ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how India uses soft power in its relationship with smaller South Asian neighbours to both assuage them and address China’s growing influence in the region. It outlines New Delhi’s soft power strategy, emphasising India as a pluralist and benign country and diplomatically expressed as cultures of pluralism in four domains: religious (Buddhism and Sufism), social (yoga), political (democracy), and economic (innovation and entrepreneurship). The chapter examines these examples to illustrate how Prime Minister Modi, political leaders, and decision-makers have attempted to define and deploy Indian soft power. Finally, it reviews the domestic and external challenges to India’s rising reliance on soft power: lacking institutional resources, decreasing appeal, and competing cultures of soft power.
