Soft Power

As some may notice, soft power is not an oxymoron. In Western Culture, being soft is not an attribute of a person with power, in fact, it can even be seen as a weakness and a submissive trait. However, eastern cultures, such as the Asians have just the opposite view. Preston Ni, communications professor at Foothill College, defines soft power as “quiet persistence.” As Ni puts it “Aggressive power beats you up; soft power wins you over.” Soft power is what makes people rally not by dynamism but through conviction, and can change people’s lives not by charisma but through caring.¹

Mahatma Ghandi, an introverted indian man who were constitutionally shy and reserved, shook the world in a gentle way and changed countless of people’s lives through passive resistance and #quiet leadership. Once the young Ghandi learned to manage his shyness, but never really overcame it, he traveled to England to study law against the will of the leaders of his subcaste Modhi Bania. The members of the caste where forbidden to eat meat and thought it is impossible to abstain from meat in England. But Ghandi thought otherwise since he already devoted himself to his mother to abstain from meat, and therefore got himself excommunicated, even after his return from England several years later completely abstained from consuming meat. Being excommunicated meant prohibition to eat or drink at the homes of his fellow caste members, including his own family. His sister and in-laws offered to host him at their homes surreptitiously, but he turned them all down. He abode by the rules of his caste as he did not see fit to retaliate or protest against the leaders of the caste. Eventually, through his persistence and compliance, the subcaste relented and even helped him later in his political work, without expecting anything in return. He later wrote, “It is my conviction that all these good things are due to my non-resistance. Had I agitated for being admitted to the caste, had I attempted to divide it into more camps, had I provoked the castemen, they would surely have retaliated, and instead of steering clear of the storm, I should, on arrival from England, have found myself in whirlpool of agitation.”

However, his quiet conviction did not bode well for his law career. He struggled to wade through discrimination and disbelief in his #temperament as a lawyer, even by his own friends and colleagues. They said he was weak and should have stood up for his belief but Ghandi saw the power “to appreciate the beauty of compromise.” His passivity, as the word Satyagraha² implies, was not weakness at all. “It meant focusing on an ultimate goal and refusing to divert energy to unnecessary skirmishes along the way. Restraint, Ghandi believed, was one of his greatest assets”, Susan Cain wrote.¹ Later in his career, he became one of the greatest political and spiritual leaders that would receive the honor as the “father of the nation” in India with his efforts to lead the non-violent independence movement against British rule and an advocate of the civil rights of Indians in South Africa.³