A well-known social and religious reformer, Keshub Chandra Sen was born in Calcutta in 1838. As an intelligent student, he often took home prizes for excellence in Arithmetic and English at an early age. Educated in the Hindu College, the college activities in which he evinced great interest included acting and reading. He was married at 18 to a child of nine or ten years of age.
Keshub was convinced that the only way to bring about a social transformation was through religious reformation— religion must be the basis of all reform movements. It was with this aim that he joined the Brahmo Samaj in 1857 and soon after, he took his first great step to oppose idolatry. He opposed the kind of education that neglects to focus on God and religion in his first tract, ‘Young Bengal, This is for you’, written in 1860. Keshub also criticised the lack of active religion in the lives of the patriotic men of the country. To encourage prayer and religious conversation, he set up the Sangat Sabha in 1860. In 1862 Debendranath Tagore, Keshub’s senior in the Brahmo Samaj, conferred upon him the Brahmananda (Rejoicer in God) title.
Following dissension within the Samaj owing to the outright and stern views of Keshub and some of his colleagues who opposed the caste system and the thread ceremony of the brahmins, the ‘Brahmo Samaj of India’ was set up in 1866 by Keshub and his friends. This Samaj, distinct from Debendranath’s’ Adi Brahmo Samaj’, considered the universe as God’s temple, truth as the everlasting scripture, faith as the root of all religion and love as the true spiritual culture. The Samaj’s scriptures included selections from the sacred books of many religious communities. Keshub was the motivating force behind the setting up of the Brahmo Mandir in 1868. The Mandir which respected all religious systems was to further advance the founding principles of the original Brahmo Samaj.
According to Keshub Chandra Sen, the Hindu society was chiefly plagued by idolatry and the caste system. In “Appeal to Young India”, he called upon the people to witness how their purposeless customs, the plight of their womenfolk and evils such as hypocrisy were gnawing at their freedom, chances of improvement and true happiness. Reform was necessary but Keshub believed that only those who possessed a firm sense of duty, reformed themselves before reforming others and had the courage to tread on thorny paths could become successful reformers. After his return from England in 1870, Keshub set up the Indian Reform Association. As part of the Association’s activities, Keshub started the Sulabh Samachar and the Sunday Mirror and made the Indian Mirror, which he started in 1861, into a daily newspaper. A ‘Normal School for Native Ladies’, a ‘Society for the Benefit of Women’ and an ‘Industrial School’ were also begun.
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Keshub Chandra Sen, who had always urged for reforms regarding child marriage, the age-old opposition to widow remarriage and polygamy, saw a dream fulfilled with the Native Marriage Act becoming law in the year 1872. The law introduced civil marriage. It further permitted widow remarriage and inter-caste marriages, and put an end to child marriage and bigamy.
It was only during his later years that Keshub Chandra Sen’s actions began to run contrary to his own religious and social principles. He began to manage the affairs of the Samaj he had set up with sole authority, without allowing any kind of discussion on opinions and views. Worse, his daughter was still below 14 years of age when he married her off in the Kuch Bihar family—which was polygamous—according to those very Hindu rites he had been known to condemn. He followed it up by defiantly justifying the marriage as one conducted under divine command.