U.K. and India can be exemplars of how you can use culture to bring people closer together: U.K. Culture Secretary

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar with the U.K. Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport, Lisa Nandy on the sidelines of Waves Summit 2025, in Mumbai on May 2, 205.
| Photo Credit: ANI

India and the United Kingdom can be the world’s “exemplars” of using cultural collaboration to transcend national boundaries and bring people together, said Lisa Nandy, U.K. Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, said on Saturday (May 3, 2025).

On Friday (May 2, 2025), India and the United Kingdom signed a new bilateral Cultural Cooperation Agreement. This pact is expected to facilitate increased U.K. creative exports to India and enable more partnerships between British and Indian museums and cultural institutions.

The U.K. Culture Secretary remarked on Saturday that the agreement serves as a “signal of intent” and marks “the beginning of the next chapter” in the relationship, anticipating further collaborations.

Observing that Prime Minister Narendra Modi aims to use India’s significant cultural heritage to unite people globally, Ms. Nandy noted this aligns closely with the message from U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

In an interview with The Hindu, Ms. Nandy, who is on a three-day visit to India, stated that while cultural collaboration between the two countries is economically important, its greater significance lies elsewhere. “We feel that at a time when the world feels very divided, [the] U.K. and India can be real exemplars of how you can use culture to bring people much closer together,” she said.

“That is why David Lammy [U.K. Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs], Jonathan Reynolds [U.K. Secretary of State for Business and Trade], Rachel Reeves [U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer] and myself, we have all been to India recently,” she explained. “Because India is one of our most important partners, nowhere more so than in culture.”

Ms. Nandy stressed the importance of acknowledging India’s influence on modern Britain, which she feels is often overlooked compared to Britain’s impact on India. “Even the Beatles, which was a quintessentially British band, was profoundly influenced by the sounds of Indian music,” she pointed out. “Without which we would not have the vibrancy across our music industry.”

“It is important to our people that we help to celebrate and interpret that for them: how the partnership between India and the U.K. has helped shape modern Britain,” she continued. “So much of this is already happening organically. What we want to do is make it much more systematic and bring our institutions together.”

She acknowledged Mr. Modi’s clear ambitions for India’s film industry, literature, music, and dance.

“India already leads the world in many of these things, but Mr. Modi is determined to do more, and that really resonates with us as a new government in the U.K.,” Ms. Nandy concluded. “Our PM Keir Starmer has spoken in very clear terms about our ambitions for the U.K. What we know is that by collaborating we can take that to the next level.”