Soft-power is great influencer if you can actually carry it out, says MEA Jaishankar

New Delhi 

An anthology of 23 articles covering a range of 'soft-power' related topics such as epics, dance and cuisines, by writers and researchers including Amish Tripathi, Pushpesh Pant, Jaya Jaitley, Christopher Benninger and Kapil Kapoor has been published.

Speaking on the occasion, External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar laid emphasis on the greater importance of'soft power' in the fast changing world that is 'more inclusive and more digital'.

"....the clever tactic of passing judgments on others while using a frame of reference and a culture and a specificity and trying to make that universal, that is an enormous exercise of soft power if you can actually carry it out,” Dr Jaishankar said.

The book, 'Connecting Through Culture: An Overview of India's Soft Power Strengths’, is an anthology of essays edited by Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts member-secretary Sachidanand Joshi and Indian Council for Cultural Relations president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe. 

Dr Jaishankar said, "Soft power in general is something intangible, which confers legitimacy, gets your attention, clearly shapes preference, in that sense a factor in the likeability of a person, institution, nation, society."

"In soft power, there is comfort on one end of the spectrum , somewhere in the middle that comfort becomes influence and at the other end of the spectrum there is domination. What countries do with soft power depends on the power of the country," he said. 

The Minister further said - "It could be a smooth osmosis process or you could have an aggressive push. Soft power is about creating narratives, making images and setting standards".

"If I had to take one obvious example, somebody would say that there is my version of democracy and by the way I feel you are short on five counts," he remarked.

He maintained that despite "all the nice talk, hegemonism still lives” and that a large part of soft power exerted by countries was through setting standards and rules.

“You have debates where some institution, some publication, sometimes some government will say... If I had to take one obvious example, somebody would say that there is my version of democracy and by the way I feel you are short on five counts. So this willingness, this desire and this actually clever tactic of passing judgments on others while using a frame of reference and a culture and a specificity and trying to make that universal, that is an enormous exercise of soft power if you can actually carry it out,” he explained. 

He said India is engaged in a “battle of soft power” and that soft power was central to “re-balancing” in the world that would lead to multipolarity. He said India’s image abroad was a reflection of the progress made domestically. 

“Today we are a more inclusive society, more digital society, greener society, a society which has dealt with a lot of legacy challenges of gender... challenges of discrimination,” Mr. Jaishankar said.

Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan also spoke on India’s soft power. 

"Soft power is a term of recent coinage but the concept is not new to India. It is deeply rooted in Indian cultural ethos. India's power depends on two factors which are Sanskrit language and Sanskriti," Khan said. 

ends 

-Nirendra Devpls visit my bloghttp://bestofindiarestofindia.blogspot.in/