Soft power can enhance the stature of a country but it can be effectively used only if it is tied to constitutional values, sensitivity and transparency in dealing with minorities and the disadvantaged, former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao said on Sunday.
Rao was delivering the Second Krishna Bose Lecture on “The Power of Soft Power” at Netaji Research Bureau on Sunday.
The event was organised on the occasion of the 91st birth anniversary of the social worker and three-time parliamentarian.
“To cite an example, Mahatma Gandhi was the quintessential exponent of benign, yet potent, soft power, through his moral efficacy, and the use of the inclusive and legitimate values of non-violence to set the agenda of Indian independence and to inspire future struggles against injustice and domination, the world over…,” said Rao, who is also former ambassador to the US and China.
“That discourse power for India must be tied to the strength of governance, constitutional values, openness, sensitivity and transparency in dealing with minorities and the disadvantaged, the protection of human rights.”
Rao, who spoke virtually from Bangalore, said she had known Krishna Bose since 2001. Rao was then spokesperson for the external affairs ministry and Bose, as a member of the Lok Sabha, was chairperson of the parliamentary standing committee for external affairs.
“As a lifelong democrat, who embraced pluralism and diversity, she (Bose) also understood how the effectiveness of soft power is directly enhanced by the maturity and the vision of the democracies who wield it,” said Rao.
The former foreign secretary warned that India could ill afford to assume a self-serving or delusional stance on soft power strengths when there was so much work to be done at home to improve lives.
She cited India’s record in dealing with the second wave of Covid infections earlier this year.
“Even the excellent work we have done in vaccine diplomacy, which is a facet of soft power, is impacted adversely when the world sees the toll that the delta variant of Covid-19 took on our population during the unutterably tragic days of May and June this year because our health infrastructure and oxygen availability were overwhelmed by this tidal wave of the virus,” said Rao.
India, she said, could score much higher on the global soft power index if the country continued to foster diversity and “pluralism as an article of national faith, more than any religion”.
At the start of the programme, an anthology of 106 articles and essays published by Krishna Bose between 1951 and 2020 was released by Sugata and Sumantra Bose, the chairperson and director of the bureau respectively, in the presence of Subir Mitra of Ananda Publishers.
Sugata Bose said: “Nirupama Rao has made a persuasive and convincing case for better marshalling of India’s soft power resources. But she has also warned us that we will only be effective in doing so if we abide by our constitutional values and protection of minority rights.”