Tharoor breaks ranks with Chidambaram, backs BRICS Summit as ‘diplomatic power move’

New Delhi: Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has offered a more positive assessment of the upcoming BRICS Summit than senior party colleague P. Chidambaram, describing the grouping as a useful platform for India's diplomacy and strategic interests.

Tharoor's remarks come just ahead of the BRICS Leaders' Summit in New Delhi on September 12-13, which India is hosting as the current chair of the grouping. The summit is taking place against the backdrop of the Iran conflict, tensions between major powers and growing debate over the future role of BRICS in the global order.

Tharoor differs with Chidambaram

Chidambaram recently questioned what tangible benefits India had gained from BRICS and other multilateral groupings such as the SCO, G20 and QUAD. He said he had not seen significant commercial or strategic gains from India's participation in several recent summits.

Tharoor, however, has argued that judging BRICS only by immediate economic gains misses its wider diplomatic value.

His position is that India's participation gives New Delhi another avenue to engage with major powers and emerging economies while maintaining its strategic autonomy.

'Don't make BRICS anti-West'

Tharoor has also cautioned the government against allowing the summit to develop an explicitly anti-Western character.

According to his latest remarks, India should ensure that BRICS remains “non-West” rather than “anti-West”, while keeping the country's national interest at the centre of its diplomacy.

That distinction is particularly significant for India because New Delhi maintains close strategic, defence and economic ties with the United States and other Western countries while simultaneously engaging with Russia, China and other BRICS members.

Why the 2026 BRICS summit matters

India's BRICS presidency comes at a particularly complicated geopolitical moment.

The expanded bloc now includes 11 countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The grouping therefore brings together countries with very different strategic interests.

The ongoing conflict involving Iran has further complicated the picture. Iran and the UAE, both BRICS members, now find themselves on opposing sides of the conflict, creating an additional challenge for consensus within the organisation.

India seeks practical outcomes

The Modi government is also looking to use India's BRICS presidency to advance practical areas of cooperation.

One major proposal under discussion is the possible linking of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) among BRICS countries to facilitate cross-border payments. Reuters reported that India is pushing the proposal despite significant technical and political hurdles.

Such initiatives illustrate the type of concrete cooperation that could give BRICS greater relevance beyond political declarations.

Tharoor's diplomatic argument

Tharoor's position reflects his longstanding emphasis on India's ability to engage with multiple power centres simultaneously.

For India, BRICS offers an opportunity to engage countries such as Russia and China without abandoning relationships with the US, Europe and other Western partners.

The challenge, therefore, is to prevent BRICS from becoming an ideological anti-Western alliance while still using the platform to promote a more representative and multipolar international system.

A political debate within Congress

The contrasting views of Tharoor and Chidambaram also highlight a broader debate over how India should evaluate multilateral organisations.

While Chidambaram has questioned whether such summits deliver measurable benefits, Tharoor's argument places greater weight on diplomatic access, strategic leverage and India's ability to shape international discussions.

With leaders gathering in New Delhi this weekend, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the summit is likely to provide India with several opportunities for high-level bilateral engagement alongside the formal BRICS agenda.

For Tharoor, the value of the summit therefore lies not simply in what BRICS produces as a bloc, but in how effectively India uses the platform to advance its own national interests.