India solidifies herself as a smart power

Power is emerging to be seen as in and through prospective prisms. One is traditional hard power, which is the building up and honing of military capabilities as well as economic might. The second is soft power, which is steered by a country’s values and culture to shape preferences and interests, and the term has its genesis in the West, thanks to Joseph Nye. The third is reputational security and that is defined by eminent public diplomacy professor Nicholas Cull as the degree of safety accruing to the nation state that proceeds from being known by citizens of other countries. There is also sharp power, which does not have a set definition but is reliant on more information and disinformation warfare. And finally, there is smart power.

Joseph Nye, American professor on International Relations, defined smart power in this way: “Effective strategies in the real world are a mix of hard and soft power, and that combination of hard and soft power in effective ways is what he calls as smart power.” It is prudent to note here that India defines herself as a smart power and continues to solidify her position in this way. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his recent visit to Ladakh, referred to how Indians can admire a Krishna playing the flute as well as a Krishna who uses the famous sudarshan chakra, his ace weapon, to decimate his powerful opponents. Nye goes on to reason that in a country’s pursuit vis-a-vis its interests, hard power alone will not be enough and soft power will have to plug the loopholes. And finally, in his elucidation, Nye also explains that a country exhibits its smart power capabilities with a deep sense of knowledge and analysis.

Back to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reference to Krishna, I would like to go to the manual of life, referred to as the Bhagavad Gita, that has been given to humanity by the poet-seer, Veda Vyasa. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna empowers Arjuna to face the real battle confronting him, which is much deeper and subtler than simply facing his own brethren in the battlefield. The Gita is referred to as having the power to enable both man and woman to understand their true self and to tap into innate spiritual strength. Krishna trains Arjuna in such a manner that he can handle any circumstance by employing the tools of soft power or hard power, to attain victory, physically and spiritually.

Many scholars in international relations believe that India will have her own narration when it comes to usage and practice of any form of power, including smart power.

Smart power is the future. India’s road to an attribution of this kind has been a long time coming, and it is interesting to observe the smart power strategy of an elected head of state. A Polish scholar, Patryck Kugiel, in his book ‘India’s Soft Power A New Foreign Policy Strategy’, expounds how India post-independence in 1947 began its sojourn as a soft power and it is the 1962 India-China war that truly catapulted India to hone its hard power and spruce up its military capabilities.

As a nation, India has had different leaders at the helm, who have enunciated their preferences for the form of power that they have wished to pursue. This has been seen in and through various phases of non-alignment to strategic autonomy. However, it must be said that India has never operated with an expansionist mindset in pursuit of land, infringing upon any other country’s territorial sovereignty.

If anything, India has succeeded in giving the world the import of peace. This is discernible in how Mahatma Gandhi fought for the Indian Independence struggle or Bharat Ratna Babasaheb Dr. B.R. Ambedkar fought without using any violent or punitive measures to enable social cohesion and social justice. In addition to this, India is also renowned to have given the world the value of universalism, which is engrained in both Hinduism and Buddhism.

In fact, one of the reasons why most of the west looks up to India is the knowledge that her spiritual masters have had to offer, that no other civilization has offered. Even in China’s case, both Bodhi Dharma, also known as Damo and Kumarajiva, were Indian products who gave much to China, which it today claims and hones as its ‘dwindling’ soft power. In the case of India’s soft power, it is purely looked at as mutual respect and the enabling of an understanding of one another’s culture. This, in my opinion, facilitates trust and respect.

India has never looked at power in a coercive way nor has she been power-obsessed, be it hard or soft power. In the COVID-era, it remains to be seen how all countries will employ their use of power, not with a sense of ascendancy but with a purpose of enabling humanity. I think knowledge will play an integral role in ascertaining this. That is why it is rightly said in the Bhagavad Gita, ‘Na hi jnanena sadrsam pavitram iha vidyate’, which means ‘knowledge provides a clear vision and mission.’