Shera, the Games mascot

New Delhi, Sept. 24: Fancy an ethnic Uzbek from Tajikistan becoming a singing sensation in Russia by belting out songs from Mithun Chakraborty’s films.

Baimurat Allaberiyev, a diminutive 37-year-old popularly known as Tajik Jimmy for his rendition of “Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, aaja, aaja, aaja” from Mithun’s 1983 hit Disco Dancer, is poised to become an icon for the Indian foreign ministry’s programme to showcase the country’s “soft power”.

The campaign will highlight the power of Indian classical or popular culture to attract adherents worldwide. By focusing on icons like Allaberiyev, a former labourer who now has a cult following on the Internet and in Russia, and Brazilian Gloria Areira, who can recite the Vedas in Sanskrit, the ministry hopes to deflect the bad press India has received over its shoddy Commonwealth Games preparations.

Officials in the foreign ministry’s public diplomacy division are hard at work to give Indian diplomats posted overseas — who have of late found themselves at a loss to explain the Games mess — some talking points about the allure of Indian culture.

The efforts began earlier this month with the release of a commemorative volume on Rabindranath Tagore. The special edition of India Perspectives, the ministry’s monthly magazine, has articles and rare pictures on different facets of Tagore’s life, such as his poetry, paintings, writings, music and overseas visits.

Joint secretary Navdeep Suri anchored the project that coincides with Tagore’s 150th anniversary celebrations. The contributors to the volume include Amartya Sen, Harvard historian Sugata Bose and Chinese historians Tan Chung and Yun Xinan, among others.

The foreign ministry has printed 70,000 copies of the special edition in 18 languages including Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, French, German, Italian, Pashto, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Persian.

“This is also on the website. We have paid for the copyright and anybody can use the material,” an official at the public diplomacy division said.

Suri’s team is now in search of more contemporary icons who exemplify India’s soft power. Last year, a diplomat in the public diplomacy division had attended Allaberiyev’s concert in St Petersburg. Allaberiyev, who once herded sheep, picked cotton or worked as a construction labourer, became an overnight sensation last year when shaky videos of him performing songs from Disco Dancer hit the Internet.

Armed with nothing but a metal bucket as accompaniment and the ability to sing male and female parts of Bollywood songs, Allaberiyev “has a cult following even as he continues to work at a shopping centre near Moscow”, said a ministry official who was previously posted in Moscow.

In an interview to news agency AFP, Allaberiyev has said that Bollywood music was big in Tajikistan when he was growing up. The public diplomacy division plans to put his music on its website and post articles about him, and hopes to organise his concerts in India and elsewhere.

It also plans to showcase the Brazilian Areira, 57, who has translated the Vedas, the Bhagvad Gita and other Hindu scriptures directly from Sanskrit to Portuguese.

“She runs a school of Vedic studies in Rio,” the official said.