India has proposed that the India, China and other major developing nations be labeled "re-emerging powers" rather than "emerging powers, taking into consideration of their historical role they played in the past, according to local daily The Hindu on Sunday.

Indian National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon told the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that the Western construct of labeling India, China and other developing countries as " emerging nations" did not do justice to their history, according to the newspaper.

Speaking at the first-ever special session on "rising powers and global governance" at the Munich conference, Menon felt he was not sure if this label fitted the description of newly rising economic powers like China and India.

He said some people feel these countries are in the process of restoring the historical norm in the international power structure.

"Re-emerging powers would be less condescending," he suggested.

He said the notion was largely inspired by Western history that the re-emergence of these countries on the global stage would lead to conflict and dissonance in the global order.

Such concepts were a result of the European experience since the Treaty of Westphalia, as four out of five instances of reordering of the balance of power had involved conflicts of massive proportions. This led to the assumption that the rest of the world will follow a similar course, he said.