Age of consent in India

Subject : History

Section : Modern India

India’s age of consent for sex is set at 18 years under the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, regardless of gender.
In 1892, the marital rape and subsequent death of a 10-year-old girl, Phulmoni Dasi, caused the age of consent to be raised from 10 to 12 years.
In 1949, it was raised to 16 years after agitation from women’s groups about the adverse effect of early pregnancy.
The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, of 2013 increased the legally permissible age for sexual consent from 16 to 18.
Although the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, of 2013 initially sought to lower the age to 16, it was set at 18 due to political pressure from conservative parties.
Section 375 of the Act: A man is said to commit “rape” if he has sexual relations with a girl less than 18 years of age with or without her consent.
POSCO Act, 2012 disallows any such sexual relationships between people under 18 years of age and puts such crimes within marriages as an aggravated offence.
An exception under the act; According to Section 375, Sexual Intercourse by a man with his wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age, is not rape.

History of child marriage

From Rig Vedic period to modern times, child marriage is practiced throughout the country with religious sanctions.
Hindu and Muslim Personal Laws do not explicitly prohibit child marriage.
The Rig Veda mentions garbhadhan — literally, attaining the wealth of the womb. It is the first of the 16 samskaras a Hindu is expected to perform.
The Greek traveller Megasthenes (350-290 BC) has written that he was told that the women of the Pandian kingdom in South India bear children at six years of age.
About seven centuries later, the Persian polymath, Al Biruni, wrote that child marriages were rampant in India.
The Muslim clergy too considered child marriages to be valid, though such children have the option to nullify their marriage.
The colonial state should be credited for reforming marriage laws. The Age of Consent Acts of 1861 and 1891 brought in reform in conjugal rights.

Age of consent 1861

The 1861 Act laid down 10 years as the minimum age for sexual intercourse. The Hindu intelligentsia opposed raising this age to 12 on the grounds that it violated norms related to garbhadhan.

Age of consent act 1891

The Age of Consent Act, 1891 was a legislation enacted in British India on 19 March 1891 which raised the age of consent for sexual intercourse for all girls, married or unmarried, from ten to twelve years in all jurisdictions, its violation subject to criminal prosecution as rape.
The sufferings of two young girls Rukhmabai and Phulmoni Dasi has led to this act.
Tilak’s newspapers Maratha and Kesari were at the forefront of this campaign.

Sarda Act

The child marriage Restraint Act set the minimum age of marriage for women and men at 16 and 18 years respectively in 1929.
This law is also known as the Sarda Act after its sponsor Harbilas Sarda, a judge and member of Arya Samaj.
The Sarda Act was amended in 1978 to prescribe the age of marriage for a girl and boy as 18 and 21 years respectively.