November 19 is International Men's Day, a date that often passes in India with little fanfare compared to International Women's Day. Yet, in the last fifteen years, a quiet but determined men's rights movement has emerged in the country, challenging the widespread assumption that gender equality discourse must centre exclusively on women.

What began as scattered online forums and small support groups in the early 2000s has grown into a network of registered organisations, legal advocacy cells, and helplines that claim to receive thousands of distress calls every year. The movement insists that men, too, can be victims—of biased laws, social expectations, institutional indifference, and sometimes even systemic malice. On the eve of International Men's Day 2025, it is worth examining how this movement arose, what it complains about, where it stands legally and socially, and why it remains one of the most polarising subjects in contemporary Indian gender politics.

The roots of organised men's rights activism in India can be traced to the mid-1990s, but the real explosion happened after 2005, the year Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code began to be widely criticised as a tool of harassment. Introduced in 1983 as a non-bailable, cognisable offence to protect married women from cruelty by husbands and in-laws, the provision soon acquired a reputation—among a section of middle-class urban men—for being weaponised in matrimonial disputes.

High-profile cases of elderly parents and distant relatives being arrested on the basis of a single complaint, often before any investigation, fuelled anger. Between 2005 and 2010, dozens of NGOs such as the Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF), Vaastav Foundation, and Men’s Rights Association were born. Their weekly meetings in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi, and Pune drew software engineers, businessmen, and retired professionals who felt the legal system had tilted dangerously against men.

By 2014, the movement had matured enough to influence policy discourse. The Supreme Court in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar (2014) issued guidelines curbing automatic arrests under Section 498A, explicitly acknowledging its misuse. In 2017, the Rajasthan High Court went further and recommended making the offence bailable and compoundable. These judicial observations were celebrated by men's rights activists (MRAs) as vindication, even as many women's groups condemned them as a rollback of hard-won protections.

The grievances articulated by the movement are by now well-rehearsed, yet they bear repetition because they reveal deep structural anxieties. False cases of dowry harassment and domestic violence top the list. Activists cite NCRB data showing that in recent years nearly 10–15 % of Section 498A cases end in acquittal after full trial, and a much larger percentage are quashed at the high-court stage or result in compromise. They argue that even when a man is eventually exonerated, the preceding arrest, job loss, social stigma, and legal expenses constitute irreversible punishment.

A second major grievance is the near-absolute bias in child custody laws. Section 26 of the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956, and judicial precedent under the Guardians and Welfare of Minors Act, 1890, continue to treat mothers as the "natural guardians" of children below five years and preferred custodians thereafter unless proven unfit. Fathers complain that courts rarely grant  them joint or even liberal visitation if the mother opposes it, turning thousands of divorced men into weekend visitors—or strangers—in their children's lives.

Third, the absence of specific laws against marital rape when the wife is above 18 (Section 375 IPC Exception 2) is cited as proof that the law views men only as perpetrators and never as victims.  Similarly, there is no gender-neutral law on domestic violence; the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, is available only to women, leaving abused men dependent on the general provisions of IPC Section 323 or 506, which are bailable and attract lighter punishment.

Maintenance laws form another flashpoint. Under Section 125 CrPC and the Hindu Marriage Act, husbands can be directed to pay lifelong maintenance even to qualified, earning wives. The Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in Shamima Farooqui v. Shahid Khan that a divorced Muslim woman is entitled to maintenance beyond the iddat period, and the 2023 ruling allowing major daughters to claim maintenance from fathers, have further convinced many men that the legal system treats them as perpetual providers regardless of circumstance.

Legally, the men's rights movement has achieved mixed success. While courts have repeatedly urged caution in 498A cases and introduced safeguards against misuse, Parliament has steadfastly refused to amend the law itself. Attempts to introduce gender-neutral provisions in the Domestic Violence Act or to recognise marital rape symmetrically have been shot down. The Malimath Committee (2003) and the Law Commission’s 243rd Report (2012) recommended making 498A compoundable and bailable, but successive governments have ignored them, wary of being labelled anti-women.

The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, which replaced the IPC from July 2024, retained Section 498A almost verbatim (now Section 85 BNS), disappointing activists who had hoped for reform under the new criminal law regime. On custody, the Law Commission’s 257th Report (2015) suggested joint custody as the default, but no legislation has followed. The only significant legislative concession has been the inclusion of men in the proposed Bharatiya Nyaya Suraksha Sanhita’s victim compensation scheme, a minor symbolic victory.

The largest and most visible stream is the "legal reform" or "equality" wing—organisations like SIFF, CRISP, and Protect Indian Family Foundation—which insists it is not anti-women but pro-fairness. They demand gender-neutral laws, mandatory mediation before FIRs in matrimonial cases, and shared parenting legislation. Many of their spokespersons are careful to preface statements with support for genuine victims of dowry harassment.

A smaller but vocal second stream veers into overt anti-feminism. Online communities on Reddit (r/MensRightsIndia), certain YouTube channels, and X (formerly Twitter) spaces sometimes express resentment against "feminazis", celebrate the declining marriage rate among urban men ("men going their own way"), and question the very need for women's reservation bills. This faction alienates moderate sympathisers and provides easy fodder for critics.

The relationship between men's rights activism and feminism in India has been almost entirely adversarial. Feminists argue that the movement distracts from the vastly greater violence faced by women—India still records over 4 lakh crimes against women annually, including 28,000–32,000 rapes. They point out that the low conviction rate in dowry and domestic violence cases (often below 15 %) is due to hostile witnesses and societal pressure on the complainant to compromise, not because complaints are overwhelmingly false. The National Family Health Survey-5 (2019–21) showed that 29.3 % of ever-married women aged 18–49 experienced spousal violence, compared to virtually no nationally representative data on male victims because no survey even asks men the question.

Feminists further contend that custody decisions favouring mothers reflect the reality that women still perform the bulk of childcare even in nuclear families, and that maintenance is necessary because Indian women face massive employment and wage gaps. They view attempts to dilute Section 498A as a return to the pre-1983 era when dowry deaths went largely unpunished.

As India heads into the third decade of the twenty-first century, the men's rights question remains unresolved. Marriage rates are declining in urban India, especially among educated men; the 2024 NFHS-6 preliminary data reportedly shows a further drop in the proportion of men married by age 30. Passport applications citing "no intention to marry" as a reason for urgency have become a running joke in family courts. Whether this is liberation or a symptom of deeper alienation is fiercely debated.

What is undeniable is that the conversation has changed permanently. Ten years ago, a man claiming to be a victim of domestic violence would have been laughed out of a police station. Today, at least in metropolitan cities, he is likely to be referred to a helpline, even if no FIR is registered. Courts now routinely quash frivolous 498A cases and award costs against complainants. Shared parenting agreements, once unheard of, are slowly entering judicial vocabulary.

International Men's Day 2025 thus arrives at a paradoxical moment. The men's rights movement can claim significant victories in judicial discourse and public awareness, yet it has failed to secure a single major legislative amendment in its favour. It has forced the system to acknowledge male pain, but not yet to treat it as equal to female pain. Whether the next decade brings reconciliation, further polarisation, or genuine legal neutrality will depend on how willing both sides are to move beyond victimhood toward a framework that protects the vulnerable regardless of gender.