The following are extracts from the pamphlet:—
Par. 1. “Now that the Age of Consent Act has been passed by his Excellency the Viceroy, in Council, and as there is every likelihood of its provisions not being sufficiently well understood by the Mahomedan community in general, and by the ignorant Mahomedans in particular, owing to the use of technical legal phraseology in the drafting of the Act, it seems to the Committee of Management of the Mahomedan Literary Society of Calcutta, to be highly desirable that the object and intention of the Government in passing this Act, as well as its scope and the manner in which it is to be administered by the Criminal Authorities, should be laid down on paper in the clearest and easiest language possible, for the information and instruction of the Mahomedan population, and particularly of such of them as are not conversant with legal technicalities.”
Par. 2. “The Committee are of opinion that such a course will be highly beneficial to members of their community, inasmuch as it will show to them distinctly what action on the part of a Mahomedan husband towards his young wife has been made, by the recent legislation, a heinous criminal offence of no less enormity than the offence of rape, and punishable with the same heavy punishment.”
Par. 3. “It is hoped that they will thereby be put on their guard against committing, or allowing the commission of an act which they have hitherto been accustomed to think lawful and innocent, but which has now been made into a heinous offence....”
Par. 9. “... There has already been a provision in the Indian Penal Code, passed more than thirty years ago, that a man having sexual intercourse with his own wife, with or without her consent, she being under the age of ten years, shall be considered guilty of the offence of rape, and shall be liable to transportation for life, or to rigorous or simple imprisonment for ten years.”
Par. 10. “From this it follows that, under the Penal Code a man having sexual intercourse with his own wife, with or without her consent, if she is above ten years of age, shall not be considered to have committed the offence of rape. But the Act that has just been passed, in amendment of the above provision in the Penal Code, raises the age of consent from ten to twelve years, and provides that a man having sexual intercourse with his own wife, even with her consent, shall be considered to be guilty of the offence of rape, if the wife be of any age under twelve completed years. This is all the change that has been made in the law.”
Par. 11. “It having been ascertained, from various sources, that in some parts of the country husbands cohabit with their wives before they have attained to the age of twelve years, and even before they have arrived at puberty, the result of such intercourse being in many cases to cause injury to the health, and even danger to the life of the girls, and to generate internal maladies which make them miserable throughout their lives, and such a state of things having come to the notice of Government, they have considered it their duty to put a stop to it, and this is the object of the present legislation.”
Par. 12. “The law does not interfere with the age at which a girl may be married, but simply prohibits sexual intercourse with her by her husband before she is twelve years of age.”
Par. 13. “It is therefore incumbent upon all husbands and their guardians (if they are very young and inexperienced lads) to be very careful that sexual intercourse does not take place until the girl-wife has passed the age of twelve years. It will also be the duty of the guardians of the girl-wife not to allow her husband to cohabit with her until she has attained that age.”
Par. 17. “... The Mahomedan law (i.e., religious law) distinctly sanctions consummation of marriage only when the wife has reached puberty, and has besides attained such physical development as renders her fit for sexual intercourse, and it is not imperative upon a Mahomedan husband to consummate marriage with his wife when she is under the age of twelve years. Even in those rare cases in which the wife attains to puberty and the necessary physical development before the age of twelve, a Mahomedan husband may, without infringing any canon of the Mahommedan Ecclesiastical Law, abstain from consummating his marriage with her until she attains that age.