How can Indian Foreign Policy analysis account for the epistemic gap that exists in its knowledge production and diplomatic historiography with reference to mapping the contributions made by women collectives and their delegates? To explore this question and to mainstream the contributions of women collectives, this article draws upon the conceptual frameworks of post-colonial feminist theory (PFT) and Feminist Foreign Policy analysis (FFPA) approach to highlight the intersectional feminist agendas that the early women collective such as the All-India Women’s Conference (AIWC) were able to circulate domestically and internationally. Conventional foreign policy analysis (FPA) frameworks embedded in gendered social hierarchies tend to elide over the multiple complexities and levels of interventions made by these women collectives in fostering a feminist informed anti-colonial standpoint in the international. It analyses the activism of AIWC, to argue that, by pursuing an intended geo-strategic feminist spatial praxis, they as politico-diplomatic agents dented the masculine domestic and imperial projects by challenging the spatial/epistemic and public/private segregation for the anti-colonial cause. Additionally, capitalizing on their feminist diplomatic clout these women delegates infused the international with practices that circumvented masculine networks and subverted them.
Achilleos-SarllC. (2018). Reconceptualising foreign policy as gendered, sexualised and racialised: Towards a postcolonial feminist foreign policy (analysis). Journal of International Women’s Studies, 19(1), 34–49.
2.
AgathangelouA. M., & TurcotteH. M. (2010). Postcolonial theories and challenges to ‘First World-ism’. In LauraS. J. (Ed.), Gender matters in global politics (pp. 70–84). Routledge.
AIWC. (1934). Annual report. Margaret Cousins Memorial Library (MCM).
5.
AIWC. (1937). Annual report. Margaret Cousins Memorial Library (MCM).
6.
AIWC. (1945). Annual report. Margaret Cousins Memorial Library (MCM).
7.
AppadoraiA. (1979). The Asian Relations Conference in perspective. International Studies, 18(3), 275–285.
8.
ArniA. (2024). The India League and the condition of India: Agnotological imperialism, colonial state violence and the making of anticolonial knowledge 1930–4. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 34, 1–26.
9.
BashevkinS. (2018). Women as foreign policy leaders: National security and gender politics in superpower America. Oxford University Press.
10.
BasuA., & RayB. (2018). Women’s struggle: A history of the all India women’s conference 1927–2016. Manohar Publishers.
11.
BaylyM. J. (2022). Lineages of Indian international relations: The Indian Council on World Affairs, the League of Nations, and the pedagogy of internationalism. The International History Review, 44(4), 819–835.
12.
BoschM. (2009). Between entertainment and nationalist politics: The uses of folklore in the spectacle of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. Women’s Studies International Forum, 32(1), 4–12.
13.
BoseS., & ManjapraK. K. (2010). Cosmopolitan thought zones: South Asia and the global circulation of ideas. Palgrave Macmillan.
14.
BowmanJ. (2023). The early political thought and publishing career of V. K. Krishna Menon, 1928–1938. The Historical Journal, 66(3), 641–665.
15.
ChakravartyS. (2006). Crusader extraordinary: Krishna Menon and the India League, 1932–36. India Research Press.
16.
CockburnC. (2010). Gender relations as causal in militarization and war: A feminist standpoint. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 12(2), 139–157.
17.
CornutJ. (2018). Diplomacy, agency, and the logic of improvisation and virtuosity in practice. European Journal of International Relations, 24(3), 712–736.
18.
DuBoisE. C., & OlivieroK. (2009). Circling the globe: International feminism reconsidered, 1920 to 1975. Women’s Studies International Forum, 32(1), 1–3.
19.
EnloeC. (1990). Nationalism and masculinity: The nationalist story is not over—and it is not a simple story. InBananas, beaches & bases: Making feminist sense of international politics (pp. 83–124). University of California Press.
20.
EnloeC. (2010). Nimo’s war, Emma’s war: Making feminist sense of the Iraq war. University of California Press.
21.
HerrenM. (2015). Gender and international relations through the lens of the League of Nations (1919–1945). In SlugaG., & JamesC. (Eds.), Women, diplomacy and international politics since 1500 (pp. 182–201). Routledge.
22.
KawlraA. (2014). Sari and the narrative of nation in 20th-century India. In NoschM. L., VaradarajanL., & FengZ. (Eds.), Global textile encounters (pp. 213–226). Oxbow Books.
23.
LouroM. L. (2015). India and the League Against Imperialism: A special ‘blend’ of nationalism and internationalism. In RazaA., RoyF., & ZachariahB. (Eds.), The internationalist moment: South Asia, worlds, and world views, 1917–39 (pp. 22–55). Sage Publications India.
24.
McGarrP. M. (2011). ‘India’s Rasputin’?: V. K. Krishna Menon and Anglo-American misperceptions of Indian foreign policymaking, 1947–1964. Diplomacy & Statecraft, 22(2), 239–260.
25.
MohantyC. T. (2003). ‘Under western eyes’ revisited: Feminist solidarity through anticapitalist struggles. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(2), 499–535.
26.
MoscovitchB. (2021). ‘Against the biggest buccaneering enterprise in living history’: Krishna Menon and the colonial response to international crisis. In ChakrabortyM. (Ed.), Global South Asia (pp. 26–37). Routledge.
27.
MukherjeeS. (2017). The All-Asian Women’s Conference 1931: Indian women and their leadership of a pan-Asian feminist organisation. Women’s History Review, 26(3), 363–381.
28.
MukherjeeS. (Ed.). (2018). Indian suffragettes: Female identities and transnational networks. Oxford University Press.
29.
NeumannI. B. (2005). To be a diplomat. International Studies Perspectives, 6(1), 72–93.
30.
NeumannI. B. (2015). Sited diplomacy. InDiplomatic cultures and international politics (pp. 91–104). Routledge.
31.
NMML. (1936–1937). Film No. 9, File No. 113, All Asian Women’s Conference. Microfilm Archives.
32.
ParrR. (2022). Citizens of everywhere: Indian women, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, 1920–1952. Cambridge University Press.
33.
RörichL. (2013). Decentering feminist internationalisms: Indian and international women’s organizations between the world wars. Comparative, 23(4–5), 47–67.
34.
SandellM. (2011). Regional versus international: Women’s activism and organisational spaces in the inter-war period. The International History Review, 33(4), 607–625.
35.
SinhaM. (2000). Refashioning Mother India: Feminism and nationalism in late-colonial India. Feminist Studies, 26(3), 623–644.
36.
SinhaM. (2020). Specters of Mother India: The global restructuring of an empire. Duke University Press.
37.
SlateN. (2012). Colored cosmopolitanism: The shared struggle for freedom in the United States and India. Harvard University Press.
38.
SlateN. (2024). The Art of Freedom: Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and the Making of Modern India. University of Pittsburgh Press.
39.
SlugaG., & JamesC. (Eds.). (2016). Women, diplomacy and international politics since 1500 (Vol. 1). Routledge.
40.
StandfieldC. (2020). Gendering the practice turn in diplomacy. European Journal of International Relations, 26(1_suppl), 140–165.
41.
TarloE. (1996). Clothing matters: Dress and identity in India. University of Chicago Press.
42.
ThakurV. (2017). Liberal, liminal and lost: India’s first diplomats and the narrative of foreign policy. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 45(2), 232–258.
43.
ThakurV. (2019). An Asian drama: The Asian Relations Conference, 1947. The International History Review, 41(3), 673–695.
44.
ThakurV. (2021). India’s first diplomat: VS Srinivasa Sastri and the making of liberal internationalism. Policy Press.
45.
ThakurV. (2022). Travels in diplomacy: VS Srinivasa Sastri and GS Bajpai in 1921–1922. The International History Review, 44(4), 874–891.
46.
TicknerJ. A. (2016). A critique of Morgenthau’s principles of political realism. In ArtR. J., & JervisR. (Eds.), International politics: Enduring concepts and contemporary issues (pp. 15–27). Pearson.
47.
TicknerL. (1988). The spectacle of women: Imagery of the suffrage campaign 1907–1914. University of Chicago Press.
48.
Van der SpuyP., & ClowesL. (2012). Transnational mentoring: The impact of Sarojini Naidu’s 1924 visit to South Africa on Cissie Gool and women’s leadership. In Women’s activism (pp. 28–43). Routledge.
49.
ZimmermannS. (2018). Globalizing gendered labour policy: International labour standards and the Global South, 1919–1947. In BorisE., HoehtkerD., & ZimmermanS. (Eds.), Women’s ILO (pp. 227–254). Brill.
