Opinion Who killed Radhika Yadav? Her father was not alone

As one attempts to make some sense of the happenings, there are several disturbing concerns that emerge. First is the sheer resistance of society to women who break new ground. This tragedy forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: Patriarchy does not simply vanish when women break barriers. Instead, it mutates and adapts and continues to find new ways to reassert itself. One finds ample evidence of it. The violent trolling of women with voices and visibility, the irrational pitting of a legal provision of economic support such as alimony (which by definition is not restricted to women) to a societal ill like dowry and the phenomenal rise of the incel culture and the manosphere — networks of men who express resentment, rage, and entitlement over women’s autonomy, are a very few examples.

Why was Radhika Yadav killed?

The tragedy also reminds us that patriarchy inflicts violence on men, even as they get benefits out of it. It does not ever allow them to become fully human, who could recognise and cherish the “human” in the other. As feminist thinkers like Carol Gilligan point out, patriarchy causes deep moral injury to women as well as men, as both are forced to split off parts of their own affective, cognitive and physical whole that do not conform to the constructed ideas of perfect “feminine” and “masculine”. A society that punishes a woman who transgresses is also the society that measures a man’s worth by his dominance and control. It taunts a man who is unable to exercise control and dominance over women in his charge. What are the kinds of neighbourhoods we inhabit where men are mocked not for violence against women but for allowing a daughter’s success to become visible? These taunts struck at the heart of a fragile masculinity, one that could not tolerate dependency, admiration, or reversed gender roles. The neighbours who mocked Radhika Yadav’s father may not have pulled the trigger, but their words were complicit in reinforcing the very logic that led to this violence. This is not to absolve the perpetrator but to recognise that misogyny is not merely personal — it is collective, institutional, and often celebrated in subtle ways.

The tragedy also reminds us that success does not immunise women from misogyny; rather, it often heightens the backlash. True gender justice requires more than representation; it demands a radical reimagining of societal arrangements and power, through collective struggles that seek to dismantle patriarchy in structures, institutions and our minds.

The writer teaches at Ambedkar University Delhi