Sacred Stones and Statecraft: How Temple Restoration Became India’s Soft Power Weapon in Southeast Asia

Ancient temples have quietly become instruments of modern statecraft. A new study published in SN Social Sciences by political scientists Bipin Kumar Tiwary of the University of Delhi and Vembanan Gunasekaran of Ramanujan College examines what the authors call temple diplomacy: the deliberate use of India’s religious and cultural heritage, particularly its shared temple traditions with Southeast Asian nations, as a lever of soft power in a region where China’s influence is expanding rapidly. The research, published in September 2026, argues that centuries-old sacred architecture is not merely a relic of the past but an active diplomatic resource that India is mobilizing to deepen ties with its eastern neighbors and to position itself as a pivotal player in the evolving geopolitical landscape of the Indo-Pacific.

The concept of soft power, famously theorized by Joseph Nye, describes a state’s ability to achieve preferred outcomes through attraction rather than coercion or payment. Tiwary and Gunasekaran apply this framework to a domain that has received comparatively little systematic attention in international relations scholarship: the restoration, conservation, and celebration of Hindu and Buddhist temple sites across Southeast Asia. Their study traces how India’s historical ties with the region, rooted in shared religious traditions and sustained cultural exchange dating back more than a millennium, form the foundation for contemporary diplomatic initiatives. From the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms that flourished in Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand to the circulation of the Ramayana epic across the region, the authors contend that this deep civilizational substrate gives India a distinctive form of cultural capital that few other powers can credibly claim.

The methodological core of the study is a qualitative analysis of key examples of temple restoration projects, cultural exchanges, and educational collaborations. India’s involvement in the conservation of the Angkor Wat complex in Cambodia stands as the most prominent case in this tradition, alongside restoration work at other heritage sites across the region. Such projects, the authors argue, operate on multiple levels simultaneously. At the material level, they transfer technical expertise in archaeology, epigraphy, and conservation science. At the symbolic level, they signal respect for the host nation’s heritage and frame India as a custodian of a shared civilizational legacy rather than a foreign power pursuing narrow strategic interests. The researchers highlight how these initiatives promote mutual understanding and cooperation, generating goodwill that conventional diplomatic instruments often struggle to achieve.

The study situates temple diplomacy within India’s broader foreign policy evolution, from the Look East policy of the 1990s to the more assertive Act East framework of recent decades. Under the current administration, soft power instruments including Buddhism, the diaspora, and yoga have been consciously elevated in Indian diplomacy, and temple diplomacy extends this repertoire into the architectural and ritual domain. The authors note that cultural dimensions have become increasingly central to India’s engagement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, complementing trade agreements, connectivity projects, and security dialogues. In their assessment, temple diplomacy strengthens India’s soft power while contributing to the broader goals of regional stability and cultural connectivity across Southeast Asia.

What makes the study particularly timely is the competitive context in which it is written. The authors devote significant attention to the challenges India faces, including cultural misunderstandings and competition from other regional powers. China has invested heavily in heritage diplomacy of its own, from the Sinocentric historicisation of transnational World Heritage Sites in Central Asia to Buddhist cultural diplomacy linking Chinese and Thai temples. Japan has long deployed pop-culture diplomacy, South Korea has pursued cultural engagement through its New Southern Policy, and infrastructural competition between India and China plays out across Myanmar, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Against this crowded field of cultural statecraft, the study suggests that India’s advantage lies in authenticity: the temple traditions of Southeast Asia are genuinely intertwined with those of the subcontinent, making Indian engagement in this sphere difficult for rivals to replicate.

The research also engages with the relational dimension of soft power, emphasizing that temple diplomacy works through people-to-people bonds rather than top-down messaging. Educational collaborations, cultural festivals, dance traditions such as those celebrated at Konark in Odisha, and the shared narrative repertoire of the Ramayana all create channels of contact between Indian and Southeast Asian publics. The authors argue that these channels matter because attraction, unlike military capability, cannot simply be decreed by governments; it must be cultivated through sustained, credible interaction. Sacred sites, in this reading, function as what might be called diplomatic infrastructure: physical spaces that anchor recurring pilgrimages, scholarly exchanges, and ceremonial events that keep bilateral relationships warm even when high-level politics cool.

The study does not present temple diplomacy as a panacea. Cultural misunderstandings remain a real risk, since the religious symbolism that resonates with one audience may be misread or contested by another. Southeast Asian nations guard their foreign policy autonomy carefully and are wary of any initiative that appears to assert Indian cultural primacy over their own distinctive traditions. The authors are candid that the effectiveness of these initiatives varies, and that temple diplomacy must be pursued with sensitivity to local ownership of heritage. A restoration project perceived as generous conservation partnership builds goodwill; one perceived as cultural appropriation could damage it. This tension between civilizational narrative and national sovereignty is, in the authors’ view, the central management problem of temple diplomacy.

The geopolitical stakes are considerable. The study situates its analysis within the broader literature on India’s China strategy, minilateral and multilateral soft balancing in the Indo-Pacific, and the evolving geopolitics of India-ASEAN engagement. In this framing, temple diplomacy is not a substitute for hard power but a complement to it, part of a portfolio of instruments through which India constrains the influence of competitors without direct confrontation. The authors draw on recent scholarship describing how geopolitical codes are constructed through both material projects and discursive claims, and temple diplomacy operates precisely at this intersection: it is a material intervention in physical heritage sites that simultaneously makes a discursive claim about who belongs to which civilizational community. The finding that such cultural strategies contribute to regional stability suggests that soft power instruments may play a stabilizing role even amid intensifying great power rivalry.

For the field of international relations, the study contributes to a growing body of work on cultural approaches to diplomacy, joining analyses of gastronomic diplomacy, sport mega-events, film co-productions, and textile heritage as instruments of national branding. Its distinctive contribution is to demonstrate that religious architecture, often treated by political scientists as a static backdrop to politics, can be analyzed as an active variable in diplomatic strategy. The authors conclude that temple diplomacy not only strengthens India’s soft power but also positions India as a pivotal player in the evolving geopolitical landscape of Southeast Asia. As competition for influence in the Indo-Pacific intensifies, the study suggests that the contest may be decided not only in naval deployments and trade negotiations but also in the quiet, patient work of restoring sacred stones that two civilizations have shared for over a thousand years.

Subject of Research: Temple diplomacy as a soft power strategy in India's relations with Southeast Asian nations

Article Title: Temple diplomacy: India’s cultural strategy for enhancing soft power in southeast Asia

Article References: Temple diplomacy: India’s cultural strategy for enhancing soft power in southeast Asia. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-026-01753-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43545-026-01753-6

Keywords: temple diplomacy, soft power, India, Southeast Asia, cultural diplomacy, religious heritage, Angkor Wat, Act East policy, India-ASEAN relations, Hinduism, Buddhism, geopolitics