By: Zahid Sultan ( Independent Researcher Based in Srinagar, India.)
The significance of the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi lies less in the spectacle of leaders assembled around a table than in the question of what that table now represents. BRICS has travelled a considerable distance from its origins as an acronym describing four emerging economies. It has acquired institutional form, expanded geographically, accumulated economic weight and increasingly presented itself as a voice of the Global South. Under India’s chairship in 2026, the grouping brings together eleven members representing nearly half of the world’s population, around 40 percent of global GDP and roughly 26 percent of global trade. India has chosen the language of “resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability”, seeking to position BRICS as a constructive and solutions-oriented platform rather than simply an instrument of geopolitical opposition.
But the more important question is whether BRICS can become an alternative architecture of global order without becoming another instrument of great-power rivalry. The temptation to describe the organisation as an emerging counterweight to the West is understandable, but analytically inadequate. BRICS is not a conventional alliance; nor does it possess the ideological coherence, strategic uniformity or institutional discipline required of one. Its members disagree profoundly about security, economic policy, regional order and even the meaning of multipolarity. The real political significance of BRICS therefore lies elsewhere. It represents an attempt by states that have acquired greater economic and political weight to renegotiate the distribution of authority within an international system whose institutions still reflect an earlier hierarchy of power. It is precisely here that India’s role becomes consequential.
India’s interest in BRICS is not reducible to the construction of an anti-Western coalition. Indeed, such an interpretation misunderstands the central logic of Indian foreign policy. New Delhi has no compelling reason to replace Western predominance with Chinese predominance, or one hierarchy with another. Its objective is more modest but, in strategic terms, more sophisticated: to widen the field within which India can exercise choice. India’s participation in BRICS, therefore, should be understood not as an abandonment of its partnerships with the West but as an extension of its doctrine of strategic autonomy. The distinction matters.
Strategic autonomy is often reduced to a rhetorical synonym for non-alignment. It is neither. Non-alignment belonged to a particular historical moment in which newly independent states sought distance from two competing Cold War blocs. Strategic autonomy belongs to a more fluid international environment in which power is dispersed but not evenly distributed. It means preserving the capacity to cooperate with competing centres of power without allowing any one of them to determine the limits of national choice. India’s simultaneous engagement with BRICS, the Quad, the United States, Europe, Russia, the Gulf and the wider Global South is therefore not necessarily evidence of strategic incoherence. It may instead be the practical expression of a multipolar foreign policy. This is the first paradox of India’s BRICS strategy: India wants a more multipolar world without wanting BRICS to become a pole dominated by China. That contradiction cannot be wished away.
China remains the most consequential internal variable in the BRICS equation. Its economic scale, manufacturing capacity, technological capabilities and financial reach give it structural advantages within the grouping. India’s own relationship with China, meanwhile, is marked by a mixture of competition, economic interdependence, military caution and diplomatic engagement. The recent thaw following the tensions of 2020 has created space for renewed dialogue, but it has not erased the strategic distrust between the two Asian powers. Both countries continue to maintain substantial military deployments along their disputed frontier, even as economic and diplomatic relations cautiously improve.
The arrival of Xi Jinping in New Delhi therefore carries a significance that extends well beyond BRICS protocol. The summit provides India with a diplomatic arena in which China can be engaged without allowing the bilateral relationship to define the entire architecture of Indian foreign policy. This is where India’s diplomacy will be tested most severely. If New Delhi allows BRICS to become primarily a vehicle for Chinese strategic preferences, India risks converting an instrument of strategic autonomy into an institution of strategic dependence. But if India treats BRICS principally as an arena for containing China, it destroys the very multilateral platform that gives the organisation its value.
India consequently has to practise an uncomfortable form of diplomacy: cooperate with China without becoming subordinate to Chinese power; engage Russia without inheriting Russia’s confrontation with the West; work with the United States without becoming an extension of American strategy. This is not diplomatic ambiguity in the pejorative sense. It is the architecture of strategic choice.
The second major question concerns Russia. Moscow increasingly sees BRICS as a mechanism through which the international system can be insulated from Western financial and political pressure. Ahead of the New Delhi summit, Vladimir Putin has argued for deeper BRICS cooperation in technology, infrastructure, payments and investment and has explicitly criticised Western sanctions and trade restrictions.
India, however, has little interest in turning BRICS into a geopolitical instrument of Russian revisionism. Russia remains important to India for reasons that are historical, strategic and material. Defence cooperation, energy security and the long institutional relationship between the two states continue to matter. India’s continuing purchase of Russian energy, even amid Western pressure, illustrates the extent to which New Delhi is prepared to protect what it regards as core national interests. But India’s interests are not identical to Russia’s. Moscow wants an international order less constrained by Western power. India wants an international order in which no major power- Western or otherwise possesses disproportionate capacity to constrain Indian choices.
The distinction is subtle but fundamental.Russia seeks revision. India seeks room. The two objectives can overlap, but they are not synonymous. This is why the debate over de-dollarisation requires greater analytical caution than it usually receives. There is an understandable tendency to interpret every discussion of alternative payment systems, local currencies or digital currencies as evidence that BRICS is preparing to dethrone the dollar. Such claims exaggerate both the cohesion of BRICS and the capacity of its members to construct a viable alternative monetary architecture.
India’s approach is more pragmatic. New Delhi has supported greater interoperability of payment systems and discussions around linking digital currencies, while emphasising practical mechanisms for reducing transaction costs and facilitating trade rather than announcing an imminent replacement for the dollar. BRICS finance officials have also called for reforms of the IMF and World Bank and for more representative, transparent and accountable global financial institutions.
The distinction between de-dollarisation and diversification is therefore crucial. India has an interest in diversification because excessive dependence on a single financial infrastructure creates strategic vulnerability. But diversification does not require the destruction of the existing system. It requires the creation of alternatives. This is a recurring feature of Indian diplomacy: reform rather than rupture. India’s preferred international politics is not revolutionary in the classical sense. It is revisionist without being destructive. It seeks to redistribute voice, representation and institutional authority while preserving enough of the existing system to prevent international disorder from becoming unmanageable. That may be BRICS’ most important contribution. The organisation’s strongest argument is not that the West is illegitimate. It is that Western dominance is no longer sufficient to constitute international legitimacy.
The distinction deserves emphasis. The post-1945 order produced institutions of enormous historical importance. The United Nations, Bretton Woods institutions and the broader architecture of multilateral cooperation created mechanisms through which states could manage collective problems. But institutional legitimacy depends partly upon representation. When the distribution of economic and political power changes while institutional structures remain relatively static, a legitimacy deficit emerges. BRICS occupies this deficit. Its expansion is therefore not merely a matter of adding countries to a club. It is an institutional expression of a larger political claim: that the distribution of voice in global governance should more closely correspond to the distribution of contemporary economic and demographic weight.
India’s role within this process is particularly interesting because it has both the legitimacy and the incentives to make the argument without turning it into a crusade against the West. This explains India’s emphasis on development, technology, financial inclusion, supply-chain resilience, innovation and reform of global institutions. India’s 2026 chairship has deliberately attempted to give BRICS a functional rather than merely declaratory character, with extensive ministerial and sectoral engagements across areas ranging from employment and education to digital infrastructure and innovation.
The point is significant. International institutions acquire durable influence when they solve problems. They become rhetorical clubs when they merely diagnose them. BRICS has spent considerable time diagnosing the inequities of the international system. Its next test is whether it can develop institutions capable of doing something about them. The New Development Bank is an important beginning, but it cannot by itself transform the architecture of global finance. The real test will be whether BRICS can create practical mechanisms for development finance, cross-border payments, technology cooperation, supply-chain resilience and knowledge exchange that are sufficiently credible to survive the political differences among its members.
This is where India’s conception of BRICS may prove more consequential than the more dramatic rhetoric surrounding the summit. India does not need BRICS to become a military alliance. It does not need BRICS to become a common ideological front. It needs BRICS to become institutionally useful. That may sound less grandiose than the rhetoric of a “new world order”, but it is precisely why it matters.
The contemporary international system is not simply divided between the West and the Rest. It is characterised by overlapping hierarchies. The United States retains extraordinary military, technological and financial power. China has become a formidable economic and strategic power. Russia retains substantial military and energy influence despite its economic constraints. India is emerging as an increasingly consequential economic, demographic, technological and geopolitical actor. The Gulf states possess financial and energy leverage. Middle powers increasingly refuse to behave as permanent clients of any great power.
BRICS reflects this fragmentation. But fragmentation itself is not emancipation. A world with multiple centres of power can be more democratic, but it can also become more unstable. Multipolarity does not automatically produce justice. It can simply redistribute the capacity for domination. This is the fundamental normative question confronting BRICS. If the answer is merely that Western power should be replaced by Chinese, Russian or another form of great-power dominance, then BRICS would reproduce the very hierarchy it claims to challenge.
If, however, multipolarity means creating institutional conditions under which no single power can monopolise the definition of legitimate interests, then BRICS represents something genuinely important. India has an opportunity to articulate precisely this distinction.
The country’s civilisational and diplomatic vocabulary of pluralism, its historical experience with colonialism and its contemporary aspiration for great-power status give it an unusual position within the organisation. India can speak simultaneously as a major power and as a developing country; as a participant in Western-led institutions and as a critic of their asymmetries; as a partner of Russia and a competitor of China; as a member of the Global South and an increasingly important actor in global governance. This dual positioning is not a weakness. It is India’s comparative diplomatic advantage.
But it also creates a responsibility. India cannot claim to speak for the Global South simply because it occupies a large demographic and economic space within it. Representation has to be demonstrated through institutional outcomes. If BRICS is to become more than a summit ritual, India will have to persuade its members that its conception of the Global South is not merely a vocabulary for Indian influence.
This is where the summit’s emphasis on resilience and innovation becomes politically meaningful. India’s attempt to connect digital public infrastructure, technology, education, research, start-ups, financial connectivity and development cooperation reflects an effort to construct forms of cooperation that are less dependent upon ideological agreement. Such functional cooperation may ultimately be more durable than grand geopolitical declarations.
There is another reason India matters. BRICS is becoming more internally heterogeneous. Its expansion has brought together states with divergent political systems, economic structures and strategic interests. The recent conflict involving Iran and Israel and the wider disruption to regional energy and maritime routes have exposed the difficulty of constructing a common geopolitical position even among states that share dissatisfaction with aspects of Western power. The presence of both Iran and the UAE within an expanded BRICS makes the problem particularly evident.
The organisation therefore confronts an institutional paradox: the more representative BRICS becomes, the more difficult consensus may become. Expansion increases legitimacy but can reduce coherence. This makes India’s emphasis on consensus and practical cooperation strategically sensible. New Delhi should resist the temptation to turn every international crisis into a test of BRICS unity. The organisation does not need unanimity on every conflict to be consequential. Its purpose should be to identify areas where interests converge and build institutions around them.
This is perhaps the most important conceptual correction to the current discourse. BRICS does not need to become a bloc. It needs to become a platform. A bloc presupposes an adversary. A platform presupposes a purpose. India’s strategic interest lies overwhelmingly in the latter.
The danger for New Delhi is that the geopolitical environment may nevertheless push BRICS towards bloc politics. Intensifying US-China competition, Russia’s confrontation with the West, sanctions, technological restrictions, trade disputes and wars in West Asia create incentives for BRICS members to define themselves negatively as an alternative to Western power. India should resist this gravitational pull. For India, the real prize is not the symbolic defeat of the West. It is the institutional expansion of Indian choice.
This is why the summit should be judged not by how aggressively it denounces Western power, but by whether it advances India’s preferred conception of multipolarity: diversified financial arrangements, greater representation in global institutions, technology cooperation, resilient supply chains, development finance, digital connectivity and a more equitable distribution of decision-making power.
India’s challenge is therefore simultaneously external and internal. Externally, it must navigate the competition between Washington and Beijing without becoming an appendage of either. Within BRICS, it must prevent Chinese predominance without turning the organisation into an India-China battlefield. With Russia, it must preserve a strategically valuable relationship without allowing Moscow’s geopolitical confrontation with the West to become India’s institutional agenda. With the Global South, it must translate the rhetoric of representation into material outcomes.
And within the international system, it must demonstrate that a rising India is not merely demanding a larger seat at the existing table but is capable of contributing to the reconstruction of the table itself. This is the deeper significance of New Delhi’s BRICS moment. The summit is not the arrival of a post-American order. Nor is it evidence that the Western order has suddenly become irrelevant. Such claims mistake geopolitical transition for geopolitical replacement. What is occurring is more complicated. The international system is becoming denser, more contested and less hierarchical in some domains, even as power remains profoundly unequal in others.
India’s task is to inhabit this contradiction rather than resolve it prematurely. Its strategic autonomy depends upon maintaining multiple partnerships. Its economic ambitions require access to Western capital, technology and markets. Its security calculations require engagement with Russia and cooperation with other Asian and Indo-Pacific powers. Its continental reality requires managing China. Its diplomatic aspirations require deeper engagement with the Global South. There is no single alignment capable of satisfying all these interests. That is precisely why BRICS matters. For India, BRICS is not an alternative to the West. It is not an alliance against China. It is not a Russian geopolitical instrument. And it is not merely a forum for the Global South. It is something more strategically useful: an additional layer in India’s architecture of autonomy.
The success of India’s chairship should therefore be measured against a demanding standard. Can New Delhi help transform BRICS from a vocabulary of dissatisfaction into an institutional mechanism for negotiated reform? Can it preserve the organisation’s diversity without allowing that diversity to become paralysis? Can it expand the autonomy of member states without constructing another hierarchy? And can India persuade the world that multipolarity is not simply the multiplication of powerful states, but the democratisation of international decision-making?
The answers will determine whether BRICS becomes a durable institution or remains a periodically spectacular coalition of grievances. For India, however, there is an even larger stake. A rising power is often confronted with an uncomfortable choice: accept an order designed by others or attempt to overturn it. India has historically resisted both extremes. Its contemporary diplomacy suggests a third possibility to modify the architecture from within while simultaneously cultivating alternatives outside it.
That is a slower strategy. It lacks the drama of geopolitical rupture. It produces fewer spectacular declarations. But international orders are rarely transformed by declarations alone. They are transformed when states acquire sufficient capacity to make existing institutions adapt to new realities. India’s BRICS strategy is best understood in those terms. The question is not whether India will choose between the West and the emerging non-Western order. The more consequential question is whether India can help ensure that neither becomes an order that others are compelled merely to inhabit.
This, ultimately, constitutes the central strategic logic of New Delhi’s engagement with BRICS. India’s objective is neither to construct an alternative bloc opposed to the West nor to acquiesce in an international order increasingly shaped by any single major power. Rather, it seeks to widen the institutional and diplomatic space within which states can exercise meaningful strategic choice. BRICS, in this conception, is valuable not because it offers a ready-made alternative order, but because it can contribute to a more plural and representative distribution of power, provided its growing institutional ambitions are not reduced to geopolitical bloc formation. For India, therefore, the significance of BRICS lies in its potential to advance multipolarity without reproducing the rigidities of bipolar confrontation: to diversify centres of influence, strengthen the voice of emerging powers, and reform existing institutions while preserving the possibilities of cooperation across competing geopolitical alignments.
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