Noted Hindi poet-critic Ashok Vajpeyi on Friday said cultural initiatives are important to improve ties with Pakistan in the long-run and hoped the two neighbours can be comrades in arms in the sphere of art.

Paradiplomacy has the potential to not only strengthen the federal structure of the Indian state but also radically alter the trajectory of Indian foreign policy by helping regional governments to realise their potential in the conduct of cross border relations.

Sit down to a Shabbat dinner with an Israeli family, play a game of matkot or join the merry-making at a traditional Hasidic wedding at Open A Door To Israel, a multi-sensory exhibition that transports visitors to the Middle Eastern country through interactive doors. Opening today at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre, the free exhibition is literally as its name suggests.

India has appreciable soft power from spiritual philosophies to Bollywood movies to food to yoga to cultural imprints in South East Asia. Not to forget India as the clichéd “world’s largest democracy” [...] Or does it? The 2015 “The Soft Power 30” a global ranking of soft power by ComResGlobal doesn’t seem to think so – India isn’t in the top 30 countries with soft power.

Can Donald Trump and Narendra Modi yoke their countries more closely together in a common fight against radical Islam? The early signs look promising, but there’s no guarantee of success. India needs to think more globally about the problem, while the U.S. must pay more attention to India’s regional concerns.

India will train Qatar's police for the FIFA World Cup 2022. This was agreed upon during a meeting between Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Nasser Bin Khalifa Al Thani and Home Minister Rajnath Singh in Delhi on Saturday. The Prime Minister, who holds the Interior Ministry portfolio, invited Mr Singh to Qatar to strengthen bilateral security cooperation as the country prepares to host the FIFA World Cup 2022.

Soon after coming to power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi prudently decided to emphasise India’s rich tradition of Buddhism in a soft-power approach to Asian geopolitics. Apart from countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Japan, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Mongolia and others, he even struck a direct chord with China to revive India-China ties. 

Indians — especially the youth — are learning Korean, eating kimchi and travelling to Seoul to sample the life shown on their favourite TV dramas, and films [...] Over the last decade, K-pop and K-dramas, as well as their movies, have unleashed a tsunami of growth and popularity in India, and the numbers of avid fans continue to grow exponentially.