A History of Child Marriage in India
Mother: I will cut off your ears.
Daughter: Oh, I will see how you cut off my ears.
Mother: Really, I am telling you, I will cut off your ears and send them to the mill, and they will make flour and we will have bread from that.
Daughter: Don’t be silly.
Introduction: The Reform Movement 1860 - 1886
In India during the 1860’s, marriage meant girls getting married below 8 or 9 years old. Socio-reform religious movements such as the Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj pioneered work against child marriage. Late in the 1860’s some success was met when the Indian Penal Code prohibited intercourse with a wife who had not reached ten years of age.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t until 1880 that child marriage as a problem became a public issue in India during the debate on the Age of Consent Bill. Towards the end of the debate a child wife of eleven years old, Named Phulmani, died when her husband raped her. More than 500 women doctors sent a memorandum to the Viceroy requesting him to stop marriage of girls below 14 years of age. The resulting bill compromised at 12 years old.
On August 15, 1884 a Parsee reformist, Behramji Malabari, circulated two notes which highlighted the evils of child marriage and enforced widowhood. The Honorable J. Gibbs added his comments to Malabari’s notes saying that, "Young mothers become stunted in growth, and often become invalids for life, while children were too often pony and weak." Kadhavdas added to the list of evils, "Early marriage is a great obstacle in the progress of female education."
Shortly thereafter, in 1886 the first petition against ‘Hindu Infant Marriage’ was proposed to the Government by the natives of Meerut. It was finally passed in 1927. It declared that no marriage would be valid unless the girl had completed her twelfth year. In spite of laws prohibiting the practice, child marriage continues to be a widespread custom in India. After looking at the debate which raged in the 1880’s, I look at Hindu scriptures and their mandates for the practice.
The Malabari Letters - 1887
Between 1884 and 1887 Behramji Malabari collected opinions for and against infant marriage and enforced widowhood from "representative Hindu gentlemen and official and other authorities." The "Hindu gentlemen" were mostly selected from Brahmins educated in English universities. The resultant letters, dedicated to the Duke and Duchess of Connaught were published in the Voice of India. Malabari argued that infant marriage was "a practice more evil than infanticide." His arguments against infant marriage can be summarized as a too early consummation of the nuptial troth, breaking down the constitutions and the ushering in of disease, the birth of sick children, the necessity of feeding too many mouths, poverty and dependence, and a disorganized household leading perhaps to sin.
A response by Ramanujchari’s typifies the reformer’s view of child marriage, an evil which he thought that even the reformers were unaware, ".the practice of the selling of girls by their parents. has become so rife in these parts of the country that girls are disposed of in marriage to the highest bidders like goods at an auction sale. Girls are married, as a rule, before they attain their 8th or 9th birthday - an age when they are utterly incompetent to comprehend the contract they enter into." The authors included in Malabari’s publication nearly universally condemned infant marriage as a "great physical and moral evil." Infant marriage was considered "one of two evils that, if not remedied in time, are sure to destroy the vitality of the whole native community of India." Infant marriage was not confined to the Hindus, but was also "practiced by Parsis and Mohamedans."
Two related issues were being discussed, child marriage and infant widowhood. Shirgaonkar, not so interested in child marriage, objected to child widowhood. He said, "I condemn infant marriages not because I think that they afterwards prove unhappy - which statement I will not accept unsupported by statistics - but because such marriages increase infant widows"
How child marriage works to increase infant widows and their misery is hinted at by Colonel E.W. West, "I have known many cases of old men marrying girls not yet emerged from childhood and it needs but little knowledge of human nature to realize the misery during the husband’s lifetime, and of Hindu ways to realize the misery after his death, of the girl."
Many authors felt that government action was a necessity: "The reason for this is that for the last 2000 years the Hindoos have lost the power of refection, and even that of following or imitating what is good. . The masses still grope in darkness. They are bound by their customs and the foolish teachings of their priests."
Of the eighty-seven respondents , only a few suggested that the evil wasn’t as great as Malabari considered it to be. For example, Dr. Rajendralala Mitra from Calcutta said, "I have also yet to learn that disparity in age of marriage does more harm in India than it does in Europe."
Mozoomdar objected and offered some statistics, arguing that the problem of infant widowhood wasn’t nearly so serious as propounded. According to the census there were only 28,369 widows between the ages of 14 and 19 out of twenty million total widows in India.
More than a few of the respondents objected to Malabari’s proposal for prohibition of child marriage. Taleyarkhanfrom Baroda argued that, "Our English ideas actually jar with their (the Hindus) sympathies, the antipathies, and all important affections of their heart and mind."
He goes on to explain that that ‘marriage seasons’ can be at intervals as many as twelve years apart. In the case cited a girl of four couldn’t be married until she was sixteen, "A horrible purgatory, according to the Shastras, for the parents to keep her unmarried at that age."
He continues by saying, "It is a wonder how this nation has succeeded for ages in preserving such a marked harmony of their homes. If we have weakly children the homes are happy, contented, well regulated and economical."
Reformers Ignored Hindu Scriptures and Epics
Malabari claims that, "No Shastra enforces marriage proper on a girl under 12 years of age, when presumably the boy must be between 15 and 20." That being Malabari’s only comment on the religious basis of the nearly universal custom of child marriage he concluded, "So much as to the social or so-called religious aspect of the practice."
The writers who supported Malabari, with one or two exceptions, also denied the religious-spiritual background of infant marriage. Lakshmiram, for example, said, "There is one foolish text, I know, which enjoins the marriage of every girl before she is eleven years old."
One exception to this denial is found in the letter of Keshaveal Madhavadas who says, "The Hindu law gives clear injunction not to keep a girl unmarried beyond 12 years old."
While it does appear to be arguable that the Vedic literature, written before 400 B.C. advised that children not be married before puberty, in the following compilation I show that the British and their Brahmin supporters ignored the long Hindu scriptural tradition of child marriage during Vedic times and after the fourth century BC. The citations also help us understand the point of view of a civilization that allowed for child marriage.
Child Marriage Before the Fourth Century B.C.
The Vedic mantras, such as the Rigveda mentioned that a girl could be married only when she was fully developed both physically and mentally and that she was to be fully developed physically before leaving her father’s home. Men were advised to marry a girl with a fully developed body. One hymn mentions that a female should be married only "when she is not a child". One modern commentator, Sharma who wrote in 1993, argues that during the time of the great epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the girls "used to be grown up at the time of marriage".
Sharma’s reasoning is that, "In the Ramayana it is described that the brides came to Ayodhya and after paying due respect to the elders lived merrily with their husbands in seclusion which presupposes post-puberty marriages." Sharma also argues that the marriage rituals described in the Grihyasutras, the Baudhayana presuppose that the marriageable age was after puberty. The consummation of the marriage could take place directly after the marriage ceremonies or a few days afterwards. "Since consummation couldn’t possibly take place before puberty," goes Sharma’s reasoning, the bride must have reached maturity. It sounds as if Sharma considers pre-pubescent girls as being physically incapable of having intercourse and therefore not marriageable.
Malabari, more than century before Sharma, discussed the ability of pre-pubertal girls to consummate marriage willingly when he wrote A.O. Hume, "Mr. Hume is informed that consummation is deferred in many cases. Not so to my knowledge .it takes but little knowledge of human nature to see that infant marriage super-induces precocious development in the case of the boy. In the case of the girl it is worse, and almost all circumstances conspire to make her a willing accessory to what, on public grounds, I am constrained to denounce as a crime." According to Malabari, pre-pubescent sexual relationships while both common and consensual, were still a "crime".
Also suggestive that the Rigveda allowed for child marriage is a hymn that mentions that Indra gave a child-wife named Vrichaya to the old man Kashivan. Furthermore, in the epic Aranyakanda, the godess Sita is supposed to have told Ravana that when she was kidnapped by him, she was eighteen and her husband twenty five and that they had spent twelve years at Ayodhya. From this commentary, the age of Sita is known to have been six years old at the day of her marriage. Sharma (1993) argued this is not true because, "the Ramayana was recast many times and the verses in question are from later editions." He says the same concerning the Uttararamacharita Bhavabhuti which described Sita as a child bride playing at the knee of her mother-in-law.
Only in the Mahabharta is there a unequivocable injunction that a girl should be married after puberty. In fact this work decrees that she should wait three years after puberty to obtain a husband.
The Kamasutra on Courtship
The Kama Sutra is attributed to Vatsyayana who wrote his "profound discussion of love and sex" no later than 300 AD and perhaps as early as 300 BC. The work wasn’t original, it was a summing up of ancient wisdom. Love and sex were considered as something a-moral, something which transcends ethics and has its own justifications.
According to the Kama Sutra the results of marrying a young girl is untarnished love, "When a girl of the same cast, and a virgin, is married in accordance with the precepts of the Holy Writ (Darma Shastras), the results of such a union are. untarnished love."
Loving a girl that had been loved by others would be reproachful, "But at all events, says Ghotakamukha, a girl who has already been joined with others (that is, no longer a maiden) should never be loved, for it would be reproachful to do such a thing." A girl who has "fully arrived at puberty" should be avoided as a wife.
The Kama Sutra describes wooing, "When a boy has thus begun to woo a girl that he loves, he should spend his time with her and amuse her with various games and diversions fitted for their age and acquaintanceship, such as picking and collecting flowers, making garlands of flowers, playing parts of members of a fictitious family.. the game of odds and evens, the game of finding out the middle finger, the game of six pebbles. Hide-and-seek, playing with seeds, blind-man’s bluff and other games of the same sort." In short, child’s games.
If the wooer is a man he should, "attach himself to the daughter of the girl’s nurse and. procure for her such playthings as may be hardly known to other girls. He should give her dolls made of cloth.."
We may wonder what the girl thinks of all this. According to the Kama Sutra, a girl always shows her love by outward signs and actions, "She never looks the man in the face and becomes abashed when she is looked at by him; under some pretext or another she shows her limbs to him; she looks secretly at him; hangs down her head when she is asked some questions by him, and answers in indistinct words and unfinished sentences, delights to be in his company for a long time; under some pretext or another she makes him look at different things, narrates to him tales and stories very slowly so that she may continue conversation with him for a long time; always wears anything that he may have presented to her, and becomes dejected when any other bridegroom is mentioned by her parents.."
That the attentions are being paid to pre-pubescent girls is shown clearly by the concluding paragraph on Kama Sutra courtship, "A man who has seen and perceived the feelings of the girl toward him, and who has noticed the outward signs and movements by which those feelings are expressed, should do everything in his power to effect a union with her. He should gain over a young girl by childlike sports."
Later, in the Yajñvalkya Smriri and its contemporary literature, we find that the fear of post-puberty marriages became so great that the Smitris brought the marriageable age of girls still lower. According to the Parashar Smitri and Sheeghrabodha the marriageable girls were divided into five categories:
1) Nagnika or naked. A girl seven years old or younger. This was regarded as best age for marriage.
2) Gauri. A girl eight years old.
3) Rohini. A girl of nine years old.
4) Kanya. A ten years old girl.
5) Rajaswala. A girl above ten years old.
According to Vaikhnasa, a Brahmin should marry a Nagnika since that is the best match. According to Marici the best age of marriage for a girl is five years old. Brahmapurana also prescribes marriage in childhood. Failure to do this will condemn the parents or gaurdian to utmost degradation.
Child Marriage from the 6th Century AD - 1400 AD
After the sixth century the marriageable age of girls went down lower and lower. The stoppage of participation of girls in Vedic education, Upanayana rituals and the insistence of purity in yajna (sacrificial) ritual contributed to the lowering of the marriage age for girls.
All the literature of the epic clearly show the tendency to lower the age of marriage age of girls. The injunction in the Dharmasutra for a woman to wait three years after obtaining womanhood to select a mate was limited to three months by Guatama and Vishnu. Guatama said that a girl should be married before she attains womanhood, otherwise it would be a sin. According to the Baudhayana and Vashithat Dharmasutras a father who allowed his daughter to remain unmarried until after her first menstruation was considered guilty of the sin of abortion on each monthly period.
Later, the Manusmitri places stress on the suitability of the groom and makes it clear that marriage of a girl before her first menstruation was permissible. In the Baudhayana it is said that a girl should be given in marriage to a suitable groom even if she is immature, and that if she is mature she should be given in marriage even if the groom is unsuitable.
By the time of the Yajnavalkyasmitri and its contemporary literature, we find that the fear of post-puberty marriage became so great that the marriageable age was brought down even lower. Nagnika, girls seven years old or younger, were regarded as the best by Vaikknasa. Marichi considered the best age for marriage of girls to be five years old. It was said that if a father does not give her girls in marriage, then the ancestors of the girl would drink the menstrual flow of the girl.
The Ratirimanjeri of Jayadeva - 1400 AD
About 1000 years (1400-1500 AD) after the Kamasutra, the Ratimañjari or "The Posy of Love’ described the 125 slokas, or sexual positions. The work was dedicated to Lord Siva.
Young girls are mentioned in only two verses, Until sixteen years, a young girl was called bala, until thirty she was called taruni, or young woman. The Ratimañjari said, "The bala is a lover of flowers and sweet things, the young woman is given to love-play. The bala gives a man pleasure and the breath of life, prana; the taruni draws out the breath of life."
An allusion is made to hairlessness as being attractive. "Now the queynt of woman should be like the back of a tortoise, the cassia blossom, lotus-scented, hairless and well spread: these five are accounted desirable.
The Koka Shastra - 1400 AD
The Koka Shastra also discusses courtship with young girls. "The bala can be won by giving betal fruit, promising her elaborate meals, by recounting all manner of wonders to her, by the arts and by games."
Young girls or young girl somatypes are preferred sexual partners, "A pretty girl of phlegmatic constitution; a mare- or gazelle-woman, yaksi, human or goddess-type; a young girl or one in the freshness of youth - this is the ideal for those who desire pleasure in the world."
In another verse we find that, "A young girl from a strange part of the country should be studied accordingly: her inborn inclinations can be found only from experience.. When you have considered this discrepancy between individual preference and local custom, and also somatype, speed of reaching orgasm, degree of response, age group, and constitutional type, you can proceed accordingly - first to appropriate ‘outer forms’ - the first of these are the embrace..Until her sixteenth year a girl is called bala a young girl who is not yet mature must be approached by way of the ‘outer’ forms of lovemaking."
The outer forms of love-making include embraces. There are two sorts of embrace for those who have not yet declared their love, four embraces by which they can make known their mind, and eight embraces for those who have shared love-pleasure already.
Children are to avoided for the inner form of love-making, as we can see from the following verse, "Woman who has been put out of her caste, a personal friend, a child, an invalid, a woman who makes love in public, a lunatic, or one who is ill-smelling, aged are always to be avoided as a matter of practice".
More Hindu Scriptual Sources - Nineteenth Century Opinions
Hindu religion enjoined parents not to keep a girl unmarried even at as small an age as 8 years. Puberty sets in among Indian females generally after 11 years, when any marriage is considered unholy. Jayal said that, "Hindu law gives clear injunction not to keep a girl unmarried beyond 12 years."
Keeping girls unmarried until their first menstruation would condemn the family to hell, as Paitinashi said, "A damsel should be given in marriage before her breasts swell. But if she has menstruated before marriage, both the giver and the taker fall into the abyss of hell; and her father, grandfather, and great grandfather are born insects in ordure."
In addition, Brahmins who married girls after their first period would become outcastes as spoken of in the Angirasmitri where it is said, "There is no atonement for man who has intercourse with a Vrishali, i.e, a woman who has her courses before marriage. It is also stated, ". the father, mother and elder brother who tolerate a girl in her courses before marriage go to hell.. A Brahmin who will marry such a girl is not to be spoken of or admitted to society."
Hindu scriptures sanctioned both child marriage and early consummation, "the girl should be married before puberty and certainly immediately after her first menstruation. If a girl gets married after her first menses it would not be a Kanya-dan but stree-dan". Kanya-dan can be consummated at the most at 11 years of her age." In one of the scenes in the Shastras a father addresses his father-in-law on giving her in marriage, "I have brought this girl up for eight years like a boy. I now give her away to your son, treat her with affection." (Nagi 1993:4).
Age at Marriage
The Manu, Mahabharata and the Vishnu Purana decreed that the man should be three times older than the girl, thus a man marrying a ten year old should be thirty, an eight year old girl should marry a man of twenty-four and so on. One pragmatical Hindu reformer suggested that a law be made prohibiting the marriage of a man over the age of 45 with a girl younger than twelve.
The practice of marrying girls between the age of two and eight years old was common, not only amongst the Hindus, but the Mohammedans and Parsees. Even the Prophet of Islam married a child as a first wife. Oman (No date) complained that, "it is undeniably true that throughout India the marriage of very young girls from 2 to 8 years old of age, with equally young boys, or often with adults of any age, is a very common practice amongst Hindus. The practice also prevails in lesser degrees amongst Parsees and Indian Muhammadans, but it cannot be repugnant to the religious sentiments of the later, since the Prophet of Islam married Ayishah when she was nine years old. She was his favorite wife, and lived to the age of sixty-nine." Abielle (No date) found that child marriage was prevalent even in the Christian areas of India. One of Abielle’s more interesting findings was that their was a near unanimity of satisfaction of the couples involved with their experiences in child marriage.
As for consummation Oman continues, "Equally true it is that even consummation of marriage has commonly taken place when the child-wife is perhaps not more than ten years of age."
Discussion
The East India Company's 17th century "looting spree" turned into a permanently profitable business by the 1800's. The British Prime Minister Salisbury soberly decreed that India should be bled "judiciously". A flood of Christian preachers, missionaries and teachers were dispatched to Anglicize the "savages." While appearing to be judicious, they were vicious in their derision of Hindus and their customs. The Brahmin caste were eager for social acceptance by those in power and quick to adopt European ideas. According to the social historian Amrit Srinivasan, "Civilizing the Indians through enforcing a uniform adoption of the Victorian ethic for women" became a central goal of the reformers. Gradually the seeds of cultural shame were sown and an Indian clone of British mentality successfully bred. From then onwards, the most effective critics of Hindu tradition were Indians themselves.
The English, who were ignorant of the long tradition of Indian spiritual literature, declared that there was no religious basis for child marriage and found support for their beliefs from their supporters within the Brahmin caste. Nearly all British educated Indians of the era parroted the English position that child marriage was an insidious evil and destroying the fabric of Indian society.
The Indian populace disagreed. As K.N. Kane of Bombay said in 1884, "There cannot be two opinions about the evil effects which these customs produce in Hindu society, but the efforts of both high and low have been rendered futile owing to the majority of the Hindu population adhering tenaciously to the opposite views." If Kane is to believed, the majority of India’s people thought child marriage to be beneficial and a source of pride. Larkshmiram, who considered child marriage a "curse", also said that, "The common saying, ‘my children were betrothed while in the cradle yet’ is the proud expression of the completely satisfied aspiration of a Gujurato parent."
At the time of the British reform movement in the 1880’s scholars and politicians reported girls being married at 8 and 9 years old to men three times their age, an ancient Hindu, and apparently Mohammadan and Parsee custom. The practice of marrying girls before they were thirteen was all but universal. According to various authors many of the marriages were consummated before puberty. Malabari himself said that, "The nuptial ceremonies, I think, are a direct inducement in 95 out of 100 cases to a too early consummation. Even the utmost precaution taken by sensible parents fails to keep the pair from mischief." The English called them "victims". Anglicized Hindus called them "willing victims in the vast majority of cases."
Cross-generation marriage was both sanctioned and encouraged by at least two thousand years of scripture and literature, perhaps even longer if we accept that Sita was a "child-bride at the knee of her mother-in-law."
An unmigated evil as the English believed? Or beneficial as the Hindus believed? Shirgaonkar, would not accept that child marriages were unhappy and complained of a lack of statistics. Taleyarkhan noted Hindu families as "happy, contented, well regulated and economical." Former Government Secretary to India, Allan Octavian Hume who almost single-handedly establish the Indian National Congress told Malabari, "I must say that I think that you somewhat exaggerate the evil results of these traditional institutions. There are millions of cases in which early marriages are believed to be daily proving happy ones."
Hume quotes a letter from a native friend, "Those ignorant of our inner life calls this a vile subjugation and say that we have made our wives our slaves, but those who live amongst us know, that it is the result of that deep seated affection that springs from early association. Where will you find a wife as true and contented as the Hindu women of a respected family?"
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Index
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