Bhagwati with her parents, who are Ivy League professors

KIDIST P. ASRAT has an excellent post at Reclaiming Beauty on Anu Bhagwati, the feminist activist and former Marine who is in the news campaigning against the misogyny of the American military. The strange spectacle of a daughter of Indian immigrants lecturing the nation about the wholesale evil of historic military protocols has what is in many ways a very familiar background story. Here is a perfect symbol of multicultural America and its nihilistic elevation and worship of the alien other.

Bhagwati’s childhood was characterized by the typical Asian focus on educational success. Her parents, professors at Harvard and Columbia, had attained prominence not long after they came to America in the 1960s. Her mother, Padma Desai, converted to Christianity in order to divorce her first husband in India and become an academic here. Her father, Jagdish Bhagwati, is an economist who has held positions with the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. Asrat speculates about Anu’s childhood:

When Bhagwati’s parents came to the US in the mid-sixties, multiculturalism was just becoming an accepted way of cultural life. By the time Bhagwati was born, it was a part of American life. I wouldn’t be surprised if growing up, her life was full of reminders of the country her parents left behind, from the food, to the music, and the friends and relatives who frequented their home. So although she grew up in America, hers was a specific, ethnically restricted, America. I think this speaks of her behavior at the hearings, her victim stance, her repeated blame on racism for her discharge, and her particular singling out of white men leaders in the military as those who prevent non-whites (and of course women) from advancing in the military.

In graduate school, Bhagwati, who no longer goes by her full name of Anuradha, departed from the script and joined the Marines. One suspects this was shocking to her parents. Asrat quotes Anu:

I had a very unique childhood. I mean, it was all about my parents. Obsessively so about the pressure of like getting into the top schools. And then I went to the top schools, and I was miserable. I just wanted to travel the world, go to war-torn areas and meet people and learn languages, and find out how people lived…I left grad school like mid-semester, and joined the Marines.

Bhagwati’s stint in the armed forces and a graduate degree in public policy gave her the requisite credentials to launch her crusade against sexual assault in the military and the exclusion of women from combat.

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