Abstract
With military conflicts becoming resource-intensive, expensive and largely
ineffective in obtaining long-term benefits, countries around the world are focusing
more on diplomatic engagement and virtuous modes like culture for achieving
strategic dividends. Cultural engagement, along with other ‘soft’ forms of
engagement, popularly known as ‘soft power’ is being increasingly deployed along
with state capacity, strategic strengths and charismatic leadership for converting a
state’s latent capacities into ‘actualized power’.
In the discipline of international relations, the term ‘soft power’ has been
increasingly gaining prominence. The core objective of soft power has been to shape
the preferences of other powers through appeal and attractions. Soft power is largely
non-coercive in nature; it includes culture, political values, economy and many other
elements. It was Joseph Nye who popularized the term in one of his pioneering
research works entitled: “Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American
Power”, published in 1990. Further, Nye reconceptualized the term in 2004 through
publishing another important book “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World
Politics”. Then onwards, countries across the globe started giving prominence to the
soft power concept in foreign policy implementation process. It may however be
noted that it is not just the sovereign states alone that relies more on the application
of soft power in the arena of international relations, there are a host of NGOs or
international institutions that focus on the theme. In other words, the growing
weightage given to the concept of soft power is a natural response towards the
rapidly changing global context.
Being one of the oldest civilisations of the world, India has been “re-emerging” in
recent times as a major player in the arena of international relations, pushing behind
centuries of colonial exploitation, backwardness and slumber. Many scholars believe
that India’s political system, its thriving democracy, military capabilities along with
space and missile programme and the country’s growing human resource will give it
a great power status in the 21st century. In other words, with the combination of hard
and soft power resources, India has been playing a very important role. In this
context, Shashi Tharoor (2012:277) however claims, “India’s potential leadership
role in the world lies in its soft power.”
Keywords: power, soft power, hard power, india’s foreign policy, non-alignment
movement etc.
