| Abstract: |
Sport has become a recognised instrument of statecraft, yet the precise channels through which it converts athletic activity into diplomatic advantage remain unevenly theorised. This paper examines the Olympic Movement as a vehicle of sports diplomacy and asks how far participation in it has enlarged India’s soft power. Working from Joseph Nye’s account of attraction and the more recent scholarship on sports diplomacy, the study advances a three-stage analytical model linking Olympic engagement to diplomatic mechanisms and, in turn, to soft-power outcomes. The method is interpretive: a qualitative content analysis of policy documents, official communications and media framing produced between 2008 and 2025, read alongside India’s competitive record. Findings are mixed. Athlete-led moments Abhinav Bindra in 2008, Neeraj Chopra in 2020 generate genuine attraction and a sense of arrival, and the proposed 2036 Ahmedabad bid functions chiefly as a status signal rather than a medal calculation. Against this, the country’s strongest sporting asset, cricket, sits largely outside the Olympic system, so the Olympic route to influence works as a supplement to, not a substitute for, India’s established cultural diplomacy. The analysis also flags a persistent attribution problem: warm perception rarely translates cleanly into negotiated outcomes. Olympic sport, the paper argues, is best read as a slow, reputational form of Indian soft power whose returns are real but diffuse. |
