It could be argued that soft power is India’s strength, but in 2024, the flaws that exist in the structure became evident. Its soft power imperative set to diminish, compounded by domestic ironies, geopolitical blunders, and an inability to assert its cultural diplomacy beyond its borders. According to Joseph Nye, the soft power option entails attraction and co-option, unlike the hard power option which entails coercion.

India’s soft power is increasingly undermined by domestic inconsistencies, including religious persecution and crackdowns on dissent.

India’s soft power assets are vast – the Bollywood movie industry, Yoga, Indian food, and the Indian story of democracy amidst growing authoritarianism around the world. These aspects along with the country’s history of challenging colonial powers and its tradition of being a democracy offer it a vantage point from which to operate. However, it is limited by internal incoherence and only covers the ugliness of Indian Strategic Culture which the world fails to see.

One of India’s glaring weaknesses is the fading of its cultural distinctiveness due to the growing adoption of Western culture at home while failing to export its influence abroad. The irony is stark: when India allows accessibility of cultural, social, and media-related Westernization, it slowly and gradually surrenders its competitive global edge. Bollywood, which was once synonymous with Indian soft power overseas, has become a copy of Hollywood in that regard and has lost its uniqueness.

Likewise, India’s youth dreaming of imitating Western fashion, music, and ethics are not so interested in exhibiting or propagating their cultural products. Two major aspects of India, namely Yoga and Ayurveda seem to linger as culturally dominant representations while their narrow focus suggests that India has not been able to cultivate and sustain narratives that hope to enthrall the rest of the world.

On the other hand, nations such as China have developed clear hypotheses on how to spread the culture internationally as well as preserving their own. This paper finds that through such cooperative establishments as Confucius Institutes as well as using cultural diplomacy, China has popularized its language, education, and values as seen in the world today.

However, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) – the major organization of India set up to promote INDIA’s culture and soft power abroad – has far fewer centers than these systematic patterns: less than forty in the entire world.

Bollywood’s Westernization has diluted its cultural uniqueness, weakening its global appeal as a soft power asset.

The world also questioned India’s reliability as a global partner. It has taken a rather neutral position in the Russian-Ukraine crisis, thus putting it on a collision course with Western powers. This has left them with short-term geopolitical interests at the cost of global principles such as joining together to punish Moscow by siding with Russia. This has made India unpredictable in the eyes of its Western partners—the United States of America and Europe—thus lessening its reliability as a world ally.

The internal dynamics of India continue to weaken the country’s soft power even more. Claims of religious persecution and crackdown on opposition together with increasing numbers of rich and poor, erode the facades of plurality and diversity of this democracy. Violent attacks on ethnic or religious minorities as well as crackdowns on dissenting voices erode India’s integrity reducing its capacity to present itself as a responsible leader of the global community.

Internationally, India continues to worry its neighbors about its capabilities. It could not perpetrate positive diplomacy as a stabilizing force in South Asia because of the sour relations with Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives, and Sri Lanka. Separation of the boundary with China and the continued territorial tensions over the Line of Control running through the Kashmir region have also attracted global condemnation, thus erasing any attempt by New Delhi to paint a new image for India as a civil and cooperative nation. These latest diplomatic gaffes only eclipse India’s efforts to establish its hegemony in South Asia and the world order.

New Delhi suffers from a lack of identity and priorities, and the symptom of this disease is a decline in India’s soft power. Forcing cultural and diplomatic muscle, India has gradually turned passive, allowing other countries to dictate the pace of relations. The rise of Westernization in homes has weakened India’s uniqueness; the lack of effective and proper soft power addresses the lack of strategic communication with Western society.

India’s neutral stance in the Russia-Ukraine crisis has raised questions about its reliability as a global ally.

India stands at a crossroads. If its contributors do not stop to refine and change from its petty cultural bastardization to geopolitical disparity and domestic incompatibility, then it could not claim to be one of the world’s leading countries. India, once aspiring to become one of the world’s leading soft powers, is now increasingly positioning itself as a nation striving to appear more influential in soft power than it is.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not represent the views, beliefs, or policies of the Stratheia.