Introduction

This chapter situates itself on the crossroads of non-Western International Relations (IR), feminist theory and foreign policy analysis (FPA), introducing feminist decolonial historiography as a methodological disruptor for the androcentric narratives of foreign policy and IR.1 In this pursuit, the chapter uses the case of Indian foreign policy and Indian IR to illustrate how feminist decolonial historiography can be employed to highlight the gendered nature of IR and its resultant post-colonial IR and FPA iterations.

The study of India's foreign policy has often been referred to as under-theorized in the IR discipline. As scholars studying Indian foreign policy have contended, its study is mostly distanced from the larger frameworks of IR theorization as well as frameworks of FPA (Ganguly and Pardesi, 2015 ; Hansel et al, 2017). In recent times, scholars of Indian foreign policy have made commendable attempts at bridging this gap. However, these explorations have been largely silent on the question of gendered foundations, even when looking at non-Western IR theoretical frameworks, thus giving the impression that the Indian foreign policy terrain/ ecosystem is gender-neutral. This chapter attempts to fill this lacuna in the literature by employing the tool of feminist decolonial historiography to understand the theoretical exploration of India's foreign policy by centring gender therein. In this pursuit, this chapter proposes feminist decolonial historiography as an important method to counter the androcentric narratives in IR theorizations and FPA.

Looking at the early years of independent India's foreign policy making, this study provides a preliminary exploration of the foreign policy visions of two of the pioneer women in the Indian foreign office at the time, Vijaya Laksmi Pandit and Lakshmi Menon. In doing so, the chapter argues that when we employ a feminist decolonial historiography in the study of foreign policy, it brings forth new actors, who had earlier been marginalized. Thus, it contributes to the larger pool of evidence for FPA and adds to the under-explored terrains of international history and IR at large. Hence, this chapter argues for engaging and (re)formulating these fields from a non-Western standpoint, thus making the case for post-colonial knowledge production in the emerging field of gender and foreign policy. The chapter provides evidence of foreign policy contemplations of two of the earliest women leaders in the Indian foreign policy establishment.