I
n a world riven by shifting alliances, competing nationalist agendas and competitive power projections, soft power has acquired a special resonance and salience. What hard power can’t achieve, soft power can, and could be sometimes more effective. Where coercion fails, subtle seduction helps build bridges and mutual goodwill.
More than two decades ago, Joseph Nye of Harvard University turned the focus on soft power to conjure up the ability to attract and co-opt rather than coerce, use force or give money as a means of persuasion. “This soft power – getting others to want the outcomes that you want – co-opts people rather than coerces them” said Nye, who coined the term in his seminal book in 1990: Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. A country’s soft power, according to Nye, rests on three resources: “its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when others see them as legitimate and having moral authority.” In 2004, Nye refined and amplified the concept in Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics.
Soft power has now become an integral part of international discourse and an indispensable asset in a nation’s armoury in winning friends and influencing policy agendas. >With its centuries-old culture underpinned by the ideals of inclusivity, pluralism and tolerance, India has a unique soft power advantage in a crowded international arena, gorged with parochial agendas. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) has been at the forefront of projecting India’s multi-layered culture through multifarious programmes and intellectual-cultural activities. Over the years, the ICCR has evolved its own brand of cultural diplomacy, which is based on dialogue and reconciling differences, rather than an overt soft power projection.
In this wide-ranging conversation with Manish Chand, Editor-in-Chief, India Writes (www.indiawrites.org), Dr Suresh K. Goel, the director-general of the ICCR, speaks about the singular character of the Indian model of cultural diplomacy and how it’s helping the country to reinforce its larger foreign policy and strategic objectives in the global arena. He vehemently rejects the theory of the clash of civilizations and makes an eloquent case for replacing such conflict-ridden approaches with a collaborative and inclusive model based on a relentless dialogue between cultures and nations.
(Excerpts from the interview)
Q) What is India’s approach to soft power? In what way is it distinctive and different from those of other countries?
A) I think our own approach has been mostly that of a dialogue with the other civilizations or with the other societies, in which there is an interaction between us and them, rather than a monologue. It is important that the two sides should really need to be together and understand how they can listen to each other, rather than rebelling or imposing their agendas.
Essentially, our focus in cultural diplomacy for the last two years has been to focus on areas where we promote a dialogue and an interaction between opinion makers, artists, cultural personalities, creative personalities and thinkers of India and other countries. The idea is to get such people together who can really devote time to understand how the dialogue can be promoted for the benefit of India and other countries. The important thing here is the consultational attitude. The problems or differences between two societies develop when two societies tend to remain in their own different compartments without any attempt to understand each other. We need to understand the basic unity of all mankind – people everywhere, cutting across national boundaries, at a very basic level are the same, they have same aspirations and dreams. Differences have come up basically because of the different environments where they live, the different contexts in which they develop their own identity. We need to have a dialogue format rather than challenging each other.
Q) How is this dialogic approach reflected in myriad activities of the ICCR?
A) From this point of view of promoting dialogue between different cultures, we have done many conferences and we will continue to do similar conferences in the future. We have set up a number of chairs of Indian studies – the number of chairs has gone up to over 100 from 85 three years ago when I took charge of the ICCR.
I have no hesitation in saying that very often the comparisons are made between the Confucius Centers developed by China and the models that we have been following in setting up the Chairs of Indian Studies across the world in a collaborative manner. I do feel that our model has given us good results and has worked very well because, first of all, in this process both sides are involved. It is not like that we unilaterally go and do our thing, but we have a collaborative approach where the universities actually choose the subject for which they want a chair to teach. After they choose a subject, the selection process of the teacher is also done jointly and then again at the financial level both the university and the ICCR are responsible for managing it. So basically both the parties have a stake in the success of the chair and therefore it does begin to work better.
The idea of setting up a chair of India studies is not just confined to teaching, but that it should become a hub or a nucleus around which the knowledge center on India can develop. We have another very strong programme which we hope to encourage in the coming years. In the fellowship programme, we support philosophical and academic work. Under this programme, the researcher would develop a theme on which students want to do research. At the end of the fellowship tenure, they publish a paper. Many of them go back to their country and start an Indology department or Indology Center. For example, a woman researcher, who came here as a senior fellow, went back to her own university and started the India Center in Kazakhstan. So I think this kind of thing, where the initiative comes from the other country, has worked really well.
Besides, the ICCR has a very high value scholarship programme, where over the last 50-60 years several thousand people have studied in India under the ICCR scholarships. Many of them have gone on to become presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers of their country. These students eventually become a vital part of the opinion-making body in the country from which they come, and obviously they become the bridge between India and their country. We have about 5000 international students who are studying in India under the ICCR scholarship programme, and every year we add about 2000 to 2500 more. A large number of students come from Afghanistan, followed by Africa. The ICCR is now also responsible for the welfare of all the international students who come to India, and not just those who come on scholarships. The ICCR is basically expected to co-ordinate welfare measures with the universities for all activities of international students.
Q) You spoke about the cascading effect of cultural diplomacy. How is our cultural diplomacy projecting India’s larger foreign policy interests?
A. It’s not easy to say that this was the specific impact of the cultural diplomacy on what we are trying to do. But if you look at what we are doing in Africa, what we are doing in Latin American countries, the Caribbean countries and in Europe, you will appreciate the impact of cultural diplomacy. It is not very obvious to many that a large extent of goodwill for India is because of cultural parameters and the country’s civilizational richness. The kind of goodwill we see for India the world over is largely because of our cultural heritage, cultural traditions which are known to be accommodative and inclusive, which are known to be really tolerant, which encourages adjusting to each other rather than adopting a confrontational or exclusivist attitude.
Q) What you are saying is that there is a spontaneous receptivity to Indian culture and languages…
A) Yes, it’s all spontaneous — there is very long-term receptivity to Indian cultural traditions in all these countries. For example, there is a school in UK, which teaches Sanskrit on its own, without any support from India. These school children are not Indian, but British and their pronunciation is fantastic. This is St. James School in London.
Or, take the case of France. Our liberal cultural traditions and thoughts are so similar to each other that you don’t have to explain India to France. I am not saying that there is no competition between
India and France in political or economic arenas. The competition will be there, but those differences will not degenerate into a serious confrontation, because we know that we basically come from the same intellectual tradition of accommodation and inquiry. This is not to rule out competition completely, but to make sure that cultural differences don’t turn into serious confrontation.
Q) This kind of cultural connectivity offsets the confrontational tendencies…
A) We hosted the India-Asean Summit last year. Everything we did was not just about India, but it was a collaborative merging of Indian cultural and artistic forms with those of Southeast Asian countries. For example, we had a painters’ residency in Darjeeling. We chose Darjeeling, because it is closer to India’s northeastern states. It is a geographical link between India and Southeast Asia. The themes were common to India and Southeast Asia. We stayed in Darjeeling for about a week and then the paintings were taken to Patna for an exhibition. It was not exclusively an Indian or Southeast Asian exhibition, but a blend of the two.
We also did a seminar in Patna on civilizational links between India and Southeast Asia. That seminar led to a bigger project on joint research and collaboration on how India and Southeast Asia have come together in the past and the common interests we had in diverse realms, what how it’s going to play out in the future. We also showcased the archival link between India and Southeast India. We selected some documents from the international archives which illustrates cultural interconnections between India and countries from Southeast Asia like Thailand and Cambodia. For example, there was a letter from the doctor who certified the last Mughgal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar to be dead and that letter is in our file.
The impact was quite visible. People did not think that India and these countries are separate entities anymore, politically yes, but not culturally. This message came out even more powerfully in a performance at the Rashtrapati Bhavan at the state dinner hosted by the president of India. It was not purely an India thing, but we had performance groups from all Southeast Asian countries. The musical genres and forms blended together in an exquisite choreography. Here people could not make a distinction between any of the participating counties. The message was that of an innate cultural affinity between India and all the Southeast Asian countries.
Q) So what you are suggesting is that the success of India’s Look East policy is to a large extent underpinned by this cultural connectivity. And we constantly need to find ways to express it to make it stronger.
A) Absolutely! First of all, the basic idea is to showcase your country not through the military hard power but through the softer elements of culture, whether it is through films, culture or books. But I think the approach to cultural diplomacy is not the projection of India as it is. We have to go beyond merely representing India. We have to develop a dialogue between India and other countries. That’s why I compare the cultural diplomacy with the notion that we need to understand each other. We need to understand what we are, our identity. Rather than creating a conflict, it can become a force to understand each other and to come together on the same platform.
The clash of civilizations theory is flawed. We must create a dialogue between cultures and nations. We must come together on the same platform. Very often, we see different identities as a source of conflict. It doesn’t have to be like this. Every single individual has a different identity, but it doesn’t mean confrontation or conflicts. It also means different areas of competence; different areas of thinking, different forms of creativity and the dialogue will help expand the horizon. India’s architecture, the temple architecture has benefitted because of Islam, leading to a new enriched architecture. We have to make sure that there is a dialogue between multiple identities and multiple strands of thoughts, rather than challenging each other. In this way, there is a constant dialogue between multiple identities rather than a conflict.
Q) What you are saying is that the notion of the clash of civilization has to be replaced by a dialogic culture in interactions between cultures and nations…
A) Absolutely. The conflict can be resolved by trusting each other and that can happen when we talk to each other. The way to understand each other better is through dialogue. Rather than confrontation, we should understand each other, adjust to each other. At the end of it all, we are one society. The so-called conflict of civilizations must be replaced by an open-ended dialogue. The conflict does not solve any problem, but the discussion would.
Q) Is there an Indian model of soft power or cultural diplomacy?
A) We have developed our own model. China comes forward with millions of dollars to start a new Confucius Centre. I think the real success is when people are ready to put in their own money. In the Chairs of Indian Studies we have set up, it’s like a collaborative partnership. The partners are showing their commitment by sharing the financial commitment. The Indian model is, therefore, a collaborative model. We are not going to come and tell you what it is going to be or what programme would be there. You decide which programme you want to start. Once it is decided, we will work together. We will collaborate with each other. 
The programme or initiative will, therefore, will be in accordance with the wishes and preferences of the partner country.
Author Profile
- Manish Chand is Founder-CEO and Editor-in-Chief of India Writes Network (www.indiawrites.org) and India and World, a pioneering magazine focused on international affairs. He is CEO/Director of TGII Media Private Limited, an India-based media, publishing, research and consultancy company.
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