In November 2024, Aleksandr Dugin, the man often called ‘Putin’s Rasputin’, spoke to a room full of students, professors and intellectuals in Delhi. He told them that India’s civilisational reinvention as Bharat depended on “what Narendra Modi has called the decolonisation of the mind”. India, he said, must return to its “Vedic roots”. He repeated the same message at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s summit in Tianjin, arguing for a Russia-China-India axis against the West.
Dugin calls himself a philosopher of geopolitics. In reality, he is more of an intellectual influencer for the global far-Right, a self-styled mystic who has advised Russian elites and built ties with nationalists and extremists across continents. His ideas blend theology, conspiracy and geopolitics into a single worldview: a revolt against modernity led by ancient civilisations.
For Dugin, India sits at the centre of that project. He sees it not only as a partner in the balance of global power but also as a spiritual anchor for a rebellion against the liberal West. Many of his influences, especially the Italian fascist philosopher, Julius Evola, shared that fascination. They imagined India as a storehouse of Aryan wisdom, a place where hierarchy was divinely ordained.
Evola’s works shaped much of Europe’s post-War neo-fascist thought. He despised democracy, equality and progress, which he saw as signs of decay. He even criticised Nazism for being too soft on — too concerned with — the masses, too egalitarian in its rhetoric about the dignity of labour. His 1934 book, Revolt Against the Modern World, argued that true civilisation could exist only through hierarchy and transcendence, a cosmic order in which rulers and priests embodied divine authority. For Evola, India’s caste system was not an injustice but the highest expression of that order.
In the last decade, Evola’s name has resurfaced in far-Right networks in Europe and the United States of America where his writings circulate online in glossy new translations. He is quoted by White nationalists and ‘traditionalist’ influencers who borrow his language of purity and hierarchy while stripping it of its historical baggage. For this crowd, India’s ancient order represents a model of sacred continuity, proof that inequality can be rebranded as destiny.
Dugin has updated that fantasy for the twenty-first century. In his book, The Fourth Political Theory, he claims to reject both liberalism and Marxism. What he offers instead is a spiritualised politics in which civilisations, not individuals, are the main actors of history. In his cosmology, the West represents chaos and corruption, “the Beast”, as he calls it. Russia, China and India are the counterweights that must restore balance through tradition and rootedness.
When Dugin talks about “multipolarity”, he is not talking about diplomacy or power-sharing. He is describing theology. His multipolar world is divided into sacred blocs, each purified of internal differences. Hindu philosophy provides the vocabulary: the cyclical ages of decline and renewal, the law of dharma, and the kaliyuga as an age of moral darkness. Like Evola before him, Dugin gives these ideas an apocalyptic twist, arguing that modernity must collapse before sacred order can return.
This message flatters India’s political Right. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, often describe India not as a secular democracy but as a civilisational State, an ancient nation rediscovering its essence after centuries of Western rule. Dugin’s talk of spiritual decolonisation fits neatly within that narrative.
His circle has found sympathy among some cultural commentators and online nationalists who quote his ideas about tradition and ‘geopolitical destiny’ without naming their source. Translations of his essays appear in fringe Indian outlets that celebrate ‘Eurasianism’ as an alternative to Western influence. For younger audiences raised on social media, Dugin’s language of pride and resistance can sound appealing, even empowering, until one notices the price it demands: submission dressed up as sovereignty.
But what he offers is not affirmation. It is appropriation. The India that fascinates Dugin and before him, Evola, is a projection. It mirrors Europe’s and now ‘Eurasia’s’ spiritual insecurities. It is an India without dissent, reform or contradiction. It is an India frozen in a fetishised myth. In that version, caste becomes cosmic law, hierarchy a virtue, and pluralism a flaw.
The real India is far messier. Its philosophical tradition is built on argument and self-correction. The Buddhists rejected ritualism, the Bhakti poets defied orthodoxy, and reformers challenged caste. Dugin’s India erases that complexity. What remains is a single-note idea about purity and order, stripped of politics, humanity, and choice.
The danger is how easily that myth translates into politics. Dugin’s call for “multipolarity” may sound like a case for sovereignty and balance but beneath it lies a theology of submission. He imagines that only civilisations purged of internal differences, spiritually unified and ethnically cohesive can resist moral decay. In his world, democracy dilutes strength, pluralism breeds chaos, and equality offends the natural order.
It is a seductive message for societies weary of Western dominance. It promises dignity and destiny, but it also turns cultural pride into an argument for obedience. Authoritarianism becomes a virtue disguised as tradition.
To be clear, Dugin is not steering India’s foreign policy. His influence operates at the level of myth, where geopolitics meets metaphysics. But myths matter. When he tells Indian audiences that the fate of the world depends on their return to Vedic roots, he is inviting them into a story of spiritual rebellion that ultimately serves authoritarian ends.
The real story of India is different. It is not about returning to an imagined past but about building a living, plural democracy that thrives on debate and disagreement. Dugin’s philosophy has no room for that kind of freedom. His world runs on obedience to an immutable structure. India’s runs on argument, dynamism, and democracy.
And that is exactly what makes it strong.
Carol Schaeffer is a journalist based in Berlin, Germany, and is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington D.C.