The curious case of Patnibrata men: Revisiting masculinity in Sikh and Punjabi reformist literature, c. 1925–1939

ABSTRACT In the 1930s, Trilok Singh Vaid, a celebrated Sikh and Punjabi writer and Ayurvedic practitioner wrote a series of books on conjugal health and ideal masculinity in which he articulated a conjugal-domestic masculinity, which he termed Patnibrata: men who will love their wives, respect their wives' consent, and form a happy dyadic unit with them. In this paper, I argue that (a) transnational sexology and women's movement in India necessitated this new model of masculinity, and (b) conjugal-domestic masculinity reconceptualised gender roles, but more importantly, sought to empower young men as heads of their household and as independent subjects.