ANURADHA BHAGWATI

Unbecoming  -A Memoir of Disobedience by
 Anuradha Bhagwati ;Published by Atria; Pages 321 ;Price Rs.699/-

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The author of the book under review is Anuradha Bhagwati. She is the only daughter of the world renowned economist Jagdish Bhagwati and Padma Desai.eminent authority on Russia. Anuradha has refused to be downed by such a weighty background. Her parents tried to make her a good Indian girl and become a member of  the desi diaspora. But she chose to join the U S Marines — the most macho wing of the military. She rushed into the army’s  misogyny, racism and also fought to get combat roles  for women.                                                                                                                Anuradha is an activist, yoga and meditation teacher, and Marine Corps veteran. She founded the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), which brought national attention to sexual violence in the military and helped overturn the ban on women in com­bat. She is a regular media commentator on issues relating to national security, women’s rights, civil rights, and mental health, and is the recipient of numerous awards. Her writing has appeared in several important papers.  This book is a raw, unflinching memoir  detailing  her journey from dutiful daughter of immigrants to radical activist effecting historic policy reform.

Anuradha  abandoned  grad school in the Ivy League to join the Marines—the fiercest, most violent, most masculine branch of the military—determined to prove herself there in ways she couldn’t before.

Yet once training begins, Anuradha’s G.I. Jane fantasy is punctured. As a bisexual woman of colour in the military, she faces constant underestimation and  confronts misogyny, racism, sexual violence, and astonishing injustice perpetrated by those in power. Pushing herself beyond her limits, she also wrestles with what drove her to pursue such punishment in the first place.

Once her service concluded in 2004, Anuradha courageously vowed to take to task the very leaders and traditions that cast such a dark cloud over her time in the Marines. Her efforts result in historic change, including the lifting of the ban on women from pursuing combat roles in the military.

“Unbecoming” is a  tale of heroic resilience grappling with the timely question of what, exactly, America stands for. It is the kind of story that will inspire the next  generation of indomitable female heroes.

Anuradha held posts in Okinawa, Thailand and Camp Lejeune, and excelled as a marksman and runner. She  faced vicious sexual harassment and when she tried to get the Marines to address it, she ran into bureaucratic cover-ups and was thwarted by the conventions of chains of command.

She  writes artistically  describing everything from the pleasures of the basketball court to martial arts training in the Marine Corps with brutal clarity. This book  has some of the best descriptions  of what it is like to be the only woman of color in a roomful of white men. “In the national security world,” she writes, “my brownness and my gender were so loud and obvious in a sea of white dudes that it often felt like I was screaming even when I said nothing. The Marines had prepared me well for this. Although she does not see combat — a fact that haunts her — training leaves her with numerous injuries; the creeping physical toll of her service is undeniable.

The volume  is an impressive  chronicle of  overcoming psychological trauma. When she finally  files and wins a case against one of her tormentors, the victory is hollow: Marine chain of command means that little happens to the perpetrator. In her fight to make sure other women have real recourse, she leaves the Marines and leads the Service Women’s Action Network to lobby for change. The job is energising and exhausting by turns. She is as careful an observer of civilian hierarchies as she is of military ones, and raises important questions about inequality, activism and storytelling.

Misogyny and gender segregation in the military make violence against women possible around the globe according to Anuradha. She  offers critiques of politicians, the military, her fellow veterans and the media. The book is at its most powerful when she writes about who she became in response to the violence the military trained her to commit.


A tale of heroic resilience grappling with the timely question of what, exactly, America stands for, Unbecoming is about one woman who learned to believe in herself in spite of everything. It is the kind of story that will light a fire beneath you, and inspire the next generation of indomitable female heroes.

  Bhagwati started  the Service Women’s Action Network, which advocates for military sexual harassment victims, and she also helped change some government policies regarding women serving in combat roles. Her candid story pulls back the curtain on a hidden world in which highly capable women who thrive on the challenge of being a soldier are hindered by the men who surround them.

An intense, fierce woman generously shares her instructive experiences as a Marine and how her service time turned her into an activist for women’s rights in the military.

The second part  focuses on her training .She reveals that the isolation of women is intentional and cruel — she is exposed, continually, to a culture intent on traumatising her. “Bhagwati, looking at you makes me never wanna have sex with a woman again,” one staff sergeant snarls.

It's shocking  until it becomes commonplace.

She continues fighting  for her fellow female Marines. There were men, especially in the younger generation, who were respectful and who treated her equally, and there were older Marines who were righteous and noble, who stood up not just for Bhagwati but for what was right, for what the Marines could and should be. But the sexual harassment and the knowledge that the Marine ethos accepts — and even encourages — it does too much damage. Eventually, Bhagwati leaves the Marines.

The third part of the book deals with Bhagwati's attempts to heal herself and change the Marines. Yet much of this section is empowering and inspiring as she helps found the Service Women's Action Network and makes her next battlefield the halls of Congress, where she helps push for changes to the way military sexual assault and harassment is dealt with as well as getting the ban on women in ground combat lifted. Eventually, she leaves the network and finds healing, even joy, in teaching yoga to veterans.

 She is passionate about the need to change the culture of misogyny in the armed forces, stating “why don't we consider misogyny as much of a threat to the health of our veterans as any other injury from service.” Joining the Marines was my way of asserting myself when I felt I had no voice. I was raised in New York City by parents who put immense pressure on me to excel academically, and conform to Indian expectations around sexuality and gender, regardless of the cost to my psyche or wellbeing. I excelled, but felt isolated, depressed, and lost. I wasn’t allowed to choose my career, express myself or love whom I wanted to love. So I joined an institution in which my parents would have no influence over me. At the time I didn’t realise that I was replacing the control my family asserted over me with an even fiercer and more violent form of patriarchy.

In lots of ways, her  book and her choice to become an activist for women was in response to her  mother’s trauma. As someone who had the privilege of being born in a more progressive era and place, it felt like her dharma to speak up for her, for myself, for others who had been harmed by abusive men or sexist institutions.

 P.P.Ramachandran.

07/07/2019.