New Delhi, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval on Friday said India has a spiritual civilisation which has never been threatened.

India may not have been an economically very big country in the past and has suffered many ups and downs in centuries but its spiritual civilisation was never threatened by any other country, he said.

Speaking at the occasion of a book launch -- 'Ganga', by the Draupadi Dream Trust, he said that when a state becomes a nation, it has several tangents and components but civilisation and culture play a bigger role in making a state as a nation.

Citing the example of the Jews, Doval said that though they had their own country in 1948, their concept of nationhood was 2,000 years old and any Jew, either sitting in Cochin or in Poland, he or she had a dream of a nation and that ultimately led them to have geographical nation that exists now.

"A nation is built by collective consciousness of the people who identify themselves with their glorious past and they want to carry it forward for the future generation,'' he said, adding this concept of nation may not be accepted by many people as of now but they will also realise when India will reach to its potential.

India has its own spiritual history and the "Rajya" or nation came to being in 1947.

"Our state, India is a civilised state; it's not based on religion, not based on language, nor ethnicity but on a civilization despite the different languages, culture and ethnicity," the NSA said.

Exhorting the people, he also said "we must preserve our culture and civilisation and to carry it forward for the next generation".

On the occasion, he also distributed the Draupadi Samman Patra to the daughter of late Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat, historian and archaeologist BB Lall and others.