Socio-Religious Reform Movements — Key Changes

Entry	Year	Description	Impact
Act X of 1891	1891	The 1891 criminal-law amendment known as the Age of Consent Act raised the relevant age under section 375 of the Indian Penal Code from ten to twelve. It is one concrete legal change to study alongside nineteenth-century social-reform debates. It must be separated from the later Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929: the former altered the criminal-law threshold, while the latter addressed child marriage. The amendment is a historical example, not a statement of current law.	Movements can seek changes in social practice, public opinion and legislation, but those results are not interchangeable. Here, the changed threshold gives a precise measure of legislative action; it cannot by itself show that early marriage ended or that all reform organisations supported an identical programme. Analyse an organisation’s demands and the enacted measure separately. This helps avoid replacing the history of several distinct movements with a single list of laws or a claim of uniform progress.