NEW DELHI - The stories come in from all over India. In the northeastern state of Manipur, Mary Kom’s boxing academy gets queries every week from young girls in the insurgency-torn region who hope to train with Ms. Kom and emulate her achievements as World Boxing Champion.

“People thought I was crazy when I began training,” Ms. Kom said at a news conference after she won her fifth consecutive championship title in September in Bridgetown, Barbados. “But I never let their criticism affect me.

“It was a real struggle,” she said, “but the love of boxing saw me through the difficult years.”

In Bhiwani district, embedded in the rural heart of Haryana State in northern India, the villagers can’t stop talking about the success of “their girls” - Gita and Babita Singh, who were showered with praise at a reception in the village after the two sisters won silver and gold medals in October at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

The Games have given the country a new set of heroines: Kavita Raut, athletics star; Gagandeep Kaur and Jhano Hansdah, archers; Saina Nehwal, badminton player. Women athletes won 13 of India’s 38 gold medals, and contributed 56 total gold, silver and bronze medals to the final tally of 101, their success setting off a chain of celebrations.

One aspect that has caught the attention of the news media is the social background of many of the top athletes.

Theirs is the world of small-town India, rural India, urban middle-class India. Few of the women are from socially privileged or wealthy families.

Ms. Kom’s family in Manipur worried when she insisted several years ago that she wanted to be a boxer. Her father has said that he thought the training would cost more than they could afford.

Gita and Babita Singh owe much of their success to their father, Mahavir Singh Phoghat, a former wrestler who trained his daughters and nieces in his own training camp. In the absence of expensive equipment, he used traditional techniques ? making the girls sprint and perform old-fashioned situps .

Many of the stories these women tell could have been lifted from “Chak De India!,” a 2007 hit movie about the travails and ultimate triumph of a women’s field hockey team . In the film, as in the real world, most of the women are from relatively modest backgrounds.

Sharda Ugra, a veteran sports journalist who now writes for the Web site Cricinfo, said: “That hockey film is very, very accurate. One of the reasons why women have taken to sport in low-income families is that it’s an access line to a job.”

She was referring to government and corporate arrangements that often guarantee athletes, especially women, a position and financial security in the workplace.

“The upper class and the middle class still look at Olympic sport ? especially sports like weightlifting or wrestling or till recently, track-andfield events ? as sports for the rustic,’’ Ms. Ugra said. “It’s patronizing, but the old humility and deference is beginning to go, as today’s sportswomen become more confident.”

Much of that confidence, though, still comes from the family’s support and encouragement .

“Until recently, women’s sports and sportswomen were treated like second-class citizens,” Ms. Ugra said. “So the Commonwealth Games’ success ? and the success of women, especially from states like Haryana, Manipur and Kerala, in the annual National Games, might help change that attitude.”

Some of the first signs of changing attitudes have been documented by the television and film industries. If “Chak De India!” followed the ups and downs of a fictional but true-tolife hockey team, the 2009 TV series “Palampur Express” followed another familiar story ? the dreams of a young girl from a rural background who wants to be a runner and win an Olympic medal.

Anju Dubey Pandey, director of the Gender Training Institute at the Center for Social Research, a research organization in New Delhi that focuses on women’s issues, cautions against interpreting the recent achievements of women athletes as a measure of the progress Indian women have made over all.

Because several of the athletes are from Haryana, a traditionally patriarchal state, there’s a temptation to turn this event into a larger success story for women, she said. “What we’re seeing is the stories of individual women who have overcome all kinds of difficulties to be where they are,” she said.

“My worry is that we might read too much into this, and ignore the very real challenges ? the repressive mind-sets of the khap panchayats,” or community elders, “the wave of honor killings, the high rate of female feticide ? that women in these states continue to face.’’

Her caveat is a useful one. But in the wake of Indian women athletes’ successes, the real victory may lie beyond simple medal tallies.

The achievements of a Saina Nehwal or a Mary Kom have already inspired many young women to believe that they, too, can move past the many societal barriers and gender prejudices that surround them, and perhaps some day bring home their own gold medals.

MANISH SWARUP/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Women, including Gagandeep Kaur, an archer, won 56 out of India’s 101 medals at the Commonwealth Games.

By NILANJANA S. ROY