TITLE OF “FINAL SOLUTIONS”
Final Solutions by Mahesh Dattani is a play which frames the time and its burning problems. In this
play particularly the issue of communal harmony is raised and what takes the play to a different level
is that the playwright tries to cater a solution to the problem by bringing the followers of the two
religions on an even keel. Whether it remains a conjecture or whatever, is a different matter
altogether, but, no doubt, Dattani tries. In The Shadow Lines, Amitav Ghosh failed to reach any
solution of the raging problem of the divide between the Hindus and the Muslims, in Riot Shashi
Tharoor struck at the root of the problem and in Train to Pakistan Khushwant Singh concludes with a
ghastly scene of death where two minds of two different religious sects though got united in love but
in reality could not. In the conclusion of this play by Mahesh Dattani, there is a striving for reaching
an amicable solution but it is still dubious, rather an expiatory note dominates.
Final Solutions touches us, and the bitter realities of our lives. The past begins to determine the
outlook of the present and thus the earlier contradictions re-emerge. No concrete solutions are
provided in the play to the problem of communalism but it raises questions on secularism and
pseudo secularism. It forces us to look at ourselves in relation to the attitudes that persist in the
society. Since it is an experiment in time and space and relates to memory, it is a play, which involves
a lot of introspection on the part of the characters in the play and thus induces similar introspection
in the viewers. The chorus represents the conflicts of the characters. Thus the chorus in a sense is the
psycho-physical representation of the characters and also provides the audience with the visual
images of the characters’ conflicts. There is no stereotyped use of the characterization of the chorus
because communalism has no face, it is an attitude and thus it becomes an image of the characters.
The sets and properties used in the play are simple. This has been done to accentuate the internal
conflicts and the subtext of the play.
Dattani’s careful manipulation of memory as an index to questions of identity and power is crucial to
his entire oeuvre. As Alyque Padamsee asks: “Is life a forward journey or do we travel round in a
circle, returning to our starting point?” In her essay on Final Solutions, Angelie Multani also poses a
set of similar questions: “What then is the ‘final solution’? Is one even possible? Would it be better
for us to stop trying to find the final answer, and just try to make our own peace with ourselves
and those around us? Is it possible to atone for the past?…” It is in this context that we need to take
a closer look at the title of Dattani’s play. The very word ‘final’ subverts the possibility of a ‘solution’
since Dattani deliberately sticks to the plural—‘solutions’, thereby questioning the justification of
‘final’. Angelie Multani points out that in this deliberate subversion lies the repetitive nature of
communal violence, guilt and hatred— “The title of Dattani’s play on communal violence and
tensions in contemporary urban India itself calls to attention the apparent insolubility of this
situation….It is indeed, this very search for a final solution, which in many ways perpetuates the
cycle of violence and hatred.”
The cycle of hatred and as Alyque Padamsee terms it; ‘transferred resentments’ seem to continue.
Ironically, ten or twenty years after the Babri Masjid demolition, the country was subjugated to yet
more phases of communal violences: the Godhra carnage, 2002 or the riots in Assam, 2012—making
the ironic quality of Dattani’s title disturbingly pertinent.
