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Designed to appease the Hindu orthodoxy, this was the compromise on which the civil marriage law had been enacted at the instance of a radical section of the reformist Brahmo Samaj led by

Keshab Chandra Sen. Thus, only those minuscule number of Hindus who had no inhibition in disavowing their religion could avail themselves of the option of civil marriage. In a logical next

step, there was an attempt in 1911 to amend the 1872 law so that Hindus would not have to give up their religion to marry across castes in the secular manner. But when Congress leader

Bhupendra Nath Basu had introduced this amendment bill, Hindu conservatives opposed it firmly enough to thwart the reform. This prompted the Arya Samaj, a larger reformist sect that also had

a revivalist agenda, to come up with an even more ambitious proposal. Taking the bull by its horns, the Arya Samaj proposed that inter-caste marriage be legal even when performed with Hindu

rituals. Indeed, whether out of love or otherwise, such marriages continued to take place among Hindus in defiance of this unnatural caste restriction and its legal and social

repercussions. In March 1916, the Aryan Brotherhood Conference of Bombay requested the Government of India to take up its draft as a government measure. The colonial administration intimated

its willingness to consider the proposal of allowing inter-caste marriage, provided the bill was introduced by a non-official member. This was how Patel, around the age of forty-five, came

to be associated with it.