‘The Final Solution’ by Manik Bandopadhyay (Summary)

‘The Final Solution' is one of the acclaimed works of Manik Bandopadhyay. The plot

of the story revolves around a poor family who migrated to West Bengal after the

Partition and turned them into destitute, homeless vagabonds, anonymous,

strangers into non-scripts. The story of Partition subsequently brings stories of

suffering, indecency, rape and sexual violence. Apparently the story deals with the

helplessness of a young mother, Mallika, who struggles to keep herself and her body

in the face of horrific events.

The story reveals the phenomena of insanity, contempt, decaying human values,

spiritual purification, and indifference to human existence. The story depicts an

astonishing note, 'Chaos, the insanity of a time when we have fallen from the human

world of language,customs, rituals into a percentile world of hatred, anger,

selfishness and insanity. Bandyopadhyay writes that since in reality displacement

and settlement is an important topic of discussion, even a few days ago one saw

homeless people, spending their days and nights, herding goats like cattle and being

confined together in the shelter of goats.

In contrast to the popular androcentric male discourse on the history of partition, the

story reaches the goal of feminist historiography in the language of Joan Wallach

Scott because it "made women the focal point, subject, and narrative agent of

women's investigation." It also brings to the fore massive disruptions and crises after

the split and projects women as active agents rather than passive recipients of this

change.
The story captures the experiences of women in the department that further illustrate

and reinterpret the important turning point in history from a women's perspective,

thus providing an alternative history where women are portrayed not only as subjects

of study but also as subjects and participants. The facts of sexual abuse, profanity,

disrespect, obscenity, violation of dignity, transgression are questions that hit the

narrator hard. According to Suranjan Das, "Riots are a transformative as well as a

historical event. It shapes and changes perceptions and desires. People have

changed: their attitudes towards each other and their thinking about themselves

have changed. "In light of the above statement, one can easily

capture the change that has taken place in people's lives during and after partition.

In the story, Manik Bandopadhyay clearly reminds the survivors of the essential

impact of the Peace Committee, the rehabilitation program and the inhumane

conditions of the refugee camps. The story depicts the struggle of a female

protagonist against capitalism, hegemony, and masculinity, the capital of a frustrated

society. The story details the economic deprivation and uncertainty for the immediate

lower classes of the country. It also contains the nature and other characters of the

short story defile and then go on to construct for themselves, and make an attempt to

map their ‘body’ and ‘gender’ as a site of ‘power’ and defiance. According to Judith

Butler, “We are acting all the time in the ways that we enact, repeat, appropriate and

refuse the norms that decide our social ontology”. And it is in the enactment, refusal

and the difference of character, when it comes to Mallika and Asha and even her

husband that Mallika comes to set herself, not as an object of patriarchy. Moreover,

what Bandhopadhyay seems to accomplish with his story, is a radical rethinking of

the ontological constructions of identity of the several ‘women’ characters of his

narrative. His story highlights that there is no specific definition of feminism or no

static ‘subject’ position that the category of ‘women’ occupy in a “postfeminist” world,

“the very subject of women is no longer understood in stable or abiding terms”.

Bandhopadhyay and his characters do not only defy the stereotypical notions of

‘performativity’ but also that of ‘gender’ and ‘identity’ itself, and thus it can be said

that Bandhopadhyay is both contesting and creating, “a subject of feminism”.

In her essay “Transcending the Gendering of Partition: An Analysis of Manik

Bandyopadhyay's Short Story ‘The Final Solution’,” Sukannya Choudhury focuses on

telling or re-telling the narrative of partition through the lens of ‘gender,’ she sees

Mallika as a breadwinner in a world where ‘women’ are subjected to “wilful amnesia”

and says that her paper focuses on a “compulsive recovery”. Her aim, primarily is to

bring about the struggle and violence that ‘women’ had to go through, and

particularly ‘subaltern’ ‘women. ’ The positioning of Mallika, a refugee on the railway

platform of Calcutta seems to be very contradictory at first. Mallika’s character can

be seen as an epitome of this statement, not only the protagonist who stands as the

‘mother-nation’ allows herself to be violated but also takes part in the body-politics

and violates Pramatha’s physical and conceptual entity. Mallika finds a solution,

which is a rather roaring resistance to “masculine supremacy”, she ends up

strangling Pramatha, after “Pramatha went limp” as she hits him with a whiskey

bottle. Mallika in the story is shown in a different light as she steps out of the

ingrainedconception of women to be docile and submissive and men providing

protection for the same.

Mallika thus, creates a separate, if not new or in the least, a disrupted ‘category’

within the narrative and the narrative thus serves to highlight an anti-essentialist

viewpoint of violence during the partition of the Indian Subcontinent. Manik

Bandhopadhyay’s purpose thus, lies to derive that the non-bhadrolok’s gender, class,

caste experiences need to be archived to welcome multi-dimensional viewpoint of

Partition.”

Bandhopadhyay highlights the difference in the subjective choices that Mallika and

other ‘women’ make in the face of the very need for survival, the story thus

considers, “the pervasive cultural conditions” along with social, historical and even

economical while setting ‘subjects of patriarchy and even feminist discourse. When

the story begins, Pramatha, Bhushan and the reader alike expect Mallika to behave

in a set manner, and one can see other ‘women’ in the story doing the very thing,

what they seem to be doing is enacting, a ‘performance.’

Mallika is forced down the profession of prostitution because she is a ‘mother’.

Mallika’s agency to choose prostitution as a means to feed her little son highlights

her maternal instincts and what becomes extensively essential to be noticed as we

question the framework of gendered thought and behaviours, is that in choosing

prostitution, not only is Mallika fulfilling her role as a ‘mother,’ but also regaining

claim over her culturally constructed body. The Central argument here is that

prostitution is a shackle that the structure of ‘power’ bounds Mallika within, her the

decision and choice to render her ‘sexuality’ as a means of survival is her limited

emancipation and finally, the ‘act’ of murder is her questioning the categories of

identity that contemporary juridical structures engender, naturalise and immobilize.

DR’S notes -

Final Solution (Short story where we will find the impact of deterritorialisation) - east

to west (Movement from Bangladesh to Calcutta)

- Four coordinates- family, language, birthplace and culture. (deterritorialisation)

- Memory has been playing an important and facing the trauma of partition

vicariously but failed to recoincile with their inner conflicts. Bhité (ancestral home-

use this word for answers)

Once they were thrown in out of their Bhité it was all about Rooting & Routing.

First and foremost adjustment was around Space. One had lived before the

deterritorialsation - from open place to hurdled refugee camps. (Also near railway

station)

Amrita Bazar Patrika - leading daily in Calcutta (English) described the Sealdah

railway Station “Gateway of Hell” (Dante)

“through me the way to the suffering city abandon every hope who enter here”

Sealdah Railway Station to Shanty (Displaced from the railway station to

overcrowded) described the suburbs “services were already stretched to their limits”

Amrita Bazaar Patrika described (no water, no electricity)

- Customs around purity and cleanliness waned out of existence.

- Dissolution of the gendered spaces.

- In the Final Solution, it depicts the destruction of values and politics of power and

sexuality in the spiralling refugee problem.

- In Final Solution, Setting- Sealdah, The setting also foregrounds the families

rootlessness and their destabilised existence.

- Simple Synopsis : Promotho ( a part of an NGO that helped the refugee) comes

across this Lady Mollika( with a child and ailing husband, sister in-law) that he would

take her to one of the houses to do odd jobs, kills Promotho when he attempts to

rape her and takes money out his pocket, goes back home to the railway station and

shares a very close moment with her sister in-law and says she will have no problem

carrying a knife (perhaps becomes a pickpocket? Or picks up prostitution)

- “Mattress kingdom” has puts into matter the irreversible- the displacement Mollika’s

family and her faced.

- “one look at her child”

- At the end of the story “There is no other way for us”

- Taking away the money from the man seemed the only “final solution” The betrayal

of patience

- Violence against women became the currency for human negotiation during and

post partition.

- Transforms into a powerless victim to an agent of family destiny.

- Doubly jeopardised because she cannot be punished as she isn’t a citizen (cannot

be legally persecuted)

Coordinates- Citizen and Human Subject

In any modern state, the political life is always guarded by a juridical legal system.

Idea of sovereignty is paradoxical. Natural self is accommodated within the political.

The moment of identification is done by Fuko. “Threashold Hold of Modernity”(Fuko)

According to Fuko, However modern we claim to be we are primodially located in the

economy of political.

Modern man according to Fuko, an animal whose politics places him or his existence

as a living being into question.

Giorgeo Agamben , modern state is primarily founded in the principal “Inclusive

Exclusion” where the subject has to succumb to the political set up and the

organisation.

Partition ushered two nations into an epoch of modernity. The idea of modernity and

growing Indian modern state simultaneously with the growing of the Indian

Movement led to the systematic generation of its own margin. Those who lived bare

lives or the wasted lives. (Refugee- unrecognised, passive, donot avail rights,

under-represented)

Communal disharmony is one of the outcomes of Two Nation theory. The other is

very systematically rendered out of the national identity. And it located into the

economy of xenophobia.

Hannah Arendt : “Refugees are people who have lost all other qualities and specific

relationships except that they are still human”

Refugee status is a liminal or a transitional status because they always inhibit the

state of homelessness. Refugee stands as the manifestation of bare life.

The status of a refugee is much like of an hyphen because their status is very

challenged.

“Limit concept” (Agamben) as they call into question the fundamental categories of

the functioning of a nation.

Marianne Hirsch: “Creation of post memory”

she says that rendering of trauma is influential in creation of post memory which is

“the relationship that the generation after bares to the personal, collective and

cultural trauma of those who came before to experiences they ‘remember’ only by

means of stories, images and behaviours among which they grew up

Idea of the female in terms of partition : The patriarchy which oppressed the feminine

for a long time is weakening. Partition is an ideological. Mollika realises she must

devise new ways of survival. Contingent with her circumstances when she goes on

to kill Promotho, a post modern subject is born ( as cannot formulate their ideas

based on a priori self, rather what Fuko calls someone who is relying on the

discursive formulation of self and existence)

Epiphanic juncture on the story : commodified agency of Mollika fails to see

Promotho as her client instead there is a merging of the pimp and the client which is

why she is disturbed. Located her sexuality within the economy of desire. She kills

him as it is a climatic moment as the feminine self sought to transcend all the

economies of oppression (ethical,ideological and sexual)

“Women within the discursive limits of humanity and culture has essentially survived

as other a relative being to a man and masculinity” - says who???

Mollika’s moment of dehumanisation.

Learner “history is the essence of cilvilization and the process of history making has

largely been a systematic exclusion of women”

Mollika’s body is the only way through which she can transcend the oppression of

her economy. Her sexuality then is no longer confined within the ideas of a governed

transgression. (it is not happening voluntarily). It now becomes her means of

sustenance which has been ushered by partition.

At the end of the text, she speaks to her sister in-law.

“We will never go hungry again”

“The sharks will come again, pick me up for sure but this time I will carry the shark

knife with me”

Mollika’s body becomes a symbol of violence as well as her emancipation. Her

liberation is controlled entirely by her state.