Some news outlets have been calling it a "space shuttle", which is highly inaccurate considering that this has no plans of being for human use. I'm happy with the progress ISRO has made but lying/deception will not help anybody.
"The hypersonic flight experiment (HEX) will be followed by the landing experiment (LEX), return flight experiment (REX) and scramjet propulsion experiment (SPEX)."
Notice - scramjet. I think it isn't reusable space program like SpaceX's. It is more of an advanced tech development program with "spaceplane" being a goal. Dovetails nicely with the current active development of 7Mach Russian-Indian scramjet missile BraMos 2.
The origin of the term shuttle is from weaving with back and forth motion carrying a payload, so something that is reusable can very arguably be termed a shuttle (especially if it can bring things back and forth to orbit).
Off topic - It's a little sad when people's first reaction to a mistake or inaccuracy is to immediately claim it as a deliberate attempt to mislead or other malicious act, and I see this a lot. Generally in Internet arguments the response to someone making an incorrect statement seems to be to call them a liar, as though they are deliberately misstating things, rather than simply being wrong...