The evolution of the India-Iran relationship over the last month throws up an interesting paradox. While much has changed in Indian policy on Iran from when Prime Minister Narendra Modi travelled to Israel, and a great deal of this change has been driven by the exigencies created by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, public opinion in India has not shifted away from Iran.On the contrary, the conflict has revealed a surprising depth to the level of public support in India for Iran. The key to understanding this paradox – where an almost coercive use of economic power does not seem to have sparked local resentment – lies in soft power, and the related but often undervalued art of public diplomacy.Over the last month, Iranian public diplomacy has, operating from within the constraints of a strained diplomatic relationship, created a positive space in the Indian public imagination for Iran to occupy. There are many lessons India can take from this, especially in its immediate neighbourhood, if it can transcend the trappings of its own populist political discourse.Soft powerPower is best understood as the ability of a state to achieve the outcomes it prefers in the world. While hard power (like military or economic force) is the ability to coerce another state to act in the manner one wants, what Joseph Nye terms “soft power” is the ability to make another state want the outcomes one wants. While soft power by itself isn’t usually sufficient to effect change, it can, when deployed well, create a public environment that welcomes such change. Nye argues that the soft power of a country depends on three resources: its culture (to the extent that this culture is attractive to others), its political values and its foreign policy (when it is seen as legitimate and having moral authority).On the face of it, there is little about the dominant Indian discourse today that suggests room for Iran to exercise such soft power. While Islamophobia remains central to the Hindutva public discourse, liberal voices in India are often susceptible to Western regime change framings, where the religiously conservative Muslim is portrayed as threatening by default.Despite these difficulties, Iran has found two specific discursive framings that have resonated with the Indian public. First, they have refused to limit their idea of India to Hindutva and second, they have used anti-imperialism as the main legitimiser of their foreign policy.India beyond HindutvaMany foreign states in the last decade have chosen to see Hindutva and Modi as being the defining features of “New India” and have incorporated nods to both in their public diplomacy. Recently, for example, Finnish President Alexander Stubb announced that he had watched and enjoyed Dhurandhar, the latest high testosterone, anti-Pakistan and pro-BJP Bollywood blockbuster. Stubb was so intrigued by the volume of the response he received that he was overheard passing on the tip to Canadian Prime Minster, Mark Carney.The Iranian approach has been different. Instead of centering this version of India, with which they have little in common, they have chosen to reimagine the India that they must deal with. There is, of course, the Hindutva government, that embraced Israel on the eve of the conflict, but in the Iranian framing, there is also a broader construct – a diverse Indian people, who value their historic civilisational ties with Iran, and who recognise the injustice of both the war and the war crimes committed against Iran. This broader construct, “the Indian people”, to whom Iranian diplomats repeatedly make references with gratitude, both online and in their interviews, strikes a fine balance. It does not challenge the Indian government (an act that would go down as interference and spark backlash). It simply acknowledges that the loud and dominant top layer in any public discourse does not necessarily represent the entirety of a polity.Whether and to what extent this alternative imagination matches the reality of the Indian polity today is impossible to pinpoint, but there is enough to suggest that Iranian public diplomacy has hit on an imagination of India and Indians that many, across the religious spectrum, find appealing, and which they would like to live up to.Anti-imperialism as a legitimiser of foreign policyThe adoption of the entirely one-sided Resolution 2817, by the United Nations Security Council on the current conflict, indicates that the international legal order today suffers from a crisis of legitimacy.In this crisis, Iran has turned to an older source of legitimacy for its actions – the moral correctness of anti-imperial struggle. Iran, by positioning itself as the only country in the world today with the courage to take on both the US and Israel militarily has made itself into a living symbol of legitimate anti-imperialist aspirations. Iranian public diplomacy has successfully conveyed this framing of the conflict to the Indian public.The responses to a fundraiser launched by the Iranian embassy in India point to the broad-based appeal of this framing. While Shia Muslims have led the way, donations to the Iranian embassy in India have poured in from people with diverse religious and political affiliations, together with messages of condolence, and support for what people see as a courageous fight against American imperialism.The role of public diplomacy and the challenges of populismIndian diplomatic overtures in the Modi years have tended to focus on the centers of power within a country and building access to such centers of power. This has meant often deprioritising or disregarding the role of public diplomacy. This has been accompanied by the conversion of traditional Indian soft power instruments, such as cricket or films, into channels of domestic populist propaganda.In countries where such centers of power do not enjoy, or cease to enjoy popular support, India’s closeness to one center of power has tended to negatively cement its association with that center of power in the public imagination of that country. The absence of strong public diplomacy has made it difficult for India to counter these impressions and to adapt when the political tide reverses. With Bangladesh most notably, India, that is perceived as having supported, or even propped up Sheikh Hasina, has been slow to adjust to the new political reality created by her ouster.While Iran’s rapid resetting of its relationship with India under extraordinarily challenging circumstances clearly demonstrates the value of strong public diplomacy, the trappings of India’s populist political discourse make these lessons difficult to adopt.First, populist political discourses tend to center themselves around one leader. For Indian diplomacy, this has meant building foreign policy strategies that revolve around the image of Narendra Modi. The Modi government has spent far more than its predecessors on overseas visits. The highlight of each of these trips, Modi’s so called “hug diplomacy”, has been endlessly glorified in the Indian media. These trips, in which the foreign audience is reduced to being props in a populist’s conversation with his own electorate offer little scope to meaningfully engage with, learn from, or shape public opinion abroad.Second, populist discourses often frame the people of specific countries as a threat to the nation, and the populist leader as the only protection from that threat. In the US, for example, Donald Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric relies heavily on racially demonising entire populations. In India, this discourse revolves around Pakistan, and increasingly, Bangladesh.While anti-immigrant sentiment is not unusual in border states, anti-Bangladesh rhetoric has become so widespread in India that it recently became a municipal election issue in Mumbai and even led to the lynching of a migrant worker in Kerala. Verbal violence on social media cannot be contained within national boundaries. The near constant demonization of Bangladeshis in the Indian domestic political discourse has been noticed in Bangladesh and has in turn seeded intense anti-India sentiment among young people in Bangladesh. This becomes a barrier that is almost impossible for public diplomacy to overcome.Finally, populist discourses often use sharp discursive breaks to delineate the period before the populist came into power from the present. In foreign policy, this manifests in the form of dramatic decisions that demonstrably mark a break from the past. For example, Donald Trump marked his new term in office by immediately dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a cornerstone of American public diplomacy abroad.India in the Modi years has focused on breaking with all things Nehruvian. In foreign policy, this has meant a certain derision for anything that suggests Third-Worldism. Unfortunately, unlike populism, public diplomacy works best when there is long term continuity in a nation’s ideals and values. The loss of this continuity, together with the constant upheavals caused by the demands of populist politics all hamper India’s ability to craft diplomatic strategies that can reach out to the broader public, especially in South Asia.Over the last month, Iran has demonstrated to us in India the spaces and diplomatic possibilities that can be created even in a hostile situation, when a nation is viewed holistically, and as more than just its government. These possibilities however cannot be created by India while meeting the domestic discursive demands of populism. As the world moves into more turbulent times, India will need all its sources of power, both hard and soft, intact to navigate it. In such a world, one must ask whether the cost of repeatedly subsuming India’s foreign policy interests in South Asia to the demands of its populist domestic discourse is becoming too high to bear.Sarayu Pani is a lawyer by training and posts on X @sarayupani.Missing Link is her column on the social aspects of the events that move India.