BRICS realpolitik: How India-China tensions get defused, strategic leverage grows

What would have happened to India-China border stand-offs had it not been for BRICS summits? In 2017, the countries were caught in a military logjam at Doklam, with neither willing to baulk. It lasted 73 days, till it dawned on China that the 9th BRICS summit at Xiamen was at stake if Narendra Modi didn't travel. China pulled back troops and saved the summit.

This time, too, matters grew tense in the eastern sector of LoAC. But Beijing agreed at the special representatives' meet to start corps commander-level talks in the eastern and middle sectors of the India-China boundary, the former happening before last weekend's summit. Matters as contested as boundary dispute may not get resolved because of a summit. But they can get defused.

Beijing doesn't want a border stand- off with India to cloud its larger global projection through BRICS, which it considers a bigger strategic play to counter the West. The massive 2020 troop build-up on India's northern borders is a good instance of how the PLA got more latitude, resulting in the violent June 15 Galwan clash, because the BRICS summit slated for July in St Petersburg that year had to be postponed due to the pandemic.


Eventually, there was a virtual summit in November 2020. But it couldn't have happened in the shadow of a tense India-China border situation. Again, Beijing saw greater strategic premium in BRICS, especially with Moscow as host, leading to the first physical meeting between foreign ministers of India and China in September 2020 on the margins of SCO. China agreed to a 5-point de-escalation plan that paved the way for the virtual summit.

By February 2021, a Pangong Tso and Gogra Post (Patrolling Point 17A) troop withdrawal deal was reached, easing the way for India to host the next virtual BRICS summit in September. Also, India had done enough militarily to stage a pushback on China. It was at the 2024 Kazan summit in Russia that Modi and Xi held their first bilateral meeting post-Galwan.

BRICS is an exercise in realpolitik for all sides, including India. It serves Indian interest to have a forum that provides a larger strategic backdrop to manage issues arising from the un-demarcated boundary with China. New Delhi also realises that as it improves border infrastructure, chances of confrontation will increase. BRICS provides a good cover. Else, edges would sharpen and regular leadership-level meetings would become a rarity.

China has its own priorities. After the New Delhi summit, Xi is scheduled to meet Donald Trump on Sep 24 in Washington. He would like to do so with a 'Greater BRICS' aura, as he looks to negotiate with the US deploying several economic leverages.

Washington has had its issues with BRICS. But Trump 2.0 has only raised the fallback value of this grouping, as well as that of SCO. India realised this during the rough ride through 2025 with the Trump regime, hitting its lowest point when Washington actively started building Islamabad as counter-leverage.

If the Rio BRICS summit in July 2025 provided a platform to push back on Trump tariffs, the image of Modi with Xi and Putin a month later at the Tianjin SCO summit provided an unexpected avenue for a political riposte. To the extent that Trump stated, 'Looks like we've lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China.'

BRICS, and SCO, serve many purposes, from providing cover to becoming leverage and, at times, strategic insurance in an eroding and uncertain world order. Can they provide an alternative in the long run? Unlikely. SCO is very restrictive, and BRICS runs the threat of becoming unwieldy with 11 members and counting. For China, this is a show of power. And, therefore, for India, a leverage on China, and the role of the one country that can tip the balance either way.

Realpolitik being the best way to understand BRICS is best illustrated by the grouping providing an effective tool to productively engage with the Eurasian economic sphere without getting bracketed with the 'enemy'. After all, not all BRICS members are adversaries of the West.

India has faced supply chain issues with China. In some cases like fertilisers, the 'solution' lies with Russia. This allows India to conduct RIC (Russia-India-China) business without labelling it as such. Similarly, there has been a surge in Indian workforce employed in Russia, exceeding 50,000 as per latest estimates. Both countries also have a labour mobility pact in place, an agenda quite different to the US.

India's prime objective is to be able to proceed with economic conversations with all geographies, without getting caught in conflicts that define the global political context today. G7, Quad, FTAs with the EU and others are a way forward with the West, while BRICS is a pathway to the China-Russia ecosystem.

India needs both. And its political equity lies in holding this balance. Which is why it can get a summit outcome document, a first since the West Asia crisis, on which both Iran and Gulf countries have signed.

It would be futile to look for institutional patterns of the 2000s in groupings like BRICS, just as it would be imprudent to dismiss them as irrelevant. They are instruments to work through today's cloak-and-dagger politics - creating unease, forcing deals, and generating leverage when staying in the game is as good as winning.