BJP Seizes on Tharoor–Chidambaram Divide Over the Value of BRICS
An argument over the usefulness of BRICS has moved quickly from foreign policy into domestic politics after two senior Congress leaders offered markedly different assessments of the grouping.
Former finance minister P Chidambaram questioned what India had gained in concrete terms from recent BRICS summits. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor took a broader view, acknowledging that measurable achievements have sometimes been limited while arguing that the grouping still carries considerable diplomatic and strategic value.
The BJP saw an opportunity in the difference.
Party leaders presented Tharoor’s remarks as a rebuttal of Chidambaram and accused Congress of speaking in contradictory voices on India’s foreign policy as New Delhi prepared to host the 18th BRICS Summit on September 12 and 13.
The political exchange is sharper than the policy disagreement itself. Chidambaram and Tharoor are applying different tests to BRICS: one is asking what it has delivered, while the other is asking what diplomatic access and influence are worth even when immediate results are difficult to quantify.
Chidambaram Puts the Focus on Results
Chidambaram’s criticism began with a straightforward question about outcomes.
“I don't think the last two or three Brics summits have resulted in tangible benefits or tangible results,” he said.
His concern was not limited to BRICS. Chidambaram also raised questions about the practical gains India derives from its participation in several international groupings, including the G20, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and Quad.
That line of criticism challenges one of the central themes of the government’s foreign-policy messaging: that India’s expanding presence across international forums is itself evidence of greater global influence.
Chidambaram’s argument asks for a different measure. If India is investing diplomatic capital in these organisations, what specific economic, strategic or political results have followed?
That question became the starting point for Tharoor’s response.
Tharoor Accepts the Shortcomings but Defends the Platform
Tharoor did not argue that BRICS has consistently produced major concrete achievements.
“We have been longer on lofty rhetoric and grand declarations but shorter on tangible measurable outcomes. But that is par for course in diplomacy,” he said.
The second part of that assessment is central to his position.
Tharoor, a former diplomat and former UN under-secretary-general, argued that international forums cannot always be judged like commercial negotiations, where success can be measured immediately through a signed agreement or financial return.
For him, BRICS also gives India a platform to maintain relationships with major emerging economies, engage with the Global South and demonstrate its ability to bring together governments whose interests do not always align.
He described hosting world leaders for the summit as “a matter of great prestige” and said it demonstrated India’s “diplomatic convening power”.
That does not answer Chidambaram’s demand for tangible results. It offers a different definition of what counts as a result.
The BJP Turns Nuance Into a Political Contrast
The BJP had little reason to preserve that distinction.
Party spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari framed the episode as “Congress exposes Congress”, arguing that Tharoor’s comments had effectively undercut Chidambaram’s criticism.
Other BJP leaders followed the same line.
Vishnu Vardhan Reddy pointed to Tharoor’s comments about the prestige of hosting BRICS and accused Congress critics of presenting a misleading account of the summit.
BJP national president Nitin Nabin also attacked Chidambaram, accusing Congress of failing to recognise India’s development and growing international stature.
The strategy allows the BJP to make two arguments at once: defend the government’s handling of BRICS while using a Congress leader’s own assessment against another senior figure in the opposition party.
It also shifts the conversation away from the harder question Chidambaram originally raised: how should India measure the return from multilateral diplomacy?
BRICS Has More Weight, but Consensus Has Become Harder
Tharoor’s defence rests partly on the scale of the expanded grouping.
He noted that BRICS members collectively account for a large share of the world’s population and around 41% of global GDP, arguing that such a grouping cannot simply be dismissed.
BRICS has also changed substantially from the original coalition of Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa subsequently joined, followed by another phase of expansion that broadened the bloc’s geographic and economic reach.
That growth has strengthened its claim to represent emerging economies and parts of the Global South.
It has also made agreement more difficult.
BRICS members do not share a common foreign policy. They have different relationships with Washington, Moscow and Beijing, different economic structures and different interests in major international conflicts.
Tharoor himself acknowledged those limitations, including the difficulty of forging common positions on issues involving Ukraine and Iran.
That tension sits at the centre of the debate. A larger BRICS carries greater collective economic weight, but greater diversity can make decisive action harder.
India Has Reasons to Keep Multiple Diplomatic Channels Open
Tharoor also linked BRICS to India’s economic interests.
He argued that the grouping could provide opportunities to diversify export markets and maintain additional channels of economic engagement at a time of uncertainty in relations with the United States.
His argument was not that BRICS economies could simply replace the US market.
Rather, India benefits from having options.
That logic has long shaped New Delhi’s foreign policy. India participates in BRICS alongside Russia and China while simultaneously working with the United States, Japan and Australia through the Quad. It belongs to the G20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as well.
Those memberships sometimes bring India into rooms containing countries with sharply conflicting interests.
From one perspective, that can make the organisations look inconsistent or ineffective. From another, maintaining access across competing geopolitical camps is precisely the advantage.
The Tharoor-Chidambaram disagreement reflects that divide in interpretation.
Diplomatic Influence Is Harder to Measure Than a Trade Deal
There is also a methodological problem behind the argument.
A trade agreement produces numbers. Tariffs can fall, exports can rise and investment commitments can be tracked.
Diplomatic influence is less tidy.
A summit can preserve communication between governments without producing an agreement. It can create opportunities for bilateral meetings, coordinate positions before negotiations elsewhere or provide access that becomes valuable during a later crisis.
None of that means multilateral meetings should be exempt from scrutiny. Governments can invoke vague notions of prestige to avoid answering questions about results.
But the opposite approach has limitations too. Requiring every summit to produce an immediate, measurable benefit risks ignoring how diplomacy often works.
That is why Tharoor could acknowledge BRICS’ shortage of recent concrete achievements while still defending India’s participation in it.
The two positions are not mutually exclusive.
A Policy Argument Becomes a Test of Congress Unity
The BJP’s intervention has ensured that the debate will not remain confined to foreign policy.
Tharoor has previously taken positions on international affairs that differ in tone from those adopted by other Congress leaders. Each such instance creates an opening for the BJP to portray policy differences as evidence of a larger internal divide.
The BRICS exchange fits easily into that pattern.
Yet describing Tharoor as simply rejecting Chidambaram would flatten the substance of what both men said.
Chidambaram is questioning whether recent BRICS summits have delivered enough tangible value.
Tharoor largely accepts the concern about measurable outcomes but argues that it captures only part of the value of multilateral diplomacy.
The BJP has turned that difference in emphasis into a political weapon.
Behind the party argument, however, sits a question that extends beyond Congress and the BJP: what should India expect from the growing number of international forums in which it plays a leading role?
The New Delhi summit will provide another opportunity to answer it. The strongest case for BRICS will ultimately depend not on declarations about prestige or criticism of its shortcomings, but on whether India can convert diplomatic access into economic, strategic or institutional gains over time.
