New Delhi/Nidani (Jind, Haryana): Huddled together at 3.45pm, minutes before their training matches in Haryana’s Chaudhary Bharat Singh Memorial (CBSM) sports school, Nidani, young boys and girls, mostly teenagers, are warming up to “fight like a man". Away from the mundane, dusty, routinized, gender-divided world outside, on this yellow and blue wrestling mat, everyone looks the same. With the same tightly cropped hair, it is difficult to differentiate between a girl and a boy. But girls who want to be wrestlers need to be trained before they morph into women.

“We have to train them before their hormones start to play...before they hit puberty. Being a man, it’s much easier to participate in a sport which is predominantly mardaana (masculine). With women, it is different," says Narendra Kumar, a wrestling coach in Nidani village. Eventually, when women become wrestlers, they are often told they have become too “masculine" to be called women.

Manhood, manliness, masculinity are terms which mean different things to different people in different societies—with the definitions mostly swinging between being a construct of the society to being a biological constitution. Feminist anthropologists argue that most of the sex selective qualities are just values society attributes to the sexes.

In her book, Seeing Like a Feminist, feminist author and political scientist Nivedita Menon writes: “If the body we inhabit is marked male, it has one kind of effect; if female, another kind of effect; if black, or Dalit or disabled, yet other effects. Body by itself does not produce effects—these are produced by its location in a world structured around certain qualities, assumed to be universal."

Renuka Singh, sociologist at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), describes the concept of manhood or masculinity as an interplay of both culture and biology.

“Biology interacts with culture differently at different developmental stages (of life) of different sexes. So, the idea of manhood is contextual and is defined by both the interaction of nature and nurture," said Singh.

With the discourse on the third gender and women’s rights, India has started to move from anatomy-based definitions of men and women, and is taking steps towards becoming a gender-neutral society, if only at a slow pace.

All this flux, however, is happening with conventions still defining the roles of men and women, and expectations from each of them still based on the preset rules for the sex ticked on a birth certificate. Masculinity, for some, is not just about brawn anymore, it is about brain as well.

A real man is not just someone who “protects" his women, but one who looks at women as fellow human beings. On International Women’s Day this year, Mint asks men about what it is like to be a man in India today.

An Indian man comes with a certain sense of entitlement, a substantial amount of freedom and an assertion of power which is entirely misplaced.- Nachiket Barve (36), fashion designer in Mumbai

If you are not chivalrous, you are called boorish or insensitive. If you are chivalrous, you can be accused of being a sexist. As an Indian man, you never know what aspect of your conduct is going to be viewed from the prism of gender.- J. Sai Deepak (31), advocate in Delhi

It is easier to be a man in India than a woman. My parents decided to send me to school, while all my five sisters were married off and will perhaps remain illiterate all their lives.- Vikash Verma (21), engineering student in Bihar

Sometimes when I lose a match, I feel like crying. Seeing that, everyone reminds me that I am a man and that men don’t cry. In our society, we (boys) are expected to show that we are tough, that we can survive on our own, that nothing at all can break us.- Deepak Poonia (19), wrestler in Haryana.

Society puts a lot of responsibility on men. Women can also take responsibility, but for them it is a choice. The fear of failure in men is more because the expectations are so high.- Gopal Jha (26), taxi driver in Darjeeling

It’s no more about men or what is to be man-like; it’s about what feminism wants men to be. Masculinity is no more about joining the army (that women should do, it is applauded) for example, but it’s about changing diapers. Masculinity is not about honesty of a role but about role reversal.- Chandra Shekhar Agarwal (39), convener of Save Indian Family, a men’s rights group, in Karnataka

Unfortunately, women’s second grade status, whichever caste or religion they belong to, has become part of the Indian culture. A Dalit Indian man today continues to be vulnerable in India, but our women are more vulnerable, because of patriarchy within and caste oppression from outside.- Bezwada Wilson (58), national convenor of the Safai Karmachari Andolan and 2016 Ramon Magsaysay awardee

Earlier being a man meant being strong physically. Now, strength of a person is determined by his/her brain. Today, even a woman can be a man. But some roles have changed. In our village, earlier it was a woman’s responsibility to take care of the diet of the livestock, while men took care of the farm. Now that women are more educated and have become modern, they think cow dung stinks, while men continue doing what they were doing. - Om Parkash Dhankar (65), coordinator, Om Parkash Dhankar

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