Child marriage debates during British India

Age of consent to age of marriage

Abstract

The social reformers continuously attacked the custom of child marriage in the mid-nineteenth century, but they could not start an organized campaign for various reasons. Apart from individual feminism, the female voice was also quiet. In the late Nineteenth Century, the reformer’s campaign did not attack the religious aspect of child marriage rather focused on its moral and physical elements. Consequently, they restricted their efforts to the sphere of Age of Consent for sexual Consummation of girls only. The Revivalist leaders' massive opposition compelled the British Indian Government not to interfere with its domestic sphere. The various changes in the first half of the twentieth century supplied a favourable environment to reopen child marriage. In this paper, the author will examine those changes and delineate the shift from “Age of Consent to the age of marriage”.