In New Delhi, as the world's largest economic coalition gathered under one roof, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi faced the ancient challenge of the convener: how to hold together those whose interests converge only at the edges. The BRICS Summit of September 2026 brought eleven nations representing 3.7 billion people and forty percent of global GDP into a single hall — yet the very breadth of that gathering revealed how much harder unity becomes when the circle grows wider. Modi pressed Putin on Ukraine, welcomed Iran's isolated president, and quietly resisted the pull toward an anti-Weste