India's BRICS balancing act: hosting Xi and Putin while resisting anti-Western tilt

New Delhi is hosting the 18th BRICS summit this weekend, and the gathering carries weight that extends far beyond the usual diplomatic choreography. Chinese President Xi Jinping will arrive in India for the first time since 2019, and Russian President Vladimir Putin will be there too—both men whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi saw just two weeks earlier at a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Kyrgyzstan. The compressed timeline itself signals something: India is moving quickly to deepen engagement with both Beijing and Moscow, even as its relationship with Washington remains strained and its own position within BRICS grows more complicated.

India's year-long presidency of BRICS is drawing to a close, and the summit represents a test of how much diplomatic room Modi can actually create for his country in a world where great powers are jostling for advantage. The bloc has grown from its original five members to eleven, adding nations like Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Egypt, Iran, and the UAE. That expansion has brought new voices to the table, but it has also fractured the group's ability to speak with one voice. 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 in Delhi, that same fault line will likely surface again.

The India-China relationship, meanwhile, sits in an uneasy middle ground. A 2024 border patrol agreement 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 the underlying tensions remain sharp. India is reporting a trade deficit with China exceeding $112 billion, and the two countries continue to argue over market access and investment terms. The border itself remains heavily militarized. According to Ashok Kantha, a former Indian ambassador to China, this is not a relationship heading toward reset—it is one of "armed coexistence and managed competition." Modi's visit with Xi will be watched closely for signs of a diplomatic thaw on trade and investment, but Kantha cautioned that stabilization should not be mistaken for fundamental change.

India's broader diplomatic strategy, which analysts call "America Plus," attempts something that may prove impossible to sustain. New Delhi wants to deepen ties with Russia and China for strategic reasons, while remaining dependent on the West for capital, technology, markets, and security. It wants BRICS to give greater weight to developing countries' concerns and to support reform of global institutions like the United Nations, IMF, and World Bank. But it does not want BRICS to become a China-led challenge to Western dominance. India has been pushing for easier cross-border payments between BRICS countries and greater use of national currencies in international trade—what some call de-dollarization, though Indian officials are careful not to frame it that way. They prefer to describe it as seeking resilience and alternatives to dollar-based financial arrangements.

The internal divisions within BRICS, however, may limit how much India can achieve. Members like Iran and the UAE have found themselves on opposing sides of regional conflicts. Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, and Egypt all maintain different relationships with the United States and hold different views on conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. Finding common ground on anything beyond economic governance reform has become difficult. Harsh Pant, vice president for Studies and Foreign Policy at the Observer Research Foundation, noted that such disagreements are likely to become more common as the bloc grows and its members' interests diverge further.

The deeper challenge for Modi is that India's balancing act will become harder as great-power rivalry intensifies. A US-China accommodation could leave India exposed. Russia's growing dependence on China is shifting the balance of power in Eurasia in ways that may not favor New Delhi. A more anti-Western BRICS could put pressure on India over its continuing dependence on Western capital and technology. The Delhi summit will show the extent of India's power as it wraps up its BRICS presidency. The real test is whether Modi can advance India's priorities for BRICS and give his country more room to maneuver internationally, without allowing the grouping to become dominated by Beijing or reduced to an anti-Western platform. That is a narrower path than it was a year ago.