India was a founding member, in 1985, of which regional cooperation organisation?

SAARC, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, is the correct answer, established on 8 December 1985 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with India as one of its founding members alongside Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka; Afghanistan joined later in 2007 as an eighth member, bringing the total to eight countries. SAARC's headquarters is located in Kathmandu, Nepal, and its stated objectives include promoting economic growth, social progress, and cultural development among South Asian nations while strengthening collective self-reliance and mutual trust. The organisation was conceived through the efforts of Bangladeshi President Ziaur Rahman, who proposed the idea of regional cooperation in the late 1970s, culminating in the first summit in Dhaka in 1985. ASEAN, the first distractor, stands for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, founded in 1967 in Bangkok by five original members (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand), and India is notably not a member, though it maintains a strategic partnership with the bloc. BRICS, the second distractor, is an economic grouping originally of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, with the acronym first coined in 2001 and the group holding its first formal summit only in 2009, making it a much newer and economically (rather than regionally geographic) focused organisation. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the third distractor, was founded in 2001 by China, Russia, and Central Asian states, with India and Pakistan joining as full members only in 2017, making it neither founded by India nor dated to 1985. A common exam trap is confusing SAARC with SAFTA (South Asian Free Trade Area), which is SAARC's trade-focused offshoot established later in 2006, or mixing up SAARC's 1985 founding with BRICS's 2009 first summit.