6.3 Rabindranath Tagore – "Profit and Loss" (translated short story)

Author/context: Tagore (1861–1941), Nobel laureate (1913), wrote unsparingly about the economics of marriage in Bengal. "Profit and Loss" is among his dowry stories.Synopsis (original summary): Ramsundar Mitra, father of five sons and one beloved daughter, Nirupama, marries her into the grand Raybahadur family for a promised dowry of ten thousand rupees he can ill afford. Only part is paid by the wedding day; the groom marries her anyway, but the in-laws treat the unpaid balance as a standing debt — and Nirupama as a hostage to it. Her father humiliates himself borrowing, and stops visiting out of shame. Isolated, insulted and finally gravely ill, Nirupama receives a doctor only at the point of death; she dies. The Raybahadurs spend lavishly on her funeral for the sake of their own prestige — and call the widower home to marry again, for a twenty-thousand-rupee dowry. The title's cold accounting is Tagore's indictment.Themes: dowry as the commerce in women; patriarchy and daughterhood; poverty and dignity; status, ritual and hypocrisy; economic dependence as violence.Legal issues raised:1. Dowry — in India: Dowry Prohibition Act 1961 (with later, harsher amendments after dowry deaths); in Nepal: the taking or giving of dowry is a punishable offence under the MulukiCriminal Code 2074 (2017) — demanding or taking dowry is criminalised, and the earlier National Code tradition also penalised…