Legal Age of Marriage in India – In India, getting married is a community-based custom. While it is customary for some groups to wait until their late 20s or early 30s, others hardly wait until India’s legal marriageable age. The legal age of marriage in India is set by marriage legislation, which respects different religious beliefs. Child marriage is prohibited in India due to laws that primarily support the age of consent for weddings. Learn about the legal age of marriage in India for both girls and boys in the blog post below. Examine the rumours around the raising of the Indian girl’s marriageable age in 2024.
Legal Age of Marriage in India 2024
Hinduism has never had an age restriction on marriage. The Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 established the idea of the age of consent. Section 5(iii) of the Act states that at the time of marriage, the boy must have turned 21 years old, and the bride must have turned 18 years old. The same age of consent for marriage is set forth in Section 4 of the Special Marriage Act, 1954, which also contains the circumstances linked to the solemnization of special marriages in India. Marriage before reaching the age of majority is forbidden by the Child Marriage Restriction Act (1929) and the more recent Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (2006).
An amendment to the Indian marriage laws is being considered, which will raise the marriage age for girls from 18 to 21 in 2024. The parliament still needs to approve and enact the reforms, though. Make touch with the authorities via family lawyers in India if you witness someone arranging child marriage in violation of the relevant laws.
Tamil Nadu Marriage Registration
Legal Age of Marriage in India for Girls
In India, women are not allowed to marry until they are 18 years old or older under the majority of personal laws and the Special Marriage Act of 1954. For Muslims, on the other hand, reaching puberty marks the completion of a marriage commitment. In India, females who turn 15 are typically considered to have reached marriageable age. However, it has recently been suggested that the marriage age for girls in India in 2024be raised to 21 Years. Nonetheless, data on child marriage incidents indicates a cultural mindset that is moving in the opposite direction.
Legal Age of Marriage in India for Boys
The law of the land requires the husband to provide for his wife’s maintenance. For this reason, men in India are legally allowed to marry at a younger age than women. Generally speaking, a man has to be older than 21 Years to be married in accordance with marital law. For Muslim men, reaching puberty is thought to indicate the legal marriage age.
Science’s Predictive Age of Marriage
In human culture today, marriage is the most typical cultural partnership for having children. The ultimate goal of the ceremonies, though they may differ, is to create a man and woman partnership that is accepted by the law in civil society. Puberty may be the benchmark if we use reproductive science to determine the age at which a girl and boy in India get married. The age at which a person’s body goes through reproductive changes and becomes an adult is known as puberty. It typically occurs in girls between the ages of 10 and 15. The age range for boys is roughly 13 to 16 years old. However, girls who marry soon after reaching puberty have a greater rate of maternal mortality.
Mature behaviour does not come with age; rather, experience does, even when the psychological component is highlighted. For both girls and boys, marriage demands a high level of maturity. There is no hard-and-fast guideline for the ideal age of marriage found in scientific studies. Nevertheless, certain reports have presented evidence from data-driven studies demonstrating that married individuals between the ages of 28 and 32 had a lower divorce rate. According to some study, the optimal age to tie the knot is between 24 and 30 years old. However, even scientists acknowledge that no one’s life is easy or uniform.
NFHS-5 Data for the Year 2019 – 2024
| Marriage and Fertility in India (in %) | Urban | Rural | Total |
| Women age 20-24 years married before age 18 years | 14.7 | 27.0 | 23.3 |
| Men age 25-29 years married before age 21 years | 11.3 | 21.1 | 17.7 |
| Total fertility rate (children per woman) | 1.6 | 2.1 | 2.0 |
| Women age 15-19 years who were already mothers or pregnant at the time of the survey | 3.8 | 7.9 | 6.8 |
| Adolescent fertility rate for women age 15-19 years | 27` | 49 | 43 |