In 1889, Phulmoni Das, a hearing-impaired lady who was somewhat greater than 10 years previous, was married off to Hari Churn Maity, a 35-year-old man with a legal file, in Bengal. 13 hours later, Das died, succumbing to accidents inflicted upon her on her marriage ceremony night time. Her demise, and a subsequent court docket case in Kolkata, ignited a fierce debate on the plight of kid brides in India and the brutal realities hidden behind marriage legal guidelines and served as a catalyst for bringing a couple of landmark legislation on the age of consent.
In her article ‘Intimate Violence in Colonial Bengal: A Loss of life, a Trial and a Regulation, 1889–1891’, historian Tanika Sarkar recounts how Das’s mom found her in mattress. “After the rape, Phulmonee was heard groaning piteously and her mom discovered her on Hari’s mattress, “weltering” in blood: the person stood close to her, additionally soaked in blood. She died in excruciating agony 13 hours later,” Sarkar says.
The case despatched shockwaves by means of society, with experiences circulating within the Viceroy’s Legislative Council, the press, and public conferences fuelling efforts to boost the age of consent from 10 years.
An post-mortem and a trial
Aunondo Prosad Bose, the Bengali physician who examined Das earlier than she died, discovered blood on her thighs and extreme accidents. An 1889 report cited by historian Ishita Pande in her 2020 ebook Intercourse, Regulation and the Politics of Age: Baby Marriage in India, 1891-1937, learn: “A longitudinal tear 1¾ inches in diameter within the pelvic mobile tissue. Vagina, uterus, and ovaries underdeveloped. No signal of ovulation.”
The post-mortem, in keeping with Sarkar, confirmed that Das had been raped. Maity was arrested and when the trial started on the Calcutta Periods Court docket on July 6, 1890, he denied raping Das, notes Sarkar. Although Maity had first admitted to rape when talking to Bose, he mentioned in court docket that Das had willingly requested him to sleep along with her and that they’d been intimate every time he visited, Sarkar provides.
Nevertheless, her feminine relations strongly denied this, saying they all the time made certain the couple slept individually. Additionally they insisted that Das was simply over 10 years previous and had not but began menstruating. Her maternal grandfather, too, testified that she was 11 on the time of her demise (later revised to 10 years three months), a declare corroborated by the police inspector from Puddopookur Thana, who verified her beginning registration as March 3, 1879.
Outstanding medical specialists, together with Dr Joubert and Dr Kenneth McLeod from Calcutta Medical School, testified as skilled witnesses within the case. Regardless of conflicting views on puberty markers, all agreed that Das’s physique was prepubertal.
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Maity was convicted for inflicting grievous damage endangering life and private security and sentenced to 12 months.
A catalyst for change
In a memo to the Viceroy of India Henry Charles Keith Petty-Firzmaurice, the fifth Marquess of Lansdowne, on July 6, 1890, Andrew Scoble, a legislation member of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council, cited Das’s case as a compelling purpose to boost the age of consent from 10 to 12 years. Scoble spearheaded the passage of the Age of Consent Act of 1891, arguing that prepubertal consummation of marriages may very well be curbed by this legislative change.
In her 2023 ebook Semiotics of Rape: Sexual Subjectivity and Violation in Rural India, Professor Rupal Oza contextualises the Phulmoni Das case within the wake of the 1885 Rukhmabai case. A younger bride in Bombay, Rukhmabai had refused to cohabit along with her husband upon reaching puberty. When he sued for restitution of conjugal rights, she argued that the wedding was compelled and refused to conform, ultimately dealing with imprisonment. This case break up public opinion, with reformist elites siding with Rukhmabai, whereas nationalists opposed colonial intervention in ‘native’ customs.
Das’s case was broadly recognised because the catalyst for elevating the authorized nubile age (the age at which a woman turns into match for marriage by legislation) from 10 to 12 years. In response to Pande, Scoble launched the Indian Penal Code and Code of Felony Process (1882 Modification Invoice) within the Legislative Council on January 9, 1891, framing the proposed change as serving a “two-fold” goal: “To guard feminine youngsters (1) from immature prostitution, and (2) from untimely cohabitation”.
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Acknowledging that 12 was nonetheless inadequate to guard all prepubertal ladies, he argued that the modification would at the least cowl 39 per cent of the ladies of India.
Opposition and cultural resistance
Many medical doctors opposed Scoble’s invoice, calling it a medical anomaly. “Phulmoni’s physique,” noticed Pande, “thus concurrently served as the location for the prognosis of Hindu social ills and for the dedication of the ‘true’ indicators of ‘childhood’ and ‘maturity.’”
To keep away from being perceived as interfering with Hindu and Muslim customs, Scoble framed the modification as a restoration of non secular norms moderately than an imposition. He cited Hindu scriptures that denounced intercourse with an ‘immature’ lady, emphasising that Muslim legislation additionally required puberty and discretion for marriage.
Thought to be a social employee and philanthropist, Nawab Ahsanullah, the third nawab of Dhaka, reassured the Legislative Meeting that, primarily based on his inquiries in Dhaka and Calcutta, “the better proportion of Muhammadans in Japanese Bengal will regard it favorably,” as Islam forbade prepubertal cohabitation.
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Regardless of such arguments, conservative factions resisted the reform. “Mr. A. Sankariah, president founding father of the Hindu Sabha, Trichoor, who despatched in a number of letters to make clear why the 2 measures of personhood – chronological age and the age of puberty – have been irreconcilable,” says Pande.
“He defined the Hindu shastric view by which vivaha (marriage) was thought of a life-cycle ceremony (samskara). The ceremony of giving a kanya (virgin) to a male was an important obligation of the daddy, and the reception of the kanya marked the husband’s assumption of duties as a grihastha or householder, which was the second and (in keeping with the lawgiver Manu) a very powerful of the 4 ashramas by which the completely different durations of Hindu life have been distinguished,” Pande provides.
Pande notes that the age of 12 had lengthy been central in reformist debates then. “The Native Marriage Act of 1872 had established twelve because the minimal age of marriage for Brahmo females,” she states.
She says Allan Webb, a professor at Calcutta Medical School, calculated puberty’s common onset at 12 years and 7 months. Surgeon Main F C Nicholson, citing a number of research, together with Webb’s ebook Pathologica Indica (1848), upheld 12 as the usual however argued for 13 as a extra correct threshold for menstruation in India in his response to the federal government of Bengal on Scoble’s proposed adjustments to the age of consent, Pande notes.
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A number of medical doctors, together with Bengali physician Boyle Chunder Sen, nevertheless, challenged 12 as outdated. Surgeon Main B L Gupta, a civil surgeon at Hooghly, cited information that over 61 per cent of Indian ladies matured after 12 and advocated 16 as a extra applicable age for marriage and consummation, Pande says.
A landmark legislation
On January 9, 1891, the Age of Consent Invoice was launched to amend Part 375 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and the Code of Felony Process, 1882. Handed on March 29, 1891, the Age of Consent Invoice established that sexual activity with a woman below 12 – even when she was the spouse of the perpetrator – constituted rape, punishable by as much as 10 years in jail. It was a landmark laws in nineteenth-century British India.
