Ms Aishani Sen Dutta

phD Scholar

Department of Political Science

Bankura University

Abstract

The international order is passing through a period of considerable uncertainty. Geopolitical conflicts, technological disruption, climate change, inequality, health insecurity and uneven development increasingly cross-national borders and cannot be addressed by states acting alone. Against this background, the 2026 BRICS New Delhi Declaration offers an important opportunity to examine how India is contributing to contemporary debates on global cooperation. Adopted during India’s BRICS Chairship, the Declaration places considerable emphasis on inclusive multilateralism, sustainable development, resilience, cultural diversity, people-centred growth and a stronger voice for the Global South.

This article approaches these priorities through an Indian intellectual lens by examining their conceptual affinity with Deendayal Upadhyaya’s Ekatma Manavavada, or Integral Humanism. Upadhyaya understood the human being as more than an economic individual. For him, physical well-being, the mind, intellect and spiritual self-formed an integrated whole, while the individual was situated within progressively wider relationships encompassing family, society, nation, humanity and nature. Development, therefore, could not be measured through material prosperity alone.

The article does not suggest that BRICS has adopted Integral Humanism or that Ekatma Manavavada constitutes an ideological foundation of the New Delhi Declaration. Rather, it argues that Integral Humanism provides an indigenous Indian philosophical vocabulary through which some of the Declaration’s central concerns can be interpreted. Seen from this perspective, India’s engagement with BRICS raises a wider question: can multilateralism move beyond managing relations between states and become more attentive to human dignity, cultural plurality, ecological responsibility and the welfare of societies?

Keywords: Deendayal Upadhyaya, Ekatma Manavavada, Integral Humanism, BRICS, India, multilateralism, Global South, human-centred development, New Delhi Declaration 2026.

Introduction

India’s engagement with the world has rarely been confined to questions of power alone. Alongside its strategic interests, there has been a continuing Indian intellectual concern with the relationship between the individual and society, material progress and ethical responsibility, diversity and coexistence, and humanity and nature. These questions acquire renewed significance at a time when the international system is struggling with challenges that cannot be understood purely through economic growth or geopolitical competition.

The 2026 BRICS New Delhi Declaration provides an interesting contemporary setting in which to revisit these questions. Adopted at the eighteenth BRICS Summit in New Delhi on 12–13 September 2026 under India’s Chairship, the Declaration reflects a BRICS agenda that now extends well beyond conventional economic cooperation. It addresses reform of global governance, sustainable and inclusive development, technological change, climate resilience, health, cultural exchanges and people-to-people cooperation. The Declaration describes the approach pursued during India’s Chairship as practical, inclusive, development-oriented and people-centred.

For India, this language has a particular resonance. India’s engagement with modernity has long involved a parallel intellectual question: must development simply reproduce models created elsewhere, or can India engage with the modern world while drawing upon its own philosophical and civilisational resources?

It is within this larger conversation that Deendayal Upadhyaya’s Ekatma Manavavada, formulated in the 1960s, deserves reconsideration. Upadhyaya was dissatisfied with approaches that understood the human being principally through material needs or economic relationships. His concern was with the complete human person and with the relationships connecting the individual to family, society, nation, humanity and the wider natural order.

This article does not claim that the New Delhi Declaration is an expression of Integral Humanism. Such a claim would confuse philosophical interpretation with institutional genealogy. Instead, it asks a more modest but intellectually significant question: can an Indian philosophy such as Ekatma Manavavada provide a useful conceptual lens through which India understands and contributes to an emerging, more inclusive form of multilateralism?

Ekatma Manavavada: An Indian Understanding of Human Development

At the heart of Ekatma Manavavada lies a simple concern: what is development actually for?

For Upadhyaya, material prosperity was necessary, but it could never provide a complete answer. A human being could not be reduced to a producer, consumer, worker or unit within an economic system. Human life contained physical, mental, intellectual and spiritual dimensions, and meaningful development required harmony among them.

It was from this standpoint that Upadhyaya criticised both capitalism and communism as he understood them. He believed that each, despite their very different approaches, tended to view human life primarily through its material dimension. Integral Humanism attempted to restore the human person to the centre of development.

This becomes clearer through the four Purusharthas: Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha. Artha, or material well-being, and Kama, associated with legitimate human desires, are not rejected. They form part of human life. But they cannot operate without an ethical orientation. Dharma, in this conception, provides that normative framework, while Moksharepresents a higher dimension of human fulfilment.

Development consequently becomes a process of balance rather than accumulation alone.

The same principle extends beyond the individual. Upadhyaya did not imagine the person and society as fundamentally opposed entities. Individual, family, community and nation were interconnected. His concept of Chiti similarly emphasised that societies possess distinctive cultural personalities and that their development cannot simply be created through the mechanical transplantation of external models.

This aspect of his thought becomes particularly relevant when considered from the perspective of India and the wider Global South. The question is not whether societies should reject modernity, technology or global cooperation. It is whether they should have the intellectual and political space to pursue development in ways consistent with their own histories, social circumstances and cultural experiences.

India, BRICS and a More Inclusive Multilateralism

This question takes us directly to India’s role in BRICS.

For India, BRICS has significance partly because it creates political space for emerging and developing countries to participate more substantially in debates over the future of global governance. The New Delhi Declaration repeatedly calls for a more representative, equitable and responsive international system and for greater representation of developing countries in global institutions.

India’s approach under its 2026 Chairship is particularly revealing. Its theme, Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability, did not present these ideas as isolated objectives. They were conceived as interconnected dimensions of development. India’s own diplomatic institute described the Chairship as organised around these four priorities, while the Declaration itself emphasises a balanced, practical, inclusive, development-oriented and people-centred approach.

Here, a meaningful conceptual conversation with Integral Humanism becomes possible.

Upadhyaya questioned systems in which the human being became subordinate to impersonal structures. At the international level, a similar question may be asked of global governance: do institutions exist ultimately to serve people and societies, or must societies continually adjust themselves to structures created under very different distributions of global power?

India’s emphasis on a stronger voice for the Global South can be understood in this context. The Global South is not merely a passive recipient of rules or development models created elsewhere. Countries possess their own experiences, priorities and knowledge systems. A genuinely inclusive multilateral order must therefore allow them meaningful participation in shaping the rules and institutions that affect their futures. The Declaration itself commits BRICS to voicing the priorities of the Global South and seeking greater representation in global governance.

From an Indian perspective, this is where multilateralism becomes more than institutional reform. It becomes a question of dignity and agency.

From Integral Human Development to Global Cooperation

Perhaps the most interesting point of convergence lies in the refusal to treat development as a single-dimensional process.

The New Delhi Declaration connects economic development with social inclusion, innovation, health, climate resilience, education, urban development and human welfare. It describes science, technology and innovation as instruments for improving people’s welfare and quality of life and emphasises people-centred, inclusive and sustainable development.

This is close to the basic question posed by Integral Humanism: economic and technological advancement may be necessary, but what kind of human life are they ultimately intended to create?

Technology provides a particularly useful example. India today has substantial interests in artificial intelligence, digital public infrastructure and emerging technologies. Yet technological capability by itself cannot be the final measure of progress. The more fundamental question concerns the purpose for which technology is deployed.

Read through Ekatma Manavavada, technology should remain an instrument of human welfare rather than becoming a force to which human beings and societies are subordinated. The New Delhi Declaration’s concern with accessible, inclusive and people-centred technological development can therefore be read alongside an older Indian philosophical insistence that material instruments acquire meaning only in relation to human well-being.

Climate change introduces another dimension. The ecological crisis has made it increasingly difficult to maintain a rigid separation between human development and the natural environment. Integral Humanism’s understanding of the individual as embedded within wider layers of existence offers one way of thinking about this interdependence. The Declaration’s emphasis on climate resilience, sustainable development and differentiated national circumstances similarly recognises that economic advancement and ecological responsibility can no longer be treated as separate agendas.

Cultural Pluralism and the Global South

India’s experience also makes the question of cultural plurality particularly important.

BRICS today brings together societies with markedly different histories, political systems, cultural traditions and civilisational experiences. The New Delhi Declaration explicitly acknowledges the broad diversity of societies and civilisations represented within the grouping while continuing to emphasise cultural and people-to-people cooperation.

This diversity need not be viewed as an obstacle to cooperation.

From the perspective of Integral Humanism, unity does not necessarily require uniformity. Different communities and nations may retain their distinctive identities while participating in a wider cooperative order. This is particularly relevant to India’s engagement with the Global South, where demands for greater representation frequently coexist with a desire to preserve cultural autonomy and different pathways of development.

India can therefore bring something more than economic weight to this conversation. It can bring an intellectual tradition that asks whether plurality itself can become the basis of cooperation.

Seen this way, the movement from Ekatma Manavavada towards multilateralism is not an attempt to internationalise a domestic political philosophy. It is an effort to explore whether an Indian conception of interconnectedness can enrich contemporary discussions about international cooperation.

The conceptual movement is therefore from integral human development towards cooperative global development: from the dignity of the individual to the welfare of society, from society to nation, and from the nation towards a wider international responsibility.

Conclusion

The significance of the 2026 New Delhi Declaration for India lies partly in the kind of multilateralism it seeks to articulate. It speaks of representation, sustainability, resilience, technological cooperation, development and the concerns of the Global South within the same framework. The Declaration also emerged from an Indian BRICS Chairship that explicitly described its approach as people-centred and development-oriented.

Deendayal Upadhyaya’s Ekatma Manavavada provides an Indian philosophical vocabulary through which this development can be examined. Its concern with the complete human being, ethical economic activity, social interconnectedness, cultural rootedness and harmony among different dimensions of life allows us to ask questions that conventional discussions of multilateralism sometimes overlook.

Yet the relationship must remain carefully defined. BRICS is not an institutional expression of Integral Humanism, nor does the New Delhi Declaration derive from Upadhyaya’s philosophy. The relationship proposed here is interpretive rather than genealogical.

That distinction, however, does not make the comparison less meaningful. India need not approach twenty-first-century global governance only through conceptual categories developed elsewhere. Its own intellectual traditions can provide additional ways of thinking about development, technology, society, nature and international cooperation.

Perhaps this is where Ekatma Manavavada acquires its contemporary relevance. Its contribution is not in offering a ready-made foreign-policy doctrine for BRICS. It lies in asking a more fundamental question: if development and global cooperation ultimately lose sight of the human being, society and the larger web of relationships within which human life exists, what exactly are they meant to achieve?

From an Indian perspective, the future of multilateralism may therefore require more than reforming institutions. It may also require recovering a deeper idea of interconnectedness,one in which economic progress serves human welfare, technology remains accountable to society, cultural diversity is respected rather than erased, and nations cooperate without surrendering their distinctive civilisational identities.

References