USE OF SOFT POWER BY INDIA AS A STRATEGIC WEAPON: MEDIA’S MANIPULATION

Abstract

With the emergence of new challenges the traditional approaches have now been
taken over by the non-traditional ones. Either it is the hard power or soft power every state
mobilize it to achieve the strategic ends. This paper focuses on India’s soft power
capabilities and its extensive use, particularly that of mass media for projecting country’s
image as the world’s largest successful democracy and vocals of world peace. However, the
employment of this strategic tool by India is not restricted to its image building but it is
geared more on tarnishing the image of other countries particularly Pakistan. The paper
further examines Indian media manipulation through ‘Liberal' lens, which is based on
liberals view of ‘free media’ and ‘freedom-of-speech’ identify Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s anti-Pakistan and Hindu nationalism agenda along with their negative framing of
news contents targeting Pakistan. The key findings substantiate that India use propaganda
strategy against Pakistan, utilizing Sun Tzu and Kautilya’s deception and isolation concept
in their foreign policy towards Pakistan. It verifies that comparing all previous governments,
Modi ‘sarkar’ has extensively mobilized media as soft power for achieving its strategic
objectives. Indian new strategy of using soft power is not effective and conducive for
regional peace at the moment rather it has proved to be supplementing its already existing
hard Power rhetoric for its gluttony of regional supremacy. The Bharatya Janata Party’s
(BJP) government seems to be adapting ‘Liberal’ approach, however, in practical terms the
essence of ‘Realist’ sentiments are deeply engraved that would not be easy to rooted out.
The paper concludes that BJP’s xenophobic rhetoric is pro-Hindu nationalism and anti- Pakistan. It uses media and other concepts of strategic philosophies as the soft power and
employs it as a strategic weapon for attaining regional hegemony.