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Notes -
India's influence on the world has been mostly cultural rather than military e.g. the spread of Buddhism to hundreds of millions of followers from Mongolia to Indonesia, the use of Indianized scripts and loanwords from Sanskrit and Pali in a half-dozen Southeast Asian languages, the construction of enormous Hindu temple complexes in Angkor Wat and Prambanan, the transmission of mathematical concepts through the Arab world into the west, etc.
In terms of the Indian state itself flexing its muscles around the world, I think it's too early to tell given its youth and current lack of development. China didn't become a major player on the world stage until this century when it got within striking distance of first world status. Of course, if we conclude that India will never get to that point for whatever reason then we may have to count them out or otherwise reduce our ambitions, but that remains to be seen.
I think this requires a massive qualifier on “major player on the world stage”, or at least some sort of time limit. Same for India as well, to be fair.
I was using the sense of "ability to project power on the other side of the world" by which no one really qualified until the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires in the 16th century.
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