SCO Summit 2026: Why Bishkek Matters for India and PM Modi's Eurasian Strategy
For New Delhi, the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is neither an alliance nor an ideological
camp. It is a difficult but necessary table where India protects its security interests, keeps its Eurasian options open, and preserves the freedom
to disagree.
By Mitin Rajkuumar Sheth (Shanilohit)
Freelance Senior Columnist | Author | Geopolitical Analyst
September 2, 2026 | Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes
Executive
Summary
The 2026 SCO Summit in Bishkek showed why the
organisation continues to matter to India despite its contradictions. New Delhi
does not see the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as an alliance, nor does it
regard closer engagement with Eurasia as an alternative to its partnerships
with the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia or the Gulf.
India’s purpose is more practical. The SCO
gives New Delhi a forum to press its concerns on terrorism, remain engaged with
Russia, Iran and Central Asia, maintain dialogue with China and Pakistan, and
argue for regional connectivity that respects sovereignty and territorial
integrity. Bishkek also demonstrated the central dilemma of India’s Eurasian
policy: it must work with countries whose interests often diverge sharply from
its own without allowing those relationships to restrict its freedom of action.
For India, therefore, the value of the SCO
lies less in geopolitical alignment than in diplomatic presence. India
is at the table not to join somebody else’s camp, but to protect its own
strategic space.
Introduction
"The
26th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting, popularly known as the SCO Summit 2026,
held in Bishkek has brought global attention to India's Foreign Policy.
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
this summit is a crucial step in maintaining India's Strategic Autonomy
between global powers like Russia and China."
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is an
uncomfortable institution for India—and that is partly why it matters.
Around the same table sit Russia, China,
Pakistan, Iran and the Central Asian republics, countries with which India has
very different relationships and, in some cases, serious strategic
disagreements. The organisation itself emerged from a continental security
framework shaped largely by Russia and China. India, meanwhile, has spent the
past two decades expanding its strategic partnerships across the Indo-Pacific,
Europe, the United States and the Gulf.
Seen superficially, those two directions
can appear contradictory. They are not.
India’s foreign policy increasingly
operates across several strategic geographies at the same time. The Indo-Pacific
matters because of maritime security, trade and China’s expanding naval
presence. Eurasia matters because of energy, connectivity, terrorism,
Afghanistan, Central Asia, Russia and Iran. India cannot afford to treat one
geography as important simply because another has become more prominent.
The Bishkek summit therefore offered more
than another round of diplomatic meetings and carefully negotiated
declarations. It provided a useful test of how India intends to practise
strategic autonomy in a world where dividing lines between competing powers are sharpening.
The question is not whether India agrees
with every SCO member.
It plainly does not.
The more useful question is whether India
can remain in such an organisation, defend positions that are distinctly its own, and work with countries where interests converge while disagreeing where they
do not.
Bishkek
suggests that New Delhi believes it can.
The 26th meeting of the SCO Council of
Heads of State, held in the Kyrgyz capital from August 31 to September 1, came
at a particularly unsettled moment. The war in Ukraine continues. West Asia
remains unstable. Afghanistan still presents serious security and humanitarian
questions. Great-power competition is reshaping trade, technology and
connectivity. At the same time, India is trying to expand its strategic reach
without surrendering the autonomy that has long defined its foreign policy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s message at
Bishkek reflected that balancing act. He returned to India’s three-part
formulation for the SCO—Security, Connectivity and Opportunity,
but the significance lay in what India placed beneath those headings.
Terrorism
Remains India’s First Test for the SCO
For India, the credibility of the SCO’s
security agenda begins with terrorism.
Modi’s formulation in Bishkek was unusually
direct. He called for dismantling the ecosystem of terrorist financing,
recruitment, radicalisation and safe havens, while insisting that there could
be no double standards in dealing with terrorism. He also warned against
treating terrorism as an instrument of state policy or as a strategic asset.
The significance of that language is
difficult to miss.
India shares an SCO table with Pakistan,
while China remains Pakistan’s closest major strategic partner. That makes
counter-terrorism cooperation inside the organisation inherently complicated.
Consensus language is easier to produce than consensus action, particularly
when member states do not always agree on the sources of terrorism or on how
individual organisations should be treated.
India therefore has reason to keep pressing
the issue within the SCO rather than letting a broad regional security platform discuss terrorism only in abstract terms.
Afghanistan makes this even more important.
Instability there affects terrorism, narcotics trafficking, radicalisation and
the wider security environment of Central Asia. India has no interest in seeing
Afghanistan once again become a permissive space for groups capable of
threatening the region.
The SCO cannot solve that problem by itself. But India would gain little by leaving the discussion to others.
Connectivity,But
Not at the Cost of Sovereignty
India’s second major concern is physical
access to Eurasia.
Geography places Pakistan between India and
much of continental Eurasia. Political relations make straightforward overland
connectivity extremely difficult. That has pushed New Delhi to look at
alternative routes, including Iran’s Chabahar Port and the wider International
North-South Transport Corridor.
For India, these are not simply
infrastructure projects. They are part of the effort to reduce geographical
isolation from Central Asia, Russia and other Eurasian markets.
At Bishkek, however, Modi again attached an
important condition to connectivity: projects must respect national sovereignty
and territorial integrity.
India’s objection is specific. The
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor passes through territory claimed by India, and
New Delhi has opposed the project on sovereignty grounds. India is not against
regional connectivity; Chabahar and the INSTC make that clear. But for New
Delhi, the route matters as much as the promise of trade. A project crossing
disputed territory cannot simply set the sovereignty question aside.
None of these corridors will become
important simply because governments describe them as strategic. Ports have to
work, railway links have to connect, customs procedures have to become easier and
businesses must find the routes worth using. That practical reality should not
obscure the larger point. If India wants a meaningful presence in Eurasia, it
also needs reliable physical access to it.
Iran
Has Become Even More Important
Iran occupies an unusual place in India’s
Eurasian strategy.
It is a major West Asian state, an SCO
member, an important energy geography and India’s most practical gateway
towards Afghanistan and Central Asia without passing through Pakistan. Chabahar
gives the relationship a physical dimension that few other partnerships can
provide.
Modi’s meeting with Iranian President
Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the Bishkek summit therefore mattered
beyond bilateral diplomacy. The two leaders discussed bilateral relations as well
as developments in West Asia, and India again stressed dialogue and diplomacy,
together with the importance of freedom of navigation and commerce.
For New Delhi, the Iranian relationship has
always required careful handling. India has substantial partnerships with the
United States, Israel and the Gulf states. At the same time, isolating Iran
would complicate India’s continental strategy and weaken one of its few
realistic routes into Eurasia.
This is exactly the kind of diplomatic
contradiction that strategic autonomy is supposed to manage.
India does not have to agree with Tehran on
every regional issue to recognise that Iran matters to Indian interests.
Russia:
Partnership Without Silence on Ukraine
Russia remains another indispensable part
of India’s Eurasian calculation.
The relationship is no longer what it was
during the Cold War, and India today has a far more diversified network of
strategic partnerships. Yet defence ties, energy, nuclear cooperation, space,
trade and decades of political familiarity continue to give the India-Russia
relationship considerable weight.
Modi’s meeting with President Vladimir
Putin in Bishkek illustrated both continuity and change.
India has resisted demands to reduce its
Russia relationship to a test of political loyalty. At the same time, New Delhi
has repeatedly argued that the Ukraine conflict cannot be allowed to continue
indefinitely and that a solution must come through dialogue and diplomacy.
In Bishkek, Modi again spoke of moving
towards an end to hostilities and peace.
This is not neutrality in the sense of
having no position. India has a position: it wants the war to end, but it does
not believe that cutting political communication with Moscow would help produce
that outcome.
There is also a larger strategic
consideration. Russia remains a major Eurasian power with deep connections
across Central Asia and a significant role in India’s defense and energy
calculations. Whatever the eventual outcome in Ukraine, India has little reason
to abandon a relationship that still serves important national interests.
The challenge is to preserve that
relationship without allowing it to define the whole of Indian foreign policy.
China
Is the SCO’s Great Indian Contradiction
No relationship better demonstrates the
complexity of India’s SCO membership than China.
India and China are major Asian powers,
large trading partners and members of several multilateral institutions. They
also have an unresolved boundary dispute, a history of military confrontation
and competing strategic interests across the Indo-Pacific and Eurasia.
The SCO does not remove any of those
realities.
What it does provide is another channel in
which Indian and Chinese leaders operate within the same diplomatic framework.
In periods of tension, such platforms can retain value precisely because
bilateral relations are difficult.
India does not need to pretend that its
differences with China have disappeared in order to sit across the same table.
Nor should photographs of leaders together at a multilateral summit be mistaken
for a new geopolitical alignment.
For New Delhi, engagement with Beijing and
deterrence against Beijing are not mutually exclusive ideas. India can
strengthen its military posture along the border, deepen Indo-Pacific
partnerships and still maintain political communication with China.
The alternative—refusing dialogue until
every dispute is resolved—would give India fewer diplomatic instruments, not
more.
Central
Asia Is More Than the Space Between Russia and China
Central Asia often receives less attention
in Indian strategic debate than Russia, China or the Indo-Pacific, but that
does not make it peripheral.
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan matter for energy, minerals, connectivity, counter-terrorism and
regional stability. They also occupy the geographical space linking Russia,
China, Afghanistan, Iran and the Caspian region.
India’s problem has never been the absence
of historical connections with Central Asia. It has been converting those
connections into modern economic weight.
Trade remains constrained by geography.
Direct physical access is limited. China has built enormous economic influence
across the region, while Russia retains deep historical and security
connections.
India cannot replicate either model, and it
probably should not try.
Its comparative advantage lies elsewhere:
education, pharmaceuticals, digital technologies, capacity building, defence
cooperation, cultural familiarity, and the political comfort many Central Asian states find in maintaining relationships with several major powers rather than depending on one.
But goodwill has limits. Without reliable
access, diplomatic goodwill can take India only so far.
What
India Actually Gained at Bishkek
A summit does not need to produce a
dramatic geopolitical realignment to be useful.
The Bishkek meeting adopted the Bishkek
Declaration along with four memoranda of understanding and more than twenty
decisions and statements covering areas including climate, nuclear safety,
energy conservation and the fight against drug addiction.
India also secured support for initiatives
that reflect its attempt to broaden the SCO beyond hard security. These
included English as an official language in the SCO Charter, the Civilisation Dialogue Forum, the Young Scientist Forum, and the Young Author’s Conclave.
India is expected to host the first SCO Civilisation Dialogue Forum later in
2026.
None of these outcomes will transform
India’s strategic position overnight.
But diplomacy rarely works that way.
For India, the value of Bishkek was
cumulative. It kept terrorism high on the agenda. It reiterated India’s
sovereignty condition on connectivity. It provided opportunities for bilateral
engagement with Russia, Iran, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. It kept India present in
discussions concerning Afghanistan and Central Asia. And it allowed New Delhi
to participate in an organisation strongly influenced by Russia and China
without accepting that their strategic preferences must automatically become
India’s own.
That distinction matters.
Conclusion:
India Is at the Table for India
India does not have to adopt any of these
agendas as its own.
For New Delhi, the purpose of remaining in
the SCO is more practical. India wants stronger action against terrorism, but
not selective definitions of terrorism. It needs better access to Central Asia
and wants connectivity without compromising sovereignty. It has reasons to keep
working with Russia and Iran, just as it has reasons to keep talking to China
despite serious differences. None of this requires India to become part of a
political bloc.
There are obvious limits to what the SCO
can deliver for India. It is not going to settle the boundary dispute with
China or remove India’s concerns about terrorism emanating from Pakistan. Nor
can a continental organisation take the place of India’s growing maritime role
in the Indo-Pacific. Relations with the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia
and the Gulf countries will continue on their own tracks.
Perhaps that is precisely the point.
India does not go to the SCO expecting it
to solve every strategic problem. It goes because Eurasia matters, and because
decisions affecting that vast region will continue to be discussed whether
India is in the room or not.
Bishkek was another reminder of why New
Delhi chooses to stay in that room.
India can talk to Moscow without following
Moscow, work with Tehran without adopting Tehran’s worldview, and sit with
Beijing without pretending that the differences between India and China have
disappeared. That is not indecision. It is the difficult freedom that
strategic autonomy is meant to preserve.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mitin
Sheth (Shanilohit) is
an Indian author, geopolitical analyst and strategic book reviewer who has been
associated with the Janmabhoomi Group of Newspapers as a freelance Senior
Columnist for more than 25 years. He has written extensively on international
affairs, geopolitics and strategic issues. His work also focuses on defense and
military affairs, emerging technologies, global security, and India’s evolving
role in the international order.
SELECTED REFERENCES
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DISCLAIMER
This article is an independent analysis
based on publicly available information, official statements, credible media
reports, and open-source research. It is intended for informational and
analytical purposes only. The views and interpretations expressed are those of
the author. While every effort has been made to ensure factual accuracy,
developments may change as new information becomes available.
FULL
DISCLOSURE
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©
2026 Mitin Sheth (Shanilohit). All Rights Reserved.
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