ANKITA SADHUKHAN (3060)

HINDU COLLEGE

SUBMITTED TO: PROF. CHARU GUPTA

Elaborate the various contours and perspectives in an Age of Consent Debate in the late 19 th
Century. What are the shifts that occurred in the passing of the Sarda Act in the early 20 th
Century?

It was against the backdrop of the Native Marriage Act III of 1872 and the proposed bill which
sparked a controversy as it prohibited polygamy, legalized divorce and laid down a minimum
age of marriage. In the debate surrounding the 1891 Age of Consent Act, the issue of Hindu
Conjugality was then highly discussed and problematised. The meaning of the word “consent”
here is of great importance. The understanding which we get while reading Tanika Sarkar’s
article, this word brought a conception of permission, a permission from that entity which was
before never considered as having its voice. The scriptures which were we created from ancient
times to early modern considered women important as in a sense of bearer of culture etc. but yet
voiceless. As far as the Foucauldian concept of body is concerned, we see here that the body of a
woman become so much politicized that a whole range of nationalism’s outcry was set into these
lines.

Predominantly we find the outcry of the conservatives against the Act which set the age of sexual
intercourse within marriage for girls should be twelve years. The main arguments of the
conservatives were that the higher age of consent would violate the garbhadhan ritual and if this
ritual is violated, the womb would become polluted, the bride's future sons will not be able to
offer a pure ritual offering to ancestral spirits etc., and it would be death to community. Another
perception is intrinsic as well as extrinsic to the conservative argument is that the colonial
intervention to the domestic or the private sphere is intolerable. The conservatives while using
explicitly nationalistic rhetoric against the legal initiatives of the colonial state and any form of
colonial intervention within the Hindu domestic sphere.1

The Age of Consent Act reconsidered by Padma Anagol-McGinn and, secondly, Phulmomi’s
body by Ishita Pande, highlights some of the major complications of the debate around this act
with explicit case studies. In the case of Rukhmabai of 1884, where Rukhmabai serves the
imprisonment rather going back to her husband who was uneducated, incapable, sick and nine
years older than her against the case filed by her husband for the restitution of Conjugal rights.

1Sarkar, Tanika. Rhetoric against Age of Consent: Resisting Colonial Reason and Death of a Child-Wife. Economic
and Political Weekly, Vol. 28, No- 36 Sept 4, 1993.
The Nationalist Conservatives highlighted her as a product of evil English Education. Whereas
the new agency of women was taking place, Maharashtrian women voiced their opinions through
literary writings and letters in different press. Rukhmabai constructed a gendered critique of
child marriage. Prominent female leaders like Amarabati, Yasodabai Joshi started recalling the
oppression of the in-laws. These female voices disgruntled the whole happy notion of great
Hindu past and happy child-marriages, marriages that are the unbreakable bond between souls
etc. They argued early child marriages do not spare home for the mental development of women.
The issues like unhappy lives of arranged marriages and the absence of a choice of partner were
discussed by women.

The male liberal reformers like Malabari, M.G Ranade were talking in the favour of the act but
their perceptions were not at all similar to those of women. These liberal reformers argued that it
is important to raise the age because unhealthy intercourse with a premature child would bring
unhealthy births which would, in turn, bring an unhealthy race. Malabari’s discusses the various
ills of overpopulation and how it is better to have birth control. These liberal reformers never
considered the case of individual pains of the women and their choices as well as voices.

In the case of child-wife, Phulmoni Dasi who was raped to death by her age-old husband, the
perspectives of the imperial state were also not impressive. As Ishita Pande highlights, the
whole project of humane sympathy was brought up through medico-biological description where
the details about suffering bodies of others served as channel compassion into 'a moral
imperative to undertake ameliorative action', and also served to fan discussions on the otherness
of certain bodies and the cultural basis of trauma. Elizabeth Kolsky highlighted that the colonial
legal treatment of the ‘unsensational’ crime of rape was itself rather unsensational and in the case
of rape, it was the rule of colonial indifference that prevailed.

II

The Sarda Act or the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929 challenged the age-old norm of child
marriage of Hindus as argued by Tanika Sarkar that Child marriage was not only customary but
also strongly recommended by authoritative religious codes so the colonial state was left with the
only option of raising the age of consent within marriage. Unlike the debates of late 19th century,
a new perception that emerged in the debate of the Sarda Act following the Katherine Mayo’s
Mother India, which had condemned the sexual depravity of Hindu men, we see debates among
Indians and the British in the public about raising the age of marriage through which early
widowhood of child and physical and mental ill effects could be stopped.

The British opposition to the legislation, where the people like Willian Vincent argued that the
Government should not interfere in marital intercourse because that was too private a matter. But
in the end, the Sarda Act was passed by 67 votes in favour against 14, will all Europeans and
official bloc support.
The arguments against the legislation were coming from the people like M.K Acharya whose
arguments were same that of late 19thC conservatives as spoke against the interference of
religious law by the state.

The arguments in the favour of the act were coming from the men of the new age of mass
nationalism where the 1919 Montagu Chelmsford act allowed the Indians to debate and pass
legislation in the Legislative assembly and to work for concerning reforms. People like Bakshi
Shan Lal brought up early scriptures of Shushruta which views the age of sixteen, the ideal age
for consummation. Reformers were re-reading and bring up the texts where there no concrete
law for early marriage is given. The voices of women were also quite evident, various
newspapers were taking the accounts of women who wanted education before marriage and
individuality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Anagol-McGinn, Padma. (1992). ‘The Age of Consent Act (1891) Reconsidered: Women’s
Perspectives and Participation in the Child Marriage Controversy in India’, South Asia
Research
2. Pande, Ishita. (2012). ‘Phulmoni’s Body: The Autopsy, the Inquest and the Humanitarian
Narrative on Child Rape in India’, South Asian History and Culture
3. Sarkar, Tanika. (2000), ‘A Prehistory of Rights: The Age of Consent Debate in Colonial
Bengal’, Feminist Studies
4. Sarkar, Tanika. Rhetoric against Age of Consent: Resisting Colonial Reason and Death of a Child-
Wife. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 28, No- 36 Sept 4, 1993
5. Sumita Mukherjee, ‘Using the Legislative Assembly for Social Reform: The Sarda Act 1929’,
South Asia Research, 26, 3, (November 2006)
6. Sinha, Mrinalini, (ed.), (2000) Mother India. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.