BRICS meeting in Delhi shows rift

BRICS is supposed to sell a simple idea — the big non-Western powers can act together when the West can’t. But the New Delhi meeting on April 24 showed the harder truth. Once you expand the club and drop an active Middle East war into the room, unity gets much harder. India ended the meeting without a joint statement and put out a chair’s summary instead — which is diplomatic code for: we talked, but we could not agree. (mea.gov.in) ### What actually happened in Delhi? India hosted a meeting of BRICS deputy foreign ministers and special envoys for the Middle East and North Africa. The agenda was the regional crisis — basically the wars and spillover tensions touching Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Israel, and the Gulf. The official Indian summary said members expressed “deep concern” and exchanged views, but it stopped short of a common position because consensus never formed. (mea.gov.in) ### Why is “no joint statement” a big deal? Because these meetings are built to produce one. A joint communiqué is the proof that the bloc can turn private disagreement into public language. When even that fails, the real message is the disagreement itself. India’s use of a chair’s statement matters for exactly that reason — it preserved the meeting, but it also exposed the split. (mea.gov.in) ### Where did the split come from? The fault line runs through the Middle East war and who should be blamed, condemned, or defended. Iran is now a BRICS member. So are the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Ethiopia, alongside the older core of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — with Indonesia also in the expanded lineup described in curren(mea.gov.in)ed softer wording or broader framing. That is not a drafting quibble — it reflects opposing strategic interests inside the same club. (indianexpress.com) ### Why was India in the middle of this? India is the 2026 BRICS chair, so it had to manage the room. But India also has its own balancing act. It has long backed the Palestinian cause, while also building much closer ties with Israel and deep partnerships with Gulf states. That makes India us(indianexpress.com)rael-Palestine to keep a broader consensus alive. That effort did not work. (thehindu.com) ### Is this just one bad meeting? Not really. It points to a structural problem inside an expanded BRICS. The bloc got bigger faster than it built habits for handling direct conflicts among members and partners. It is easy to agree on broad themes like reformin(thehindu.com)ections. (tbsnews.net) ### Does this mean BRICS is breaking apart? Probably not — but it does mean the “BRICS speaks with one voice” story looks weaker than it did. The grouping still has reasons to stick together: trade, finance, political signaling, and shared frustration with Western-led institutions. But cohesion now depends much more on the topic. On Middle East security, the limits are suddenly obvious. That is the real news from Delhi. (indianexpress.com) ### What should we watch next? September. India still has to shepherd the bloc toward the 2026 leaders’ summit, and the test will be whether it can produce consensus text there on the wars now dividing members. If Delhi cannot, this meeting will look less like a stumble and more like a warning — BRICS can expand, but expansion also imports rivalries. (indiatoday.in) The bottom line is simple. BRICS did not fail because diplomats forgot how to write. It failed because the bloc now includes countries that want incompatible things from the same crisis. Delhi just made that impossible to hide.