Tharoor Urges India to Guard Its Interests at BRICS Summit
Shashi Tharoor says India must prioritise national interest at the BRICS Summit, play hardball with China, and brace for US sanctions over Russian oil.
As India hosts the 18th BRICS Summit, the chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor, has laid out what he sees as the central foreign policy tests before New Delhi, stressing that national interest must come before collective multilateral goals even as the country welcomes more than a dozen heads of state and government.
Speaking ahead of the gathering, Tharoor said the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping would be the focal point of the summit. On the continuing friction along the Line of Actual Control, he said India is right to keep cooperating with China in forums such as BRICS while refusing to blur the line between bilateral disputes and broader multilateral aims.
He recalled the Galwan clash as an unprovoked transgression that killed 20 Indian soldiers, and said the situation on the ground has not yet returned to the earlier position. Beyond the border, he pointed to Chinese economic pressure, including the withholding of critical industrial inputs such as rare earths, tunnel boring machines and power substations, describing it as the use of India's import dependence as leverage.
India, he said, is open to reciprocating a friendly gesture from Beijing, but is equally prepared to respond firmly if China chooses confrontation. Any bilateral conversation, he added, must proceed on India's terms.
On Russia, Tharoor flagged the risk of US sanctions of up to 100 per cent on countries that continue buying Russian crude. He noted that India had earlier trimmed energy imports and stepped back from Iran's Chabahar project to respect American sanctions, but said repeating that approach with Russia would be far harder given the scale of India's energy needs. Turning to alternative suppliers such as Venezuela or Guyana, he said transport costs would rise sharply.
He suggested the government may eventually have to place energy security above access to Western markets, and could need to tell Indian exporters that they might lose their American market while being helped to find buyers elsewhere. Energy cooperation with Russia, he noted, runs both ways, since India also sells refined petroleum products back to Moscow. New Delhi, he added, can still try to persuade Washington to allow more time and space to continue the relationship.
On the economic agenda of the expanded 11-member bloc, Tharoor cautioned against a joint push away from the dollar towards an alternative dominated by the Chinese yuan. He instead backed bilateral local-currency arrangements, citing the rupee-rouble trade with Russia.
He also addressed the absence of Bangladesh's Prime Minister, who reportedly declined to attend over confusion about whether the invitation was as Prime Minister or as BIMSTEC chair. Tharoor called Dhaka's explanation odd, and said an invitation to the BIMSTEC chair inherently honours the Prime Minister of Bangladesh.
On Pakistan, he said India must veto any attempt by China or Russia to bring Islamabad into BRICS, arguing that Pakistan has taken no step to dismantle cross-border terror infrastructure. As Pakistan prepares to chair the SCO, he recommended continued engagement to protect Indian interests, noting that other member states would likely stop Islamabad from using the chair to undermine the organisation.