The Age of Consent Act was passed by the Legislative Council of the Governor-General of India in Calcutta. The bill raised the age of consent for girls from ten to twelve years of age in all regions of India. Opposition to the bill arose from the council member Romesh Chunder Mitter, who claimed it violated Hindu practices. However, the bill was ultimately passed due to a high-profile case of an eleven year-old girl who died of hemorrhaging after having forced intercourse with her 35 year old husband. This, in part, drove the calls to raise the age of consent. However, in reality, the new law was not regularly enforced. Haimabati Sen notes this in her work, Because I am a Woman, when she writes, “A girl of eleven,..., was raped by her husband. She was hemorrhaging and it did not stop” (193). Sen was then forced to cover up the cause of death as septicemia from menstruation, rather than the rape. Thus, the Age of Consent Act had little effect on preventing premature sexual intercourse. It was seen by local Bengali citizens as an infringement by the British government of Hindu practices. This inflamed nationalist and anti-British sentiments that were spreading in the late nineteenth century.
Citations:
Engels, Dagmar. “The Age of Consent Act of 1891: Colonial Ideology in Bengal.” South Asia Research, vol. 3, no. 2, Nov. 1983, pp. 107–131, https://doi.org/10.1177/026272808300300205.