India’s greatest weakness is its inability to harness its soft power effectively in recent years, a failure less of policy than of public diplomacy. India has received scant praise for the enormous restraint it has shown in the wake of the Mumbai attacks. The tremendous success of the J&K elections has barely resonated outside the country. Errant calls in newspaper pages and on television channels for swift and irresponsible military retribution against Pakistan have drowned out the voices of reason, providing justification for the Pakistani military’s brazen unilateralism in redeploying troops away from its northwest frontier, and lending a veneer of plausibility to prank-calls to President Asif Ali Zardari and supposed airspace violations by India. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s impetuous and insensitive statements linking Mumbai to Kashmir and domestic Indian troubles is but another outgrowth of India’s deficient public diplomacy. India may be a model smart power, but it will count for little if it remains a silent power.

The writer researches US foreign policy towards South Asia in Washington DC and blogs at

http://polaris.nationalinterest.in