World Guru India

This chapter analyses one of the most prominent aspects of Narendra Modi’s attempt to reinvent Indian foreign policy: his push to turn India into a ‘world guru’. It argues that this idea is deeply embedded in Hindu nationalist thinking and is widely supported on among the contemporary Hindu Right. The chapter traces the development of the idea that India ought to do more to build and leverage ‘soft power’ in international relations from the early 2000s onwards. It explores the Modi government’s effort to infuse India’s public diplomacy with Hindu nationalist themes, to promote yoga and supposedly Hindu ideas about the management of the environment and climate. It looks too at the unusual methods that the Modi government used to try to make India a world guru, including the use of inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogues.