Relations over rivalry, people over politics: India looks to build BRICS bridges in uncertain world | India News

Relations over rivalry, people over politics: India looks to build BRICS bridges in uncertain world

Focus on relationships over rivalry, substance over mere statements, and people over politics are the pillars of New Delhi’s approach.

As India hosts the 18th BRICS Summit this weekend, it will look to build bridges in an uncertain world, bolstering multilateral ties with an eye on development-oriented, people-centric approaches.

Focus on relationships over rivalry, substance over mere statements, and people over politics are the pillars of New Delhi’s approach, according to an Indian official.

The motto is a testament to India’s balancing act and its efforts towards world peace, especially with partners such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iran in the same room; the two BRICS members have found themselves on opposite sides of the West Asia war.

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“In the coming days, leaders from around the world will gather for the BRICS Summit. There is full confidence that the conference will feature positive and meaningful discussions on various issues, with aspirations for global welfare,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X on Friday.

“One should converse only with the virtuous, act in concert only with the virtuous.

“One should engage in debate and friendship only with the virtuous, and nothing whatsoever with the unvirtuous,” he said, setting the tone for the summit.

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Heads of the bloc’s members—India, Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates—will meet on September 12, the opening day of the summit, to discuss global governance and multilateralism. Saudi Arabia, though a full member since January 2024, has yet to attend a summit as a member state.

India considers BRICS a complementary forum in a multipolar world, alongside its participation in other global forums such as the G20, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), and Quad. This approach helps India, which exercises strategic autonomy, work with a diverse range of partners.

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The BRICS Summit embraces a people-centric approach with a “humanity-first” touch and development orientation, the person cited above said, adding that New Delhi will look to amplify the voice of the Global South at the forum.

Under India’s chairship, BRICS reaffirms its commitment to reforming global governance and strengthening multilateralism, the person added.

Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More