On August 28, at the end of the 25th round of special representative level talks between India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing, both sides separately issued an eight-point list of outcomes and consensus that promises to advance the future dialogue on the vexed boundary issue. Regardless of ultimate resolution, the outcome laid the groundwork for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s anticipated visit to New Delhi to attend the 18th BRICS summit on September 12 and 13.

India is currently the BRICS chair. Although still unconfirmed, this would be Xi’s first visit to India in seven years. He and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are expected to hold a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit to add momentum to their continued effort to rebuild the frayed China-India ties. 

Both leaders attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, August 31 to September 1. However, no bilateral exchanges were held, barring a handshake between the two that lasted few seconds. New Delhi prefers the venue for a high-profile meeting to be inside the country, not at a foreign location or for mere optics. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin also attended the SCO summit in Bishkek and will also travel to New Delhi for the BRICS summit later in September. Bishkek was the venue for an official Modi-Putin meeting on August 31, where both leaders discussed various key aspects of bilateral ties, including cooperation in areas of trade and investment, energy, and defense. Modi reportedly offered Putin India’s mediation assistance in ending the war with Ukraine. They also shared a car to travel to the opening ceremony for the World Nomad Games, currently underway in Kyrgyzstan. Notably, Putin met Xi for a bilateral meeting in Bishkek also. 

No such meeting between Putin and Modi, however, has been planned in New Delhi. India seems to be heavily invested on ensuring a productive meeting with the Chinese, undiluted by any other high-profile engagement. While this urgency by New Delhi and Beijing to manage their relationship is shaped by evolving geopolitics, the meetings, their venues, and agendas are part of the broader power flexing, hedging, and ally hunting that has marked the existence and workings of BRICS in the last two decades. 

One of the core principles of the inception, working, and expansion of minilateral organizations is internal cohesion. A common vision unites members. While differences and their explicit articulation are common in the larger universal forums and multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, minilateral groups are built to espouse specific goals, and their success depends on the extent to which differences are kept manageable or outside the agenda of the organization. 

BRICS stands apart in this respect, particularly given the constant power play and maneuverings between the three leading members: India, China, and Russia. The trajectory of the bilateral relationship between India and China, on the one hand, and India and Russia, on the other, seems to be the two parallel yet connected tracks shaping how far New Delhi is willing to let the group’s agenda be framed as anti-Western. For example, principally due to New Delhi’s opposition, the de-dollarization campaign initiated by China and Russia has stalled. India does support the group’s alternative financial institutions, like the New Development Bank (NDB), which provides credit without conditionalities, unlike those imposed by Western institutions. It also uses bilateral local currency agreement such as the India-UAE Local Currency Settlement System (to trade in rupee and dirham) and digital frameworks like BRICS Pay to reduce vulnerability to sanctions, tariffs, and the volatility of the U.S. dollar.

New Delhi aims to achieve a range of objectives during its chairmanship, seeking to make the group more “ practical, actionable, development-oriented,” and responsive to the challenges confronting the Global South. It has sought to give the acronym BRICS itself a new policy meaning: “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability,” advocating for “humanity first” and “people-centric” approach. However, the key to achieving even its rather less-contentious agenda – including issues such as disaster resilience, clean energy, climate action, green finance, energy transition, health, fintech, digital public infrastructure, AI, trade, supply chains resilience, and space economy – needs support from other members, including China and Russia. New Delhi’s parallel diplomacy in Beijing and Bishkek appears to be geared toward those ends.  

At the same time, though, the unresolved border dispute with China has cast a long shadow over India’s engagement with BRICS. New Delhi has consistently resisted efforts to expand the grouping’s economic or connectivity initiatives in ways that could indirectly legitimize Chinese infrastructure ambitions, such as linkages to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which India opposes tooth and nail. India has also been opposed to proposals for a common BRICS currency, wary that such instruments could be dominated by Chinese financial architecture. Similarly, both Russia and China are open to Pakistan’s membership into BRICS, which New Delhi resists given its adversarial relationship with Pakistan and its apprehension of allowing the China-Pakistan axis a new platform. Pakistan’s fragile economic profile doesn’t qualify it to become a BRICS member, India has argued. Moreover, the internal fragmentation, differences, and dilution of agenda with the inclusion of new members like Egypt and Ethiopia, Iran, and UAE has made New Delhi cautious about inviting more new members. The bandwagoning of countries with China further compounded these complexities.

This underlying distrust means India often approaches BRICS summits with a defensive posture, prioritizing the containment of Chinese influence while pursuing ambitious collective goals. It is unlikely that even a successful Modi-Xi meeting will shift the pronounced lack of trust that characterizes relations between the two countries.

India’s relationship with Russia, on the other hand, has been forged over decades of defense cooperation, energy trade, and diplomatic support. It provides India a crucial counterbalance within BRICS. Russia remains one of India’s largest arms suppliers, and the relationship has only deepened since the Ukraine war pushed Moscow to provide discounted oil exports that New Delhi eagerly absorbs. 

In an ironic twist, India of late has emerged as a key supplier of gasoline to Russia, after large Russian refineries were crippled by Ukrainian attacks.  While this is unlikely to change the distorted trade between the two countries, such need-based partnership gives India a degree of comfort operating within the China-heavy grouping. 

Russian and Chinese ties are also complex, marked by mutual dependence, strategic mistrust, and competing interests. Yet both countries have increasingly found common ground in challenging the existing U.S.-led international order. India, on the other hand, frequently leverages its ties with Russia and, more importantly, the latter’s dependency on non-Western partners to ensure Moscow remains sensitive to Indian security and diplomatic concerns. India has supported Russian positions on issues where doing so does not conflict with its own strategic autonomy and the goal of building a multipolar world order. However, even this seemingly strong partnership has to navigate the largely anti-Western motives that Russia shares with China. 

These divergences and distrust will continue to test BRICS’ unity and growth potential. New Delhi aims to keep BRICS relevant to the Global South while preventing its transformation into a Chinese bandwagon or an explicitly anti-Western coalition. But detachment from Beijing isn’t an option. It requires a complex skill set and diplomatic dexterity of engaging China adequately, aligning with Russia tangentially, and at the same time maintaining India’s strategic autonomy. Ironically, these very bilateral relationships that make this balancing act possible also reveal the limitations of BRICS as a unified political project. Under the changing world order, for India, maintaining this balance may ultimately prove to be a more significant achievement than any ambitious new initiative announced during its chairmanship.