The re-imagination of ‘India’ from that of a postcolonial nation-state to a ‘historic’ civilizational state coincides with the rise of Hindutva-driven politics (political Hinduism as the identity and ideology of the Indian nation) of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This substantive shift has become an apparent feature of India’s self-perception vis-à-vis civilizational romanticism that has followed the 2014 emergence of Prime Minister Modi and his brand of masculine nationalism and Hindu populism. However, the groundwork for its wider public acceptance has been laid via decades-long Sangh Parivar activism (the Hindutva family of organizations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh).
Posturing, not Policy
This reimagination is attempted by giving historicity to the Indian state, as one not conceived at independence on 15 August, 1947, but a continuation of the Vedic origins: a narrative built on an ‘aspirational’ civilizational past. India’s civilizational narrative is largely built on aspects of Hinduism – encompassing a renewed ‘nationalistic’ appreciation of spiritualism, traditionalism and homogenization that is generic to the BJP’s Hindu right politics. This narration has, since 2014, gained both a name and a face. The Indian government’s decision to change the name from “India” to “Bharat” (both names accepted in Article 1, Indian Constitution, 1950) on official invites and presentations at its presidency in the G-20 Summit 2023 drew international attention. The most tangible and aggressive rhetoric in the Indian claims to a civilizational state has been the ideation of ‘Akhand Bharat’ (united India). This imagination was seemingly captured in the new Parliament building mural that referred to the ancient Mauryan empire. It depicted civilizational India to encompass all of its South Asian neighbors, drawing immediate criticisms from Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
The reconceptualization of the Indian state by the BJP into the dream of ‘Akhand Bharat’ – a united Indian nation transcending post-colonial borders to include India’s civilizational expanse over all modern South Asian states – is core to the Indian civilizational claim that is born out of Hindutva ideology. It is aspirational, hoping to undo the culturally divides that India underwent during the medieval Islamic invasions, as well as the territorial partition at the eve of independence. The proposition finds grounds in the disconnect between political South Asia and its socio-cultural identity, undermining the strictly territorial creation of nation-states in the region. South Asia is made up of a diverse mix of races, religions, ethnicities, and traditions, which has historically coexisted and shared cross-border connections. Communities in the region were never cleanly separated into ghettoes. Therefore, the borders established after 1947 were more the result of decisions by local elites and the rushed British withdrawal, rather than reflecting the region’s long-standing cultural and historical unity. As a result, South Asia remains a blend of influences that becomes often oversimplified stemming into the Indo-Vedic culture, which has now commonly come to be equated with Hinduism.
However, this reimagination is more a shift in posture than in policy. Akhand Bharat does not find any articulation in Indian foreign policy, that has remained prudent more than ideological. The narrative has its target audience in the domestic voter, not the international community. But, despite being a popular domestic rhetoric, there has been a lack any attestation at the official level at the international level. Notwithstanding the rather hostile imagery, India has claimed Akand Bharat to be a cultural unity rather than apolitical one, pointing to India’s longstanding history of non-aggression. Thus, India’s civilizational rhetoric is aimed largely at a domestic audience and in an attempt to show an ascendent Indian.
Intended Audiences: Indian Exceptionalism
India’s civilizational narrative is a part of the ‘Vishwa Guru’ (world teacher) imagery that locates India as a cultural beacon to the world. Additionally, the BJP’s encouragement of the flagship Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan (self-reliant India mission), has marked India’s aspirations to growth into the economic model for the Asian Century. These have become a premise for pressing hard a discourse underlined by masculine nationalism that is typical of the BJP ideology. The civilizational narrative has successfully invigorated a sense of Indian exceptionalism, making clear that it is no longer India’s ambitions to merely emulate Western development, but also take pride in her indigenous institutions and practices – be it the Gurukul model of education, tribal sustainability models, or the ‘Make in India’ and ‘Vocal for Local’ campaigns. This has also been embodied in India’s expanding soft power footprint, be it through promotion of ayurveda, celebration of Indian festivals by the diaspora or recognition of the International Day of Yoga at the United Nations General Assembly.
India’s civilizational state narrative faces a paradox, with simultaneous emphasis on modernization and historical pride. A neoliberal-democratic India with free-market economics and cosmopolitan globalization has progressed parallel with renewed emphasis on religiosity, nationalism, social relations, and Dharma (civic virtue and collective morality in order to uphold the universal order). As civilizational tropes have been used to promote a certain idea of Hindutva ideology to domestic audience, it has attributed a form of cultural paternalism to the BJP, who have been notified as the defender of the “true” Indian civilizational identity.
Which Civilization? Whose India?
Now imagine the trouble it can cause. The narrative can be skillfully subverted to pit civilization against constitutionalism. Since the Indian state is pulled back to a civilizational cradle, the postcolonial Indian democracy is no longer a subject of the 1950 Indian Constitution, but simply an era in the larger, grander Indian civilizational history – not a prefixed condition of being Indian in the 21st century, simply a phase of an Indian-ness that can include so much more – approximate 7,000 more years of things. The overmagnification of India’s civilizational status creates a hype in Indian exceptionalism that can easily argue against the Western imports of liberal-democracy, civil liberties, intuitionalism, and the rule of law in order to mask “the malign intentions of tyrants.” There is a good dose of skepticism that national pride too must endure, especially since, a civilizational notion derived from a necessarily ‘narrow’ and ‘exclusionary’ nature of Hindutva that would leave out non-Hindus out from a civilizational construct of India.
Thus, the Indian civilizational state lies as a contested imagination of India and South Asia, leaving questions over its credentials of hyper-nationalism with ripples beyond its intended domestic audience and a cause for concern back home. The narrative has been a rewriting of the India’s self-image as one that is more historic, more certain, more unified, more homogenous, more strengthened. This assertiveness is visible shift in posture, largely pandering to voters – sighting a creation of the exceptional Indian, and the Indian dream – that is both modern and historic. That takes inspiration from the past but looks at the future. A future that necessarily is defined by the BJP in its ambitions of a “Ram Rajya”, a “Hindu Rashtra”, an Indian civilizational state beyond its constitutional existence. One with perfect socio-cultural unity. In this regard, the civilizational state is also a means of recreating not only the Indian state but also reinvigorating an ‘Indian’ identity. This grasp on the Indian identity itself is the actual success of the BJP and its civilizational narrative.
Unintended Audiences: The Indian Subcontinent v. South Asia
While the thrust of this reinterpretation is to draw electoral capital rather than mark a makeover of India’s relationship vis-à-vis its neighborhood, the uncanny resemblance to Chinese civilizational claims over Tibet, Taiwan, or the South China Sea, combined with uniquely South Asian anxieties, have combined to raise concerns over future Indian expansionism at cost of its neighbors.
The civilizational narrative puts India in jeopardy against its South Asian neighbors by expanding on the ‘big brother complex’ that India is critiqued for by its South Asian peers. South Asia already suffers from anti-India insecurities, which are an outcome of structural power asymmetry, with India looming large in terms of geography, demography as well as economy. Anxieties over intervention and assimilation of smaller neighbors by India has historically resulted in South Asian states investing heavily in creating national identities exclusive of India. Dissent by South Asian states against India’s cultural appropriation of the ‘Indian’ subcontinent has been an attempt to mobilize its own citizens, as well as to reassert their own territorial integrity and state capacities. There exists an underlying relation between civilizational aspirations and ‘irredentism,’ or an assertion on other nations’ territory. Civilizational states have tended to invoke cultural pasts to legitimize present political action, and even aggression. While South Asian states remain dependent on India for substantive strategic interests, India’s civilizational claims have only acted to substantiate already existing fissures between India and other South Asian states.
India’s claim to a civilizational state essentializes the character of the region as that which is pivoting around her – an Indian subcontinent rather than a South Asia with an India in it.
The Image Problem and South Asian Churn
These hyperbolic claims aggravate the asymmetric realities of the region, leading South Asian states to ‘de-risk’ by lowering dependency on India. This has increasingly taken the form of utilizing China, also a claimant to a civilizational state in East Asia, as a counterbalance against possibilities of Indian hegemony. While the BJP has gained electorally as the champion of the Indian civilizational state, blowback, in form of Chinese involvement in South Asia, has introduced new security threats for India as well as its neighbors, some of whom have fallen prey to Chinese debt-trap diplomacy. China has squeezed in to fill vacancy in the region that has been created due to mistrust of South Asian states toward India. Thus, an unwanted repercussion of the Indian reimagination has been the fallout with South Asian states, who have strengthened engagements with Beijing, ‘hedging’ the region against Indian interventionism.
Since 2020, South Asia has also undergone a series of crises, which have adversely affected India’s relative position in the region. 2024 has been a year of political transition in South Asia, with old problems often resurrecting in new forms, be it the resurgence of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan following the hasty withdrawal of American troops; the economic crisis and mass uprisings that led to the removal of the Rajapaksha dynasty in Sri Lanka; the incarceration of former prime minister Imran Khan in Pakistan and replacement by a military-sponsored Sharif regime; or a string of unstable governments in Nepal. All of these events have heightened political stability and national security concerns across South Asia.
Adding onto that the structural insecurities of relatively small nations, some of whom share borders with an economically, politically, and strategically “big brother’ India, now pushing for an irredentism domestic narrative, certainly strains relations further. As China overtakes India as the major trading partner of Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka; simultaneous push backs from (formerly) close allies have emerged. Disputes with Nepal on the Kalapani-Lipulekh border; Bhutan’s recent interests in courting China; expulsion of Indian military forces from the Maldives; extension of China’s lease on the Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka; Indo-Bangladesh tensions after the post-Hasina regime; and China’s leverage in Myanmar’s domestic conflicts/insurgencies. India is no longer viewed as the guarantor of South Asian security, with a China emerging not only as an economic partner to South Asian states, but also as a critical security counterweight to India in the region.
The Critically Indian Way
India’s civilizational claim places India is a more precarious position in South Asia, especially as the region undergoes a flux. India’s hegemonic aspirations need to refocus on ‘neighborhood first’ – India as a global power by virtue of being a regional power in South Asia, beyond its old tactics of interventionism and heavy-handed bilateralism.
India’s position in South Asia is already compounded by structural asymmetries, with its largeness looming over the region. Blatant interventionism does little to help the hesitancies of smaller powers who share the region, all of whom share borders with India alone, in terms of a South Asian neighbor. Were Kautilya’s Rajmandala theory extended to the geopolitics of South Asia, India finds itself to be the ‘ari’ (enemy/competitor) to each South Asian state, where it is expected to help its neighbors, but also respect their national sovereignty. With China as a counterbalance to Indian interests, India’s capacity to only ‘dictate terms’ is waning; necessitating a more participatory means of cooperation. China’s thrust on economic cooperation over political engagement can be a better lesson. While Indian does not share China’s economic capacities, regional economic integration can increase potential interconnectivities, create mutual interests, and encourage cross-border investment and deepen solidarities in South Asia. Toward this, it is not the civilizational India narrative that can foster cross border solidarities and secure India’s position in South Asia, rather aggravating anti-Indian sentiments in the region; with a reoriented focus on regional cooperation through SAARC, BIMSTEC and BRICS to amplify her position in South Asia.
