We need to break free of patriarchal clutches

Last week's murder of tennis coach Radhika Yadav should make us confront the patriarchal prejudices that hold not just Indian women back from success, but the country as a whole

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Success can be fatal. Last Thursday, 25-year-old Radhika Yadav, a tennis player running a small coaching school, was shot dead in Gurugram. Her father, Deepak Yadav, confessed to the killing. The police said that he killed his daughter over her refusal to shut down her tennis training centre. Reports of the confession state that he was being taunted for "living off her income" and facing questions over her "character"; and since their family was financially well-off, he felt that she need not run her business. This motive has drawn gasps of shock across India. It reveals all too starkly a sinister reality that multitudes of women face—the insistence that an adult daughter must forever stay under the family patriarch's command, with no right to live on her own terms.