2025: The year of India in the age of influence

Some years announce themselves loudly, with slogans, campaigns, and carefully worded vision statements. Others slip up on you quietly, almost casually, until one day you pause and realise something has shifted. 2025 was that kind of year for India.

There was no single press release declaring India’s arrival as a global soft power giant. No dramatic turning point you could circle on a timeline. Instead, India just kept showing up, confidently, comfortably, and everywhere, until the world stopped asking why India and started accepting of course India. This was the year India didn’t try to sell its influence. It simply lived it.

Soft power is supposed to be subtle, but it’s rarely allowed to be. Countries often over-curate it, over-brand it, over-explain it. India, in 2025, did the opposite. Its influence felt organic, less like diplomacy, more like presence. India appeared in places that don’t usually feel “strategic”: in wellness routines, film festival queues, Instagram reels, award show gestures, playlists, classrooms, and

dinner conversations. It wasn’t being translated or introduced anymore. It was just… there. And familiarity, it turns out, is the most powerful form of influence. If one moment captured this shift perfectly, it was at the 2025 Oscars, not during an acceptance speech, but right at the beginning. As host Conan O’Brien stepped onto the stage for his opening monologue, he paused, smiled, folded his hands into a namaste, and greeted India, in Hindi.

“Logo ko namaskar. Waha subha ho chuki hai to mujhe ummeed hai ki aap crispy nashte ke saath Oscars dekhenge.” It was funny. It was warm. And it landed effortlessly. No one asked why India. No one needed context. India wasn’t a special segment; it was part of the room. That’s soft power at its most potent, when a global cultural event instinctively acknowledges you, not as an outsider, but as an audience that matters.

If one event captured India’s evolving confidence in the global creative economy more structurally, it was WAVES 2025. In May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the first World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit in Mumbai and spoke of the “dawn of India’s Orange Economy.” The phrase stuck, for good reason. The Orange Economy, rooted in creativity, culture, and intellectual property, finally gave language to what India has always done instinctively.

Film, music, gaming, animation, design, fashion, digital content, these weren’t side industries anymore. They were drivers of influence. WAVES didn’t feel like India asking for validation as a content hub. It felt like India claiming its role as a cultural architect, someone who understands that stories don’t just entertain; they shape identities, economies, and geopolitics. What made WAVES stand out wasn’t just scale or star power. It was tone. India wasn’t performing creativity; it was facilitating it.

By bringing together creators, platforms, policymakers, technologists, and storytellers from across the world, WAVES positioned India as a bridge, between the Global North and South, between legacy storytelling and AI-led futures, between cultural depth and commercial ambition. The message was unmissable: if the future of media and influence is being written, India is no longer a footnote. It’s part of the draft. That confidence spilled over into culture at large. Diwali’s recognition by UNESCO in 2025 carried an emotional weight that numbers and certificates don’t capture. Because Diwali never needed global approval. It needed global understanding.

UNESCO’s acknowledgment felt less like an elevation and more like a quiet correction, a recognition that India’s cultural practices are not niche rituals, but universal ideas wrapped in local warmth. Diwali speaks of renewal, hope, community, and light finding its way back. Those ideas travel easily. They always have. In 2025, Diwali wasn’t introduced to the world. It was finally seen the way Indians have always seen it.

A decade into International Yoga Day, yoga’s power lies precisely in how unremarkable it has become. In 2025, yoga didn’t need a headline. It had a habit. Morning routines in cities that don’t speak Hindi. Mental health conversations. School curricula. Corporate wellness programmes. Recovery protocols for athletes and executives alike.

India didn’t need to explain yoga anymore. People simply showed up on the mat. Few cultural exports achieve this level of quiet permanence. Yoga has, and it remains one of India’s most effective, understated expressions of soft power. Indian cinema, meanwhile, continued to do what policy documents can’t: tell stories that cross borders without asking permission. Indian films weren’t just screened at Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Berlin, and Busan in 2025; they were discussed seriously.

Reviewed thoughtfully. Programmed without exoticism. Indian filmmakers were no longer framed as curiosities from “elsewhere,” but as voices within global cinematic conversations. Indian film festivals, especially IFFI, played a crucial role in this shift. IFFI functioned less as a national showcase and more as a cultural gateway, introducing global audiences to the diversity, complexity, and confidence of Indian storytelling. It invited the world to see Indian cinema not as a monolith, but as an ecosystem.

That’s soft power at work: when your stories don’t just travel, they belong. Fashion, too, carried India’s influence into unexpected spaces. The Met Gala 2025 saw one of the most visible Indian moments in recent memory. Shah Rukh Khan made a highly anticipated debut in a custom Sabyasachi ensemble, earning a spot on The New York Times’ Most Stylish list. Kiara Advani stunned in a sculptural Gaurav Gupta creation. Diljit Dosanjh blended Punjabi royalty with modern tailoring in Prabal Gurung.

Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Isha Ambani, and Natasha Poonawalla brought Indian craftsmanship to the carpet through Rahul Mishra and other designers. Under the theme “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” Indian designers and stars didn’t dilute the brief, they enriched it. Handwoven fabrics, zardozi, paisleys, traditional jewellery, and Indian silhouettes spoke fluently in a global fashion language.

It wasn’t a costume. It was confidence. Perhaps the clearest sign of India’s influence in 2025, though, wasn’t diplomatic or institutional, it was pop. When Dua Lipa dropped “Woh Ladki Jo Sabse Alag Hai” into her concert, it wasn’t a novelty act. It was effortless. Indian music, memory, and rhythm now live comfortably inside global pop culture, not as a trend, but as texture.

This is the soft power sweet spot. When culture isn’t showcased, it’s sampled, remixed, and made someone else’s own. What the world encountered in 2025 wasn’t a tightly managed brand campaign. It was a feeling. An India that is ancient and young at the same time. Traditional, but never stuck. Confident without being loud. Comfortable holding contradictions. India didn’t dilute itself to go global. It expanded, naturally.

We may only fully appreciate 2025 years from now. As the year India crossed an invisible line, from potential to presence. From being introduced to being anticipated. In an age where influence is fragile and attention is brutal, India achieved something rare: soft power with staying power. Because when people stop asking where influence comes from, and simply feel it, you know something has shifted.

Former Civil Servant, writes on Cinema and Strategic Communication Inputs provided by Zoya Ahmad and Vaishnavie Srinivasan