Beyond Borders, Beyond Fear: India's Counter-Terrorism Vision for BRICS

For India, terrorism has never been merely a distant security debate conducted in conference rooms or reduced to carefully negotiated paragraphs in international declarations. It has been lived through lost lives, grieving families, attacks on cities, violence in border regions, and decades of confronting networks that have repeatedly attempted to disturb the country's peace. Mumbai, Pulwama and Pahalgam belong to different moments in India's recent history, yet they carry a common and painful reminder: terrorism survives when violence is sustained by networks of finance, ideology, technology, mobility and sanctuary.

This experience has shaped the way India speaks about terrorism before the world.

India has consistently argued for an international approach that treats terrorism without selectivity. This position has found increasingly explicit expression within BRICS. The 2026 New Delhi Declaration calls for "zero tolerance for terrorism," rejects double standards in countering terrorism and calls for concerted action against all terrorists and terrorist entities designated by the United Nations.

The expanding BRICS platform offers India an important space to carry this conviction forward. Under India's 2026 BRICS Chairship, counter-terrorism has acquired renewed significance. BRICS today brings together countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America and West Asia, with political and security cooperation forming one of the grouping's three broad pillars.

The question before India is therefore deeply practical: Can BRICS transform a shared rejection of terrorism into a shared capacity to prevent it?

India's Experience Gives Its Voice a Particular Weight

India's approach to terrorism has been shaped by decades of lived experience, with every attack leaving behind a different lesson. Mumbai exposed how a small group could exploit modern communications to create violence with enormous psychological impact; Pulwama revealed the devastating reach of suicide terrorism; and Pahalgam brought another painful reminder when 26 people were killed on 22 April 2025. The attack was subsequently condemned in the strongest terms by BRICS leaders in the 2026 New Delhi Declaration.

The person who carries a weapon represents the visible end of a much larger chain. Behind that person may stand recruiters, financiers, handlers, propagandists, logistical facilitators and digital networks. Somewhere along that chain there may be territories, organisations or financial channels that allow the network to survive.

The real struggle against terrorism therefore begins long before an attack occurs.

This is precisely where BRICS cooperation can acquire meaning.

Search for Collective Resolve

The New Delhi Declaration adopted on 12 September 2026 gives considerable space to terrorism. BRICS leaders condemned terrorism as criminal and unjustifiable regardless of motivation and irrespective of where, when or by whom it is committed. They reaffirmed their commitment to confronting terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.

The declaration calls for accountability under national and international law while grounding counter-terrorism in the UN Charter, human rights law and international humanitarian law where applicable.

BRICS already possesses an institutional mechanism through which this cooperation can develop. Its Counter-Terrorism Working Group is supported by five thematic subgroups. Their work has covered areas including deradicalisation, terrorist misuse of the Internet, terrorist financing and capacity-building. The 2026 New Delhi Declaration welcomed the work of the CTWG and its five subgroups under the BRICS Counter-Terrorism Strategy and Action Plan and called for deeper cooperation.

Emerging Trends

Terrorism has changed with the times. Today, recruitment can begin on a screen, communication can cross borders within seconds, and money can move through digital channels that are difficult to trace.

BRICS has recognised that terrorism is changing with technology. The New Delhi Declaration draws attention to terrorist financing, misuse of digital platforms and virtual assets, and calls for closer cooperation among financial, law-enforcement and technology agencies to detect and disrupt these networks early.

The geography of terrorism has therefore become increasingly complex.

A person now physically present in one country can communicate through infrastructure located in another jurisdiction and move resources through financial systems crossing several borders.

The finance involved

Every terrorist operation requires resources.

The financial footprint of an individual attack may sometimes be relatively small, while the infrastructure sustaining an organisation can be extensive. Terrorist financing can interact with informal transfer mechanisms, criminal networks and increasingly sophisticated digital channels.

The 2026 BRICS Declaration gives substantial attention to illicit financial flows and terrorist financing and encourages stronger cross-border cooperation among financial intelligence units and other competent authorities.

This creates an opening for India to encourage a more preventive philosophy of financial intelligence within BRICS.

Success in counter-terrorism should therefore increasingly be visible in the attacks that never take place, the recruitment networks that lose their reach, and the financial channels that are interrupted before money becomes violence.

The Human Mind

There is another dimension that deserves equal attention: the human mind.

Terrorism begins much earlier than the moment someone acquires a weapon. Radicalisation can develop through narratives of grievance, belonging, humiliation, identity and imagined purpose. Extremist organisations understand emotions remarkably well. They know how to transform loneliness into belonging, anger into identity and grievance into justification for violence.

BRICS has now explicitly recognised the importance of countering extremism and de-radicalisation, especially among younger generations, and has encouraged its members and their competent authorities to exchange best practices.

This creates room for a richer conversation within BRICS.

Families, teachers, religious leaders, universities, community organisations and digital platforms inhabit spaces that security institutions alone cannot fully reach. BRICS countries possess enormously diverse social and cultural experiences. That diversity can become an intellectual resource through exchanges on community resilience, youth engagement, digital literacy, rehabilitation and approaches to preventing extremist narratives from capturing vulnerable minds.

India's Long Campaign for a Global Understanding of Terrorism

There is an unfinished diplomatic journey that India has carried for three decades: the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism.

India initially proposed a comprehensive convention in 1996. A revised Indian draft was subsequently introduced before the UN Sixth Committee in 2000. United Nations records confirm that the 2000 text was based upon India's original proposal presented during the fifty-first session of the General Assembly in 1996.

The negotiations remain unfinished even though the United Nations continues to work towards resolving outstanding issues surrounding the draft Comprehensive Convention.

This delay reveals one of the enduring difficulties of international counter-terrorism law. States share a broad desire to suppress terrorism while questions concerning the scope of a comprehensive definition and its relationship with other bodies of international law have complicated consensus.

BRICS has now renewed its call for the expeditious finalisation and adoption of the Comprehensive Convention within the United Nations framework.

From Shared Words to Shared Responsibility

India and BRICS have reached an important moment in their engagement with terrorism. The commitment is clear: zero tolerance, rejection of double standards, stronger action against financing, safe havens, cross-border networks and radicalisation. India can now help translate this shared resolve into deeper cooperation, better intelligence exchange and stronger preventive mechanisms.

Behind every act of terrorism lies a human loss that no declaration can fully capture. India carries the memory of such losses into its BRICS Chairship. The true measure of cooperation will therefore lie in preventing violence before it reaches another family. India's message can remain simple: human life cannot become collateral to geopolitical convenience, and terrorism must find no safe space between national borders.

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*The author, Dr Sreoshi Sinha, is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the School of International Relations and Peace Studies, Nalanda University. Views expressed are personal.*