A study of the attitude of the Government of India is to the subject of child-marriage shows that, while steadily exercising persuasive pressure toward progress and change, it has been dominated, always, by two general principles--the first, to avoid as far as possible interference in matters concerning the religion of the governed; the second, never to sanction a law that cannot be enforced. To run counter to the Indian's tenets as to religious duties, religious prohibitions, and god-given rights has ever meant the eclipse of Indian reason in madness, riot and blood. And to enforce a law whose keeping or breaking must be a matter of domestic secrecy is, in such a country as India at least, impossible.
Indian and English authorities unite in the conviction that no law raising the marriage age of girls would be today effectively accepted by the Hindu peoples. The utmost to be hoped, in the present state of public mentality, is, so these experienced men hold, a raising of the age of consent within the marriage bonds. A step in this direction was accomplished in 1891, when Government, backed by certain members of the advanced section of the Indians, after a hot battle in which it was fiercely accused by eminent orthodox Hindus of assailing the most sacred foundations of the Hindu world, succeeded in raising that age from ten years to twelve. In latter-day Legislative Assemblies the struggle has been renewed, non-official Indian Assemblymen bringing forward bills aiming at further advance only to see them, in one stage or another, defeated by the strong orthodox maj ority.
Upon such occasions, the attitude of the Viceregal Government has consistently been one of square approval of the main object in view, but of caution against the passage of laws so much in advance of public opinion that their existence can serve only to bring law itself into disrepute. This course is the more obligatory because of the tendency of the Indian public man to satisfy his sense of duty by the mere empty passing of a law, without thought or intention or accepted responsibility as to the carrying of his law into effect.
Not unnaturally, Government's course pleases no one. From the one side rise accusations of impious design against the sanctuaries of the faith; from the other come charges as bitter but of an opposite implication.
"What right have you to separate man and wife?" cries an orthodox Brahman Assemblyman. "You may lay your unholy hands on our ancient ideals and traditions, but we will not follow you."[1] Yet, with equal vehemence a second member declares that "every Englishman in the Government of India seems to be throwing obstacles in the way of other people going forward."[2]
[1. Legislative Assembly Debates, 1925, Vol. V, Part III, p. 2890.]
[2. Ibid., 1925, Vol. VI, p. 557.]
An examination of these debates gives a fair general view of the state of public opinion on the whole topic. Members seem well aware of conditions that obtain. The divergence comes in the weight they assign to those conditions.
Rai Bahadur Bakshi Sohan Lal, member from Jul-lundur, when introducing a non-official amendment to raise the age of consent within the marriage bond to fourteen years, argued:[3]
"The very high rate of fatality amongst the high classes in this country of newly-born children and of young married wives is due to sexual intercourse and pregnancy of the girl before she reaches the age of puberty or full development of her physical organs. The result of such consummation before bodily development not only weakens the health of the girl but often produces children who are weak and sickly, and in a large number of cases cannot resist any illness of an ordinary type, or any inclemency of weather or climate. Thus some of them die immediately after birth or during their infancy. If they live at all, they are always in need of medical attendance, medical advice or medical treatment, to linger on their lives; or in other words they are born more to minister to the medical profession than themselves and their families or their country. Neither can they be good soldiers nor good civilians, neither good outdoor workers nor good indoor workers; neither can they be fit to attack an enemy nor defend themselves against attacks of an enemy, or against the raid of thieves or dacoits.[4] In a few words, his birth is very often the cause of ruining the health, strength and prosperity of his parents without resulting in a corresponding benefit to society. The husband, in the majority of cases,...has to arrange for his re-marriage several times during his life-time, on account of the successive deaths of his young wives or on account of his wife bearing children who are not long-lived."
[3. Ibid., 1922, Vol. II, Part III, p. 2650.]
[4. Gang robbers.]
Successive debates expose the facts that few or none of the Indian parliamentarians dispute the theoretical wisdom of postponing motherhood until the maturity of the mother; but all agree that it is impossible to effect such a result without prohibiting the marriage of girls of immature age. Yet this they say, with one accord, cannot be done--and for three reasons:
First, because immutable custom forbids, premarital pubescence being generally considered, among Hindus, a social if not a religious sin.[5]
[5. See Legislative Assembly Debates of 1925, March 23 and 24 in Vol. V, Part III, and Sept. i, in Vol. VI.]
Second, because the father dare not keep his daughter at home lest she be damaged before she is off his hands. And this especially in joint-family households, where several men and boys--brothers, cousins, uncles--live under the same roof.
Third, because the parents dare not expose the girl, after her dawning puberty, to the pressure of her own desire unsatisfied.
With these intimate dangers in view a learned Brahman Assemblyman, Diwan Bahadur T. Rangachariar, Member from Madras, spoke earnestly against the unofficial bill of 1925 raising the age of consent within the marriage bonds to fourteen years. Any pretense at enforcing such a law would, it was generally conceded, demand the keeping of the wife away from her husband, retaining her in her own father's zenana.[6] Said the Madrassi Assemblyman, warning, imploring:[7]
[6. Women's quarters.]
[7. Legislative Assembly Debates, 1925, Vol. V, Part III, p. 2884.]
"Remember the position of girls in our country between twelve and fourteen. Have we not got our daughters in our house? Have we not got our sisters in our house? Remember that, and remember your own neighbours. Remembering our habits, remembering our usages, remembering the preco-ciousness of our youth, remembering the condition of the climate, remembering the conditions of the country, I ask you to give your weighty judgment to this matter."
Another Brahman member vehemently protests:[8]
"The tradition of womanhood in this country is unap-proached by the tradition of womanhood in any other country. Our ideal of womanhood is this. Our women regard their husbands--they have been taught from the moment they were suckling their mothers' milk to regard their husbands as their God on earth...To the Brahman girl-wife the husband is a greater, truer, dearer benefactor than all the social reformers bundled together!...What right have you to interfere with this ancient, noble tradition of ours regarding the sanctity of wedlock?...What is the object of this legislation? Do you want to make the women of India strong and their children stalwart? But remember that in trying to do that, you may otherwise be doing a lot of evil, far worse than the evil you seek to remove...By all means take care of [the girl's] body; but fail not to train her morals, to train her soul, so as to enable her to look upon her husband as her God, which indeed is the case in India, among Hindus at least...Don't destroy I beg of you--don't ruin our Hindu Homes."
[8. Ibid., p. 2890 et seq.]
To reasoning of this sort another member--Mr. Shanmukhan Chetty, of Salem and Coimbatore--hotly retorts:[9]
[9. Legislative Assembly Debates, 1025, Vol. VI, p. 558.]
"The fact that a so-called marriage rite precedes the commission of a crime does not and cannot justify that crime. I have no doubt that if you were to ask a cannibal, he would plead his religion for the heinous act he does."
And Dr. S. K. Datta, Indian Christian representative from Calcutta:[10]
[10. Ibid., 1925, Vol. V, Part III, p. 2839.]
"If ever there was "a man-made law," this compulsion of young girls to become mothers is one of them."
The bill raising the age of consent to fourteen was finally thrown out, buried under an avalanche of popular disapproval. In the next Assembly Sir Alexander Muddiman, leader of the Viceroy's Government, brought in an official bill drafted with a view of breaking the impasse and securing that degree of advance that would be conceded by the conservative Indian element- This bill, fixing the woman's age of consent within and without the marriage bond respectively at thirteen and fourteen years, was enacted into law as Act XXIX of 1925.
The discussion that it evoked on the floor of the Assembly gave still further light upon the attitude of Indians.
Some speakers pointed to the gradual growth of public opinion as expressed in caste, party and association councils as the best hope of the future. These deprecated legislation as both irritating and useless, calling attention to the fact that the orthodox community, comprising as it does the great majority of Hindus all over India, would regard legal abolition of child-marriage as, literally, a summons to a holy war.
Similarly, any active attempt to protect the child-wife during her infancy would, it was shown, be held as an attack upon the sacred marital relation, impossible to make effective and sure to let loose "bloodshed and chaos."
Rai Sahib M. Harbilas Sarda, of Ajmer-Merwara maintained, it is true, that[11]
[11. Ibid., 1925, Vol. VI, p. 561.]
"where a social custom or a religious rite outrages our sense of humanity or inflicts injustice on a helpless class of people, the Legislature has a right to step in. Marrying a girl of three or four years and allowing sexual intercourse with a girl of nine or ten years outrages the sense of humanity anywhere."
But Pundit Madan Mohan Malaviya, of Allahabad, thought differently, saying:[12]
[12. Ibid., pp. 573-4]
"I have to face the stern realities of the situation, realities which include a general permission or rather a widespread practice of having marriages performed before twelve and consequently of the impossibility of preventing a married couple from meeting...I submit that it is perhaps best that we should reconcile ourselves to leave the law as it is in the case of married people for the present, and to trust to the progress of education and to social reform to raise the age of consummation of marriage to the proper level...I am sure, Sir, that a great deal of advance has been made in this matter. In many provinces among the higher classes the marriageable age has been rising...It is the poorer classes who unfortunately are the greatest victims in this matter. Early marriages take place among the poorer classes in a larger measure than among the higher classes."
And Mr. Amar Nath Dutt, of Burdwan, combated the action proposed, thus:[13]
[13. Legislative Assembly Debates, 1925, Vol. VI, pp. 558-9.]
"We have no right to thrust our advanced views upon our less advanced countrymen...Our villages are tern with factions. If the age of consent is raised to 13, rightly or wrongly we will find that there will be inquisitions by the police at the instance of members of an opposite faction in the village and people will be put to disgrace and trouble...I would ask [Government]...to withdraw the Bill at once. Coming as I do, Sir, from Bengal, I know what is the opinion of the majority of the people there."
Mr. M. K. Acharya, of South Arcot, also strongly adverse to change, declared that[14]
[14. Ibid., p. 551.]
"...what is sought to be done is to make that an offence which is not an offence now, to make that a crime which is not at present a crime, and which we are unable to regard as a crime, whatever may be the feelings of some few people to the contrary."
To which the same speaker added, a few moments later:[15]
"There is very little opinion of any respectable body of men in India which wants this reform very urgently. It may come, and there is no harm in it, in its own course. Really this is...merely to give Honourable Members some legislative marbles and tops to play with during the time that we happen to be in Simla."[16]
[15. Ibid, p. 556.]
[16. Simla is the summer seat of the Central Government.]