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Journalism of Courage
In 1889, Phulmoni Das, a hearing-impaired girl who was a little more than 10 years old, was married off to Hari Churn Maity, a 35-year-old man with a criminal record, in Bengal. Thirteen hours later, Das died, succumbing to injuries inflicted upon her on her wedding night when she was sexually assaulted. Her death, and a subsequent court case in Kolkata, ignited a fierce debate on the plight of child brides in India and the brutal realities hidden behind marriage laws and served as a catalyst for bringing about a landmark law on the age of consent.
In her article ‘Intimate Violence in Colonial Bengal: A Death, a Trial and a Law, 1889–1891’, historian Tanika Sarkar recounts how Das’s mother discovered her in bed. “After the rape, Phulmonee was heard groaning piteously and her mother found her on Hari’s bed, “weltering” in blood: the man stood near her, also soaked in blood. She died in excruciating agony 13 hours later,” Sarkar says.
The case sent shockwaves through society, with reports circulating in the Viceroy’s Legislative Council, the press, and public meetings fuelling efforts to raise the age of consent from 10 years.
Aunondo Prosad Bose, the Bengali doctor who examined Das before she died, found blood on her thighs and severe injuries. An 1889 report cited by historian Ishita Pande in her 2020 book Sex, Law and the Politics of Age: Child Marriage in India, 1891-1937, read: “A longitudinal tear 1¾ inches in diameter in the pelvic cellular tissue. Vagina, uterus, and ovaries underdeveloped. No sign of ovulation.”
The autopsy, according to Sarkar, confirmed that Das had been raped. Maity was arrested and when the trial began at the Calcutta Sessions Court on July 6, 1890, he denied raping Das, notes Sarkar. Though Maity had first admitted to rape when speaking to Bose, he said in court that Das had willingly asked him to sleep with her and that they had been intimate whenever he visited, Sarkar adds.
However, her female relatives strongly denied this, saying they always made sure the couple slept separately. They also insisted that Das was just over 10 years old and had not yet started menstruating. Her maternal grandfather, too, testified that she was 11 at the time of her death (later revised to 10 years three months), a claim corroborated by the police inspector from Puddopookur Thana, who verified her birth registration as March 3, 1879.
Prominent medical experts, including Dr Joubert and Dr Kenneth McLeod from Calcutta Medical College, testified as expert witnesses in the case. Despite conflicting views on puberty markers, all agreed that Das’s body was prepubertal.
Maity was convicted for causing grievous hurt endangering life and personal safety and sentenced to 12 months.
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 law member of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council, cited Das’s case as a compelling reason to raise 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 could be curbed by this legislative change.
In her 2023 book Semiotics of Rape: Sexual Subjectivity and Violation in Rural India, Professor Rupal Oza contextualises the Phulmoni Das case in the wake of the 1885 Rukhmabai case. A young bride in Bombay, Rukhmabai had refused to cohabit with her husband upon reaching puberty. When he sued for restitution of conjugal rights, she argued that the marriage was forced and refused to comply, eventually facing imprisonment. This case split public opinion, with reformist elites siding with Rukhmabai, while nationalists opposed colonial intervention in ‘native’ customs.
Das’s case was widely recognised as the catalyst for raising the legal nubile age (the age at which a girl becomes fit for marriage by law) from 10 to 12 years. According to Pande, Scoble introduced the Indian Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure (1882 Amendment Bill) in the Legislative Council on January 9, 1891, framing the proposed change as serving a “two-fold” objective: “To protect female children (1) from immature prostitution, and (2) from premature cohabitation”.
Acknowledging that 12 was still insufficient to protect all prepubertal girls, he argued that the amendment would at least cover 39 per cent of the girls of India.
Many doctors opposed Scoble’s bill, calling it a medical anomaly. “Phulmoni’s body,” observed Pande, “thus simultaneously served as the site for the diagnosis of Hindu social ills and for the determination of the ‘true’ signs of ‘childhood’ and ‘maturity.’”
To avoid being perceived as interfering with Hindu and Muslim customs, Scoble framed the amendment as a restoration of religious norms rather than an imposition. He cited Hindu scriptures that denounced intercourse with an ‘immature’ girl, emphasising that Muslim law also required puberty and discretion for marriage.
Regarded as a social worker and philanthropist, Nawab Ahsanullah, the third nawab of Dhaka, reassured the Legislative Assembly that, based on his inquiries in Dhaka and Calcutta, “the greater proportion of Muhammadans in Eastern Bengal will regard it favorably,” as Islam forbade prepubertal cohabitation.
Despite such arguments, conservative factions resisted the reform. “Mr. A. Sankariah, president founder of the Hindu Sabha, Trichoor, who sent in several letters to clarify why the two measures of personhood – chronological age and the age of puberty – were irreconcilable,” says Pande.
“He explained the Hindu shastric view by which vivaha (marriage) was considered a life-cycle rite (samskara). The rite of giving a kanya (virgin) to a male was a crucial obligation of the father, and the reception of the kanya marked the husband’s assumption of duties as a grihastha or householder, which was the second and (according to the lawgiver Manu) the most important of the four ashramas by which the different periods of Hindu life were distinguished,” Pande adds.
Pande notes that the age of 12 had long been central in reformist debates then. “The Native Marriage Act of 1872 had established twelve as the minimum age of marriage for Brahmo females,” she states.
She says Allan Webb, a professor at Calcutta Medical College, calculated puberty’s average onset at 12 years and seven months. Surgeon Major F C Nicholson, citing multiple studies, including Webb’s book Pathologica Indica (1848), upheld 12 as the standard but argued for 13 as a more accurate threshold for menstruation in India in his response to the government of Bengal on Scoble’s proposed changes to the age of consent, Pande notes.
Several doctors, including Bengali doctor Boyle Chunder Sen, however, challenged 12 as outdated. Surgeon Major B L Gupta, a civil surgeon at Hooghly, cited data that over 61 per cent of Indian girls matured after 12 and advocated 16 as a more appropriate age for marriage and consummation, Pande says.
On January 9, 1891, the Age of Consent Bill was introduced to amend Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1882. Passed on March 29, 1891, the Age of Consent Bill established that sexual intercourse with a girl under 12 – even if she was the wife of the perpetrator – constituted rape, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. It was a landmark legislation in nineteenth-century British India.
