Feminism and Gandhi: imagining alternatives beyond Indian nuclearism

Abstract

Abstract This article makes an important theoretical and empirical contribution to the growing literature on nuclearism, using the case-study of India. Despite sustained criticism of and organized resistance to Indian nuclearism for decades, nuclear weapons and power continue to enjoy a high degree of legitimacy, often attributed in part to a lack of articulations of alternative pathways beyond the world-view of nuclearism. Against this backdrop, I argue that a potential starting point for such a conversation in India specifically can be found in the incipient Gandhian undercurrents within Indian anti-nuclear feminist activism. After highlighting the limitations of existing attempts to coalesce Gandhian and feminist strands, I argue that a feminist-Gandhian ethic can be built around the themes of intersubjective self, emotions and ahimsa on which both these strands converge. I then illustrate how such a feminist-Gandhian ethic could help move India beyond nuclearism thanks to its capacity to facilitate more effective disaster scripting and a counter-hegemonic cultural alternative and to legitimize non-exploitative and pluralistic forms of techno-science, before concluding with its policy implications in India and beyond. Besides the addition of a regional world-view under the purview of global International Relations, this work augments a nascent strand of post-western IR theorizing which critically interrogates the binaries of the West / non-West.