India’s Soft Power

by Patryk Kugiel

  India as a Hard Power: 1964–1998

  The humiliating defeat in war with China was a bitter lesson for India. It marked the beginning of a new era in Indian foreign policy. Following the death of Nehru, more pragmatic politicians took charge of India’s foreign policy: Lal Bahadur Shastri (1964–1966) and Indira Gandhi (1966–1977; 1979–1984). The limited success of the previous soft power approach, aggression by China in 1962, aggression by Pakistan in 1965, and China’s nuclear tests in 1964 all proved to Indian leaders that military strength could play a more important role in statecraft than moral arguments. India took a novel course on realism and militarism. In this new period, “India retreated from its global ambitions to a concerted effort to build its material power and focused on regional autonomy” (Basrur, 2010: p.268). It also meant that from the late 1970s to 1990, the idea that India should project itself as a firm, powerful state and be able to use force freely was the dominant strategic theme in Indian policy (Cohen, 2004: p.58).

  When Pakistan’s army dictator Ayub Khan tried to resolve the dispute of Kashmir by dispatching the paramilitary and regular army to Indian-held Kashmir (Operation Gibraltar) in 1965, India responded with full force and opened another front in the Pakistani province of Punjab. The second war with Pakistan ended a few weeks later with the victory of the Indian army. In response to China’s acquisition of nuclear weapons in 1964, India embarked on an indigenous nuclear weapons programme, shrugging off the pacifist policy of Nehru who shared – along with Mahatma Gandhi – the ethical aversion to weapons of mass destruction. India stepped up its military buildup, its acquisition of armaments abroad, mainly in the USSR and its allies, and developed a more ambitious missile and space programme to sustain its superiority in South Asia.

  A major manifestation of India’s hard power approach came in 1971 with the military intervention in East Pakistan, which led to its breakaway from the newly formed state of Pakistan—and the emergence of an independent Bangladesh.

  Although India’s engagement in the crisis had a clear strategic and security basis to exploit any opportunity to fundamentally weaken its regional rival, such actions were justified to the world as a humanitarian intervention to stop genocide by the Pakistani army and massive exodus of Bangladeshis to India. Indira Gandhi strategically used the accumulated soft power image precedent of the past to realise hard power interests. India was ahead of its times with the precedents of humanitarian intervention; as such its move was largely seen as suspicious by fellow developing countries that adhered to a non-interventionist principle and by the U.S. and the West, which supported Pakistan. Even Indira Gandhi was well aware of the dilemma of whether India should be a soft or a hard power—as she complained once: “We are accused of being soft but when we become hard we are accused of being hard” (quoted in Hymans, 2009: p.247). India did not fully exploit the military victory over Pakistan: it signed the Shimla Agreement, which changed the Line of Actual Control in Kashmir into the Line of Control and compelled both rivals to settle the issue in “bilateral negotiations”.

  In yet another example of India’s hard power approach, it annexed Sikkim in 1975. Several years later, India’s muscle flexing peaked during the 1980s (Basrur, 2010: p.269). This included sending Indian Peace Keeping Forces to Sri Lanka (1987–1990) and a brief intervention in the Maldives in 1986. Another example of coercive diplomacy was the imposition of an economic blockade on Nepal in 1990. Although there was no further war with Pakistan, relations between the two countries remained extremely tense, and both came close to a conflict in 1986 and 1990. In 1979, Indira Gandhi declared a new doctrine, according to which South Asia was seen as an area of exclusively Indian influences. Certainly, in this period, India didn’t try to get a leadership role in South Asia by persuasion and attraction, but through direct imposition of its will on smaller neighbours.

  At the global level, India’s Agreement of Friendship and Cooperation with the USSR, signed in July 1971, in preparation of a confrontation with Pakistan, marked the departure from the principle of non-alignment. By openly siding with the communist bloc in a global confrontation, India undermined its position as leader of the Non-Aligned Movement. Intervention in Pakistan in 1971 was by itself a violation of the fundamental principle of NAM and its own foreign policy – that of non-intervention in other countries’ internal affairs. Further undermining its image as principle-based country, India did not condemn the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, which resembled the situation surrounding the 1956 crisis in Hungary—proving India’s preference to strategic relations over South Asian solidarity. But this was not the end: two more decisions dealt a final blow to India’s international image.

  From a soft power perspective, Indira Gandhi made two “colossally bad decisions”: in May 1974, when her government conducted a so called peaceful nuclear explosion and a year later, when she declared a state of emergency. “Neither of these acts” – claims Hymans (2009: p.251) – “did anything positive for India, or even for Mrs. Gandhi’s personal, power; instead, this one-two punch of militarism and authoritarianism ruined the Indian state’s credibility in the eyes of its natural Western constituencies. A bitter feeling of betrayal further heightened their negative reaction. India’s long and patiently constructed diplomacy of soft power lay in ruins.”

  The end of the Cold War forced India to make crucial readjustments in its external outlook. According to Raja Mohan, India had to rethink non-alignment as a central principle of its foreign and security policy and find another organizing element for its external relations (Mohan, 2003: p.29). This new policy became more “modest and pragmatic”. (Mohan, 2003: p.262). It opened a new direction for Indian foreign policy.

  The disintegration of the USSR quickened the process of India’s rapprochement with the U.S., which already had started in the 1980s under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. India shed off its traditional anti-Americanism and became more willing to engage with Western powers. Still, their relations could not make much progress due to controversies over India’s nuclear programme and the worsening crisis in Kashmir. India’s new pragmatism meant normalization of ties with Israel, even though rhetorically India remained a strong supporter of the Palestinian aspiration for statehood. To some, it looked like “India’s embrace of the American world order during the 1990s set the stage for the recent resurgence of the country’s soft power, but also represented the ultimate abdication of its former great soft power ambitions” (Hymans, 2009: pp.259–60).

  In 1991, India launched its Look East Policy to capitalise on the rapid growth of the South East Asian nations and reassert its strong position in post-Cold War Asia. By the mid-1990s, it initiated a more cooperative policy towards its neighbours, termed, after then-Prime Minister I. K. Gujral, as the Gujral Doctrine. In order to repair strained relations with its smaller neighbours, India resigned from the principle of reciprocity and was better prepared to offer unilateral concessions to smaller SAARC members.

  At the same time, despite its conciliatory steps, India did not step away from pursuing hard power. Post-Cold War India, however, emphasised economic power as a major platform to strengthen its international role. The economic liberalization started in 1991, and rising economic interdependence made India discover the strategic importance of a strong economy. It became evident that basic precondition for realisation of India’s global ambitions was accumulation of material wealth. Hence, foreign policy was framed with the interest and intention of creating conducive regional and global conditions for the Indian economy to flourish.

  Prioritisation of economic cooperation did not mean that India neglected its military power. On the contrary, rising militancy in Kashmir in the 1990s, persisting tensions with Pakistan, and China’s growing threat made India invest heavily in strengthening its military capabilities. It prioritised army modernization and its military acquisitions abroad. Waning idealism and rising realism in India’s foreign policy was well-illustrated in a remarkable shift on its policy towards
Myanmar/Burma. From the time of its harsh criticism of the Burmese junta’s cruel suppression of the student’s movement in 1988, India, by the early 1990shad turned to a policy of “constructive engagement” with the military regime in Rangoon. Again, hard military and security interests and strategic considerations won over more idealistic and soft power motivations.

  The pinnacle of the hard power approach came in May 1998, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government conducted five nuclear tests in the desert of Rajasthan (Pokharan II). It showed India’s strength as a major power and was a culmination of “India’s defiance of a major power system” (Nayar and Paul, 2003: p.19). Pakistan followed India in a few days’ time, and both countries were harshly criticised by the international community. New sanctions were imposed on them by the Western states, led by the U.S. Such action called into question India’s own credibility and its policy based on the principles of non-discrimination and nuclear disarmament. A country that had for years been calling for denuclearisation had just declared itself as a nuclear power and seemed to take final departure from its principle-based foreign policy. Its international image was hardly undermined, but others had to treat it more seriously. As a result, India reaffirmed its image as a hard power.

  It is important to note, that even though India pursued a more hard-power driven policy in this period, complete rejection of soft power of the earlier era was not feasible. As observed by Cohen, “Both Indira and Rajiv made many changes in Indian foreign policy, but they and the Congress party establishment insisted that a national consensus on foreign policy based on Nehruvian principles was in place, even when they departed from them” (Cohen, 2004: p.37). This was evident from the humanitarian justification of the intervention in Pakistan in 1971, self-imposition of nuclear tests, and constant opposition to the Non-Proliferation Treaty on the grounds of its discriminatory character. The real change in Indian foreign policy towards a more pragmatic realism came only after the Cold War. With the end of bipolarity and crucial changes in domestic politics, the loss of dominance of the Indian National Congress and rising role of regional parties, “the Nehruvian consensus in foreign policy has long since broken down” (Cohen, 2004: p. 37).

  Assessment of the effectiveness of the hard power approach in external relations over this period is not unambiguous. India has not yet been recognized as a global power, and many have started questioning whether it is even a regional power. Although its relations with the West touched its nadir point following its nuclear tests, there was strong conviction in India that this was a price worth paying to join the nuclear powers’ club and acquire an indispensable feature of global power. Economic reforms and the opening of the economy since the early 1990s had already started bearing fruitin the form of faster internal growth and heightened international interest in the emerging market. However, the end of the Cold War and increasing irrelevance of the Non-Aligned Movement made India’s global position as a speaker of developing countries less significant. In addition, India’s more pragmatic foreign policy left many partners in the developing world disappointed, and India’s role as a leader of the developing world was subsequently contested. Yet, world powers were equally disinterested in accommodating some of India’s global aspirations as they were in the previous era.

  India’s position in South Asia was even more disputed. Simmering conflict with Pakistan intensified in the 1980s and 1990s, and Pakistan acquired nuclear capabilities to ease India’s dominance in conventional arms. Relations with smaller neighbours remained troublesome, and India’s dominance in South Asia was resented. Its policy as a regional hegemon gave India “an important lesson to be learnt: that power projection both had its limits and could be counterproductive” (Basrur, 2010: p.270). This proved the ineffectiveness of India’s hard power and explained why India had already changed its policy towards its neighbours in the 1990s (Wagner, 2005). The new approach based on economic interdependence and shared destiny revealed the first signs of a more soft power policy.

  Change was required to further improve India’s international image, which suffered due to a number of domestic problems. A popular uprising in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in the early 1990s, supported by Pakistan and crushed by brutal pacification and militarisation of the region, went against the peaceful mindset in the post-Cold War liberal order. India’s nuclear tests were perceived by other nuclear powers as a threat to the global status quo. Domestically, the 1992–1993 communal clashes, in Ayodhya and Mumbai, called into question India’s democratic system and inter-religious tolerance. There was little left of a perception of a spiritual and peaceful India that could contribute to the international order.

  India as Smart Power: Post-1998

  Most scholars agree that the revival of soft power in Indian foreign policy took place only in the late 1990s or early 2000s (Lee, 2010c; Mukherjee, 2013; Hall, 2012). Although Christian Wagner (2005) is partly right when he locates the shift from a hard to soft power approach in the early 1990s, as some softer policies can be traced back to that period, the main institutional mechanism and instruments developed for projecting soft power are found a decade later. According to Malone (2011: p.252), “finally, in the 1990s, the Nehruvian framework was definitively retired. Since then, India’s foreign policy strategy has been, essentially, to rise in the world through full and unembarrassed participation in the American world order. As such, it closely follows Nye’s prescription for soft power in today’s world.”

  Several authors cite 1998 as a turning point in Indian foreign policy (Nayar and Paul, 2003; Muni, 2009). After testing nuclear weapons, India achieved its maximum hard power, while its soft power reached a new low. For realist thinkers, this development had a fundamental significance for gaining more confidence and respect in the world. As one former diplomat writes: “More than anything else, it was India’s status as a nuclear weapons power that compelled both the U.S. and China to take India more seriously, and brought it welcome attention and grudging respect from other countries” (Sikri, 2009: p.280). Interestingly, S.D. Muni observes that India’s shift in its policy on democracy promotion and rapprochement with the U.S. came from “the need to cultivate the USA in the aftermath of uneasiness developed on the question of India’s nuclear explosion and decision to acquire nuclear weapons” (Muni, 2009: p.12).

  In some opinions, this development meant a final departure from previous principle-based and soft power approach in Indian foreign policy and total endorsement of hard realism based on national interest. Hymans (2009: p.237) summarises that “India pursued such a revolutionary soft power strategy under Gandhi and Nehru, until turning away from it under Indira Gandhi, and then definitively abandoning it under Atal Behari Vajpayee.” This opinion is incorrect. On the contrary, this development can be seen as another turning point and the beginning of a more deliberate use of soft power in Indian policy.

  The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as Prime Minister had, in fact, started using soft power not for ideological or idealistic reasons, but from the perspective of pragmatic necessity. Among several reasons explaining the possible shift, the most pressing was the need to rebuild the reputation of India as a responsible, status quo power and attractive economic partner – the reputation undermined by its nuclear tests. This was important not only to face the wrath of the international community and ease the sanctions but also to address India’s image problem resulting from foreign and domestic policies in previous years.

  There was growing recognition that the previous strategy – based mainly on hard power – had failed (Wagner, 2005, 2010). By the late 1990s India’s leadership role in South Asia was contested as never before: the image of regional bully was stronger and tensions with Pakistan and other neighbours were rising (Mitra, 2003; Gateway House, 2012). On the global stage, India’s nuclear tests and simmering conflict in Kashmir were not enhancing India’s image as status quo power.

  Moreover, India must have real
ized that China’s offensive in South Asia were a direct challenge to India’s interest in its neighbourhood (Palit, 2010, 2011). To compete with China on soft power terms, India had to develop its own adequate toolbox. The evolving international context, including globalisation and the arrival of new technologies, made the soft power theory quite appealing to many countries. It became common for many of them to develop soft power policies, and India had to follow suit in adjusting to the new reality. It was not only economic liberalisation and globalisation that worked in favour of India but also two geopolitical processes – democratisation and the war on terrorism – that supported rise of soft power in India.

  A different international context in the post-Cold War world, marked by replacement of the confrontation between capitalism and communism by the struggle for democracy, put a special weight on India as the most populous democratic country and contra-positioned it against another Asian giant – China. Moreover, declaration of the Global War on Terrorism by American President George W. Bush, after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, allowed for re-framing of the conflict in Kashmir to India’s advantage. What had been seen in the West in the 1990s as a problem of human rights violations and brutal repression of a freedom movement now emerged as part of the global fight against the international menace of terrorism. India changed its label from oppressor of the Kashmiri people to a credible ally in the war against terrorists. The problem of Kashmir had been successfully muted in international affairs and played a lesser role in shaping India’s global image in following years.