Developmental civilisationalism: India’s higher education internationalisation, 1950s–2025

Critical internationalisation studies have moved beyond Western-centric assumptions, yet analyses of non-Western systems treat global convergence and civilisational assertion as mutually exclusive, obscuring how states pursue both simultaneously. Drawing on legal-policy and regulatory texts, this study analyses India's higher education internationalisation from the 1950s to 2025 and tests three explanations: neoliberal convergence, postcolonial resistance and institutional layering. Each captures part of India's configuration, but none explains the co-presence of developmental and civilisational logics within single instruments. This study introduces developmental civilisationalism, in which the state pursues global competitiveness and asserts civilisational authority through a compatibility layer that renders these agendas mutually constitutive. A four-phase genealogy shows this layer rests on capacities built across seven decades and four political regimes. Regulatory instruments can therefore coordinate market and civilisational agendas within a single governance design, and comparative research should examine instrument architecture rather than assume liberalisation signals convergence with Western models.