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Modi Govt Considers Lowering Marriage Age for Males: Can Indian Men Handle it at 18?
The Narendra Modi government plans to reduce the marriageable age for men to 18 from 21, as earlier sanctioned in the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006. The government has also proposed to make child marriages void at the outset.
ThePrint asks: Modi govt considers lowering marriage age for males: Can Indian men handle it at 18?
If law sees individuals aged 18 as adults, then teenagers should have the right to marry at that age
Madhu Mehra
Executive Director, Partners of Law in Development
I think the question is framed provocatively to obscure both the reasoning for the change and the human rights issues involved. At 18, a person attains legal adulthood and is assumed to have the capacity to marry.
If the change is an acknowledgement of the capacities related to adulthood, then it is equally necessary to talk about the legal capacity for sexual consent, which is 18 years at present. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the World Health Organization recognise sexuality to be an intrinsic aspect of adolescence.
Yet, in complete disregard of both international law and biology, India increased the age of consent from 16 to 18 years in 2012. This makes for a confusing legal framework. It infantalises all persons from 0-18 into compulsory abstinence, who suddenly assume maturity as they turn 18 and, in the case of women, become legally eligible to marry.
International law recognises capacities as evolving in children, who are sexually curious and active from puberty onwards. Sexual consent flows from a recognition of adolescent sexuality, while a minimum age of marriage is predicated on legal capacity to contract, take up employment, manage finances and so on.
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