How to be a cultural superpower

Call it Disney diplomacy from the East. But Mickey Mouse has some competition now. So does MTV. Chinese rock bands are entrancing American teenagers with their music; sufi singers are emerging from their shells in the Muslim world; and yoga gurus are telling Westerners how to sit in the lotus position. All of them have one thing in common. They are the software of their country’s soft power.
Hard power can drive people away but soft power almost always brings them closer. This is why nations with big ambitions have always used cultural exports to enhance their clout. During the Cold War, both the US and USSR opened cultural centres around the world, leaving Bolshoi ballerinas to challenge Broadway beauties. Today, the story is being repeated. Bharatnatyam and yoga are taking on Confucius and Chinese rock bands in the new world order, whose economic engine is said to be located in Asia.
The Chinese are aggressively pursuing cultural diplomacy and now, India is responding. The Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) opened seven new cultural centres in Asia this year and is planning many more across this continent, Europe and the Americas. Is the ICCR desperately playing catch-up with China, which will soon open roughly a hundred 'Confucius Centres' around the world? "It's definitely an incentive," says Dr Karan Singh, the ICCR president who served as India's ambassador to the US in the 1980s (see interview). Singh, who was recently in the US to identify a building to house a cultural centre in Washington, says India needs to flex its soft-power muscle. "Diplomacy is like the Ganga-Jamuna-Saraswati triveni. The Ganga is political diplomacy, the Yamuna is economic diplomacy and the invisible Saraswati is cultural diplomacy," he says.
In 2009, the ICCR opened centres in Kabul, Kathmandu, Bangkok, Tokyo, Dhaka, Kualalumpur and Abu Dhabi. Bhutan will have one by next year and talks are on with Pakistan and the Maldives for similar centres. "My idea was to first consolidate our region and to 'look East'. We have also started a centre in China as an extension of our mission as there is a ban on cultural centres there," says Singh, who took over as ICCR head in 2007.
Of late, Beijing has been taking cultural exports seriously. Last week, two of China's hottest new rock bands - Carsick Cars and P K 14 - began a whirlwind musical tour of the US. The ICCR says it has sent Indian rock bands abroad in the past but till now, there just wasn't the money to do this consistently. Now, Delhi, like Beijing, seems ready to splurge on the culture front. "This year, we got a special grant of Rs 75 crore from the government. Hopefully, this will become an annual grant," says Singh.
Can such funding help India follow the American model of cultural diplomacy? Minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor says Hollywood, MTV and McDonald's have done more for American soft power than specific government activity. Tharoor defines soft power as the "ability of a country to attract others with its culture, social values and foreign policies". At the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference in Bangalore recently, the minister said, "In today's world, it's not the size of the army that wins, it's the country that tells a better story. India is and must remain a land of better stories."