This piece is occasioned by an article titled Sex Gets Younger in a popular broadsheet a couple of weeks ago. It was based on interviews with ‘young’ people in the 21 – 26 segment who are indulging in premarital sex. The article went on as if the wannabe western denizens of India have got a sexual revolution going: that the age at which people are indulging in sex is getting lower. Traditionally, that is, until 50 years ago, young, prepubescent girls were married off and were seen off with their husbands, after what was called “nuptials”, that is – consummation – soon after they attained puberty. Can sex get any younger than that?
“The 1891 Age of Consent Act was legislation introduced in British India to raise the age of consent of consummation from ten to twelve years. While an 1880 case in a Bombay high court by a child-bride, Rukhmabai, renewed discussion of such a law, the death of an eleven-year-old Bengali girl, Phulomnee, due to forceful intercourse by her 35 year old husband in 1889, necessitated intervention by the British.” Interestingly, Bal Gangadhar Tilak opposed the bill on the grounds that this was not an issue for the British but Hindus to decide.
It is not my case that child marriages and early age of consent are acceptable. I am only saying that having sex early in life nothing new to this holy land. Indeed, there were many child marriages and child widowhoods in our inglorious past. Nobody will ever want those days to come back. We all also condemn young girls forced to become sex workers as soon as they are ‘eligible’. Obviously, I don’t belong a paedophile advocacy group.
In India, today, the age of consent is 16, although the official age for girls to get married is 18 and for boys, 21. That is, a girl (or boy) can get laid before they can get a driving license for a two-wheeler with gears. Talking of sex getting younger is so ridiculous.
“In January 2004, a Division bench of the Kerala's High Court in Southern India suggested that the age of consent should be raised from 16 to 18 in that state. Justice R. Basant said he considered illogical that a legal system in which an age of 18 is used for other purposes – like the Indian Majority Act, the Contract Act, the Juvenile Justice Act, the Child Marriage Restraint Act and the Representation of People Act – has a different approach in the case of sexual consent.”
The age of marriage 18 – 21 (for girls and boys respectively) is a healthy framework. Otherwise we have a situation where boys and girls who are not allowed inside pubs or to smoke can get raunchy.
Age of Consent Around the world…
In 1979, the now-defunct Dutch Pacifist Socialist Party supported an unsuccessful petition to lower the age of consent to 12. In Canada, the age of consent was raised from 14 to 16 on 1 May 2008 (in 1890 it was raised from 12 to 14).
“In 1977 while a reform in the French penal code was under discussion in the parliament, a petition to decriminalize of all consented relations between adults and minors below the age of fifteen was sent to Parliament but did not succeed in changing the law. In 1978 the petition was discussed in a broadcast by radio France Culture in the program "Dialogues", with the transcript later published under the title Sexual Morality and the Law in a book by Michel Foucault...”
Talking of Michael Foucault, he wrote in his celebrated History of Sexuality that India was by far much more liberal (not licentious) than the west in matters of sexuality. It was only the British and their Victorian morality that made a mess of things in India.
About Michael Foucault and his ouvre, another day…
[Much of this article is sourced from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent_reform and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_Age_of_Consent_Act]
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