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As China lays the BRICS
India’s ideological ties with the US and Israel make it a distrusted BRICS partner, while China uses the bloc to expand its technological and economic influence. Modi’s awkward balancing act leaves India vulnerable to Beijing.
Some in BRICS unofficially suspect Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being a Trojan horse. They believe that US President Donald Trump has excessive sway over Modi, which may or may not be linked to Gautam Adani’s legal troubles in New York; enough Indian right-wingers, however, also believe India should be strategically aligned with the US and its puppet-master Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The RSS and BJP admire Israel’s anti-Muslim stand and its Greater Israel project, believing it may one day help bring about Akhand Bharat. Secretly, they may even rejoice over the genocide in Gaza.
Certainly, in India there is suspicion that the new 0.4 per cent merchant discount rate (MDR) on UPI payments above Rs.2000 is further evidence that Modi is remote-controlled by Trump. After all, a merchant who does not want to pass the cost to consumers may simply ask for a credit card; Visa and Mastercard are US companies that extract profit from such financialisation. There is the 100 per cent tariff on Indian imports approved by the US Congress. And while Trump has approved $2.8 billion in arms to Israel, India has also, since 2023, made 2,600 shipments to Israel, including an Adani arms export, the Hermes 900-drone missile. India’s foreign diplomacy may congratulate itself for breaking the ice at BRICS between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, a part of the Israel-US-India alliance, but no one in BRICS will overlook India’s arms exports to Zionism’s cruel regime.
Nonetheless, no one is going to throw India out of BRICS. And as the host of the recent summit, New Delhi had the chance to push its own agenda. Our spoon-fed media highlighted the border dispute in Modi’s bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The consequent pronouncements on the border, which saw clashes in Galwan, Ladakh, in 2020, and encroachments in Arunachal Pradesh this year, make one believe that the government is satisfied with keeping the new status quo intact.
