Age of Consent

What could be more hypocritical than denying the fact that the growing rate of adolescent sex among Indian teens over last two decades has been well documented in Indian media and other social agencies and then passing a Victorian bill to increase “age of consent” in order to create more confusion around decriminalization of sex among youngsters. The septuagenarian law makers of India are far from the social reality. If the bill on new “age of consent” passed by Union Cabinet last week is anything to be believed, then digest this: a boy of 17 having a consensual sex with her girlfriend of same age could be punished under “rape charges” of IPC because moving on the legal “age of consent” would be 18.

When most of progressive democracies across the world believe in the fact that 16 is the right age for consensual sex, the old, orthodox parliamentarians of India think completely otherwise. Where are we heading? Do our parliamentarians really understand the current social dynamics?

In a country like India, making antediluvian laws is another craze among law makers. When the rest of the world think progressively and live in the present, then why our leaders are so passionate about moving back to Victorian age? Either our leaders are too imbecilic to perceive the changing social attitudes towards sex or they are blatantly inhuman to criminalize teen sex.

With growing liberal attitudes towards sex across Western countries and to decriminalize LGBT sexual activities, the most advanced nations have revisited the statutory “age of consent” and most of them have reduced that magic age than increasing it. For example, in UK, Canada, Belgium, Holland, Norway, and some states of the USA, the age of consent is 16, and in Denmark, Greece, and Sweden, it's 15. And the most interesting fact that in Italy, the motherland of our UPA chairperson Ms Sonia Gandhi, the age of consent is 14.

What's more pathetic in Indian context that our law makers still refuse to acknowledge the glaring fact that teenagers not only explore or casually experiment, but also do really have sex and even sometimes do more than the adults do. Rather than imposing upon a moralistic or ethical view on sex and defining archaic, draconian laws, our law makers would try to read the current social reality and debug their purulent mindset before passing any law.