Tides, Borders, and the Return of Memory: Cultural Diplomacy in an Age of Global Tension

There are moments in history when politics stops being an intellectual exercise and becomes personal: not because the world suddenly becomes more fragile, but because we finally learn to see the cracks. The last few years have been that kind of moment. Cultural diplomacy, migration, border anxiety, and the increasingly loud demand to “reclaim our land” are not isolated shifts; they are symptoms of a world wrestling with identity after decades of claiming to be borderless.

We thought globalisation would make cultures permeable and borders irrelevant, but instead, we are learning that when economies shake, societies reach for memory. Some reach for memory as an anchor — a way of re-engaging with where we come from. Others weaponise memory to keep people out. Between these extremes lies a struggle that is shaping our world.

We thought borders would disappear with globalisation. Instead, they became psychological walls.

The return of cultural diplomacy feels like the world rediscovering soft power after exhausting every other form of influence. Governments that once bragged about GDP numbers now realise that numbers cannot hold a nation together; stories can. Symbols can. Rituals can. India’s International Day of Yoga across continents, China re-deploying panda diplomacy, Saudi Arabia using cultural festivals to reinvent identity — these are expressions of power through culture rather than coercion.

On the surface, these appear harmless, even ornamental, but culture has always been strategic. Culture creates emotional access where political access is blocked. Yet cultural diplomacy today unfolds in contrast with the hardening of geopolitical lines. Heritage sites in Ukraine and Gaza bombed into rubble are not collateral damage; they are assaults on continuity. Destroying culture is not erasing the past — it is erasing a future.

If war destroys land, cultural erasure destroys belonging.

In this atmosphere of doubt and fear, borders stop being lines on maps and become psychological fences. Migration is no longer mobility or aspiration; it is framed as intrusion. Nations that once spoke about human rights now hesitate at the sight of displaced families. The media paints migration as a threat, politicians reduce people to numbers, and citizens — frustrated by shrinking economies — look for someone to blame.

Aggression against migration is rarely about capacity; it is about ownership. Who owns opportunity? Who owns culture? Who owns land? The argument is less about entry and more about the fear of something disappearing — identity, familiarity, control.

When a society is afraid of losing itself, it starts building walls — not to protect land, but to protect imagination.

That is why the phrase “reclaim our land” has returned globally, wearing two opposite faces. On one side are Indigenous communities — from the Onondaga Nation in the U.S. to First Nations in Canada — recovering ancestral land as an act of restitution. This is reclamation as healing, not exclusion. However, the same language becomes a slogan for expulsion when employed by nationalist movements: reclamation is used as a means of purification. The same vocabulary; two opposite ethics.

Odisha sits at a unique intersection of these global narratives. We rarely think of ourselves in the language of diplomacy because our culture does not feel like an export — it feels like breathing. But history tells a louder story: we were travellers, merchants, navigators. Our ancestors crossed oceans before nations learned to draw borders. The ancient maritime connection between Odisha and Southeast Asia was one of the earliest forms of cultural diplomacy anywhere in the world. We crossed seas not to conquer, but to connect.

Our ancestors did not travel to impose; they travelled to exchange.

Every year, Bali Jatra restores this memory. The festival is not nostalgia — it is evidence. It is Odisha, remembering that the world was once accessible through the tides of the Mahanadi. It celebrates that ancient idea: culture is not a boundary, it is a bridge. When delegations from Indonesia come to Cuttack, when Odia delegations travel to Bali and Java, we witness diplomacy through heritage. The Kalingan sailors did not just carry textiles and rice; they carried imagination, stories, architecture, and language. And they brought back influences that shaped temple design, rituals, vocabulary, and cuisine.

Globalisation didn’t create new networks; it reactivated ancient ones.

Bali Jatra also challenges the contemporary hostility toward migration. Our own civilisation is a story of movement. Migration built culture; it did not dilute it. When Indonesia inaugurates Bali Jatra in Odisha, it is soft power in reverse — a reminder that relationships built through memory outlast relationships built through policy.

And if we can anchor diplomacy in culture, perhaps we can help the world remember this: Land does not become ours by excluding others. Land becomes ours when we belong to it. When reclamation is not about removal, but about relationship.

Reclaiming land is not a demand to remove others; it is a commitment to return to ourselves.

Odisha shows the world that heritage is not a museum project. It is lived, practised, shared. It crosses oceans. It crosses time. And if the world is slowly building higher walls, Odisha reminds us that some civilisations knew how to build boats.