Raising the age of marriage in 1970s India: Demographers, despots, and feminists

SynopsisIn this article, we explore forces that led to the increase in the legal age of marriage in India in 1978. In particular, we focus on the relationship between feminists and the population control interests within and outside India that propelled the 1978 change. We probe the relationship between age of marriage and other instruments of population control, closely tracing when and how demographers began to pay attention to using the legal age of marriage as a means of population control, and its growing consolidation as a policy measure within UN institutional agendas. We note the appeal of this measure against the backdrop of Emergency-era forced sterilizations in the mid-1970s and describe the technocratic means by which the 1978 amendment of the Child Marriage Restraint Act passed in the Indian parliament. While recognizing the hegemony of population control discourses, we offer broad distinctions between feminist and population control goals. In doing so, we offer an explanation of the seeming indifference of feminists to raising the age of marriage in this moment as compared to the avid feminist support, historically, for combating child marriage.