The interplay of the medieval and the modern in north India continues to make it the most interesting part of India to study. Sagarika Kissu’s story of the how young women are enthusiastically working out in the gyms of small towns in north India is super interesting. Basis what Ms Kissu is saying, it appears that there are three different reasons why women are joining gyms in north India’s mofussil towns.
The first reason is to get away from their conservative families:
“When Vanshika returned home to the small Uttar Pradesh town of Shamli after finishing her internship in Noida, she said she felt trapped. There were no cafes or malls to escape to, and far less freedom to move around as she pleased. Then she discovered a neighbourhood gym tucked inside a narrow bylane. Its thumping music, mirrored walls and air-conditioning offered just the taste of city life she had been craving.
“When I came back from Noida, I was depressed. Even stepping out of the house felt like a struggle. The gym came to my rescue. It’s a place where I socialise, enjoy my time and feel free,” said 27-year-old Vanshika, covered in sweat after a workout.
Gyms are mushrooming across rural and small-town India, spawning a quiet subculture of friendships, freedom, flirtation, and flexing away from the family gaze. For young women, they offer a rare, socially acceptable reason to step away from their restricted daily routines and have a few hours that belong only to them, side by side with men. For men, they are places where ideas of masculinity are nurtured, recorded, and displayed unapologetically, not just on the gym floor but on Instagram…”
The second reason for joining the local gym is to get fit for the marriage market:
“Parul’s presence in this gym is a hard-won victory. A BA student at the all-women Janta Vedic College, she lives under a lid so tight she isn’t even allowed a mobile phone and has to use her mother’s device to make calls. She says she has no social media account either. Her father initially said a firm no to the gym idea, pronouncing that men would stare at her, trap her and then the “ghar ki izzat” would be destroyed.
“My father is very strict….My mother understands but even she can’t speak much before papa,” said Parul, wiping her forehead with a handkerchief.
The gym ban only lifted after Parul was rejected by three prospective grooms for being a little overweight. Suddenly, the gym was less a threat and more a necessity. But it came with a condition: she would go with her mother and only to a gym close to their house. So, when a new gym opened just 100 metres away on 12 March, Parul was the first to sign up.
Now, her mother, Saroj, sits on a nearby bench with a water bottle, playing a watchful, permanent sentry.
“She is so beautiful, but families are rejecting her because of her weight. So I told her father it was high time she started going to a gym, otherwise we won’t get a match. Now I come with her. Because see, there are men here and she is a woman. What can we do? Society is such,” said Saroj.”
And the third reason for women joining gyms in northern India’s small towns is for self-defence:
“For 27-year-old Kirti Tanwar in Alwar’s Ambedkar Nagar, the gym has become a form of self-defence. She joined initially for fitness and to de-stress. Over time, she noticed a change in how men behaved around her. They no longer stared at her the way they once did.
“Men had an inkling that this woman goes to the gym and won’t shy away from hitting them back,” she said with a loud laugh. Now, she wants to build muscles like her elder brother….
At Brothers Gym, tucked inside a narrow bylane in Shamli, Ishika was known as the quiet girl. But two months into joining the gym, something changed.
“It was as if I found an expression. I wanted to express myself. The fear had waned. These three hours at the gym were cathartic. No one poked at me. I could do what I wanted. This was my time. I felt free,” said the 24-year-old.
Ishika and Vanshika are neighbours and are the only two women at the gym, where they became members 6-7 months ago. Both their parents are supportive of their gymming, saying “beti kasrat karegi” (our daughter will exercise).”
While the reasons why women are taking to gymming in north India might be less than ideal, the fact that they are doing so is by itself a triumph. As we highlighted in our 2024 bestseller “Behold the Leviathan: The Unusual Rise of Modern India”, the startling ascent of Indian women – in education, in sport and in entrepreneurship – over the past 25 years is one consistent silver lining in India’s developmental track record.
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