Forgiveness is the only Final Solution
A Reading of the play ‘Final Solutions’ by Mahesh Dattani
Angelie Multani
Abstract
1947 is identified as the year that India and Pakistan gained independence
from British Colonial rule. It is also the year that saw the formation of two
separate states from one nation – one, Pakistan apparently founded on a
theocratic principle and the other, India, founded apparently on principles of
democracy and secularism. While the political establishment was celebrating
the achievement of Independence and the formation of sovereign states,
ordinary citizens were reeling from the shock of neighbours turning on each
other, dislocation and being uprooted from the homes their families had lived
in for generations.
Although there have been several literary representations of the violence, of
this traumatic severing of countries on religious and ethnic lines, there has
been very little attempt in literature to link what is now obvious to most
sociologists and even to the layman – that the communal tensions and fault
lines in contemporary India have their origins in the trauma of partition and
the lack of resolution or forgiveness. How does one deal not only with crimes
that were committed against oneself or one’s family in the name of religious
belief, but also with crimes that one committed oneself? While neighbours
and friends turned against each other, much more than countries or political
allegiances were divided – it was the very notion of self and family that
suffered. Mahesh Dattani’s play ‘Final Solutions’ is a rare literary/dramatic
text that connects our contemporary context with the unforgiven trauma of
1947. This play places a modern liberal family in the middle of a communal
riot – while two Muslim men seek sanctuary from the fundamentalist Hindu
mob baying for their blood outside the house, inside the Hindu family must
face their own demons – of the past as well as the present. How far is the past
from our here and now?
Key Words: Partition, violence, memory, Indian-English theatre, Dattani,
forgiveness.
*****
1. Self and Community
Right at the opening of the play Final Solutions the past is fused
with the present with the character of Daksha, a young 15 year old girl
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reading out from her diary, while the older Daksha, now known as Hardika,
sits motionless at the same level. Dattani’s play is marked as unusual even in
the stage setting and the positioning of the characters, as he merges a semirealist
set, with a detailed kitchen and pooja (prayer) space within a symbolic
set signifying a house, surrounded by a horse-shoe shaped ramp, on which
stand figures with sticks and masks, denoting the Mob/Chorus. The
Mob/Chorus carry masks that can suggest either religious identity – Hindu or
Muslim, depending on the scene. The use of a Chorus is significant, as it
associates the play with the idea of tragedy, as well as the notions of
collective identity, anonymity and even, as suggested by Ricouer,
forgiveness1.
The set design of the play emphasises Dattani’s contention that the
family unit represents society. The living space of the Gandhi family is
shown through a "barebone presentation, with just wooden blocks for
furniture". The only detailed sets are the kitchen and a pooja room. This is
significant, as really, it is largely through food habits and taboos that we all
draw the lines that separate us from each other. There is a close relationship
between food habits and religious beliefs, and the obvious ‘otherness’ of
different communities is manifested through differences in what/how we and
they eat. We also make sharp distinctions where food and food related
utensils etc are concerned, which perhaps serve to emphasise separation in a
uniquely distinctive and defined manner. Taboos are most clearly expressed
in our realities through these two particularised spaces in Dattani’s sets – the
room for worship, and the space where food is prepared.
The sets also position the family, signified by the home, in relation
to society, which is represented through the Mob/Chorus, who more or less
encircle the Gandhi home. The representation of the younger Hardika
[Daksha] takes place on another level, thus ensuring that the past always
remains in front of us and cannot be forgotten. This conflation of past and
present is an integral aspect of the play, not only in the characters, but in the
central concern, that of communalism and how we deal with it. The idea of
partition in India is usually talked about in terms of ‘partition and the
violence that accompanied it’, "thus making a separation between ‘the
partition’ that was history and the violence that was an aberration."2 FS
makes the point that this was not an aberration, or a one-time eruption of
chaos and inhumane conflict. The play establishes that as long as
communities are divided in their memory and representation of the events of
1947, they will never be able to forgive each other or themselves. The
violence enacted by ordinary human beings during those tumultuous times
has been well documented by historians as witnesses and actors struggle to
make sense of ‘senseless times’. Gyanendra Pandey writes that there are
several interesting aspects in the way that most survivors of 1947 recall the
violence – first of all, the site of violence is usually located outside the space
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of home – the village/town/community – "What stands out in the victim’s
memory of partition, I submit, is the proposition that the violence was always
out there and never in us."3 Pandey goes on to say:
What violence seems to do in such narrations is to mark
the boundaries of community. … Violence marks the
limits of community, that is to say, violence can occur
only at or beyond that limit. By the same token, what
occurs within the boundaries of the community is, by
definition, not violence.
What is exposed to Daksha/Hardika is the presence and possibility
of violence not just within her community, but inside her home, her bedroom.
When her friendship with Zarine is discovered and misrepresented to the
family, Daksha is beaten and locked up by her husband. She is already
shattered at what she considers a rejection by her friend, her alter ago in
many ways, and is unable to accept the aggression enacted upon her by her
husband. When Daksha sought Zarine out to be her friend, she remarks both
on the latter’s beauty as well as her musical tastes which overlap with her
own, thus in a sense, conflating both identities into one. The idea of a
harmonious ‘golden’ past in which both Hindus and Muslims lived together
in peace and harmony is also hinted at in this construction, as Daksha rediscovers
a joy and abandon in music that she thought she had lost, through
her friendship with Zarine.
Zarine and I talked and laughed for at least ten minutes
before I mentioned the gramophone. I told her my in-laws
didn’t allow me to play our gramophone. She laughed
again and took me upstairs. She asked me what I would
like to listen to. Noor Jehan, of course! She seemed
pleased with my choice. She wound up the machine and
played my favourite song! We both listened and sang
along with Noor Jehan. Three voices singing together in
perfect unison.4
The ‘personal’ and the ‘public’ is constantly merged, as Daksha
reads from her diary:
All my dreams have been shattered … I can never be a
singer, like Noor Jehan. Hari’s family is against my singing
film songs. His parents heard me humming a love song to
Hari last night. And this morning they told him to tell me
… There is so much happening in the world that maybe it
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isn’t fair to trouble you with my sadness. I am just a young
girl who does not matter to anyone outside her home.
Maybe I should talk about more important things. Like last
year, in August, a most terrible thing happened to our
country. We … gained independence.
The ‘terrible’ thing referred to by Daksha is of course, partition, the
outbreak of violence, riots and communal chaos that accompanied
independence in India and Pakistan. The idea of gaining freedom is
inextricably linked with the communal conflagration that swept through
different parts of the country as according to various estimates, 16 million
people lost their homes by the beginning of 1948, and many more were
dislocated in the next few years – and many were killed, raped, forced to
convert to other religions and separated from their families.
2. To Forgive, but not to Forget.
While Daksha attempts to re-discover her lost alter ago, the political
and economic battles between the warring communities continue. In her
study of the communal divide in Banaras, Vasanthi Raman points out that the
riots that occurred in that city in the 1990s were, at least partly, based on an
economic and business rivalry between the Hindus and Muslims in the
weaving and saree business.5, Similarly, in the play, Daksha’s family is
attempting to buy over Zarine’s family’s business – when this overture fails,
they take advantage of a communal riot to burn the store down, and then buy
it. Daksha remains unaware of this, but her son Ramniklal carries the guilt of
his father’s act throughout his life, and attempts to atone for it through his
offer of employment to Javed.
The fact that Ramniklal offers Javed a job not out of a sense of
equality, or a genuine desire to help an unemployed young man, but out of
guilt and the desire to expiate his own culpability transforms his gesture into
a communal one, thus exposing his liberalism as a façade:
Ramniklal: I have a saree shop in Kapda Bazaar.
Not a very big shop – now. It used to be but… I
could use your help. The shop is all we have now.
We had a mill … I got rid of it. I should have
gotten rid of the shop and kept the mill… You’ll
like the shop. You can handle those Bohra and
Memen women who usually pass by our
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showroom. … Please. I would be … happy if you
say yes. I will be … it will be my pleasure to give
you that job. That shop, it used to be … (Pause)
Take the job, please.6
The past lives on and contaminates the present. Daksha vents her
anger and frustration at the implied betrayal by Zarine on the community at
large, and sees the young men as legatees of the tradition of pride and
violence that she projects on to Zarine’s actions:
Daksha: … I had to speak to Zarine and find out
what was wrong. I could tell by their faces that
something had happened. They brought in their
dekshis and thalis and laid them on the table. They
removed the lids and … I smelt their food. "Come
sit with us!" Zarine said to me. I looked at her and
her eyes were red. Her mother never looked at me.
… How cruel could she be? Asking me to … sit
with them. She knew I wouldn’t. She wanted me to
go away. I couldn’t. I sat with them. They started
their meal. … I sat and watched them eat those
things! … And I brought out the contents of my
stomach then and there! Zarine stood up and I
reached out for her thinking she would help me.
She screamed at me instead. …I could hear
Zarine’s voice, "Are you happy? Are you happy?"
I didn’t know what she meant and I didn’t care
then. … Later I learnt from Kanta that Wagh and
Hari had felt sorry for them and had even offered
to help them by buying their burnt-up little shop.
Zarine’s father wanted much more for it. It was not
possible to give him what he demanded and so the
resentment. What wretched people. All this fuss
over such a small matter. I hate people with false
pride. As if it is their birthright to ask for more
than they deserve. Such wretched people! Horrible
people!7
This sense of personal betrayal is generalized to a hatred for the
entire community – Daksha confuses the name of Javed’s sister with that of
her old friend – Zarine. As Daksha cannot forgive Zarine and all she
represents for the suffering visited on her by her own family, Javed cannot
forgive the insult he faced from a Hindu orthodox priest, and he enacts his
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revenge upon the entire Hindu community in acts of violence. They are both
trapped in cycles of hate and repeat "I cannot forget. I just cannot forget."
Ramnik, on the other hand, cannot forgive himself for profiting from
a hate crime committed by his father and grandfather. He enacts his revenge
through sneering at the religious beliefs of his wife, an orthodox Hindu and
by inciting his daughter to also arraign herself on his (liberal) side against
that of her mother. In this attempt to isolate his wife and mother on account
of their beliefs, Ramnik does not succeed in consoling himself – rather, he
remains a divided subject, torn between his intellectual beliefs and his
emotional ambivalence. Unable to get over his past, to forgive himself or his
family, he too remains a victim of suppressed prejudice and intolerance.
3. Resolution?
The only note of hope in the play comes right at the end, in the
penultimate scene, as Aruna prepares for her morning prayers. Smita takes
Javed and Bobby out to help fill the water for the ceremony, despite the
religious beliefs that would bar non-Hindus from touching any object or
material required for a prayer ceremony. As the young people step outside
the circumference of the home and the prejudices and beliefs it symbolizes
within its walls, they revert to a playful innocence and splash each other
with the water. After this ‘baptism’ in a sense, they return to the house, to
hear the sound of the prayer bell being rung. As Javed visibly stiffens in an
instinctive reaction as he is reminded of the prejudices he has faced his
entire life, Bobby takes matters into his own hands, and deliberately
walking into the prayer room, picks up the idol of Lord Krishna in his
‘infidel’ hands. This, as anybody acquainted with religious doctrine would
be aware, is potentially tremendously disruptive and ‘profane’. In his
speech, Bobby states that Krishna is not defiled by his touch – he is
welcoming; he accepts and is not humiliated. This is the touch of a human
being who respects another’s beliefs, another religion, and does not reach
out to destroy or contaminate, but to believe and tolerate.
The symbolism of Krishna is significant also, as it in the opening of
the play, young Daksha believed that it was Krishna who was angry with her
for listening to the music of a Muslim singer, and who therefore punished
her by having her records smashed in the riot, and by allowing her father to
be killed. It is Krishna, in the end, who accepts the touch of the Hindu and
the non-Hindu with equal equanimity.
It is only through acknowledging the truth and facing it, that we can be
set free. The Mob/Chorus, which, as I have stated before represents society,
also refers us to the Chorus of Greek tragedy, with resonances of catharsis
and forgiveness. One of the most enduring functions of a narrative, as a
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choric function is that of catharsis, which is a necessary prelude to
forgiveness. In an interview with Sorin Antohi, Paul Ricoeur says "we are
capable of successive identi.cation with the different characters and then
with the chorus, which represents us"8. Summarizing Antohi’s response, we
conclude that there is a collective side to forgiveness in tragedy represented
and brought about by the chorus. Interestingly, adding to the point raised
earlier, this interview goes on to discuss "the idea of mutual recognition, to
be able to recognize what the other has lost in his turn. One must see that the
other has lost too, that loss is shared.9 Only when we recognize this mutual
loss and acknowledge it, rather than cling on to our own ideas of what we
have lost and how we have suffered, will reconciliation and forgiveness be
possible. It is difficult to reconcile the very idea of a ‘Mob’ with the healing
function of a Chorus, yet this seemingly contradictory conflation is perhaps
the main point of Dattani’s play. The Mob which encircles the Gandhi house,
is ultimately, without religion, a signifier of general social attitudes. They
repeat lines which are clichés in the communal antagonism they represent,
but clichés which nonetheless carry the full force of vituperative violence and
the emotional force of belief behind it. They remain on stage till the very end
– the lights go off last on the Mob/Chorus, and it is here that the final
conflation of self and community occurs. Even if Daksha/Hardika learns to
forgive, even if Javed turns back from the path of violence he has set out on,
until the Mob, or Chorus, which represents each one of us gets over its
hatred, its violence, the fires of communalism will not abate. It is through
identifying with the Mob, thus fulfilling the function of the Chorus device,
that the audience is implicated in the action, is made to feel the burden of
responsibility, and realizes that it cannot be shrugged off.
The first step towards breaking the cycle of violence that is apparent
in the play Final Solutions is of course, understanding and acknowledging
mutual loss, mutual hurt. If Daksha is unable to forget or forgive 1947, and
Javed is in turn unable to forgive the humiliation suffered by him, we will be
locked into an endless cycle of retaliation. Many sociologists and historians
see direct connections between the unresolved legacy of 1947 and
contemporary strife in the sub-continent. Vasanthi Raman writes:
A macabre way in which partition has resurfaced in the lives
of Indian Muslims, particularly since the 1990s, is in the
metaphor of a ‘mini-Pakistan’. Partition is almost reenacted
every time there is a ‘riot’ and Muslim areas have been
affected. The portrayal of the ‘riot’ in the media recreates the
horror of partition along with the entire notion of the
‘dismemberment of the sacred motherland of India’. The
language and slogans of the Hindu right wing during the
series of riots since 1992, when the Babri Masjid was
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vandalized, unabashedly recall partition.10
The destruction of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 was
portrayed as a revenge for the ‘Islamisation’ of India that had taken place
during the successive Turk invasions. The destruction of the Masjid was
represented as the ‘re-appropriation’ of Hindu identity, of Hindu space, of
the birthplace of Rama, which had been usurped by the Muslims. This event
in Indian history, (aided and abetted by some state governments) has perhaps
most significantly in the recent past, served to define Hindu-Muslim
relationships in India. The Babri Masjid, relatively anonymous before it was
destroyed, became in a sense, a flashpoint for later communal riots as it was
seen as a failure of the secular nation-state to protect its Muslim citizens,
their identity and their sentiments.
There have been perhaps too many incidents of communal
violence in the years after Babri Masjid, but I would like to mention a few of
the more recent ones, to demonstrate that the cycle of violence has not yet
abated. Almost immediately after the Masjid was destroyed (live, on national
television), there were riots in Bombay, till then one of the most ‘secular’
spaces in the country. It is commonly held that the riots occurred in two
phases – first there was a Muslim reaction to the Babri Masjid’s demolition,
then there was a Hindu backlash, where Muslim dominated areas, businesses
and residential colonies were targeted. There was literally, a re-enactment of
partition, as post riots, many Muslims moved from their homes to live in
Muslim dominated areas, and many more left the city. After the riots, there
was the first attack on Bombay in 1993, a series of 13 bomb blasts in key
areas of the city, commonly believed to have been funded and master-minded
by Muslim mafia leaders, as ‘revenge’ for those who were murdered in the
riots.
In May 2002, a train that had just left Godhra station in the
state of Gujarat was attacked and a coach populated mostly by members of a
Hindu right wing political party was set on fire. After this there was large
scale and unprecedented violence against Muslims in Gujarat – Muslim
homes were targeted, people were caught and set on fire in the streets, and
the scale of violence and carnage was unprecedented in Independent India,
many believe with state complicity. It is difficult to express the extent of
inhuman violence, and the systematic and planned attacks that were carried
out in the towns, cities and villages of Gujarat between February and May
2002.
The most recent aftershock of this cycle of violence was
perhaps seen in Bombay last year, in what is now referred to as the ‘Bombay
Terror Attacks’, or 26/11. A group of perhaps 10 young men alighted on the
beaches of this metropolis from rubber dinghies, carrying guns, ammunition
and dry fruits to tide them over how many ever days of terror they could
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inflict on the city. There was a phone call made to a Hindi news channel (not
proved true) by a group claiming responsibility for the attack and stating that
it was ‘revenge for the Babri Masjid’. Targeting specific landmarks, iconic
representations of India’s economic capital, these young men who looked
like ‘college students’ according to eye witnesses, who saw them land, were
wearing red thread around their wrists, sacred markers of Hindu identity, so
that they could move around the city without arousing suspicion. This is
perhaps the most frightening and chilling image of all. The sacred thread of
one religion was believed to provide a certain kind of immunity because the
dominant community in India are the Hindus.
The question remains with us – how much longer are we to be
trapped in this mindless cycle? Is there an end to violence and retaliation in
sight? There are no clear answers, just as there are really, no final solutions.
As Daksha asks at the end of FS, ‘Do you think those boys will ever come
back?" Ramnik’s words echo on stage: "If you call them they will come. But
then again – if it’s too late – they may not."
Let us hope it is not too late. That we can finally forgive, and if
we can’t forget, at least hold on to things which we may be glad to
remember.
Forgiveness is the only Final Solution
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Notes
1 Memory, History, Forgiveness:A Dialogue Between Paul Ricoeur and
Sorin Antohi (Budapest, March 10, 2003.) www.janushead.org/8-
1/Ricoeur.pdf
2 Smita Tewari Jassal and Eyal Ben_Ari, (Eds.) The Partition Motif in
Contemporary Conflicts, Sage Publications, New Delhi. 2007. Pg. 23.
3 Gyanendra Pandey, Community and Violence: Recalling Partition.
Economic and Political Weekly, August 9, 1997. P 2037.
4 Final Solutions, p 203. Interestingly, when Daksha chooses Noor Jehan as
her favourite singer, she is making an ‘anti national and anti community’
choice, by selecting as a role model, a singer personifying the idea of Muslim
womanhood, a singer who chose to leave India and go to Pakistan in 1947.
(Neeladri Chatterjee, still unpublished)
5 Vasanthi Raman, The Surang (Tunnel) of Madanpura: Partition Motif in
Banaras in The Partition Motif in Contemporary Conflicts. P 260 – 282.
6 FS p 194
7 FS 221
8 Paul Ricoeur interview
9 Paul Ricouer interview
10 Vasanthi Raman, p 276.
Bibliography
Causa, H. Janus Head, janushead.org. History, Forgiveness: A Dialogue
Between Paul Ricoeur and Sorin Antohi (Budapest, March 10, 2003.)
Dattani, Mahesh. Collected Plays 1, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2000.
Pandey, Gyanendra, Community and Violence: Recalling Partition.
Economic and Political Weekly, August 9, 1997.
Tewari, Jassal Smita and Ben_Ari Eyal, (Eds.). The Partition Motif in
Contemporary Conflicts, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2007.
Angelie Multani is Assistant Professor of Literature at the Department of
Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Her
area of specialization is postcolonial and Indian English theatre, although she
is also interested in issues of gender and cultural studies. At present she is
editing a collection of critical essays on the work of Mahesh Dattani.
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