India's Soft Power and Vulnerability

Abstract

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, Rieko Kage, Devesh Kapur, Sunil Khilnani, Richard Ned Lebow, Dinshaw Mistry, Stephen P. Rosen, two anonymous reviewers, and participants at seminars at the University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth College for their comments on previous versions of this article.

Notes

1. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), pp. 88–9. See also Joseph S. Nye, “Springing Tiger,” India Today, September 25, 2006. Nye was less bullish on Indian soft power a few years earlier; see Nye, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), esp. p. 71.

2. Shashi Tharoor, “India's Bollywood Power,” The Japan Times, January 9, 2008. For a concordant opinion see also, for instance, Niclas Ljungberg, India: The World's Next Superbrand (London: Marshall Cavendish, 2008).

3. Nye, Soft Power, pp. 5–6.

4. Nye, The Paradox of American Power, p. 10ff.

5. A basic introduction to this literature is Marilynn Brewer and Norman Miller, Intergroup Relations (Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 1996).

6. For more on this point, see Brewer and Miller, Intergroup Relations, and Kathryn Woodward, ed., Identity and Difference (London: Sage, 1997).

7. Charles Maier critiques Nye's implicit liberal imperialism in his Among Empires: American Ascendancy and its Predecessors (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), esp. pp. 74–5 and n. 75, p. 313.

8. Martin Francis, “The Domestication of the Male? Recent Research on Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Masculinity,” The Historical Journal, Vol. 45, No. 3 (September 2002), pp. 637–52.

9. Francis G. Hutchins, The Illusion of Permanence: British Imperialism in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 56.

10. See Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967), esp. pp. 160–9.

11. David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860–1940 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994).

12. On the soft power of the Gurkhas, for instance, see Leo E. Rose, Nepal: Strategy for Survival (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).

13. Cited in Revathi Krishnaswamy, Effeminism: The Economy of Colonial Desire (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1998), p. 20.

14. Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 25^th anniversary edition (New York: Vintage Books, 2003).

15. Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1995); David Arnold, “Race, Place, and Bodily Difference in Early 19^th Century India,” Historical Research Vol. 77, No. 196 (May 2004), pp. 254–73.

16. From Katherine Mayo, Mother India (1927), cited in Andrew J. Rotter, “Gender Relations, Foreign Relations: The United States and South Asia, 1947–64,” The Journal of American History Vol. 81, No. 2 (September 1994), p. 523. Mayo was an American who had drunk deeply from the prejudices of her British hosts during a visit to India.

17. Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 73–5.

18. See Emma Tarlo, Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India (London: Hurst and Co., 1996).

19. Hutchins, The Illusion of Permanence, pp. 178–81.

20. See Guha, Dominance without Hegemony; Krishnaswamy, Effeminism.

21. Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Decline of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 117. Pace Ferguson, sati had long been a decidedly marginal practice until indirectly stimulated in and around Calcutta (and only there) by the disorienting presence of the British in the late 18^th century. See Ashis Nandy, “Sati: A Nineteenth-Century Tale of Women, Violence, and Protest,” in Nandy, ed., At the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics and Culture (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 1–31.

22. Daniel O'Quinn, “Torrents, Flames and the Education of Desire: Battling Hindu Superstition on the London Stage,” in Michael J. Franklin, ed., Romantic Representations of British India (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 65.

23. Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man's Burden” (1899), in Collected Verse of Rudyard Kipling (Kessinger Publishing, 2005), p. 215.

24. See William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, v. 1: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932 (New York: Dell, 1983), pp. 249–63.

25. This and further quotations from Winston S. Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (London: 1898), Project Gutenberg E-Book #9404, release date December 2005.

26. Maier, Among Empires, p. 77.

27. Hutchins, The Illusion of Permanence, pp. 201-2.

28. Manchester, The Last Lion, p. 848.

29. Nye, “Springing Tiger.”

30. Reinhold Niebuhr, “What Chance Has Gandhi,” Christian Century Vol. XLVIII, No. 41 (October 14, 1931), pp. 1274–76. See also the discussion in Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (New York: Scribner, 1932). I became aware of Niebuhr's take on Gandhi thanks to Lloyd I. Rudolph, “Gandhi in the Mind of America,” in Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 104–9.

31. Niebuhr, “What Chance Has Gandhi,” p. 1275.

32. Gandhi was not the first to recognize the soft power that lay latent in Indian soft vulnerability, and in particular the philosopher and linguist Iswarchandra Vidyasagar (1820-91) was an important forerunner. See Ashis Nandy, “The Psychology of Colonialism: Sex, Age, and Ideology in British India,” in Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 27–29.

33. Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, “The New Courage: An Essay on Gandhi's Psychology,” World Politics Vol. 16, No. 1 (October 1963), pp. 115–6.

34. Ashis Nandy, “Woman versus Womanliness in India: An Essay in Cultural and Political Psychology,” in Nandy, At the Edge of Psychology, p. 41.

35. Quoted in Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 132.

36. Percival Spear, “Mahatma Gandhi,” Modern Asian Studies Vol. 3, No. 4 (1969), p. 300.

37. Quoted in Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 133.

38. Winston Churchill quoted in Stanley Wolpert, Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 9.

39. See Wolpert, Shameful Flight.

40. The differences between Nehru and Gandhi are easily overblown. Throughout his tenure as Prime Minister, Nehru remained deeply imbued with the paradoxical mix of revolutionary ambition and self-restraint that had animated the freedom struggle. And, especially when we consider Nehruvian India's foreign and defense policies in comparison to the policies adopted by the other major players of the Cold War era, it is hard to miss the family resemblance between Nehru and Gandhi's visions. See Sunil Khilnani, “Re-Engaging with Nehru,” The Book Review Vol. XXIX, No. 5 (May 2005), pp. 4–8.

41. For instance, the longtime Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies demonstrated total incomprehension of Nehru's thinking. See Meg Gurry, “Leadership and Bilateral Relations: Menzies and Nehru, Australia and India, 1949–1964,” Pacific Affairs Vol. 65, No. 4 (Winter 1992–1993), pp. 510-526.

42. Harold A. Gould, “The Reasons Why: America'sHalf-Century Struggle to Control the Political Agenda in South Asia,” in Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, eds, Making US Foreign Policy Toward South Asia: Regional Imperatives and the Imperial Presidency (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 131.

43. Nicholas Mansergh, The Commonwealth Experience (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 338.

44. Arjun Appadorai, The Domestic Roots of India's Foreign Policy 1947-72 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 229–30.

45. Mansergh, The Commonwealth Experience, p. 396.

46. Gould, “The Reasons Why,” pp. 102–5.

47. Harold Isaacs, Scratches in our Minds: American Images of China and India (New York: The John Day Company, 1958), pp. 241, 271.

48. Ibid., pp. 365–70.

49. Lloyd I. Rudolph, “Prologue,” in Rudolph and Rudolph, eds., Making US Foreign Policy Toward South Asia, pp. 40–3.

50. Sulochana Raghavan Glazer and Nathan Glazer, eds., Conflicting Images: India and the United States (Glen Dale, MD: Riverdale, 1990), p. 4.

51. Quoted in Ashis Nandy, “Indira Gandhi and the Culture of Indian Politics,” in Nandy, At the Edge of Psychology, p. 119.

52. Memorandum for the Record, National Security Council, Washington, August 11, 1971, 3:15-3:47 PM, document 121 of Foreign Relations of the United States: South Asia Crisis 1971, p. 324.

53. Taped telephone conversation between Nixon and Kissinger, December 3, 1971, 10:45 AM, document 216 of Foreign Relations of the United States: South Asia Crisis 1971, p. 593.

54. Taped conversation between Nixon and Kissinger in the Oval Office, December 6, 1971, 6:14 PM, document 239 of Foreign Relations of the United States: South Asia Crisis 1971, p. 675.

55. Taped conversation between Nixon and Kissinger in the Oval Office, December 15, 1971, document 309 of Foreign Relations of the United States: South Asia Crisis 1971, pp. 824–5.

56. Nehru's deep and wide-ranging study of the past is reflected in his Glimpses of World History: Being Further Letters to his Daughter, Written in Prison, and Containing a Rambling Account of History for Young People (1934; centenary edition published by Oxford University Press, 1989).

57. Sudarshan Kapur, Raising Up A Prophet: The African-American Encounter with Gandhi (Boston: Beacon, 1992).

58. Martin Luther King, Jr., “My Trip to the Land of Gandhi (1959),” reprinted in James M. Washington, ed., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches that Changed the World (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), pp. 39–48.

59. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam,” April 4, 1967. Accessible via www.stanford.edu/group/king/liberation_curriculum/speeches/beyondvietnam.htm

60. Jonathan Bellman, “Indian Resonances in the British Invasion, 1965-1968,” The Journal of Musicology Vol. 15, No. 1 (Winter 1997), pp. 118–9.

61. Hank Johnston, “The Marketed Social Movement: A Case Study of the Rapid Growth of TM,” Pacific Sociological Review Vol. 23, No. 3 (July 1980), pp. 333–54.

62. Mark Oppenheimer, Knocking on Heaven's Door: American Religion in the Age of Counterculture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003).

63. Daniel Sargent, “From Internationalism to Globalism: The United States and the Transformation of International Politics in the 1970s,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2009, ch. 4.

64. Mrs. Gandhi should be assigned principal responsibility for these errors, though her actions can also be seen as a symptom of a deeper malaise in Indian politics and society.

65. Rudolph, “Gandhi in the Mind of America,” pp. 120–1, 128.

66. “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World? It's Aishwarya Rai, Queen of Bollywood,” 60 Minutes, air date January 2, 2005. Accessible via http://www.cbsnews.com/stories.

67. James Lamont, “‘Slumdog’ Oscar Success Divides New Delhi,” Financial Times, February 23, 2009.

68. Piya Chatterjee, A Time for Tea: Women, Labor, and Post/Colonial Politics on an Indian Plantation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).

69. Stephen Cohen interviewed by Jyoti Malhotra, “In the US, Even Those Against the Deal Like India.” Accessible via http://www.livemint.com .

70. Cited in George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 420.

71. See Jacques E. C. Hymans, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions, and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), esp. chs. 7–8.

72. Rajesh Rajagopalan, “India: The Logic of Assured Retaliation,” in Muthiah Alagappa, ed., The Long Shadow: Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21^st Century Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), esp. pp. 193–4.

73. K. Alan Kronstadt, “US-India Bilateral Agreements in 2005,” Report to Congress, Congressional Research Service, September 8, 2005.

74. See the broadly parallel analysis offered in Rudolph, “Prologue,” pp. 45–6.

75. Ashley Tellis, “The Evolution of US-Indian Ties: Missile Defense in an Emerging Strategic Relationship,” International Security Vol. 30, No. 4 (Spring 2006), pp. 113–51. In his article Tellis also stresses the role of underlying international systemic forces pushing India to embrace BMD.

76. Jacob Heilbrunn, “Winston Churchill, Neocon?” New York Times “Week in Review,” February 27, 2005.

77. Sunila S. Kale, “Inside Out: India's Global Reorientation,” India Review Vol. 8, No. 1 (January-March 2009), pp. 43–62.

78. “The Top 50 Universities for Technology,” Times Higher Education Supplement 2007. Accessible via http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk.

79. See “Power Plays: Business Implications of the Indo-US Nuclear Deal,” India Knowledge@Wharton, August 9, 2007. Accessible via http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india.

80. International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook: Crisis and Recovery (April 2009), p. 10.

81. Benjamin I. Page, Julia Rabinovich, and David G. Tully, “How Americans Feel About Asian Countries and Why,” Journal of East Asian Studies Vol. 8, No. 1 (January–April 2008), pp. 29–59.

82. The top score was Great Britain (71), and the bottom score was Iran (21). Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Global Views 2006: The United States and the Rise of China and India—Results of a 2006 Multination Survey of Public Opinion (Chicago, IL: Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2006), p. 19.

83. The Global Views 2006 survey found that 72 percent of Americans saw outsourcing as “mostly a bad thing,” and 47 (versus 39) percent saw India as practicing unfair trade.

84. David M. Halbfinger, “The Nation: For Kerry and Edwards …” New York Times “Week in Review,” February 29, 2004.

85. Obama quickly retracted the memo. Mike Glover, “Obama Calls Memo ‘Dumb Mistake,’” Time, June 18, 2007.

86. “Remarks by the President on International Tax Policy Reform,” May 4, 2009. Accessible via http://www.whitehouse.gov.

87. Ze Wang, Aaron Arndt, Surendra Singh, and Monica Biernat, “The Impact of Accent Stereotypes on Service Outcomes and its Boundary Conditions,” unpublishedmanuscript in progress, extended abstract published in Ann L. McGill and Sharon Shavitt, eds., Advances in Consumer Research Vol. 36 (2009), pp. 940–1. Accessible via http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes. Also Ze Wang, personal communication with author, May 24, 2009.

88. The effects of the customers' negative stereotypes of Indian-accented service providers were moderated if the outcome of the interaction was clearly positive, or if the customer was warned in advance not to expect a successful interaction.

89. Wang et al., “The Impact of Accent Stereotypes,” p. 940.

90. Winifred R. Poster, “Who's On the Line? Indian Call Center Agents Pose as Americans for US-Outsourced Firms,” Industrial Relations Vol. 46, No. 2 (April 2007), pp. 271–304.

91. Both of which are subtypes of the overall stereotype of the “effeminate Asian.” See Robert G. Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999); Minjeong Kim and Angie Y. Chung, “Consuming Orientalism: Images of Asian/American Women in Multicultural Advertising,” Qualitative Sociology Vol. 28, No. 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 67–91.

92. Devesh Kapur, “The Indian Diaspora and Indian Foreign Policy: Soft Power or Soft Underbelly?” chapter 7 of Kapur, Democracy, Death, and Diamonds: The Domestic Impact of International Migration from India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).

93. Arthur G. Rubinoff, “From Indifference to Engagement: The Role of the US Congress in Making Foreign Policy for South Asia,” in Rudolph and Rudolph, eds., Making US Foreign Policy Toward South Asia, pp. 169–226.

94. President Barack Hussein Obama, Inaugural Address, January 21, 2009. Accessible via http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office.

95. Kapur, “The Indian Diaspora and Indian Foreign Policy.”

96. Jason A. Kirk, “The US-India Nuclear Agreement: Consolidation of an Ethnic Lobby?” Paper presented to the Midwest Political Science Association conference, Chicago, April 2007.

97. On the double-edged sword of “model minority” status see Lee, Orientals; William M. Maddux et al., “When Being a Model Minority is Good … and Bad: Realistic Threat Explains Negativity toward Asian Americans,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin Vol. 34, No. 1 (January 2008), pp. 74–89.

98. “Rush Limbaugh's Comments Are Objectionable and Hurtful,” USINPAC press release, April 22, 2009. Accessible via http://www.usinpac.com.

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100. Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008).