MJ Akbar
Two pictures and a phrase were the dictionary and thesaurus of the 18th BRICS summit of 11 member states on its 20th anniversary.
When China’s inscrutable President Xi Jinping becomes scrutable, it is because serious thought has been put into the shift. His normal visage at the highest point of visual camaraderie is at best a manicured smile. On Saturday, September 12, his eyes lit up, his face beamed with genuine pleasure, and a wide smile broadened into a laugh as he joined the laughter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Vladimir Putin at the BRICS conference hall in Delhi.
In a telling display of warmth, Modi gripped Xi’s arm with one hand and clasped Putin by the other. All three knew that each gesture, each move, each word was an international message through the world’s cameras. Images of this triangle of laughter within a circle of bonhomie went viral and made the front pages of every relevant newspaper on Sunday morning.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the laugh was worth a million for analysts in chanceries and the dark rooms of deep-state departments in every important capital.
The body language of the second photograph, in which Modi took Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian by the hand and walked with him to a high table upturned the existing calculus of Indian policy towards the conflicted lands between the Arabian and Mediterranean Seas, underlined Modi’s skills as a bridge builder, and reinforced India’s ascent as a benevolent power with the credibility to create space for peace between binaries hardened by war.
A conscious gesture
It was a conscious rather than impromptu gesture, indicating the rapport that Modi and Pezeshkian had established during their first meeting at Bishkek less than a fortnight earlier. Public vibes and closed-door discussions lifted India-Iran relations from mists of uncertainty to clarity. The mature goodwill bore fruit at BRICS; it will influence the strategic dynamics of the coming years.
The phrase which entered the lexicon, ‘politico-diplomacy’, was written into the text of the Delhi Declaration to ensure a life longer than conference semantics. With deft politico-diplomacy, Modi asserted the principles of his policy, even as he worked behind the scenes for a pragmatic, practical route map towards a new security and stability architecture.
There was no disagreement from any country as India included comprehensive condemnation of terrorism as criminal regardless of motivation, “in all its forms and manifestations, including the cross-border movement of terrorists”, and cited the specific example of the Pahalgam attack on April 22, 2025.
Prime Minister Modi established India as a pivotal power in the vast and volatile region between Europe and the Indian Ocean, a mature voice when the cacophony of war is accompanied by atonal discord, economic coercion and the monster threat of an iniquitous, disruptive, aggressive and even genocidal AI technology.
Politico-diplomacy is driven by leaders with vision. It implies that conversations between tailored suits and silken ties are not enough. Modi’s politico-diplomatic leadership persuaded UAE’s Sheikh Khaled Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to meet Pezeshkian to resolve differences over the Delhi Declaration in the best way: one-to-one. Their faces were stoic, but they found a way. This could be a precursor for a larger role for India’s Prime Minister as American power ebbs from West Asia and chameleon ideas like the Mecca Pact slither to an early demise.
Cheque-book security
Riyadh discovered the limitations of cheque-book security when the Mecca Pact crumbled upon the first impact. Pakistan and Turkey became invisible as the Houthis took coastal islands and cities over Bab al-Mandab and thereby effective control of the most active supply line of Saudi energy through the Red Sea.
Pakistan’s Generals, who in August were foaming with triumphalism, became as quiet as has-beens. Pakistan fled from a commitment sealed with a prayer before the holiest mosque in Islam and lubricated by a financial bailout of another $3 billion. The payback was betrayal. One welcome outcome is that talking about an Islamic NATO has faded.
Pakistan’s impotence was compounded by US President Donald Trump’s flat rejection of the Saudi distress call.
Curiously, Trump explained that the Houthis had told him not to enter this war. No one knew that he had a hotline to the Houthis. Churchill said that war was God’s way of teaching Americans geography; it seems the Trump White House has just received an overdue geography lesson.
The Gulf’s perennial storms can shut any window of opportunity with a sudden gust. It requires strength to keep that window open. West Asia needs healing, a new normal. A new world order will remain a cliché without serious repair of the old.
West Asia dynamics
In the last six months, West Asia’s dynamics have changed but core problems have not. Iran was vulnerable at the start of the war. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf are vulnerable now. Hamas has survived an unprecedented assault, and Hezbollah remains a fighting force. Israel is in upheaval, although its military strength can never be underestimated.
The crisis is an opportunity to address the fundamental issue of Palestine, seriously and not whimsically. The Palestine paragraphs in the Delhi Declaration are remarkably unambiguous. Israel was not mentioned, but no code is required to decipher the BRICS rejection of “forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza Strip” and prolonged occupation; affirmation of “the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people” and “full membership” of the UN as a “sovereign, independent and viable State of Palestine within the internationally recognised 1967 borders, which included the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital, in order to achieve the vision of two States living side by side, in peace and security”. BRICS also opposed any attempt to alter the legal and historical status of “occupied Jerusalem”.
India’s Prime Minister made it very clear that BRICS would be relevant only if it changed from a talk shop to a workshop, if it became a rule-maker instead of a rule-taker. He did not cover any weakness in diplomatic wool.
The summit took a firm stand on the disruption in the world economy created by the wishlist of a superpower, although the US was not mentioned. “Unilateral sanctions”, “secondary sanctions” and “coercive measures” were inconsistent with WTO rules. Modi, Xi and Putin reminded BRICS that unity was strength. Together they constitute 40 per cent of the world’s GDP, 50 per cent of its population and perhaps 100 per cent of common sense.
As Modi pointed out, the GDP of BRICS countries has grown by 4.5 times since 2006; the rest of the world grew by 2.5 per cent. There was categorical rejection of some signature decisions of Trump, including the targeted bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities which are already under IAEA watch.
New might of Asia
BRICS is also a consolidation of the new might of Asia. Asia was present in force: China, India, Russia (three-fourths of which is in Asia), Iran, Indonesia, the Philippines, Egypt, Saudi, the UAE. They ignored Trump’s threat to impose a 10 per cent tariff on any country aligning with “anti-American policies of BRICS” and opted for “fast, low-cost, more accessible, efficient, transparent and safe” intra-BRICS trade on mutually beneficial terms. On September 11, India and Russia signed a pact that includes rupee-rouble payments and $50 billion worth of investments. Much of this investment is likely to be in defence. Putin looked relaxed and very much at home in Delhi.
Xi, who will chair BRICS in 2027, recognised that cooperation between India and China was key to its future. He had a very practical message: leave as much of the past behind so that it does not become an obstacle to the future. India and China, he added, were not rivals. Both countries promised to remain sensitive to each other’s core concerns.
Xi’s opening remarks included a warning: “Challenges unseen in a century are accelerating across the world.” One of the unseens has become one of the unknowns.
China, eager to outpace America in high technology, is apprehensive about manoeuvres by the high-tech companies who control the world market. The Frankensteins who created the AI monster are busy in a strange campaign against themselves. Dario Amodei of Anthropic says the AI industry lied to the people in its pursuit of wealth and wants to give control to the “right combination of governments”, with Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of just about everything joining this enthusiastic peal of alarm bells. The “right combination” excludes China.
Xi, who will chair BRICS in 2027, recognised that cooperation between India and China was key to its future. He had a very practical message: leave as much of the past behind so that it does not become an obstacle to the future
Beijing believes that this remarkable outbreak of honesty from capitalism’s premier wealth-squeezers is a ploy to stop China’s ascendancy, which would destroy their business model. It is an expensive model. This year alone $2.5 trillion is being spent on AI. China stressed BRICS cooperation in open-source access, digital currency and training young engineers and scientists. Xi and Modi were both wary about the weaponisation of high technology.
Ties with Washington
BRICS has no reason to be and is not hostile to America. India seeks the best of relations with Washington. Putin meets Americans who come with suggestions for the end of the Ukraine war. Xi is preparing for a visit to America. In Delhi, BRICS members indicated that they had not become sovereign states to dilute their independence.
There has been near-unanimity about the success of the Delhi Summit. Turkey has voiced interest in membership. The lobby in Dhaka, which stopped Prime Minister Tarique Rahman from participating, seems to be suffering from non-buyers’ remorse. It has used a strange alibi: Delhi’s invitation was to Bangladesh rather than the Prime Minister. The format for such invitations is the same for every guest.
BRICS, said Modi, has come of age. Perhaps the time has come for India and China to think about the use of a cliché, the Global South. The term began as a replacement for the Third World. It was an attempt to suggest that the Global North, or Europe, ravaged the Global South through colonisation. But colonisation was also racist, with implications that the Global White was inherently superior to the multicoloured Global Palette. We may need a positive term that promotes the idea of the kind of national resurrection that India and China have shown.
BRICS, said President Xi, has embarked on its Golden Decade. He said this in Delhi because the Golden Decade began in Delhi.
With deft politico-diplomacy, Modi asserted the principles of his policy, even as he worked behind the scenes for a pragmatic, practical route map towards a new security and stability architecture
