Age of Consent and Child Marriage in I ndia

Abstract

Anti‐colonial struggles have been narrowly interpreted so far, in terms of political self‐determination in the making of sovereign nation‐states. However, the impressive historical literature on Indian child marriage and the age of consent for girls has provided a context for locating the overlapping of the politics of nationalisms and sexualities. This entry reveals how imperialism as a global system allowed Britain to legitimate its continued rule in nineteenth century colonial India by denigrating the marriage and family sexual norms of India as “degraded.” Equally it outlines the assertion and resistance of Indian women whose campaigns gained a small victory in raising the age of consent from 10 to 12 years in 1891. The parallel strength of the powerful anti‐imperial cultural movements is also scrutinized with the conclusion that new conjugal arrangements were forged by Indian men who succeeded in retaining older forms of patriarchal hierarchies through the instruments of “respectable” sexuality and nationalism.