Nilkantha Chakravarty

Nilkantha Chakravarty, also called Nilkantha-babu, is Parvati’s father and the head of a small household beside the zamindar’s palatial mansion. His firm rejection of the customary bride-price for daughters sits uneasily beside the financial calculations and status boundaries that ultimately shape Parvati’s marriage. Through him, the novel shows how personal principle can resist one convention without freeing a family from the larger economy of marriage and social rank.

Family and Social Position

Nilkantha’s old house stands next to the zamindar’s vast mansion, making the difference in scale between the households immediately visible. He owns some land and performs puja in the homes of a few clients; the kindness of the zamindar’s household also contributes to the comfortable life he leads. His family is not wealthy, and the Chakravartys are described as belonging to a trading household. Their position is therefore secure enough for comfort, but distinct from the zamindar family’s wealth and prestige.

That distinction becomes consequential when Parvati reaches marriageable age. In the custom described by the novel, a daughter’s marriage brought bride-price into her family, while a son’s marriage required his family to pay. The prospect of arranging a daughter’s marriage could thus ease household finances, particularly for a family without great wealth.

Principle and the Rejected Match

Nilkantha rejects the practice of taking bride-price for Parvati. Although his own father had accepted such a payment for his daughter’s marriage, Nilkantha has no intention of selling his daughter for money. His wife knows this and presses for Parvati’s marriage, while still hoping that she might marry Devdas. Parvati’s grandmother cautiously raises the possibility with Devdas’s mother, pointing to the children’s closeness since childhood and Parvati’s distress when Devdas left for Calcutta.

Devdas’s mother understands the hint and is herself fond of Parvati, but she regards the proposed match as socially unacceptable: the Chakravartys are traders, they live next door, and bringing a bride from that household would invite shame. Devdas’s father’s objection to marrying his son while he is still studying provides another reason against the match. When Nilkantha learns that his mother raised the proposal, he scolds her for doing so and insists that his family need not beg anyone to marry Parvati. He points to his daughter’s good looks and says he will arrange a marriage within the week. His response combines defense of family dignity with an urgent determination to answer the rejection on his own terms.

Arranging Parvati’s Marriage

Nilkantha returns from arranging a match with Bhuvan Chowdhury, the wealthy zamindar of Hatipota, about twenty miles away in Burdwan district. Bhuvan is under forty and has been widowed; his wish to marry again is given as the reason for the match. The news does not please most members of the Chakravarty household, but the expectation that two or three thousand rupees will come from Bhuvan, one way or another, silences the women. The account does not identify this money as a bride-price, and Nilkantha’s earlier rejection of that custom remains distinct from the financial expectation surrounding this marriage.

The match brings Parvati into a household of strikingly greater wealth: her new home is a large, old mansion with extensive domestic quarters and many servants. There she is made lady of the house and received by Bhuvan’s children, including his eldest son, Mahendra. The marriage therefore changes not only Parvati’s circumstances but also her place within an established household, where she assumes a maternal role toward children from Bhuvan’s first marriage.

Character and Narrative Significance

Nilkantha’s choices are not presented as a simple rejection of money. He refuses to treat his daughter’s marriage as a sale, yet he insists on finding a match quickly after the proposed connection with Devdas is rejected, and the financial benefit expected from Bhuvan’s household becomes a decisive consideration for his family. The contrast does not erase his stated principle; it shows the limits within which that principle operates. He resists one customary transaction while negotiating a marriage shaped by wealth, household standing, and the unequal social status of the two families.

His part in Parvati’s story is concentrated at the point where childhood intimacy gives way to marriage arranged by adults. The rejection of the Devdas match closes one possible future, while Nilkantha’s swift arrangement with Bhuvan secures another, materially advantageous household for his daughter. In this way, his actions help make visible the gap between Parvati’s personal attachment and the social and economic judgments that determine her marriage.