Introduction India as a 'civilizational state'.

Keywords: India; civilisational; Global South politics; history and International Relations; rising powers EN India civilisational Global South politics history and International Relations rising powers 427 432 6 03/15/23 20230301 NES 230301 The (re)turn in interest around the concept and projections of civilizational states has followed the recent surge of different authoritarian-populist versions of this discourse, notably in China, India, Russia, Turkey and the United States. While critical of the attempts to secure international acquiescence for the 'RSS's long-term political programme of eliminating opposition and imposing a totalizing and narrow Hindu nationalist agenda upon India' (p. 435), Sullivan de Estrada takes seriously the invidious and long-term lack of recognition that India and other colonized/post-colonial states have faced. Compared to the 1990s and early 2000s, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) first came to national power espousing the ideas of I Hindutva i , India is now wealthier (albeit highly unevenly, and with considerable economic weaknesses and fault-lines); and its nationalistic undermining of democratic, liberal norms is deeper, but also more widely mirrored among some western and other southern states. [Extracted from the article]