Soft Power, Cultural Diplomacy and the Global South

Soft Power as an Instrument of Statecraft

The preceding sections set out the material instruments of Indian diplomacy — security, economy, energy, technology, the sea. This one addresses the instrument that rests on attraction rather than capability: the ability to shape others’ preferences through culture, values and example rather than coercion or payment.

For India this is not a peripheral asset. Beyond military and economic strength, modern power rests on demography, culture, norms and state capacity marshalled by a grand strategy — and here India’s civilisational inheritance is a decisive advantage.

From Soft Power to Hard Power — An Evolution

India initially sought leadership through soft power alone, asserting global influence via non-alignment and civilisational value rather than military might. The 1962 Sino-Indian conflict shattered that idealism, teaching a hard lesson: soft power without hard power is unrealistic.

Phase	Development
1940s–1960s	Soft power and non-alignment — moral authority as the primary currency
1962	The Sino-Indian war — the turn to real-politik and hard power
1964	The Chinese nuclear test — India keeps the nuclear option open
1998 onward	Pokhran-II; the Agni-V ICBM (first tested 2012) and joint defence programmes

For a major power there is always a link between national security and hard-power capabilities that reduce vulnerability and build deterrence. India today is emerging as a credible military power — yet it continues to press for a fairer order through diplomatic rather than coercive tools, as in its long critique of the NPT and CTBT. The mature position is not soft power instead of hard power, but the two in combination.

The Five Pillars of India’s Soft Power

Pillar	Meaning
Samman	Dignity — respect accorded to and expected from partners
Samvaad	Dialogue — engagement in preference to confrontation
Samriddhi	Shared prosperity — development as a collective good
Suraksha	Security — regional and global stability as a public good
Sanskriti evam Sabhyata	Cultural and civilisational links as the connective tissue of diplomacy

• Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam — ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’ — is the guiding ethos, adopted for instance as the theme of India’s G20 presidency.
• Wellness and culture — Yoga (the International Day of Yoga is observed in over 180 countries), Ayurveda, Bollywood, and ICCR cultural outreach.
• Humanitarian assistance — the Vaccine Maitri initiative burnished India’s image as a responsible power during the pandemic.

Leading the Global South and Reforming Governance

India increasingly frames its rise as the voice of the Global South — a bridge between the developed North and the developing South, and a champion of a more equitable order. This is soft power converted into diplomatic position.

• Voice of Global South Summits — convening scores of developing nations around the theme of an empowered, sustainable South.
• The G20 presidency and the induction of the African Union into the G20 — amplifying Southern voices inside the institutions that matter.
• Development partnerships — ITEC, scholarships, vaccine diplomacy and the export of digital public infrastructure.
• Institutional reform — a persistent demand for reform of the global financial institutions and of the UN Security Council (the reform debate itself is examined in the chapter on international institutions).

The Indian Style of Negotiation

Soft power shapes not only what India asks for but how it asks. Negotiation is itself a distinctive instrument of Indian diplomacy, and Indian negotiators bring three recurring traits to the table.

Element	How it shows up
Civilisation as asset	Spiritual and intellectual heritage compensates for material weakness; counterparts are expected to respect it rather than understand it
Dignity above all	Rarely makes requests; prefers to be the ‘author’ of an idea; values summits (especially Republic Day) and careful protocol and reciprocity
Moral high ground	Frames issues in moral terms; a maximalist ‘porcupine’ style; acutely sensitive to fairness, as on climate change

The Power of Language

Indian negotiators treat words as strategy. ‘Sharing best practice’ is preferred to the uncomfortable ‘assistance’; India casts itself as a ‘development partner’ rather than a ‘donor’, consciously distinguishing its approach from the West’s.

Case Study — ‘Claim’ versus ‘Dispute’	In 1960, during border talks, the diplomat Jagat Mehta urged Nehru to insist on the word ‘claim’ rather than ‘dispute’, since ‘dispute’ implied the boundary was genuinely unsettled. On this interpretational difference Nehru declined to endorse Zhou Enlai’s six points — a vivid illustration of how diplomatic vocabulary can shape sovereignty itself.

Two further traits complete the picture. The first is a cyclical approach: if talks yield no conclusion, India is content to await the next turn of the cycle — a patience mirrored in its cultural sense of time. The second is a taste for exceptionalism, seeking custom-made arrangements in preference to ‘everyone does it this way’.

Issues and Challenges

Challenge	Explanation
Rhetoric outrunning delivery	Partners in Southeast Asia and Africa increasingly sense that the cultural claim exceeds the substance behind it
Soft power without hard backing	Attraction unsupported by capability invites the 1962 lesson to be relearned
A frozen institutional order	A great-power club reluctant to admit new members blunts the returns on Global South leadership
Resource constraints	Domestic development pressures limit the funds available for scholarships, aid and cultural outreach
Competition for the South	China’s development finance offers an alternative model, contesting India’s claim to speak for the developing world

The Way Forward

• Blend hard and soft power — pair credible deterrence with civilisational diplomacy rather than treating them as alternatives.
• Close the delivery gap — match cultural claims with funded, visible projects in partner countries.
• Institutionalise Global South leadership — make the Voice of Global South summits a standing mechanism rather than an episodic one.
• Invest in the instruments — expand ITEC, scholarships, ICCR centres and digital-public-infrastructure partnerships.
• Accept the responsibilities of status — great powers mould the system; India must be willing to bear the costs that go with shaping it.

Synthesis

India’s soft power is its oldest diplomatic asset and, until 1962, was very nearly its only one. The lesson of that war was not that attraction is worthless but that it cannot stand alone: influence rests on the combination of capability and appeal.

What has changed in recent years is the conversion of civilisational claim into institutional position — the G20 presidency, the African Union’s induction, vaccine and digital diplomacy. The task now is to ensure that delivery keeps pace with the claim, since soft power is the one instrument that is destroyed by the suspicion that it is merely rhetoric.