HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929, passed on 28 September 1929, in the
Imperial Legislative Council The Imperial Legislative Council (ILC) was the legislature of the British Raj from 1861 to 1947. It was established under the Charter Act of 1853 by providing for the addition of 6 additional members to the Governor General Council for legislativ ...
of
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, fixed the age of marriage for girls at 14 years and boys at 18 years. In 1949, after India's independence, it was amended to 15 for girls, and in 1978 to 18 for girls and 21 for boys. It is popularly known as the Sarda Act, after its sponsor Harbilas Sharda. It came into effect six months later on 1 April 1930 and applied to all of
British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
. It was a result of social reform movement in India. Despite strong opposition from the British authorities, the legislation was passed by the British Indian Government which had a majority of Indians. However, it lacked implementation from the British Indian government, largely due to the fear of British authorities losing support from their loyal Hindu and Muslim communalist groups.


Legislation process

Various bills addressing questions on the
age of consent The age of consent is the age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to sexual acts. Consequently, an adult who engages in sexual activity with a person younger than the age of consent is unable to legally claim ...
were introduced in the Indian legislatures and defeated. In 1927, Rai Sahib Harbilas Sharda introduced his Hindu Child Marriage Bill in the
Central Legislative Assembly The Central Legislative Assembly was the lower house of the Imperial Legislative Council, the legislature of British India. It was created by the Government of India Act 1919, implementing the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms. It was also sometime ...
. Under the pressure of world opinion, the social reformists in India and Nationalist freedom fighters, the Government referred the Bill to a select committee named as the Age of Consent Committee headed by Sir Moropant Visavanath Joshi, the Home Member of
Central Provinces The Central Provinces was a province of British India. It comprised British conquests from the Mughals and Marathas in central India, and covered parts of present-day Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra states. Its capital was Nagpur. ...
. The other members of the committee were
Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar Sir Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar (14 October 1887 – 17 July 1976) was an Indian lawyer, diplomat, and statesman who was the first president of the United Nations Economic and Social Council and the 24th and last Diwan of Mysore. He also served as ...
, Khan Bahadur Mathuk, Mian Imam Baksh Kadu, Mrs. O. Brieri Beadon,
Rameshwari Nehru Rameshwari Nehru (née ''Rameshwari Raina''; 10 December 1886 – 8 November 1966) was a social worker of India. She worked for the upliftment of the poorer classes and of women. In 1902, she married Brijlal Nehru, a nephew of Motilal Nehru and ...
,
Satyendra Chandra Mitra Satyendra Chandra Mitra (23 December 1888 – 27 October 1942) was an Indian freedom fighter, who started his political career as a revolutionary and got associated with the Jugantar Party. He was arrested and interned at Janjira Char in the ...
, Thakur Dass Bhargava, Maulvi Muhammad Yakub,
Mian Sir Muhammad Shah Nawaz Mian Sir Muhammad Shah Nawaz was a prominent politician of Punjab in the 1920s. He was married to Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz daughter of Mian Muhammad Shafi.All India Women's Conference The All India Women's Conference (AIWC) is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Delhi. It was founded in 1927 by Margaret Cousins in order to improve educational efforts for women and children and has expanded its scope to also tackle ...
,
Women's Indian Association The Women's Indian Association (WIA) was founded at Adayar, Madras, in 1917 by Annie Besant, Margaret Cousins, Jeena Raja Dasa, and others to liberate women from the deplorable condition women suffered in socio-economic and political matters duri ...
and
National Council of Women in India The National Council of Women in India (NCWI) was a women's organization in India, founded in 1925. It was the second of the first three major feminist organizations in India, alongside Women's Indian Association (WIA) and All India Women's Conf ...
, through their members developed and articulated the argument in favour of raising of the age for marriage and consent before the Joshi Committee. Muslim women presented their views to the Joshi Committee in favour of raising the age limit of marriage even when they knew that they would face opposition from Muslim Ulemas. The Joshi Committee presented its report on 20 June 1929 and was passed by the
Imperial Legislative Council The Imperial Legislative Council (ILC) was the legislature of the British Raj from 1861 to 1947. It was established under the Charter Act of 1853 by providing for the addition of 6 additional members to the Governor General Council for legislativ ...
on 28 September 1929 and became a law on 1 April 1930 extending to the whole of British India. It fixed 14 and 18 as the marriageable age for girls and boys respectively of all communities.


Significance

The Child Marriage Restraint Act was the first social reform issue which was taken up by the organized women in India. They played a major role in the development of argument and actively used the device of political petition and in the process contributed in the field of politics. Pro-reform politicians, such as
Motilal Nehru Motilal Nehru (6 May 1861 – 6 February 1931) was an Indian lawyer, activist and politician belonging to the Indian National Congress. He also served as the Congress President twice, 1919–1920 and 1928–1929. He was a patriarch of the Nehr ...
, were caught off guard when the organized women's association met with leaders to ask for their support in the bill. The all-India women's association pressured politicians for their support in the bill, standing outside their delegations holding placards and shouting slogans such as 'if you oppose Sharda's bill, the world will laugh at you'. It was also this group who pushed for, and eventually succeeded in having Gandhi address the evils of child marriage in his speeches. Victory for the bill can be credited to the women's association, who presented the act as a means for India to demonstrate its commitment to modernity. Declaring they would begin to make their own laws, free of male influence, the women's organization brought liberal feminism to a forefront. Although this is a victory for the women's movement in India, the act itself was a complete failure. In the two years and five months it was an active bill, there were 473 prosecutions, of which only 167 were successful. The list goes on with 207 acquittals, with 98 cases still pending during August 1932. Out of the 167 successful prosecutions, only 17 or so did either all of or part of their sentence. The majority of cases were in Punjab and the United Provinces. A 1931 census was available to the public during the summer of 1933 in order to give a status report of how the bill was doing: the number of wives under fifteen had increased from 8.5 million to 12 million, but the number of husbands under the age of fifteen had gone from 3 to more than 5 million. The number of wives under the age of five had quadrupled (originally the numbers were about 218,500, which then shot up to 802,200). The percentage of widowed children had decreased from about 400,000 to about 320,000. Though these numbers are startling, during the six months between when it was passed and when it became an active bill, it's suggested that only about three million girls and two million boys were forced into a child marriage; the largest percent of these marriages were between Muslim children. The bill's census report, however, shows that the law reached and affected the masses, even if the numbers are very slight. However, the Act remained a dead letter during the colonial period of British rule in India.Forbes, Geraldin H., ''Women in Modern India'', Cambridge University Press, 1998 pp 89 As per
Jawaharlal Nehru Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (; ; ; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat— * * * * and author who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20t ...
, this was largely due to the fact that the colonial British government did nothing to propagate awareness of it, especially in smaller towns and villages of India. In his
autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...
, Nehru elucidates that this was largely due to the fact that the British did not want to earn the displeasure of the communal elements among the Hindus and Muslims. In the 1930s, the only parties in India that continued to support the British rule were these communal groups. The British government did not wish to lose their support, hence they completely avoided implementing this and similar social reforms, instead focusing their attention on preventing the Indian freedom movement. Thus their infamous "Dual Policy" which prevented any significant social reform in India.


See also

Age of Consent Act, 1891 The Age of Consent Act, 1891, also known as Act X of 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 ju ...


References

{{reflist


External links


The Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929
1929 in law Child marriage in India Acts of the Imperial Legislative Council 1929 in India 1929 in British law Child marriage in Pakistan Bangladeshi wedding Marriage law in India