Soft Power Dissection

So much is being spoken about how India is making it's presence felt and also staking a claim at the global high table on the basis of it's "Soft Power". Is it all music to the ears signifying nothing or is their some substance in India's claim? When India stakes claim at the global high table of Soft Powers, it asks to be included in an exclusive club with countries like US, Western Europe, Japan, China and perhaps a few others that boast of world renowned culture, arts, science, literature, and other such matters related to human pursuits matured over ages attaining the status of being at the cutting edge of their respective fields.

Given that it's a tall order to match for any country staking claim to the membership of this exclusive club, what exactly is our claim to fame? Our culture is one of the oldest, Sanskrit is one of the oldest language that still attracts scholars in droves, all our major languages that have derived from Sanskrit are no less a treasure trove by themselves, some of the oldest literatures on virtually any subject can be found in India. It's evident that India was one of the most advanced civilization during the time when our culture was taking shape of the form we recognize and take pride as our own. In addition to our traditional soft power we also hear about Bollywood, Multi-Culturism and IT Software development carried out in India in the long list of the things that supposedly make us a soft power. We may not agree with all of them but that is not the point.

India was all that and more when India was subjected to foreign rule first by Mughals followed by the British and even years after India became a republic it was counted among the poorest in the world and hardly anyone called it a soft power. We started to hear the soft power noise only when India’s economy entered a high growth trajectory and it’s GDP became comparable to the GDPs of the developed countries.

So, can we conclude that wealth makes the world see your other positive attributes? That IMO would be an extreme view. India does have a wealth of attributes that are considered necessary to be called a soft power, but unless it is backed by a sound economy and a perceptible hard power it is unlikely to be acknowledged.


(Picture courtesy Tribune)