The state assembly of Himachal Pradesh passed a bill raising the marriageable age for women from 18 to 21 years. In doing so, Himachal Pradesh became one of the first Indian states to standardise the minimum age of marriage for women and men by amending The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006. The Central government had been mulling over the idea of increasing the minimum age of marriage for women since December 2021 and had introduced the prohibition of child marriage (amendment) bill, 2021 in Parliament. This lapsed in June 2024 due to the dissolution of the 17th Lok Sabha.
Given the background, such a decisive move by the Himachal assembly is a germane example of effecting social change through law-making, intending, as the bill claims in its statement of object, to eradicate from Indian society the pernicious practice of the “solemnisation of child marriages”. The bill claims it is ushering in gender equality. But detractors have questioned the desirability of the bill itself. It is, therefore, imperative that the basis for the bill and the larger movement towards increasing the marriageable age of women are explored and enunciated in a granular manner.
In response to the efforts of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, the colonial government incorporated an age of consent provision in the Indian Penal Code 1860, categorising sexual intercourse with a woman under the age of 10 as rape. Thereafter, in Dadaji Bhikaji vs Rukhmabai (1886), Rukhmabai, a child bride, attempted to extricate herself from having to cohabit and consummate her marriage with her husband on the grounds that she could not give personal consent to her marriage by virtue of being a minor. Rukhmabai’s trial was a precursor to the Age of Consent Act, 1891 that raised the age of consent for the consummation of marriage for women in India from 10 to 12 years. This Act made sexual intercourse with a woman below the stipulated age illegal and punishable. Subsequently, the enactment of the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929 raised the marriageable age to 14 years for women (later amended to 15 years in 1949) and 18 years for male of all communities. A study by S.N. Agarwala noted that the decade following this enactment revealed a distinctrise in the mean age of marriage of females and a significant reduction in child marriages. Thereafter, the PCMA fixed the minimum legal marriageable age of females and males at 18 and 21, respectively.
Despite this, data from National Family Health Survey 2019-20 reveal that while the percentage of women married between 20-24 years had declined from 27% in 2015-16 to 23% in 2019-20, the cases registered and persons convicted under PCMA had steadily increased from 2006 to 2019. This speaks of better enforcement of the law by states. In 2020, a State Bank of India report suggested that an increase in the marriageable age for women will lead to an increase in the percentage of females enrolled for graduation by 5-7%. Another 2020 study by Pintu Paul noted that females with secondary and higher education are less likely to be married before 18 years. Early marriages thus invariably resulted in missed opportunity costs for females in terms of education and employment, not to speak of maternal reproductive health and child health.
Personal laws of all communities prescribe different marriageable ages for men and women without rational justification. The Himachal bill seeks to undo this status quo in the interest of raising female participation in higher education and the workforce. On the whole, it encourages women to make the transition from the often invisible private domain to full public participation as autonomous subjects. While laws cannot be a panacea for all social ills, what they can be are catalysts for expediting social change.
Sushant Khalkho is a Bengaluru-based lawyer. Satisfy Dkhar is with the School of Public Health and Sanitation Management, KSRDPRU, Gadag, Karnataka. Views are personal
