Marriage is an institute well defined in Indian social system than any where else. It has many aspects and aims. Like regulating sexual behaviour, setting up a system to give you freedom to pass your genes i.e. to ur child, give him social values that U think should persist even after you, set up a social hierarchy and so on. The people today marry without knowing much about the requirements. In Indian history age has been decided depending upon the perceived age when people would be mature enough to understand this and the two concerned people should be of same age. But in those days world was not so small a place. So other factors affecting the marriage were added by societies to ease down their work considering all in same place, same community and following same ideological and social values would be at similar level of understandings. So behind - the - scene facts were not explained to new married couples. Then a certain age at which the 'boy' and 'girl' had attained sexual and mental maturity was a common factor for marriage. Over the years they felt that man needed to earn by going outside and woman had mainly role at home, the man to be able to support himself and his family needed to be more in age. This set up the tradition of marrying elder (slightly) man. The sexual performance crept in as the societies went through changes and this also raised the bar so that man has good control over sexual relationship in the married life..and so on things kept changing. The world has come far off from where it started and need of today's are totally different. The old tradition of marriage is also going thru change over this time. The three days' function has become a few hours' formality to adopt the new time limits people have and when marriage as an institution has also evolved thru so many facets ... All this was to explain the marriage has undergone changes as per the needs of the time. Now people are living-in without marriage it is needless to say there are no caste / community religion or any other barriers ...govt has decided minimum age for boy and girl ...so the age should then be no matter in today's world. Especially the more girls becoming financially self reliant they see only purpose of marriage as child bearing because sexual regulation is meaning less for them as they consider open sexual relationships more satisfying (at least in mind) They see sex as tool of fascination and an over excited partner at some time and more mature dealer at some other time is perceived as best bet for this satisfaction. However if you really want to respect the holy institute boy and girl should be of more or less same age (not precisely upto dates of birth). So final answer from me is no for basic question