The New Delhi Declaration, adopted on September 12 at Bharat Mandapam, closed a two-day summit that Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired as this year's BRICS host. For New Delhi, the achievement was less about any one line in the 140-paragraph document and more about proving it could hold together a grouping that includes both Iran and the UAE, both Russia and a Gulf bloc uneasy about Moscow's ties to Tehran, without anyone walking away.
Former foreign secretary Nirupama Menon Rao called it a genuine diplomatic achievement for India, though she also noted that the carefully hedged language showed the limits of what BRICS can do when its own members disagree.
## A bigger, harder group to manage
BRICS was founded by Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2006, with South Africa joining in 2010. Since 2024 it has added Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, with Indonesia following in 2025, alongside a wider circle of "partner" countries such as Nigeria, Vietnam and Malaysia. The expanded bloc now accounts for roughly 40 percent of global GDP and about half the world's population, which is precisely why holding it together has become harder. Getting Iran and the UAE, on opposite sides of the recent Middle East conflict, to sign the same document was, by most accounts, the toughest part of this year's negotiations.
## The meeting everyone was watching: Modi and Xi
For an Indian audience, the summit's most consequential moment may not have been in the declaration at all. It was the bilateral meeting between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Xi's first visit to India in seven years and a clear sign that relations frozen since the deadly 2020 Ladakh clash are thawing.
The two leaders committed to a fair and mutually acceptable resolution of their long-running border dispute and agreed to treat the relationship with a long-term strategic view rather than letting disagreements harden into disputes, according to India's foreign ministry. There was business to discuss too: China is now India's largest trading partner, with two-way trade touching a record $151 billion in the year to March 2026, but India's trade deficit with China has also swollen to a record $112 billion. Both sides agreed to work on that imbalance and on smoother market access, though neither leader offered specifics on how.
## The Middle East: restraint, but no names
On the war involving the US, Israel and Iran, the declaration stuck to generalities: "deep concern" over escalation in the Middle East and calls for "maximum restraint," without naming any of the parties involved. China's Xi went further in his own remarks, saying the war served no one's interests and calling for a lasting ceasefire. Iran and the UAE, both BRICS members with sharply different stakes in the conflict, had blocked a joint statement on the same issue as recently as May; getting them to agree to even this softened language was described by officials as a late-night, down-to-the-wire negotiation.
## Russia, Ukraine and the sanctions question
On Ukraine, the bloc again avoided naming the country directly, calling instead for disputes to be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy. It did, however, take a clearer position against unilateral sanctions imposed outside UN Security Council authorisation, a point that matters directly to Russia and, by extension, to India, which has continued buying discounted Russian crude even after Washington slapped a 25 percent penalty tariff on Indian goods last year over exactly that trade. The Kremlin said afterward that Xi and Modi had separately offered to help facilitate peace talks on Ukraine, an offer Moscow said it welcomed.
## India's biggest prize: momentum on the UN Security Council
For New Delhi, the paragraphs on UN reform carry outsized weight. The declaration backs a bigger role for India in a reformed Security Council, part of a decades-long campaign India has run through BRICS, the G4 grouping with Brazil, Germany and Japan, and other forums. Accounts of exactly how far the text goes differ: some reporting describes it as a direct endorsement of permanent-seat bids for India and Brazil, while other accounts say the language stops short of that, backing only a larger role rather than explicit permanent membership. Even UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric weighed in on the sidelines, arguing that a council built around five permanent members no longer reflects a world eight decades removed from 1945. Days later, American economist Jeffrey Sachs added his own voice, saying no country had a stronger claim to a permanent seat than India.
Not every member is fully on board. Newer entrants such as Egypt and Ethiopia have their own Security Council ambitions and have previously resisted being locked into exclusively backing India, Brazil and South Africa, a reminder that BRICS solidarity on this issue is not automatic.
## Gaza, tariffs and the rest of the text
The declaration was more direct on Gaza than on either the Iran or Ukraine conflicts, calling for a permanent ceasefire, unhindered humanitarian access, support for UNRWA and eventual Palestinian statehood on 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital. On trade, it criticised "unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures" without naming the United States, even as President Donald Trump's administration has imposed tariffs on China, Russia and India alike and has previously called the bloc "anti-American." Putin, addressing the summit, accused unnamed powers "accustomed to thinking in colonial categories" of using tariffs and sanctions to hold back rising economies.
## Not everyone at home is convinced
The summit's success abroad hasn't silenced criticism at home. The opposition Congress party used the gathering to press the Modi government to do more to rebuild India's standing among Global South partners and to more clearly address concerns that India had been seen as tacitly endorsing strikes on fellow BRICS member Iran, a reminder that how the summit is read in New Delhi is not the same as how it was choreographed for New Delhi.
## What comes next
Modi closed the summit by urging members to turn the declaration's language into time-bound action rather than another entry in BRICS's long list of aspirational statements, a challenge that will now fall to Beijing, which takes over the bloc's rotating chairship ahead of the 2027 summit. For India, the immediate test is narrower: whether the Modi-Xi border commitments produce anything concrete on the ground, and whether the UN-reform language it fought hard for translates into actual movement at the Security Council, where progress has stalled for decades regardless of how many declarations have called for it.