Then why was Radhika Yadav murdered in broad daylight? Why was she killed by the one man who was supposed to shield her from the ugliness of the world?
News out of India last week showed us that, while we live in towering cities, in a digitally fast-paced world, society is still as chauvinistic as it was during the Neanderthal era. We live in a world where a man’s ego, nay, a father’s ego, is as brittle as a sugar thread. How does a man with a successful and talented daughter kill his daughter because of what other men think?
Radhika was a successful tennis player-turned-coach in India. The 25-year-old ran her own tennis academy in her home city of Gurgaon, but her life was cut short because her father, her own biological father, had his ego bruised when other men taunted him for living off his successful daughter.
There are not enough curse words and angry emojis that would represent the anger and emotions I feel. I am very sure my sentiments are echoed by women all over the world! There is no reason in the world for a father to murder his own daughter, but to kill your child because other men are chiding you for having a successful daughter? That has got to be one for the books!
To be blessed with a talented child, a disciplined child, one who is successful but grounded on the foundations of family and respect, all that is not good enough? What would weaken the resolve of a man, a father, to shoot his own daughter in the back out of pure jealousy and spite?
What if the daughter had been a boy? If the man had a child who had the same life trajectory and the same success as Radhika but was born a boy, would the outcome be the same? Would he not be proud and boastful of his son’s accomplishments?
In the same country where Indians value their sons, it has been proven over and over again that it is in fact the girls who take care of their parents when they are older. That the sons abandon their frail and aged parents after they have swindled them out of every fortune. That the sons’ wives mistreat their parents when they are old. Yet these lessons still mean nothing.
Just three decades ago, the Chinese aborted and abandoned baby girls, only to learn the value of women in society a short while later. Chinese society was overrun by an imbalance of men and women as parents preferred having boys over girls. It was only when the boys reached maturity that they discovered that these boys are nothing without girls. That their society also needed girls who were just as well raised and well educated as their precious sons.
Have we learnt nothing? It may be a man’s world, but we all know by now that it would mean nothing without a woman. Radhika’s father is about to learn that the hard way. He will live his life in isolation. Instead of being taunted for having a successful daughter, he will be taunted as the pariah who murdered his own daughter. He will be daughterless and hopefully wifeless.
It’s 2025 yet the patriarchal society is alive and well. If we are being honest, it never really left. It was just operating silently in the background as we were romanced by the uprising of feminism and women empowerment. However far women have come in society, we are not nearly as close to where we should be. But perception is what matters, right?
