A young state-level tennis player, Radhika Yadav, was murdered by her own father in Gurgaon earlier this month. What triggered this heinous act, as the father’s confession suggests, was the constant social ridicule: “The house runs on your daughter’s money.”If anything, this community shaming is not just idle jibes; they strike at the very foundation of how masculinity is imagined in many parts of India and reveals how deeply gendered shame can cut. In fact, even if extreme violence of this sort may be a rarity, community shaming is deeply embedded in everyday life. It operates in routine and systemic ways. Seen thus, the underlying masculine unease at play here is hardly confined to Haryana, a state known for being deeply patriarchal. Rather, it is a more pervasive phenomenon, unfolding at a moment when shifting gender roles are outpacing the social norms and expectations that have traditionally sought either to restrain or gradually accommodate them.Tellingly enough, even in Kerala, a state so often invoked as a model of literacy and celebrated for its matrilineal heritage and progressive social indicators, a parallel story of unease unfolds through its shifting migration landscape. Consider the growing cultural currency of terms like pavada visa (skirt visa) or saree visa, used to deride men who migrate abroad as dependents through spouse visa. Deepak Yadav, 49-year old man accused in the murder of her daughter and former tennis player Radhika Yadav, being brought to a court, in Gurugram, Friday, July 11, 2025. Photo: PTI.Pavada/Saree VisaUnderstanding the essence of pavada visa requires looking beyond the phrase itself and considering the socio-cultural meanings attributed to migration in Kerala. While Kerala is known for its overt dependence on remittances, migration is not merely an economic phenomenon. It is deeply embedded in the social and cultural fabric of the state. In fact, the Malayali migration imaginary encompasses diverse visions of how the society is organised. Over the years, cross-border mobility, especially to the Persian Gulf, has gained such social currency that it gradually emerged as a rite of passage for Malayali men – a threshold of sorts that every man must cross to earn the badge of respectable masculinity. The Persian Gulf-bound migrant worker has long been the archetype: the dutiful, sacrificial male figure who crosses the Arabian Sea and braves distant lands to send the coveted dinars and dirhams back home – the one whose toil in the scorching desert heat of Arabia is both emblematic of, and essential to, his identity formation. In this arrangement, the economic agency of the male migrant has been intertwined with his self-worth and social standing. The man who works abroad is the pillar of his family: he sends remittances, builds homes, becomes a community benefactor, and seen as the fortifier of his community’s ties to the global economy. To migrate, and to work abroad, is thus to enter an unwritten contract with society — that of the provider, protector, and patriarch. However, the recent trend suggests that desire for Gulf migration, once considered as the gold standard for cross border mobility among the Malayali, is slowly waning. Malayali migration is now increasingly reoriented towards North America, Western Europe and countries such as the UK, New Zealand, and Australia, where Malayali women are moving in growing numbers as students and skilled professionals. This changing mobility trend suggests a clear shift away from the traditional male-dominated Malayali migration to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. With more women entering the job market and securing skilled jobs, the West emerges as the primary destination for its better job prospects, higher standard of living and citizenship opportunities. The growing preference for the West is also driven by women seeking freedom from patriarchal constraints, seeing it as a place that offers greater independence and equality. As the momentum slowly shifting towards the West, two significant shifts have become apparent. First, male migration as the norm is increasingly being challenged. Second, couples today increasingly prefer to migrate and build their life together abroad. This is in sharp contrast to the earlier Gulf migration patterns where most men migrated solo while women remained in Kerala managing the home and family. Within this evolving landscape, the possibility of migrant women becoming the primary breadwinners is also beginning to crystallize in the Malayali social imagination. Strikingly, the sarcastic expressions of “pavada visa” or “saree visa” are a sharp reaction to this change. Circulating both online and in everyday conversation laced with mockery, the phrases reflect the resistance to rewiring the social imaginary in tune with the new reality: the breadwinner and risk-taker is now the wife, while the husband accompanies her as a dependent, often after the woman migrates for higher education or skilled work. The mockery is so pervasive that men who migrate in this way, whether the decision is mutually agreed upon by the couple, made independently by the man, or even when he moves first on his own, are still mockingly referred to as pavada or skirt online. The sense of shame is so deeply felt that even the growing number of migrant vloggers, especially men, who criticise pavada visa taunts as expressions of male ego or chauvinism often begin by clarifying that they themselves did not arrive on a pavada – spouse – visa. In some cases, vloggers confronted with such remarks involve their wives on the vlog, where the wives explicitly state during their conversation, intended for viewers, that their husbands are not on a spouse visa.While the term pavada visa may be relatively new and popularised in recent years through social media, its patriarchal undertone, laced in sexist impulse and stigma around male dependence, is hardly novel. Earlier forms of the same gendered mockery could be found in phrases like “bharyayude adipavada kazhukunnavan (the man who washes his wife’s underskirt),” used to ridicule men who were seen as less dominant, subordinate or dependent on their wives. For instance, in earlier Malayalam films, the term “adipavada” is often varyingly used as an insult, typically to caricature a man as not manly enough in front of his wife. A woman in Kerala crosses a road holding an umbrella against a heavy downpour and wind. Photo: PTI/FileIn this light, perhaps a more layered interpretation would suggest that the term “pavada visa” functions as a quiet yet sharp commentary on the perceived loss of male agency and social control. This perceived loss operates on two levels. First, it reflects a flipped version of the familiar narrative of ‘wives joining their husbands’ – an inversion of the long-held gendered order in which the man, traditionally the economic provider, becomes the dependent figure. Even though this dependence may take the form of being unemployed, underemployed, or working in low-paid manual jobs and may not involve a complete reversal of traditional gendered divisions of labour, not being the lead still challenges established norms. Secondly, even when the decision (for a man to go as a dependent) is made mutually between spouses, society remains unsatisfied, because the man’s role lacks the visible performance of agency that traditional gender script prevailing in Kerala society demands for masculinity. The case of Radhika Yadav, whose father was financially independent and not reliant on his daughter yet, still faced social ridicule for failing to conform to societies’ patriarchal expectations of masculinity serves as a mirror to this. Relatedly, the pavada visa is further stigmatised by amplifying fears of male dependence and circulating warnings that caution men against appearing subordinate or losing control within the family. Even discreet familial issues like divorce or separation are at time amplified on social media, with posts warning men who migrate on so-called pavada visas of their inability to “control” their wives, thereby reinforcing the stereotype that male dependence abroad is inherently emasculating and renders marriage unstable. In this, the irony is often implicitly comparative, rooted in a quiet departure from traditional migration patterns, where men led the process and willingly sacrificed their own comfort in pursuit of socio-economic mobility for their families, thereby entrenching stable and successful family lives. In all, pavada visa, in its most incisive form, reveals both the fragility and the resilience of social norms. It is a phrase that captures the shifting gender roles and the reconfiguration of migration as a concept no longer inherently tethered to Malayali masculine identity, while simultaneously offering a window into the changing dynamics of power, agency, and identity within the rich tapestry of Kerala migration landscape. It is a reminder that in a world where the economy has globalized and identities have become increasingly fluid, there are few absolutes, except, perhaps, the perpetual redefinition of what it means to be a ‘real’ man or a ‘real’ woman in the age of migration. The tragedy of Radhika Yadav and the mockery encapsulated in the term “pavada visa” may appear unrelated – one a brutal act of violence, the other a linguistic jab. Nevertheless, both tell the same story: when masculinity is rigidly defined by dominance and economic provision, any deviation, even something as simple as being a dependent, is punished, either through humiliation or worse. If anything, it shows that women’s achievements are often not recognised as such unless they align with societal approval and the gender norms embedded within in. Muhsin Puthan Purayil is an assistant professor of political science at Manipal Law School, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Bengaluru, India. With contributions by Mufsin Puthan Purayil, an assistant professor at Jindal Global Business School (JGBS), O.P Jindal Global University, and Manju J Manoj, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at University of Hyderabad, India.