Page 16 - A Gender-Sensitive Indian Foreign Policy- Why? and How?

Indian Council
of World Affairs

If we are to have external credibility, then India’s politics and
policies internally must be gender sensitive too.

benefits and support, for instance) and Scheduled Castes and Tribes as well
as other underrepresented caste groups.

A third internal element relates beyond the foreign policy establishment to
the country being represented - in our case, India. If we are to have external
credibility, then India’s politics and policies internally must be gender
sensitive too. Some elements of this:

• Yes, we have read down Section 377 of the IPC, but that was
only the beginning. The way that the Transgender Act of
2019 was passed, without taking on board the concerns of
community representatives suggests that the state completely
reflects society’s discriminatory attitudes towards gender
and sexual minorities - that they cannot have expertise in the
matter of their own lives.

• Since the gang-rape in Delhi in 2012, it has become de rigeur
for politicians to speak about sexual and gender-based
violence. Statements call for strict action and severe penalties,
and preventive measures include the invasion of privacy
through CCTVs and restraints on female mobility in the name
of protection. Women, like gender and sexual minorities, are
infantilised in this discourse - unable to decide for themselves
and determine their best interests.

• Even as politicians shout themselves hoarse about saving
daughters and protecting sisters, they cannot bring
themselves to censure their peers for hateful, misogynistic
speech or worse, to bar them for being charge-sheeted for
violence. Our best defences for this are “she could be lying” or
“it is our culture.”

The reality is that our failure to create a
gender-sensitive political culture, leave
alone a gender sensitive society
completely undermines any aspiration
speakers at this seminar might
express for a gender-sensitive
foreign policy. We shroud our
failings by extending towards

16 our international window

Indian Council of World Affairs An ICWA Conversation