Can You Belong to Rival Groups and Still Be Independent? BRICS and India's Multi-Alignment

Independence Through Belonging to Many Groups Can a

country belong to several rival groups and remain independent of all of them? Most people assume independence requires distance. India's experience suggests it can also come from belonging to many groups at once.

Domain One: Diplomacy In **September

2026, India hosted the 18th BRICS summit in New Delhi and reached a consensus on the New Delhi Declaration**. The grouping's members have serious disputes of their own, including India's unresolved border tensions with China.

Yet the same India is a member of the Quad, a close partner of the United States and a country whose Prime Minister said in 2016 that it had overcome the "hesitations of history" with Washington. Some critics see this as trying to keep everyone happy.

George and Johny see it differently. BRICS's internal divisions stop any single member from dominating it, which is why India can belong without being dominated. The group also lets India keep talking to China when high-level bilateral visits are not happening.

And their central warning is that countries that become the frontline of great-power rivalry pay a heavy price. Belonging to several groups is how India avoids being pulled onto that frontline. The comparison with the Non-Aligned Movement (1961) is useful.

NAM sought autonomy by standing apart from both Cold War blocs. Multi-alignment seeks autonomy by engaging with all sides. The goal is the same, but the method has changed.

Domain Two: The Individual and the Civilisation

The same idea appears in the life of individuals. In Identity and Violence (2006), Amartya Sen argued that each person has many identities: nationality, language, religion, profession, gender, politics. Violence often begins when one identity is presented as the only one.

A person who is simultaneously Bengali, Muslim, an economist and a poet is harder to recruit into hatred than someone told they are only one of those things. Holding several identities protects people from being defined by any single group. Indian history offers an example at the level of a whole society. Akbar's sulh-i-kul, "peace with all", was not neutrality between faiths but engagement with all of them, through debates between scholars of different religions and appointments across communities.

An empire that engaged with every tradition was harder for any one of them to capture.

Synthesis

Comparing these domains leads to a conclusion neither shows on its own: independence comes from having many attachments, provided there is a stable core behind them. Plural belonging protects a person from being defined by one group and a state from being subordinated by one power, because no single group has a complete claim on them.

But without a stable core of values or interests, belonging to many groups becomes opportunism. Sen's plural individual still has a conscience and sulh-i-kul was still a deliberate imperial policy. India's multi-alignment needs the same: a clear sense of national interest under all its memberships.

Non-alignment kept India independent by keeping its distance from both blocs. Multi-alignment aims for the same independence by engaging with many partners at once. It will succeed only as long as India remains clear about its own interests.