India, July 4 -- On June 26, the defence ministers' meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) concluded in the eastern Chinese coastal city of Qingdao without a joint statement. India had refused to sign on as the draft document avoided mention of the Pahalgam terrorist attack in April while highlighting terrorist incidents in Pakistan. India argued that signing the document would undermine its positions and policies on State-sponsored terrorism. This bias highlighted by Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh underscores China's efforts to shield its "iron brother" and ally, Pakistan. While the disagreement over the issue casts a shadow over high-level meetings of SCO hosted by China as the rotating president, it also reflects a deeper problem of how India-China differences are now at the heart of their interactions in multilateral institutions and, thus, of geopolitics. SCO and Brics, which is set to have its summit over the weekend in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, have been geopolitically significant from their very conception. However, their focus was on what Chinese official statements often identify as "practical cooperation," which included cooperation in economics and trade, technology, counter-terrorism, and sharing experiences in dealing with governance challenges to coordinating positions in multilateral trade negotiations at the World Trade Organisation and International Monetary Fund and on climate change. This focus allowed the members to avoid geopolitical divisions. While these are still significant objectives, China's strategies in these organisations have changed in the last decade. In Communist Party of China General Secretary Xi Jinping's "new era", Beijing has started to redefine the role and identity of SCO and Brics, yoking them more closely to its own particular domestic and international objectives. It has, thus, used these institutions to promote and validate a strongly anti-liberal Chinese model of political and economic development globally as well as to showcase Chinese foreign policy initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative and the three global initiatives - on development, security and civilisation - launched since 2021. China has aggressively promoted the expansion of the membership of the SCO and Brics as a way of countering the weight of Western-dominated regional and global institutions and it now increasingly wants to utilise these platforms to articulate significant geopolitical issues aligning with its own positions and interests. For example, China has hinted in recent years that these organisations should coordinate their positions on matters such as the Israel-Hamas conflict. India itself became a member of the SCO alongside Pakistan as part of the organisation's expansion and one rationale Chinese academics subsequently offered was to let the two countries use the forum to help resolve difficult bilateral problems. But China is hardly the honest broker - persistent India-China differences over Pakistan-sponsored terrorism relate to their broader geopolitical rivalry with Pakistan playing the role of China's proxy in South Asia. Expanding the role of the SCO and Brics to cover geopolitical issues as China has sought to do, redefines the role and identity of these institutions and, consequently, opens up avenues for internal divisions. Chinese moves have naturally led to opposition from India. New Delhi eventually acquiesced in the expansion of Brics but has taken a softer line than other members on Israel's actions in Gaza. Despite its gap in capabilities with China, India perceives itself to be a leader on the Asian continent and a rising power globally. China, for its part, sees itself as a putative successor to the US as global hegemon but is aware of the challenge that India poses at least over the short term. Beijing's words and deeds have been tailored accordingly. In response to remarks by the Indian defence minister at a meeting with his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of the SCO meet that stressed "the need to create good neighbourly conditions" among other things, Beijing declared that "China stands ready to maintain communication with India on issues including delimitation negotiation and border management, jointly keep the border areas peaceful and tranquil, and promote cross-border exchange and cooperation". However, the previous 60 days had also seen Sino-Pak military collusion during Operation Sindoor, a trilateral between Chinese, Pakistani and Afghan foreign ministers in Beijing soon after the declaration of a ceasefire, as well as the inaugural Bangladesh-China-Pakistan meeting of senior foreign ministry officials in Kunming in June. In the first two decades of the 21st century, multilateral forums such as the SCO and Brics provided useful platforms for interactions between the political leaderships of the two countries. However, structural conditions underlying India-China interactions have changed over the last decade. Even as there is the appearance of a rapprochement, India-China contestations have not only continued but extended to multilateral organisations. The Brics Summit in Rio has for its theme "Strengthening Global South Cooperation for More Inclusive and Sustainable Governance". However, India-China competition will now likely prevent institutions such as the SCO or Brics from emerging as platforms for Global South cooperation and advocacy. Given Chinese ambitions and strategies within regional and global organisations, there will be fewer multilateral forums where India and China can come together to move their relationship along other tracks or to discuss differences. Meanwhile, a West in relative decline and often unwilling to meet its commitments to the global good, and India's still limited capabilities in an age of rapid economic, technological and military transformation mean that claims of strategic autonomy ring increasingly hollow. Instead, New Delhi faces increasingly stark choices - alignment with China on the latter's terms, alignment with a West pulling in different directions, or a difficult, lonely free-floater position in international politics. The twin questions of what India must do to regain agency in its international relations and how it must go about doing it, have not yet been credibly addressed by its political leadership....