Evaluate India's use of heritage and cultural diplomacy (e.g., Prambanan Temple restoration) as a tool of soft power in Southeast Asia.

Soft power, as Joseph Nye framed it, is the ability to attract rather than coerce. India's shared civilisational links with Southeast Asia — Hindu-Buddhist temples, the Ramayana tradition, and figures like Tagore — give it a distinctive cultural currency that its Act East Policy increasingly leverages.

Strengths as a soft-power tool

• Restores shared heritage: the Archaeological Survey of India will conserve the UNESCO-listed Prambanan Temple, jointly launched by both leaders, using the anastylosis method — projecting India as a civilisational partner, not a hegemon [1].
• Institutionalised cultural ties: the 2026–27 "Tagore–Dewantara Year" marking the centenary of Tagore's 1927 Indonesia visit anchors people-to-people diplomacy in a durable framework [2].
• Complements hard power: heritage goodwill smooths deeper defence, maritime and trade cooperation under the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership [2][3].
• Low-cost, high-legitimacy: unlike Chinese chequebook diplomacy, it invites mutual ownership.

Limitations

• Symbolism over substance: conservation goodwill rarely offsets India's modest trade and connectivity footprint versus China's BRI.
• Under-resourced: ASI's overseas capacity and cultural budgets are thin relative to ambition.
• Episodic: tied to high-level visits rather than sustained institutional delivery.
• Diaspora-narrow: appeal can seem confined to shared Hindu-Buddhist pasts, limiting reach in Muslim-majority publics.

Heritage diplomacy is a genuine but supplementary asset — it builds trust that must be converted into economic and strategic weight. Sustained funding, ASI capacity-building, and linkage to IPOI and ASEAN frameworks would let India's civilisational soft power reinforce, not substitute, hard-power engagement in the Indo-Pacific.