly under strain in the majoritarian discourse of current domestic and foreign policy.
Even before Narendra Modi was elected Prime Minister in 2014, the populist politician from India's western province of Gujarat could claim international recognition, especially among large sections of India's 25-million strong diaspora. As Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi had travelled to various countries, addressing dozens of meetings where members of the diaspora were present in large numbers. He had visited China, too, to seek investment for his state -printing red business cards in Mandarin to please his potential Chinese investors. This pragmatic and mediasavvy attitude can be seen in the approach of the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party government in India's public diplomacy, wooing the diaspora through mega events in the world's major cities, promoting the cultural and religious aspects of India and emphasizing India's democratic, demographic and digital strengths as one of the world's fastest growing large economies.
Since 2013, India has been the world's third largest economy, behind China and the United States, on the basis of purchasing-power parity, while in overall GDP terms, its $2.6 trillion economy became the fifth largest, surpassing Britain in 2019 (IMF, 2019). Nevertheless, the country is still home to the world's largest number of people living in extreme poverty. This change in India's global status has coincided with the relative economic decline of the West, creating the opportunity for an emerging power, such as India to participate in global governance structures hitherto dominated by the USled Western alliance (ACHARYA, 2018;CULL, 2019). Given its history as the only major democracy that did not blindly follow the West during the Cold War years, pursuing The soft power of India a nonaligned foreign policy, India has the potential now to take up a more significant leadership role. Despite growing economic and strategic relations with Washington, it maintains close ties with other major and emerging powers. India's presence at the Group of 77 developing nations and at the G-20 leading economies of the world has been effective in articulating a Southern perspective on global affairs. India is also a key member of the BRICS grouping of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as well as the Commonwealth.
Parallel to its rising economic power, is the growing global awareness and appreciation of India's soft power-its mass media, celebratory religiosity (yoga and Ayurveda) and popular culture (THAROOR, 2008;BLAREL, 2012;THAROOR, 2012;THUSSU, 2013;KUGIEL, 2017). Joseph Nye in his 2004 book Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics suggests that soft power is an integral part of foreign policy, especially for states seeking to 'incorporate the soft dimensions into their strategies for wielding power' (NYE, 2004, p. 1). Its role in foreign policy is important precisely because 'in behavioural terms, simply put, soft power is attractive power' (IBID, p. 6), pursued in order to influence the behaviour of other states.
How much such 'attractive power' does India possess? India's soft power has a civilizational dimension to it: the Indic civilization, dating back more than 5,000 years, being one of the major cultural formations in the world, with wide-ranging influences from religion and philosophy, arts and architecture to language, literature, trade and travel. As the point of origin of four of the world's religions -Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism -and as the place where every major faith, with the exception of Shintoism and Confucianism, has coexisted for millennia, India offers a unique and syncretized religious discourse.
The dissemination of Hindu and Buddhist ideas across Asia is well documented: it is no coincidence that the official airline of Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, is named Garuda, the Sanskrit name for the mount of Hindu God Vishnu.
The Indian contribution to Islamic thought (and via that to European intellectual culture) on mathematics, astronomy, and other physical and metaphysical sciences is widely recognized. India's soft power in historical terms was directed not towards the West but to Asia. India's cultural influence across East and Southeast Asia during the early centuries of the Christian era was spread through the dispersion of Hinduism and Buddhism and thus the millennia-old relationship between India and the rest of Asia has a strong cultural and communication dimension. Buddhism was at the heart of this interaction, with the widest dissemination of ideas emanating from what constitutes India today, and remains a powerful link between the Indic and the Chinese civilizations. Narratives on Buddha's life and teachings are still a cultural referent in much of Asia, while traces of Indic languages, cuisine, dance, and other art forms survive in parts of Southeast Asia, notably in Indonesia. Two of the world's other great religions -Christianity and Islam -also have long associations with India.
Some of the earliest Christian communities were established in India: St. Thomas is supposed to be buried in Chennai and one of the world's oldest mosques is also located in India -in Kerala, where Jewish communities have lived for millennia. Adding to this legacy is India's long and continuing encounter with European modernity and its contribution to a distinctive worldview epitomized by leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence and tolerance -whose thoughts influenced such leaders as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, prompting scholars to speak of a 'pax-Gandhiana' (PAREL, 2016). This rare combination of a civilization which has strong Hindu-Buddhist foundations, centuries of Islamic influence, and integration with Western institutions and ideas, gives India cultural resources to deal with the diverse, globalized and complex realities of the twenty-first century.

The Diasporic Dimension
Another key dimension of India's growing global soft-power profile is its extended

Communicating Soft Power
Unlike the entertainment industry, Indian news and current affairs continue to be largely domestically oriented and therefore absent in the global news arena. As a The soft power of India result, the capacity to communicate India's cultural attributes to a globalized audience is largely underdeveloped. Of the countries with ambitions for a global role, India is the only one whose national broadcaster (Doordarshan) is not available in the major capitals of the world. Unlike non-English speaking countries such as China (CGTN),

Russia (RT), Qatar (Al Jazeera English), Iran (Press TV) and Turkey (TRT-News), whose
English-language 24/7 news networks are widely distributed around the world, the Indian viewpoint is notably missing in the global news sphere, at a time when news media are a key instrument of public diplomacy.
While India's English-language private news networks, such as NDTV 24x7, CNN-News 18, India Today Television, Times Now and WION (World is One News) are available globally, they have rarely ventured out of their diasporic constituencies. These networks do not appear to be interested in catering for an international news market.

Instead, the international dimension of the commercial news channels functions
primarily to reach to the global diasporic audience, who are perhaps more interested in coverage of India itself rather than broader international affairs. For a nation with a developed model of journalism and one of the world's largest English-language news markets, it is an irony that Indian journalism is losing interest in the wider world at a time when Indian industry is increasingly globalizing and international engagement with India is growing across the globe. Despite its penchant for managing media messages and Modi's personal reputation as a formidable communicator, his government has done little to address this shortcoming in India's external communication strategy.

Digital Diplomacy
Where television has failed, will the internet succeed in communicating India's This digital revolution is particularly significant in a country that boasts the largest population of young people in the world -more than 70 per cent of India's population of 1.3 billion is below the age of 35. It will ensure that Indic ideas will travel across global digital superhighways in large volume, strengthening the already wellestablished connection between India and its diaspora, as well as wider international publics. As noted by a commentator, 'India benefits from its traditional practices (from Ayurveda to yoga, both accelerating in popularity across the globe) and the transformed image of the country created by its thriving diaspora. Information technology has made its own contribution to India's soft power' (THAROOR, 2012, p. 284). Given Modi's energy, his astute use of social media and his formidable communication skills, the Indian Prime Minster has endeared himself to large sections of this constituency (TANDON, 2016).
However, the deployment of diasporic and digital diplomatic resources do not alone make a country attractive on the world stage; these assets need to be translated into influencing the behaviour of other states and stakeholders, requiring a concerted effort by policy makers (MUKHERJEE, 2014). Modi's 'faith-based' diplomacy, promoting, and some would say, appropriating Buddhism is particularly pronounced.
As mentioned earlier in the chapter, Buddhism was founded in India and remains the most enduring and powerful idea to be identified with the region called India today and connects Indian culture with countries across Asia. It is not without symbolic significance that the first foreign visit Modi made after being elected Prime Minister in 2014 was to Buddhist Bhutan. Since then, in his official visits to Asian nations such The soft power of India as Nepal, Japan, China, Mongolia and South Kore, he has repeatedly invoked Buddhism (MAZUMDAR, 2018). Although according to the 2011 census, merely 0.7 per cent of the Indian population were Buddhists, Modi's government declared 'Buddha Purnima' (Buddha's birthday) an official holiday to be celebrated each year. With its focus on peace and non-violence, Buddhism is seen as a useful soft power tool for India, which has traditionally projected itself as a peace-loving nation (despite being a nuclear power, the world's largest importer of arms and having the third largest armed forces in the world). Emphasizing the millennium-old cultural and communication links with other Asian nations, the Modi government has propounded the idea of 'sanskriti evam sabhyata' (culture and civilization) as a core principle for promoting India's image globally.
One area which deserves greater emphasis is India's successful tryst with democracy -'the world's largest democracy.' India has an electorate of 700 million (larger than the combined number of voters in the US and Western Europe) and more than 100 registered political parties. This largely successful experience is unprecedented outside the 'democratic West.' India's democratic record -electing Modi, who is never shy of publicly admitting his very humble background, being the son of a 'Chaiwala' (tea seller) to the highest office in the land -coupled with a secular and federal political infrastructure, in place for nearly seven decades, is a unique experience in encompassing and accommodating different ethnic, religious, and linguistic stakeholders.
Despite the dire predictions of many commentators at the time of independence from Britain in 1947, that a country mired in poverty, ignorance, and illiteracy could not sustain a democratic system and would descend into autocratic dictatorship, India has proved that this can be achieved (SEN, 2005). The scale and scope of the Indian electoral process should offer great opportunities for other developing countries to learn from the Indian experience, ranging from understanding voter behaviour among a largely poor electorate as well as the importance of an autonomous and effective Election Commission. Beyond the electoral aspects of democracy, India also demonstrates that a unified nation state can function without a single language or one religion but as a socially diverse, culturally plural, multilingual, and multi-faith country. Such heterogeneity may be India's major strength in a globalized world, where the capacity to deal with diversity is likely to grow in importance (THUSSU, 2013). Unlike China, India's soft power initiatives are not centrally managed by the government. Indeed, the government takes a backseat while India's creative and cultural industry, its religions and spirituality, as well as its active diaspora and corporations help promote Indian interests abroad, a phenomenon likely to accelerate in an increasingly globalized and networked world.

How Effective is India's Soft Power?
The intangible nature of soft power makes it hard, if not impossible, to measure.
To make India a more attractive country, especially among other developing nations, would require India's policymakers to seriously address the daily deprivation that millions of its citizens suffer. Despite its admirable economic performance in the past two decades, India is still home to more poor people than the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa. On virtually every internationally recognized index, India remains very low in the ranking of nations: from child malnutrition to infant mortality, access to basic health and education; to status and security for women (KOHLI, 2012;DRÈZE;SEN, 2013). The contrast is especially stark with its BRICS partner China, a one-party, authoritarian state, which has been able to raise 700 million people out of poverty in the past two decades-an exceptional record by any historical or contemporary standard. The exponents of India's soft power must consider why India's example of a multicultural democracy has not been generally appreciated by other developing countries, many of which view, with admiration if not awe, the Chinese model of The Indian policy elite, like their counterparts in many other developing countries, seem to have adapted the market mantra of 'branding' nations and cultures.
A relatively new concept, which emerged in the 1990s in the West, nation branding is rooted within the discipline of marketing and situated within the subfield of 'place marketing,' applying techniques traditionally used by transnational corporations to promote countries as products for favourable foreign investment or to challenge or redress media and cultural stereotypes associated with many developing countries. A country of India's size, scale and substance should not have to be so instrumentalist in its approach. Beyond populist and majoritarian considerations, Modi and his mandarins should recognize that India's soft power will only be effective internationally when the country is able to substantially reduce, if not eliminate, the pervasive and persistent poverty in which a majority of its citizens live. If this could be achieved within a multi-cultural and multi-lingual democracy, then India would indeed offer a new developmental model and, together with a more effective public diplomacy, its status as a major civilizational and economic power would receive its due appreciation around the world.
As one commentator notes: 'India remains in a transitory phase where its hard power is yet to become preponderant even regionally to the point where it can meaningfully project its soft power in order to create a political environment conducive to its international goals' (MUKHERJEE, 2014, p. 55).