Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: New Delhi hosts the BRICS foreign ministers’ summit, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi calls on citizens to take austerity measures amid fuel shortages, and Pakistan’s interior minister makes an important trip to Bangladesh.
New Delhi Hosts BRICS Foreign Ministers
As U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in Beijing this week, another summit is taking place in New Delhi: the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting, held on Thursday and Friday.
As this year’s BRICS chair, India accords great strategic importance to the group, which has gained momentum in recent years. New Delhi will also host the annual leaders’ meeting in September.
However, the bloc’s expanded membership—it now includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to original members Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—along with the ongoing conflict in the Middle East could make New Delhi’s job this week difficult.
New Delhi has long stood by BRICS, despite frequent criticism that the group is just a talk shop. The group enables India to balance its ties with the West and those with key players beyond it. Aside from Iran, every new member is a close partner of India, and BRICS priorities tend to align with Indian ones.
Past BRICS summits have emphasized goals and principles that are important to New Delhi, including engaging with the global south, advocating for United Nations reform, and even pushing for mechanisms to circumvent Western sanctions.
India’s embrace of BRICS has been vindicated as growing discontent with the U.S.- and Western-led global order has attracted more countries to join. The 2024 BRICS leaders’ summit in Russia, for example, featured representatives from 35 countries and several international organizations, including the U.N. secretary-general.
The membership expansion in 2024-25—the first since South Africa joined BRICS in 2010—also reflects the group’s growing cachet. Trump’s threats to impose 100 percent tariffs on the BRICS countries if the bloc tries to undermine the U.S. dollar suggest that even he recognizes its increasing prominence.
But that rising influence has presented the group with one of its biggest challenges to date: Put simply, many of the new members don’t get along. Iran and the UAE are at odds, and Egypt and Ethiopia have a fraught relationship. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia—which participates in BRICS activities despite not being a formal member—is a bitter rival of Iran.
For a group that functions based on consensus, this is a recipe for paralysis. And though India is close with the other new members, its relations with Iran are fragile—in part because of its deepening embrace of Iranian rivals such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia. This will complicate New Delhi’s efforts to manage divisions within BRICS during the summit.
The Iran war has only intensified these rivalries, and it could prevent the group from agreeing on a joint statement. (It’s hard to imagine Iran and the UAE agreeing on anything related to the war.) It’s also likely the reason why China—one of the bloc’s most critical members—will have no high-level representation this week. (China is sending its ambassador to India to the summit.)
Viewed from India’s perspective, though, there could be some benefits to these difficulties. For one, many of the new BRICS members—with the obvious exception of Iran—are also aligned with the West. So, even if disagreements make it harder for the whole group to function, it works toward New Delhi’s interests if BRICS isn’t seen as avowedly anti-West.
The Iran war could also distract the group from pursuing long-elusive initiatives that have worried India, such as a proposal for a BRICS bank to counter the Western-led global economic architecture. (After all, New Delhi relies on that architecture.)
Still, the challenges now facing BRICS suggest the strong likelihood of a vague, watered-down joint statement emerging from the foreign ministers’ summit that will give more ammunition to critics. And that’s not an ideal outcome for India, which takes pride in convening large global forums that feature ample substance alongside pageantry.
What We’re Following
Modi calls for austerity measures. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on Indians to institute austerity measures in response to fuel shortages during a rally in the city of Telangana on Sunday. Modi advised citizens to limit fuel and diesel use, work from home, and reduce foreign travel.
The comments were at odds with public statements from some other senior officials in recent weeks who took a defiant stance—contending that India is not experiencing energy shortages and that there is enough supply to avoid raising fuel prices. Such messaging also contrasted with that of other governments in South Asia, which have issued warnings about prices and shortages.
It’s unclear why Modi changed tack, but it could be political. A few key state elections are now over, with results announced last week and Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) performing well. It seems that the ruling party now has the political space to acknowledge India’s vulnerabilities and call on citizens to take steps that might bring hardship.
All this said, Indian officials are still being cautious with their public statements. On Tuesday, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri appeared to contradict Modi, saying that there was no fuel shortage. This intervention was likely intended to reduce public anxiety and the risk of panic-buying.
Did Pakistan shield Iranian jets? CBS News reported on Monday that Pakistan had allowed Iranian military jets to be parked at an air force base near the garrison city of Rawalpindi, possibly shielding them from U.S. airstrikes. The report cited unnamed U.S. officials; Pakistan quickly rejected it.
According to Pakistan, Iranian aircraft did arrive after the cease-fire brokered last month, during further talks between senior U.S. and Iranian representatives in Islamabad. Per Islamabad’s statement, the jets transported Iranian officials, with some aircraft and personnel remaining in anticipation of a possible second round of negotiation, which have not happened.
Meanwhile, CNN reported this week that some Trump administration officials have grown unhappy with Pakistan’s mediation of the Iran war, worrying that Islamabad isn’t adequately conveying Trump’s displeasure with the state of the talks to Tehran—and that it is presenting a rosy picture of the Iranian position to Trump in turn.
Both reports are just the latest reminder for Pakistan that its role as a prime mediator in the conflict was never going to be easy—inviting public criticism and broader scrutiny to its delicate diplomatic efforts.
India’s top diplomat postpones Nepal visit. Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri postponed a trip to the Nepali capital of Kathmandu for this week. The visit was expected to be important, given that Nepal has a new government and a few creeping points of tension with India, one of its most important partners.
Misri was reportedly planning to convey to Nepali Prime Minister Balendra Shah a formal invitation from Modi to visit India. But according to Nepali reports, Shah’s refusal to meet Misri prompted India to call off the trip.
This marks the latest case of Shah declining to meet with foreign officials who are not of similar or higher rank to himself. Before Misri’s visit—as with U.S. Ambassador to India Sergio Gor, who visited Kathmandu earlier this month—other senior Nepali officials, including Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle, tried to convince Shah to change his mind.
This pattern of stubbornness now presents an early test for the maverick premier. Shah pledged to shake up politics, and declining to meet with lower-ranking officials from countries close to Nepal is presumably an example of that. But he also incurs risks by taking that stand, starting with spoiling ties with close friends.
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Under the Radar
Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi visited Bangladesh last weekend, holding a few significant meetings.
Discussions with Shama Obaed Islam, Bangladesh’s state minister for foreign affairs (a cabinet-level position that is junior to the foreign minister), resulted in a joint pledge to increase trade and business cooperation. Naqvi also met with his Bangladeshi counterpart, Salahuddin Ahmed, and signed a memorandum of understanding focused on anti-narcotics
Such engagements reflect increasing Bangladesh-Pakistan cooperation, which picked up after the ouster of longtime Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2024. In the aftermath, the two countries launched formal trade for the first time since Bangladesh’s independence in 1971 and inked a series of agreements related to trade, cultural relations, and knowledge exchange.
Naqvi’s visit to Dhaka is especially notable given expectations that Bangladesh’s newly elected government aims to patch up ties with India, which have been tense since Hasina’s departure. Given signaling that Bangladesh’s foreign minister may soon visit Pakistan, it appears that Dhaka is keen to maintain momentum in the relationship.
