Looking through history, one can find that nations and cultures have over time asserted their dominance via 'hard power' projections, only to further assert their dominance via the use of 'soft power' tools.
Award-winning author Amish Tripathi travels back in time to pull some examples to substantiate the claim that "soft power is most often built on the back of hard power conquest and equally hard power is not a guarantee for soft power to automatically emerge".
However, Tripathi positions India as a model country in history, one that emerged as an exception to this rule. The culture of the Indian subcontinent or "Bharatvarsha" is an example of a country having spread its soft power through much of the known world without necessarily resorting to any hard power projection abroad, says Tripathi.
A very relevant example of soft power built on the back of hard power as rightly pointed out by Tripathi is what he terms as "the cultural dominance of the Anglosphere across the modern world", a remnant of the humongous power exercised by the British empire, which was built on warfare.
Similarly, that hard power conquest is not a guarantee for soft power dominance to follow can be seen from the historical example of the Mongols. The Mongols, he says, "established one of the largest empires in human history, yet the Soft Power of Mongolia, from the Mongolian language to Tengri religion to native Mongolian culture is hardly visible outside Mongolia".
But India, unlike most others, was one such culture whose soft power spread across more than half the global population, for over a millennium (from the 1st Century CE to around the 12th Century CE), without almost any overseas military conquest.
A country whose way of life, religions, philosophies, stories, rituals, music, sometimes even names, were absorbed and accepted by millions of people in foreign lands. A country that succeeded in casting many others in its own image (to varying extents), without apparently trying to.
"A country that did not use the imposition of force; It instead used the pull of attraction. A country that sent traders, scholars, storytellers, scientists, priests, mathematicians, sculptors, painters, musicians, metallurgists and many others to foreign lands, but almost never sent an invading army," Tripathi says in his article on Indian Soft Power, under the Brand Finance Report 2020.
The concept of hard and soft power diplomacy usually comes into play in the field of foreign policy. While hard power basically refers to coercive power wielded via inducements or threats, say for instance the threat of military action or economic sanctions against another, soft power works more on the lines of attraction through persuasion.
To this day, he says one can spot the remnants of India's soft power influences dating as far back as the 1st millenium CE. Among many other cultures, very clear examples of the same are visible in South-East Asia where the locals adopted Sanskritised names, builbust Indian-style temples, had Indian-style rituals, and worshipped Hindu Gods & Goddesses (with their own regional variations), Tripathi adds.
He lists some reasons behind how India was able to exercise its soft power back in the day, despite little or no hard power projection at the time. The country's domestic strength, its economic success, liberal and open-minded spirit, knowledge, science, and a warrior spirit are a few things that enabled it to assert and establish its dominance.
Tripathi believes that the story of ancient India has many lessons for the world, modern Indians and the modern Western powers alike. He emphasised the need for modern Indians to reach back and understand what exactly facilitated the success of their ancestors, and maybe they could try and revive that spirit and capitalise on the same.
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