Why Should India Be Defensive About Its Soft Power? 

India’s soft power is based upon its vast Dharmic heritage going back thousands of years. Its core is Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sanskrit but has similar great teachings in the country’s many regional languages.

India has sophisticated systems of philosophy, psychology, medicine, science, social thought and spirituality, containing a wealth of wisdom and transformative ideas for this new era of information technology. It has an elaborate and integrated artistic culture of music, dance, painting, poetry, sculpture and architecture, covering human creativity in all its diverse forms.

India’s culture is vibrant today with the world’s most numerous and largest attended festivals and sacred sites, regularly engaging its billion people and now many foreigners as well.

In addition, India’s traditional knowledge-based approach is taking new forms in software development and information technology. This trend is bound to increase dramatically in upcoming decades.

Denying India’s Soft Power by the Ruling Elite

The government of India did little to develop or promote the country’s soft power up to the present administration. Cultural power is important economically, politically and diplomatically, establishing the prestige of a nation. India has not taken advantage of its tremendous cultural resources to its own detriment, and to the benefit of its enemies.

Such a self-defeating cultural policy is not found anywhere else in the world. America has boldly spread its popular culture with pride, money and power. China extensively promotes its culture, history and language. Islamic countries promote Islam in every available forum. Yet India with its profound Dharmic culture has been apologetic on spreading its soft power, to the extent of almost denying its existence.

The main reasons for the lack of such development can be found within the country itself. India’s own leaders have wanted to weaken the cultural strength, unity and identity of the country.

Congress leaders since Nehru have been afraid of India’s soft power because they recognised that a resurgence of India’s Dharmic cultural ethos could bring their domination to an end. The socialist ruling elite of India has always been anti-India in culture, exalting Western leftist thought over India’s Dharmic traditions even in writing history textbooks. India’s media and academia seem happier denigrating the country’s cultural traditions than honouring them.

India’s ruling elite has at times colluded with foreign media, missionaries, and NGOs in an organized attack on Indian culture from within India itself, as well as in the international reporting on India. They have tried to limit and subvert India’s soft power.

Use of India’s Soft Power

India’s culture has already spread worldwide with little government support. India’s great gurus have spread India’s soft power since Swami Vivekananda over a century ago. While Vivekananda had to challenge the negative attitudes of the colonial British, after independence India’s government remained resistant to present India’s Dharmic traditions even to an already receptive world. Because of this neglect, India does not receive the proper credit for the extensive influence of its culture that dominated Asia for centuries and is being recognized again throughout the world today.

India’s foreign policy has more often defended the rights of other nations than promoted the country’s own heritage. It created a non-aligned movement, not an India-aligned movement.

The current Indian government of Narendra Modi is the first administration to truly recognize India’s soft power and represent it internationally with conviction. International Yoga Day is a good example of this, but it is occurring on many levels and must be encouraged further.

Soft and Hard Power

Besides not developing its soft power, India has not properly developed its hard power either, its political, economic and military strength.

These two factors cannot be separated. Without soft power, hard power lacks its intellectual and cultural edge. While soft power provides the ideas and motivation, hard power gives the tools and weapons for the soft power to expand.

The Way Forward

If India supports the spread of its culture, it will have a wider influence throughout the world. Greater cultural unity will also aid in stronger national unity and purpose within the country.

India should be culturally expansive, not apologetic or defensive about its civilizational heritage that is one of the largest, oldest and most sophisticated in the world. India’s Dharmic traditions, though only partially available outside of India, are already benefitting people on all continents. Dharmic insights should be brought into India’s diplomacy, politics and economics as well, where they have much to offer for guiding national policies.

India at long last has a government that honours both the soft and the hard power of the country. There remains much resistance in current opposition parties, reflecting past influences that were happier with a weak state. It is time for these obstructions to be removed, so that India can move forward as a powerful nation with a vibrant and enduring culture and civilization.