Debate Over India's Role in BRICS and Non-Alignment Legacy

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) grew out of the 1955 Bandung Conference, where 29 newly independent Asian and African nations agreed on ten principles: sovereignty, non-interference, refusal to join great-power military blocs, and support for peoples still under colonial rule. This spirit was institutionalised at the Belgrade Summit of 1961. India was a founding member and, for decades, its most prominent voice. NAM stood behind the anti-colonial struggles in Algeria and Vietnam, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and in the 1970s carried the demand for a New International Economic Order into the United Nations, seeking fairer prices, technology access, and representation for developing countries.

After the Cold War ended, the world turned unipolar and NAM's coherence weakened. Many members, including India, moved closer to the US-led order. NAM still exists on paper, with around 120 member states, but it rarely shapes global debates today. Into this vacuum came BRICS, formed in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India and China, with South Africa joining in 2010.

BRICS built its own institutional architecture through the Fortaleza Declaration of 2014, which created the New Development Bank (NDB) and a Contingent Reserve Arrangement, offering financing outside the World Bank and IMF. Membership expanded further when Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE joined, and at the 16th Summit, held in Kazan under Russia's chairship, Indonesia was admitted as a full member. BRICS now covers more than half of humanity and about a third of the world economy, but its members range widely, from Iran's ideological confrontation with the West to Brazil's position as a dissatisfied insider of the Western system. This internal diversity is exactly why BRICS cannot be read as a simple anti-Western bloc.