Sweet are the ways of mango diplomacy

In Barack Obama, the United States has a president who has been touched by foreign "soft power" like none before him. You could see and hear it at the modest Diwali event hosted by the White House last month, the first ever attended by a US president. The ease with which he spoke of Diwali and diyas, and the comfort with which he essayed a respectful namaste to the Indian priest who chanted Asato Ma, all bespoke easy conviviality with foreign cultures.It's another matter that metaphorically, he bowed before China in Beijing. Many believe that was money talking; culture, it stalks.
With Obama, it all goes back not just to his South Asian college room-mates who taught him to make dal-roti, but even further back. As a child in Indonesia, he heard the Ramayana and the story of Hanuman and it is this charm he carries in his pocket. The story here is not of Indian influence on Obama or in America, but how, long before that, Indian soft power swept across South-east Asia, where China is now the dominant force. Obama's Hanuman, it turns out, is a four-limbed monkey god uncommon in India but popular in Thailand where it finds mention in the Thai version of Ramayana (known as Ramakien).
This week, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh heads for Washington DC for the first state visit Obama is hosting, the US president would have just finished reading his daughter Malia Yann Martel's Life of Pi. It is the story of an Indian boy from Pondicherry, cast adrift in a lifeboat with a tiger, a hyena, a zebra and an orangutan and Obama is said to have found its philosophical discourses on Hinduism and Christianity compelling. It's just another manifestation of how an increasingly plural America has opened itself up to foreign cultural influences even as Americanism raced across the world in the 20th century in an exercise of "soft power".
The story of India's cultural expeditions across the seven seas is much older than the term "soft power", a phrase coined by Harvard University's Joseph Nye in a 1990 book, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. Soft power is the ability to influence and obtain what you want through co-option and attraction, as opposed to 'hard power', which is the use of coercion, often by military means. Although Nye was developing the theme for 20th and 21st century America, the idea of using soft power dates back to ancient Chinese and Indian philosophers such as Lao Tsu and Kautilya. Kung Fu and yoga came to America long before McDonald's went to Tiananmen Square and discotheques came to Delhi.
Soft power takes different forms, from cultural currency such as values and policies (India's democracy in Afghanistan) to institutions (the Goethe Institute and Alliance Francaise across the world). But few symbols are more colourful, immediate and potent than cuisine and cinema. When Indian mangoes finally broke into the US market, it got more coverage than India's success in space ventures. Bollywood is now a byword for entertainment in the US, although a single Hollywood film can rake in more moolah than an entire year of Bollywood profits.
Across the US today, you can see Indian soft power jostling for space and attention with Chinese, Hispanic, Korean and other foreign brands - from supermarket shelves where Priya and Patak pickles and papads are neck and neck with Aunt Amy's Chow Mein and Pad Thai, to the streets and cineplexes were desi eateries are trying to catch up with chains like Panda Express and PF Changs. In one area at least - the arts and entertainment - India is abreast, if not ahead, of the rest. Last year, Reliance's Big Entertainment bought several cineplexes across the country, even though they are still located in crummy strip malls. This was meant to showcase Bollywood's output. This year, Washington DC's Kennedy Center announced it would hold a Festival of India in 2012, more than 25 years after the first Festival of India enhanced Brand India across the world.
How will it all pan out? Perhaps we will get some idea when Sasha and Malia, President Obama's daughters, grow up and make their choices.