Previous Year Question

The Native Marriage Act was passed in 1872 CE.

During the nineteenth century, leaders of the Brahmo Samaj placed particular emphasis on social reforms relating to marriage. Keshab Chandra Sen brought issues such as inter-caste marriage, widow remarriage, female education and child marriage into public debate. His reform efforts made an important contribution to the enactment of the Native Marriage Act.

This legislation was Act III of 1872 and is also referred to as the Native Marriage Act or Civil Marriage Act. It provided legal recognition to marriages that faced difficulties in obtaining recognition under traditional religious marriage ceremonies.

The law made monogamy compulsory. It fixed the minimum age of marriage at 18 years for males and 14 years for females. In the context of that period, these provisions were important steps towards restricting practices such as child marriage and polygamy.

The Act provided a civil form of marriage and expanded the legal possibility of marriage outside traditional caste and religious restrictions. For this reason, it occupies an important place among the nineteenth-century legislative measures associated with social reform.

Civil marriage law was further developed later. The Special Marriage Act, 1954 repealed the earlier Special Marriage Act, 1872, while preserving marriages that had already been validly solemnised under the 1872 Act.