India Gains In Stature At BRICS Summit In China

THE BRICS Summit in Xiamen, China has worked well to considerably enhance India’s global stature.

- Nilova Roy Chaudhury

Even before it began, the 9th summit meeting between the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) ensured that the face-off between Indian and Chinese forces ended peacefully, with mutual disengagement at the Doklam tri-junction. Chinese President Xi Jinping did not want a situation where one of the five leaders due to be present at the crucial summit did not attend, and Indian diplomacy allowed him that face-saver.

It is an indicator of the importance of BRICS that both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi were invested enough in the group to ensure that officials brought about the disengagement at the Doklam tri-junction a week before the summit at Xiamen.

At the summit, on September 4 and 5, there was no awkwardness on display as Indian Prime Minister Modi met with President Xi, indicating that they had decided to place bilateral tensions behind them and look ahead to ensure that differences between the two countries did not turn into disputes.

At the Summit, India scored a major diplomatic victory and managed to ensure that China’s ‘all-weather ally’ Pakistan was censured by the BRICS leaders. For the first time ever, the names of key Pakistan-sponsored terrorist organisations like the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) and the Haqqani network were included in the BRICS joint declaration for causing violence.

The BRICS leaders unanimously adopted the declaration in which they expressed “concern on the security situation in the region and violence caused by the Taliban, ISIL/DAISH, Al-Qaida and its affiliates including the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, TTP and Hizb ut-Tahrir.”