This Is Who We Are: The Civilisational Statement India Made at BRICS 2026
The first thing the world's leaders saw when they arrived at Bharat Mandapam on September 12 was not a flag, not a map, not a welcome banner with diplomatic language about cooperation and shared futures. It was a 27-foot golden dancing Shiva — the Nataraja, the Lord of the Cosmic Dance — standing at the entrance in the early Delhi morning, arms extended in four directions, one leg raised, one foot trampling the demon of ignorance, a ring of fire encircling the whole thing, made from an alloy of eight metals including traces of silver and gold, weighing approximately 18 to 20 tonnes, cast without a single welded joint using a technique that goes back to Mohenjo-Daro.
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| Image Source: @AmitShah on X |
The man who made it is Radhakrishnan Sthapaty of Swamimalai, a small town near Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu's Thanjavur district. His family has been making Shiva's idols since the Chola Empire period. Thirty-four generations. The Chola dynasty ruled southern India roughly between the 9th and 13th centuries CE and produced, among other things, the finest bronze sculpture ever made anywhere on earth. The technique Radhakrishnan used — the lost-wax casting method, in which a wax model is coated with alluvial soil, heated to burn away the wax, and filled with molten metal — is the same technique used to make the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro. More than a hundred skilled artists worked on the Bharat Mandapam Nataraja for seven months. 3.25 lakh man-hours.
India placed before the world's leaders an object whose making is an unbroken thread from the Indus Valley to the present day. No country in that BRICS photograph can say that about anything it put at the entrance of its diplomatic venue.
The design itself is actually sourced and not imagined, which is what makes it a subject of interest. The Nataraja at Bharat Mandapam draws from three specific Chola-era temples, all in Tamil Nadu. The Thillai Nataraja at Chidambaram, where Nataraja is the presiding deity and the city's name means, literally, "stage of consciousness." The Uma Maheswarar at Konerirajapuram. The Brihadeeswara at Thanjavurm, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the largest temple in India when it was completed in 1010 CE, its vimana casting no shadow at noon on the day of its consecration.
I have written about Rameswaram in the Bharat Darshan series, the 11th Jyotirlinga, the southern cardinal point of Shankaracharya's 8th century circuit, where the subcontinent runs out of arguments and simply stops, where Sri Lanka is 31 kilometres away and the Rama Setu shoals are visible at low tide. Rameswaram is Tamil Nadu. Chidambaram, which inspired the Nataraja, is Tamil Nadu. The Nataraja standing at Bharat Mandapam was made in Tamil Nadu. Modi gifted Putin the Thirukkural, a Tamil classical text. The gala dinner included Carrot Bean Poriyal and Thakkali Belle Saaru, South Indian dishes with Tamil names.
Whether by deliberate design or the organic accumulation of choices made by different departments of India's MEA under EAM Jaishankar, the Tamil civilisation was the most visible civilisational layer India chose to present to the world at BRICS 2026. That is an unreported observation and I think it is a significant one.
Now, because the iconography is not decoration, let us understand what the Nataraja actually says. Shiva as Nataraja performs the Ananda Tandava, the cosmic dance of bliss, in which the universe is simultaneously created, maintained, and dissolved.
In the upper right hand he holds the damaru — the drum whose sound is the first vibration of creation. In the upper left he holds agni — the fire that will eventually consume what was created. The lower right hand is in the abhaya mudra — the gesture of protection and fearlessness. The lower left points to the raised left foot — the gesture of liberation, of release from the cycle. The right foot stands on Apasmara, the dwarf demon of ignorance and forgetfulness.
The ring of fire surrounding everything is the cosmos itself. Two invisible interlocked triangles in the composition represent Shiva and Shakti simultaneously — the masculine and the feminine as one inseparable reality.
Creation and destruction are not opposites in this philosophy. They are one movement, one dancer, one moment. The entire cycle of existence — birth, life, death, dissolution, rebirth — is contained in a single bronze figure cast without welded joints from an eight-metal alloy by a family that has been doing this for thirty-four generations.
Ananda Coomaraswamy — the great art historian who did more than anyone to explain the Nataraja to the Western world — wrote of it: "It is the clearest image of the activity of God which any art or religion can boast of."
That sentence is engraved on a plaque at CERN — the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva — where a two-metre Nataraja has stood since June 18, 2004, gifted to the world's most advanced particle physics laboratory by the Government of India.
The physicist Fritjof Capra wrote on that same plaque: "Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art, and modern physics."
PERFECT GIFT
— Mahesh (@MaheshB101) May 6, 2021
GIFT FOR ENERGY
TO THE RIGHT PLACE!
Gift of NATRAJA -- Dancing Shiva -- from India to the CERN -- Center for Research in Particle Physics in Geneva,Switzerland. pic.twitter.com/ebDWcvo5zz
The particle physicists of Geneva and the Chola bronzecasters of Swamimalai were looking at the same thing from opposite ends of human knowledge. India knew this twenty-two years before the BRICS Summit. It sent the dancer to CERN before it sent him to Bharat Mandapam.
On the evening of September 12, after the family photograph was taken, after the bilateral meetings and the plenary sessions and the joint declaration with its 140 paragraphs, Modi hosted the eleven BRICS leaders at a gala dinner. The menu carried no meat. Khumb Galouti — mushroom kebabs on sheermal bread. Paneer Lababdar. Gucchi Marmik — Himalayan morel mushrooms with saffron and mamra almonds. Carrot Bean Poriyal. Thakkali Belle Saaru. Shahtoot Phirni with sweet mulberries and gold leaf. The Russian President, whose cuisine is built around fish and meat, ate mushroom kebabs. The Iranian President, the UAE Crown Prince, and South Africa's Ramaphosa were served Beetroot Raita, and they enjoyed their meals, attendees confirmed.
เคฐाเคนुเคฒ เคांเคงी เคी เคो เคนเคฐ เคฌाเคค เคชเคฐ เคชेเคเคฆเคฐ्เคฆ เคนोเคคा เคนै, เคिเคธเคा เคोเค เคเคฒाเค เคจเคนीं เคนै।
— Rajiv Ranjan (Lalan) Singh (@LalanSingh_1) September 14, 2026
เคเคฆเคฐเคฃीเคฏ เคช्เคฐเคงाเคจเคฎंเคค्เคฐी เคถ्เคฐी @narendramodi เคे เคจेเคคृเคค्เคต เคฎें เคฌ्เคฐिเค्เคธ เคธเคฎ्เคฎेเคฒเคจ เคฌเคนुเคค เคนी เคธเคซเคฒ เคธเคฎ्เคฎेเคฒเคจ เคฐเคนा। เคธเคญी เคช्เคฐเคคिเคจिเคงिเคฏों เคจे เคญाเคฐเคค เคे เคเคคिเคฅ्เคฏ เคी เคธเคฐाเคนเคจा เคी। เคाเคฒा เคกिเคจเคฐ เคฎें เคฌเคนुเคค เคนी เคชौเคท्เคिเค เคถाเคाเคนाเคฐी เคญोเคเคจ เคชเคฐोเคธा เคเคฏा। เคธเคญी เคจे… pic.twitter.com/mh8CcFcGlO
Modi had already placed the Thirukkural in Putin's hands that morning — the Russian translation of the 1,330-couplet Tamil classical text attributed to Thiruvalluvar, composed somewhere between the 4th century BCE and the 6th century CE. Chapter 26 of the Thirukkural is called Pulaal Marutthal — Abstinence from Meat. The gift and the menu were the same statement made twice in two different languages.
Taken together — the Nataraja, the Thirukkural, the vegetarian dinner, the Tamil thread running through all three — India was making an argument at BRICS 2026. We are not a recently independent state presenting itself as a new power. We are a civilisation that has been thinking about the nature of reality, the ethics of eating, the relationship between human beings and the cosmos, for four thousand years without interruption. The cosmic dancer at our entrance was made by a family that has been making him since the Chola Empire. The book we placed in the Russian President's hands was written 1,500 years ago. The food we served you tonight is the food of our deepest conviction about life and its sanctity.
In that photograph where leaders, Putin to Modi's left, Xi to his right, the golden dancer behind them all, arms extended in every direction, one foot trampling ignorance, one hand holding the drum of creation, one hand holding the fire of dissolution, a ring of cosmos encircling everything, India was saying something quietly.
This is who we are. This is what we think about while you were building empires. This is what we have been making, in the same way, from the same alloy, by the same family, since before your nations existed in their current form.
(Saket Suman is Editor at IndianRepublic.in, and the author of The Psychology of a Patriot.)