6 min readSep 12, 2026 04:21 PM IST First published on: Sep 12, 2026 at 04:21 PM ISTIt’s an extraordinary conclave of global leaders. As the BRICS summit opens today at Bharat Mandapam, the leaders will represent almost half the world’s population, 40 per cent of global GDP and over a quarter of global trade. The geopolitics makes the lineup even more exceptional, almost audacious. Narendra Modi will host, amongst others, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian, Indonesia’s Prabowo Subianto, China’s Xi Jinping and the UN Secretary-General. Almost miraculous, in these Manichean times.It will be tempting to judge it, though, as one judges all summits: Can a communiqué survive the night? Can two wars be papered over in a paragraph? And if Xi shows up smiling, is that a thaw? None of these is the real test. Anyone who has attended the drafting of a summit line in this town knows how it goes. It starts with the communiqué and ends with the communiqué, and whatever grand vision India has for the international system two decades from now is considered — politely — by India’s diplomats to be somebody else’s bailiwick: The professors. The real test is whether India brings an idea to the meeting or is simply a venue for others’ ideas.AdvertisementSurjit Bhalla wrote one for India in this paper yesterday: Dump BRICS, look West. His maths is not wrong, and neither is his analysis. China will never rebalance. But BRICS was never meant to be either a growth miracle or a security blanket. To fail it for not being something it never set out to be is to flunk it in the wrong exam. The real mistake comes at the conclusion. Looking West because America has shown itself willing to punish partners who drift is not grand strategy. It is a mere change of address.BRICS is imbalanced. China pushed hardest for new members. Its bank is in Shanghai. Russia and Iran, the members under Western sanctions, are the ones most interested in de-dollarising their trade. And it is Washington, not Beijing, that now threatens tariffs against any bloc that flirts with a rival to the dollar. Equidistance between America and China is not a policy; it’s an assertion of powerlessness. Alignment with either is surrender. What India should do instead is work, quietly, to change what BRICS is for. The world doesn’t need more blocs. It needs more choices. A grouping that seats Iran beside the UAE will never agree on ideology, and need not.Must Read | BRICS Summit 2026 Live Updates: PM Modi announces adoption of BRICS Delhi declaration, focus on smooth flow of global tradeThe international system, and Asia at its centre, is too large and too plural to be organised around a single axis. India’s place in the world gives it both latitude and responsibility to say this with conviction. Brazil and South Africa, which gain nothing from either Chinese or American primacy, can say it with the same conviction, and should join Delhi at the table.AdvertisementThe rule applies in the other direction too. Reforming a Western-designed system is a legitimate wish, but a world where Washington is replaced by Beijing as the trusted guarantor of Asian choices simply replaces one centre with another. The harder ambition is an Asia in which China is powerful but not hegemonic, India influential but not domineering, ASEAN does not have to choose, the Gulf defines itself, and the small don’t have to be anyone’s client states. None of that is “anti-China”. All of it is opposed to hegemony. That distinction is the whole argument.Three things are within India’s reach this weekend. First, an interoperability protocol that links domestic fast-payment systems, building on UPI’s existing presence in the Gulf and South-East Asia and allowing any member to join (or leave) at will. Not a BRICS currency, but a set of alternatives so that no country ever has to rely on a single financial plumbing system. Second, reform of NDB governance that gives newer members more power over its capital. Third, if the sherpas insist on a statement about Ukraine and Gaza, let’s make it one about principles, not positions: Not an endorsement of anyone’s war aims but a defence of sovereignty which applies to Ukrainians and Gazans alike, and an offer of Indian good offices that this government has, for whatever reason, been extremely reluctant to extend.you may likeWhen I teach Indian foreign policy at Jawaharlal Nehru University, I teach Kautilya too. The mandala confuses my students for reasons opposite those I expect. They think an old book will give them hierarchies. They find networks. I call their attention to the inner ring, where the vijigishu sits: The king who wishes to conquer. Then you realise that every king in a mandala considers himself the vijigishu. The map has as many centres as it has points. Hegemony, in Kautilya, isn’t how the world is. It’s what one powerful ruler wants to make of it, despite all the other vijigishus. Asia should settle, instead, for a Kautilyan compromise: A circle of states that can disagree and still cooperate, whose sovereignty is absolute and none of which has the power or the excuse to impose its will on the others.Also Read | Explained: Why you can’t put all of BRICS in the anti-West boxHistory is being made whilst we wait. But it isn’t made by onlookers. It’s hammered out on anvils. For two days this weekend, India is in possession of the anvil. Washington and Beijing wield the hammers. If India can lay ideas on that anvil this weekend, there’s a chance Asia will have more than one centre when the dust settles. And if there’s one enduring product of this summit that survives the photo-op, let it not be a declaration. Let it be a different question we ask about Asia. Not “Who will dominate?” but “How do we ensure that nobody does?”(The writer is dean and professor, SIS, JNU and former vice-chancellor, University of Jammu)