The Capitals: When New Delhi's Chandrayaan triumph took over BRICS leaders in Johannesburg

Last week, The Capitals told you that all eyes were on New Delhi after Moscow's failed attempt at repeating Soviet era triumph of its lunar mission. This week, with a big smile, a minimalistic grin, and a Faux pas, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended up at the center of India's lunar leap that closely mirrored New Delhi's diplomatic push to establish India as an ambitious power on the rise.

The big smilemoment came at around 6:04 PM (Indian Standard Time) on August 23— a day India will now celebrate as National Space Day to honour the success of Chandrayaan-3 mission— when Prime Minister Modi appeared during the livestreaming of successfullunar landing and fluttered a small tricolour amid a joyous screen showing scientists of Indian Space Research Organisation bursting in celebrations.

The minimalistic grin moment came next morning in the South African capital Johannesburg at the site of annual summit of BRICS— Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa— when Modi showed President Lula da Silva of Brazil a newspaper frontpage that said 'India's Modi out of this world'.

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TheFaux paswhen Modi, while triumphantly informing host South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa of Chandrayaan-3's success, ended up saying that the Vikram Lander of Chandrayaan-3 mission landed in South China, before correcting himself to add it landed on South Pole. For Indian social media users, this underlined how China was on top of Modi's mind during BRICS summit.

Read more in The Capitals this week:

Johannesburg, South Africa

One of South Africa's capitals (mind you, the country has three nationalcapitals for three different purposes; Pretoria, Cape Town and Johannesburg) hosted the showpiece summit of the nations that was seen to be riling the West. This was not for the contradictions it presented due to presence of both India and China but for its geo-economic weight thatelevated even more by the time the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China stood together for a family photo on August 24.

Brazil's PresidentLuiz Inácio Lula da Silva, China's leader Xi Jinping, South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov | Commons

Starting January 2024, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates will all be able to add BRICS membership to their resumes.

The bloc also called for comprehensive reform of the United Nations, including its Security Council— a longstanding demand of New Delhi and Brasilia — "with a view to making it more democratic, representative, effective and efficient, and to increase the representation of developing countries".

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