Book contents
- Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age
- Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Provincializing Childhood
- Part II Queering Age Stratification
- 3 The Sex/Age System
- 4 Reproductive Temporality
- Part III Consent Otherwise
- Epilogue
- Works Cited
- Index
4 - Reproductive Temporality
The Staging of Childhood and Adolescence in Global/Hindu Sexology
from Part II - Queering Age Stratification
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 July 2020
- Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age
- Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Provincializing Childhood
- Part II Queering Age Stratification
- 3 The Sex/Age System
- 4 Reproductive Temporality
- Part III Consent Otherwise
- Epilogue
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Puzzling over the repetitive evocation of sexologists such as Havelock Ellis during debates over the age of marriage in the Legislative Assembly, this chapter studies sexology as a site for the dissemination of the age-stratified sexual morality upheld by the Child Marriage Restraint Act. The marriage manuals, antimasturbation tracts, samples of erotica, and sex education texts surveyed in this chapter drew equally on the new science of sex and shastric knowledge and were particularly focused on the regulation of sexuality with reference to children. In making rough translations between two epistemic and ethical orders, these works buttressed an age-stratified sexual morality, gave chronological age roots in (a primordial) India, depicted marriage reform as a return to a (Hindu) golden age, and helped align the time of the (Hindu) ritual body with the temporality of secular body and of the modern nation. While such translations might have aided marital reform, the silent exclusions – of Muslims in particular – that were inherent to this schema could not be covered over for long.
Keywords
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- Information
- Sex, Law, and the Politics of AgeChild Marriage in India, 1891–1937, pp. 166 - 212Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020