Page 13 - A Gender-Sensitive Indian Foreign Policy- Why? and How?

Indian Council
of World Affairs

Some years ago, I wrote a piece “Have the Women Spoken?” Speaking as
2
a South Asian which I include very much in my Indian identity, I said the
following: “I often wonder what a feminist foreign policy for South Asia
would look like. (In Europe, the Swedes have it; we do not.) Can we not
consider a discourse that speaks of matters beyond war and peace (peace
in the South Asian subcontinent seems to be associated with white flags,
surrender, submission, weakness)? Do we think of a South Asian Commons?
Not an arena for mutual jousting where we bait each other in blood sport,
but a space for maturity of peaceful purpose, robust civility, and mutual
accommodation? We have built towering babels around ourselves, but we
have not cleared a way for the Commons.”

Not much distinguishes Indian and other South Asian women from
each other. We share similar genealogies, and labour under the same
masculine patriarchies. We care similarly about our children, our homes,
our environments. We are programmed to be peacemakers, each in our
own small way and we weep similarly for lives lost. We want literacy,
empowerment, and liberation from hierarchies that keep us confined in
spaces and prevent the full flowering of our talents as capable, gifted,
human beings.

I said that a feminist or gender-sensitive foreign policy would embrace the
idea of a South Asian Commons; it would speak and act in favour not
of ravishing disunities, but of rationalising unities, of merging
capacities to build, to develop, to link. It would exercise vetoes
to block war, not peace; it would emphasise the right to
food, the right to public health, the right to knowledge
and learning, the fundamental right of women to exist,
the right to reject the disconnects, the worn clichés and
mental barriers that divide us. It would weigh the interests
of humanitarianism against the interests of power with far
greater precision and wisdom. It would say no to violence,
against all, but particularly crimes against women and
children. It would reject the voices of the far right and the
far left. It would feel the true pulse of the unknown man
or woman, the marginalised, the excluded. It would have
a people-centred approach. It would promote business-
to-business engagement, building the infrastructure for
trade, removing non-tariff barriers, facilitating commerce,
understanding the economics of proximity rather than promoting
proximity as a peril. Why sacrifice these benefits at the altar

2 Nirupama Rao, ‘Have the women spoken?’, The Indian Express, 18 October 2016, https://indii-
anexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/india-pakistan-women-literacy-women-empower-
ment-women-safety-3088484/ 13

A GENDER-SENSITIVE INDIAN FOREIGN POLICY Why? and How?