India's BRICS balancing act: Can Modi keep the bloc from becoming anti-Western?

Narendra Modi is about to host one of the most delicate diplomatic performances of his tenure. This weekend in New Delhi, he will welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping—the first time Xi has set foot in India since 2019—along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of nine other nations for the 18th BRICS summit. The timing is compressed and deliberate: Modi saw both Xi and Putin just two weeks earlier at a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Kyrgyzstan. Now he is seeing them again, in his own capital, as India's year-long presidency of BRICS draws to a close. The summit is meant to showcase India's diplomatic reach and its ability to navigate between the world's great powers. But it is also a test of whether Modi can keep BRICS from becoming what he fears most: a bloc defined by opposition to the West, and one increasingly dominated by China.

India's strategy, as analysts describe it, is neither simple alignment with the West nor simple alignment against it. It is what one strategic affairs expert calls "America Plus"—a careful dependence on Western capital, technology, markets, and security partnerships, combined with deepening ties to Russia and China for strategic reasons. This is not new thinking for New Delhi. Former Indian ambassador to China Ashok Kantha explains that engagement with BRICS and other regional groupings has long been part of India's pursuit of what it calls strategic autonomy: a seat at multiple tables, the ability to pursue its own interests without being locked into any single relationship. The problem is that this balancing act is becoming harder to maintain.

The India-China relationship, which forms the foundation of BRICS dynamics, is strained. In 2024, the two countries reached a border patrol agreement that ended a four-year military standoff along their disputed frontier. International flights have resumed. The Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage has reopened. Some visa restrictions have eased. But these gestures mask deeper fractures. India reports a trade deficit with China exceeding $112 billion. The two nations argue over market access. The border remains heavily militarized. Kantha describes the relationship not as a thaw but as "armed coexistence and managed competition." The Modi-Xi meeting will be watched for signs that trade and investment disputes might ease, but Kantha cautions against mistaking stabilization for a genuine reset. India needs China to be predictable, but it cannot afford to lower its guard.

BRICS itself has become a harder instrument for India to wield. The bloc has grown from five founding members to eleven, adding nations with fundamentally different interests and relationships with the United States. Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, and Egypt sit alongside Iran and the United Arab Emirates—countries that have found themselves on opposing sides of regional conflicts. Earlier this year, BRICS foreign ministers could not agree on a joint statement about the Middle East crisis, forcing India to issue a unilateral chair's statement instead. With Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian expected at the Delhi summit, this divide is likely to resurface. Harsh Pant, a foreign policy analyst at the Observer Research Foundation, notes that such disagreements will probably become more common as BRICS tries to coordinate on issues where members have competing stakes.

India's own priorities for BRICS reflect its broader diplomatic calculation. New Delhi wants the bloc to give greater weight to developing-country concerns and to push for reform of global institutions like the United Nations, IMF, and World Bank. It has been pushing for easier cross-border payments between BRICS members and greater use of national currencies in international trade. But Modi's government has been careful—deliberately careful—not to frame this as an attempt to replace the US dollar or create a common BRICS currency. The goal, as Pant explains it, is not de-dollarization but resilience: alternatives to dollar-based arrangements that give developing nations more options without directly challenging American financial dominance. This distinction matters because it signals that India does not want BRICS to become a vehicle for anti-Western strategy.

Yet the pressure to move in that direction is real. As great-power rivalry intensifies, India's balancing act becomes more precarious. Strategic affairs analyst C. Raja Mohan warns that a US-China accommodation could leave India exposed, while Russia's growing dependence on China is shifting the balance of power in Eurasia in ways that may not favor New Delhi. A BRICS that tilts toward China, or one that becomes explicitly anti-Western, could force India to choose sides in ways it has spent decades avoiding. The Delhi summit will reveal the limits of Modi's diplomatic skill. Can he advance India's priorities for BRICS—greater voice for developing nations, reformed global institutions, alternative payment mechanisms—while preventing the bloc from becoming either a Chinese instrument or an anti-Western platform? The answer will shape not just BRICS but India's room to maneuver in a world where the space between great powers is shrinking.