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6 - An Age of Discretion

Querying Age and Legal Subjectivity in the Secular Shariat

from Part III - Consent Otherwise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2020

Ishita Pande
Affiliation:
Queen's University, Ontario
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Summary

This chapter traces a case involving a Muslim wife, Badal, who left behind a marriage contracted for her in her childhood on attaining puberty. Ameer Ali’s judgment in the case of Badal Aurat and Anr. v. Emperor (1891) was cited repeatedly as a precedent for the application of the Islamic legal concept of the “option of puberty” in colonial courtrooms. The case sheds interesting light on layered and dynamic historical structure of “Islamic law” and serves as a counterpoint to the tragic and coeval case of Phulmoni Das studied in the first chapter of the book. This chapter traces the afterlives of the case in colonial courtrooms, not with the intent to celebrate Muslim law in its colonial application, but in order: first, to use an Islamic legal principle – the “option of puberty” – to shine a light on the kinks, quirks, and limitations of the liberal legal principle of the “age of consent”; second, to raise questions about the contrasting visibility of the two cases – Badal and Phulmoni – in the historical scholarship on the age of consent and marriage in India; and third, to ask if it is possible to step away from liberal legal categories to imagine consent without (chronological) age.

Type
Chapter
Information
Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age
Child Marriage in India, 1891–1937
, pp. 257 - 282
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • An Age of Discretion
  • Ishita Pande, Queen's University, Ontario
  • Book: Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age
  • Online publication: 13 July 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108779326.007
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  • An Age of Discretion
  • Ishita Pande, Queen's University, Ontario
  • Book: Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age
  • Online publication: 13 July 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108779326.007
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • An Age of Discretion
  • Ishita Pande, Queen's University, Ontario
  • Book: Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age
  • Online publication: 13 July 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108779326.007
Available formats
×