Page:Sketches of some distinguished Indian women.djvu/92

80 sides, it raised a storm of opposition among the adherents of the Brahmo-Somaj. The principles they professed with regard to caste prevented any objections being raised on that ground, but they vehemently opposed the project, both on the score of the youth of the contracting parties and also on that of the religion of the bridegroom.

With regard to the latter objection, Keshub Chunder Sen and his friends maintained that the Maharajah was in heart already a Brahmoist, and that his youth, and the influence of his mother and his grandmother, had alone prevented him from joining the Theists, and that by this marriage he would be firmly attached to the purer faith professed by his wife.

The question of age was a more serious one, as it could not be denied that the marriage would involve a virtual surrender of the principle for which Keshub Chunder had so strenuously contended, and would be a serious bar to further progress in this direction. It was, moreover, pointed out that, in consequence of the bride and bridegroom not having attained the legal age, the marriage could not be celebrated according to Brahmo rites, as authorized by the Act of 1872; that it would, in fact, be a purely Hindu marriage, celebrated with all the idolatrous and superstitious ceremonies commonly in use; and, further, that the bride would be deprived of the pro-