If the French came up with the Alliance Française to capture the attention of the Global community, China has now started the Confucius institutes as effective healthy rivals. The traditional Asian recluse now has centres that look at imparting to the world the niceties of their culture and allow foreign nationals an opportunity to learn and enjoy Chinese martial arts, language, calligraphy, food, music and dance.

With the opening up of the country and the entry of the icons of global trademarks, Beijing started to realise the importance of so-called “soft power”. While the Americans have a lot of problems in many parts of the world, their way of life and their culture — particularly their popular culture — are attractive to hundreds of millions of people around the globe.

Advocating a more pragmatic approach, he wanted India to maintain cordial relations with the countries that would invest in India and help the country meet challenges such as food security, which was assuming a very grave magnitude.

This is the opportunity to raise the bar. In fact, like the treasure of King Tut, some of the exhibits must be assembled for a travelling exhibition. That would be India's best step forward in cultural diplomacy. It would make a statement about enhancing the country's presence and reinforcing faith in our living tradition.

According to Schmachtel who has been nominated as the cluster President for its first year, “EUNIC was formed in 2006 and has a reputation as Europe’s leading cultural relations practitioner to create lasting partnerships between professionals and to forge greater understanding and awareness of various European culture and to encourage language study.

The founding members are the Alliance Française, the British Council and the Goethe-Institut....creating effective partnerships and networks among them in order to improve and promote cultural diversity and understanding between European societies and to strengthen international dialogue and cultural cooperation with Nigeria.