6. The Civil Marriage Act.
By this time several marriages had been performed according to the revised ritual of the Brāhmic Church, which had given great offence to orthodox Hindus and exposed the participators in these novel rites to much obloquy. The legality of marriages thus contracted had even been questioned. To avoid this difficulty Keshub induced Government in 1872 to pass the Native Marriage Act, introducing for the first time the institution of civil marriage into Hindu society. The Act prescribed a form of marriage to be celebrated before the Registrar for persons who did not profess either the Hindu, the Muhammadan, the Parsi, the Sikh, the Jaina or the Buddhist religion, and who were neither Christians nor Jews; and fixed the minimum age for a bridegroom at eighteen and for a bride at fourteen. Only six years later, however, Keshub Chandar Sen committed the fatal mistake of ignoring the law which he had himself been instrumental in passing: he permitted the marriage of his daughter, below the age of fourteen, to the young Mahārāja of Kuch Bihār, who was not then sixteen years of age.[11] This event led to a public censure of Keshub Chandar Sen by his community and the secession of a section of the members, who formed the Sādhāran or Universal Brahmo Samāj. The creed of this body consisted in the belief in an infinite Creator, the immortality of the soul, the duty and necessity of the spiritual worship of God, and disbelief in any infallible book or man as a means of salvation.[12]