“If My Body Is Fit, I Can Do Anything”

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Last month, the International Olympic Committee announced that the 2012 London games would be the first to feature women’s boxing—and India is gunning for the gold. Somini Sengupta reports in the Times today on how the boxing ring “represents a new kind of freedom” for Indian women.

Boxing not only provides financial security—successful Indian athletes are rewarded with “coveted government employment, usually with the police or with the railways”—but, as we know from every sports movie ever committed to celluloid, a stronger sense of self:

For other women, boxing brings less tangible rewards: the confidence to go out on the streets without fear, for instance. Or as a boxer named Usha Nagisetty put it, a chance to be somebody.

“Before boxing, I had nothing,” said Nagisetty, 24, who came to train this summer at another camp, in the central Indian city of Bhopal. “Who is Usha? No one knew. I was fat. I was average in studies. I didn’t think life had anything to offer me.”

Here's the accompanying slideshow.

Photograph of Indian boxer M.C. Merykom by Findlay Kember/AFP/Getty Images.