What do fathers see when they look at their adult daughters performing in public? And how might this paternal gaze affect these women?s professional lives? It is hard to imagine such questions being relevant to the affluent, urban game of women?s tennis in the 21st century. But Mr Imran Mirza has made them so ? in India, at least. Mr Mirza is Sania Mirza?s father. He has publicly expressed his discomfiture at the popular enthusiasm over his daughter. He has gone on to link this warmth of response (especially in the media) to what he considers to be the provocativeness of her wardrobe. There is something unsavoury about a father?s assumed proprietorship of his grown-up daughter. But there is technically very little one could say or do about this if he exercises this ?right? in the privacy of his family life at home. But Mr Mirza has not left the matter at that. First, he has chosen to make his fatherly outrage public. Second, he has scrutinized the rules of the Women?s Tennis Association, and found in them nothing to contradict his sense that female players wear mini-skirts and tight tops out of their own perverse will. Third, he has taken it upon himself to speak for all Indian fathers who feel ambivalent about seeing their daughters play in such clothes. Some of them have even denied their daughters permission to play tennis professionally for this reason. Interestingly, the honour being defended is not only female, but also Indian. And the mothers have nothing to say about this ? or are silently happy to be spoken for.

It is paradoxical that Mr Mirza?s public and officious puritanism should appear to be rather more perverse than his daughter?s wardrobe. But this is inevitable. More often than not, obscenity lies in the eyes of the beholder; and censorship looks uglier than the thing being censored. What is particularly unpleasant, in this case, is this open spectacle of paternal control over a woman?s public demeanour. Fatherly protectiveness, when it makes itself public in this manner and chooses to speak for an entire community of Indian fathers, shows itself up as almost shockingly proprietorial. An ironic ? and strangely sinister ? touch is given to the situation when Mr Mirza mentions, in passing, that he needed, of course, to talk to his daughter about all this before deciding to do anything about it.