Gandhi in Cultural Diplomacy: A Study of Visual and Heritage Representation in Indian Foreign Policy

Abstract

Mahatma Gandhi images keep circulating outside India as a tool for diplomacy, statues gifted by the Indian state, and memorials that subsequently become storm centres of a controversy, yet scholarship hasn’t really asked why some versions of Gandhian symbolism travel well while others get contested. This gap in scholarship matters because it obscures the truth that heritage means different things to different people depending on who is constructing it. How does the contemporary usage of Gandhi’s image in Indian cultural diplomacy relate to and diverge from the visual logic that Gandhi constructed himself, specifically in relation to the Khadi and dress writing (1919-31)? This paper attempts to analyze the posed problem by carrying out qualitative case studies involving the Gandhi's Khadi and dress writings (1919-31) and statue diplomacy in Ghana, Malawi and other countries (2003-22), which has taken place in Ghana, Malawi and elsewhere (2003-22). It analyses this through Winter's heritage diplomacy and Nye's soft-power theory. The findings show that, the Khadi of Gandhi was able to find worldwide acceptance as he kept explaining it himself, in his own words, again and again. On the other hand, state-installed statues do not get to have that ongoing explanation – they just assert meaning and leave it at that. That is exactly what makes them susceptible to the pushback which the original symbol never faced. The paper’s contribution is the distinction between authored heritage and asserted heritage. This has implications for our thinking about heritage diplomacy, Indian foreign policy, and visual studies.