The Delhi BRICS Summit offered an important picture of India’s place in a fragmenting world. New Delhi clearly sees value in a grouping that is non-Western, but little advantage in allowing it to become explicitly anti-Western. The objective is reform without rupture: a more representative international order, greater agency for the Global South and protection against economic coercion, without abandoning access to Western markets, capital and technology. That distinction was made explicit by Prime Minister Modi when he said BRICS was “not against anyone”. India did resist attempts to turn the meeting into a platform of anti-American rhetoric. We did not witness endorsement of a common BRICS currency or dramatic declaration of de-dollarisation. The focus remained on national-currency settlements, faster cross-border payments, resilient supply chains, digital public infrastructure, health, food and energy security, and reform of the UN, IMF and World Bank. India scored a significant diplomatic success in securing a unanimous New Delhi Declaration despite sharp differences between Iran and the UAE over West Asia. Consensus was preserved, but only through carefully generalised language. In this, BRICS’s value and its limitation was exposed : it can keep difficult conversations alive and affirm broad principles, but it struggles to assign responsibility or organise collective action when there is the occasional collision of the interests of its members . The Modi-Putin meeting reaffirmed the durability of the India-Russia relationship at a time when Moscow is under Western sanctions and increasingly dependent on China. India continues to value Russia as an energy, defence and strategic partner, while seeking to broaden the relationship into technology, manufacturing and industrial cooperation. But New Delhi did not endorse Moscow’s more confrontational conception of BRICS as an alternative order struggling to shake off Western rules. Engagement with Russia remains an important part of India’s strategic autonomy, but there is no evidence of alignment with a Russian-Chinese bloc. The Modi-Xi meeting was more consequential, although its results were deliberately modest. Xi’s first visit to India in nearly seven years restored the political space for engagement. Both leaders supported greater business links, mobility and cultural exchanges, and discussed India’s structural trade imbalance, supply-chain vulnerabilities and need for meaningful market access. Modi reiterated that peace and tranquillity along the border, and mutual sensitivity remain essential to the wider relationship. The outcome was therefore managed stabilisation, not a strategic reset. India and China have acknowledged the necessity of coexistence, competition and selective cooperation without pretending that mistrust has disappeared. BRICS provides one of the few settings in which this competitive coexistence can be practised. It also allows India to engage China and Russia while maintaining its partnerships with the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia. BRICS widens India’s diplomatic and economic choices. As C. Raja Mohan observes, India’s success may have been to keep BRICS “boring”: practical enough to be useful, abjuring boiler-plate ideology or rhetoric . The deeper achievement of Delhi was to preserve the manifest pluralism of the grouping. The test will come under China’s presidency in 2027. Beijing will probably push for a “Greater BRICS”, stronger political coordination and reduced dependence on Western financial systems. India will support institutional reform and greater Global South representation, but resist conversion of BRICS into a China-led geopolitical pole. BRICS matters to India not because it peddles a replacement world order, but because it helps prevent any single power or coalition from monopolising the existing one. It provides India more room for manoeuvre, in an age of unstable multipolarity. #BRICS2026