The document summarizes Mahesh Dattani's play "Final Solutions". It discusses the plot, characters, themes and conclusion. The play addresses religious communalism in India through the story of a Gujarati family during a period of riots. It depicts the suffering of minorities and explores themes of gender bias, communal tensions, and the need for acceptance between religious groups. Dattani uses the character of Daksha to show how women's freedoms and dreams are shattered by patriarchal norms after marriage.

1. Submitted to Complied by
Dr.Naveen K Mehta Soumya Tiwari
Associate Professor Research Scholar
Department of English Department of English
Sanchi University of Buddhist-Indic Studies Sanchi University Of Buddhist –Indic Studies

2. Mahesh Dattani
■ Mahesh Dattani is considered to be one of the most comprehensive dramatists in the modern
Indian theatre. He was born (1958) in the city of Bangalore, though his parents originally
belonged to Porbandar in Gujarat. Dattani has a very strong passion for theatrical art. He longs
to present multicolored Indian life and sensibility. It is because of this he had set his eyes on the
art of play writing and stage performance.
■ Dattani has an unconventional approach to theatre. He looks at the theatre to manifest the
causes of the unprivileged sections of our society. His plays externalize the problems and
attempts to draw out the feelings of suppressed in a very authentic and realistic manner. His
plays are originally written in English. He has written a good number of dramas which are
diverse in themes, techniques and devices.
■ Dattani’s entire dramatic corpus can be classified into three categories namely Stage Plays,
Radio Plays and Screen Plays which is a valuable contribution to the Indian English Theatre.
He started his career with his Where There's a Will (1988) which dealt with mechanics of
middle class Gujarati family. He continued writing plays such as Dance Like a Man (1989),
Tara (1990), Bravely Fought the Queen (1991) and Final Solutions (1992) for which he won the
prestigious Sahitya Academy Award in 1998. He even wrote plays such as Do the Needful
(1997), Seven Steps Around the Fire (1998), Clearing the Rubble (1998), On a Muggy Night in
Mumbai (1998), 30 Days in September (2001) and more recent Brief Candle (2009) and also
many others. Dattani’s theatrical genius is characterized by innovation, dynamism and diversity.

3. Introduction
■ The play talks about the sufferings of both the Hindus and the Muslims. The Hindus had to suffer in the hands of the Muslims and the
Muslims had to suffer in the hands of the Hindus. Hardika or Daksha (both the names are of the same person) symbolizes the majority
whereas Javed symbolizes the minority. The mob mentioned in the play symbolizes the hatred of each and every individual. The play at one
side speaks about the communal tension and on the other side it speaks about friendly relations as well. The plot of the play moves from the
past to the present and vice versa. The story revolves around the lives of people in a Gujarati family, where the characters speak about three
generations. Hardika the grandmother who is known as Daksha as well (in the past), Ramnik, son of Hardika and Smita, grand-daughter of
Hardika. Memory plays a vital role in the play as Hardika is often seen recollecting her past memories. In the play the mob or the chorus
symbolizes the communal hatred of the minority and the majority.

4. Characters
■ HARDIKA- Hardika is the mother of Ramnik. She is also known as Daksha in the play when the play revolves around the past. Daksha writes down everything
in her diary because diary is her best friend. Right from her first day at her in laws house to making a new Muslim friend namely Zarine, she writes down
everything in her diary. The diary symbolizes the past and the present. Daksha as a young girl in the past writes down everything on the pages of her diary and
Hardika in the present, teaches things to her family about the past, from her diary. Hardika, known as Daksha at her young age, had a Muslim friend whose
name was Zarine. Zarine’s house was the only place for Daksha where she could found some solace and freedom. Daksha was fond of the Noor Jehan songs and
she could hear the songs only at Zarine’s place. Zarine and Daksha were good friends, but their friendship was not meant to be last forever. Daksha’s father was
killed by the Muslims in a riot and from then onwards Daksha started to hate the minority people. In fact she lost all her faith from her Lord Krishna as well.
Hardika or Daksha is a such a character who symbolizes the majority or the Hindus and their sufferings as well.
■ JAVED Javed is a Muslim boy in the play. He is a young baffled boy who becomes a victim and a terrorist. The politicians exploit him in the name of Jehad,
the Holy War. Javed takes training for the terrorist activities. He goes rather he is sent to a street where the Hindus live. The street is also known as Mohalla.
The Rath Yatra procession comes on to the street and there comes many people who join in the procession. Javed feels happy as he comes there to work for the
holy war. He throws a stone at first to the procession to create a chaos. He had the responsibility of murdering the pujari or the priest of the Ratha Yatra. Javed
moves towards the pujari with a knife in his hand, he gets mingled in the crowd. Though Javed has the responsibility to kill the pujari, he fails to do so. The
knife fails down from his hand and he feels nauseous and thinks in his mind that what is he doing in the procession. This state of mind of Javed clearly shows
that, though he is a terrorist, he has heart of a human being as well. Moreover he doesn’t have the courage to kill a person who is innocent. Javed is not the
actual murderer of the pujari, in fact the knife fails down from his hand and he clearly beholds that someone else takes up the knife from the ground and kills
the pujari. He becomes the victim of his fate.

5. Characters
■ SMITA- Smita is a girl who believes in liberal ideology. She does help her mom in her pooja work because she loves her mom but she doesn’t personally support all
the things from heart.
■ Bobby -whose original name is Babban, is a friend of Javed. Though he is also a Muslim like Javed, he doesn’t want to show that off to the world and that is the reason
he changes his name from Babban to Bobby when he goes to college. Unlike Javed , Bobby has a control over his temper and he doesn’t react angrily in all the
situations. He is the one who saves Javed from the Ratha Yatra procession and takes refuge in the house of Ramnik Gandhi. Bobby is the one who makes Aruna, wife of
Ramnik, to understand that God doesn’t differentiate between people. To Him all are equal.
■ Ramnik Gandhi,- son of Hardika, is a very liberal minded man and he doesn’t support the communal hatred. He even gives refuge to the two Muslim guys in his
house because he wanted to atone the sin committed by his father and grandfather in the past. He even thinks of helping Javed by giving him a job in the shop, so that
he can earn his livelihood in an honest and peaceful way.
■ Aruna - wife of Ramnik Gandhi, is a typical Indian house wife who is a Godfearing person as well. She has spent her whole life in pooja path and she doesn’t like to
compromise with anything that is related to her God. She also believes that everybody has their own way to woe ship God. She strongly dislikes the decision of her
husband, the decision of allowing the Muslim boys to stay with them under the same roof. Aruna did have sympathy for the two boys, but at the same time she was
scared of them as well. In fact, when Javed tries to help her out by filling up the drinking water, she clearly tells him that outsiders are not allowed to fetch or fill water
in their house.

6. Plot
■ Final Solutions was written and performed in 1993, a period of high tension and violence in urban India. The play grew in specific context as
Dattani responded to the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992. Dattani’s social consciousness led him to address the contemporary social issue of
religious communalism to advocate communal harmony. He tries to convey that there are no solutions to this problem except for that of acceptance
and empathy for each other. Final Solutions opens with the image of five masked individuals dressed in black. Dattani has named them as
Mob/Chorus. Each member has two masks one is of Hindu and other of Muslim. They remain on the top of a large crescent shaped ramp for most
of the time in the play. Below the ramp is the home of Gandhi's, a middle class family, in present day, Amargaon, Gujarat. The Gandhi family
comprises of the elderly surivivor of the partition of India and Pakistan, Hardika, who was earlier known as Daksha, her son Ramnik, her daughter
in law, Aruna and her grand-daughter Smita.
■ On another level of the stage is Daksha’s room in 1948. Thus the play is into three spaces one, the mob, two, the Gandhi family and three, the
memory of Dakhsha. At various points of time these three separate worlds interact and overlap with each other. The action of the play is set in
motion by the recent destruction of the chariot and images of Hindu dieties of a Rath Yatra while travelling through a Muslim neighborhood of the
city. Riots had broken out in Amargaon and so curfew has been imposed in the city. The local Hindu and Muslim communities, represented by the
Mob/Chorus are blowing each other for the riots. The communal violence between these groups brings back Hardika’s memories of partition and
her life as a new bride in 1948. Her memories are expressed through the character of Daksha who is shown reading from her diary.

7. Plot
■ The Gandhi family is safe within their home and although Smita is worried about the safety of her Muslim friend, Tasneem. The family is having a peaceful evening but it is
disrupted when Bobby and Javed two young Muslim men arrive at their doorstep begging to take them inside. The Mob/Chorus with Hindu masks are after Bobby and Javed
and are threatening to kill them. Despite the objection of his mother Ramnik opens the door of his house to protect the two. An interaction occurs between the Gandhi's and
Bobby and Javed throughout the course of the night. Hardika still has resentment against Muslims due to the events that had happened in her life following the partition and
thus she protests against Bobby and Javed’s presence in her home. Through the character of Daksha the audience is slowly able to know the two factors that are the source of
Hardik’s animosity. The first was the murder of her father in hometown, Hussainabad, which became a part of Pakistan during the partition. The second reason was that the
physical and mental abuse she had to endure when her husband Hari and her in laws found out about her friendship with her Muslim neighbor, Zarine. Her son Ramnik is a
secular Hindu and much more hospitable to the boy. But Ramnik’s kindness is partly driven by the guilt he feels over running the business his father established by cheating
Zarine’s family after partition.
■ Ramnik’s wife Aruna is a deeply devout woman who feels extremely uncomfortable with Muslims sitting in her home and drinking water from the same glasses. She
believes that their touching is polluting. Smita, Ramnik’s daugter is also very uncomfortable with Bobby and Javed’s presence but for other reasons. Prior to the action of the
play, Smita and Bobby had a brief romantic love affair with each other which they later decided not to pursue.

8. Plot
■ Now Bobby is engaged to Javed’s sister and Smita’s friend Tasneem. Smita also struggles with her relationship with her mother, who she describes
“stifling” her with religious rituals. Bobby whose real name is Babban is also a secular Muslim who tries to hide religious identity. Javed on the
other hand is a Muslim Youth with a strong sense of identity. After becoming a victim of religious prejudice during his childhood, Javed had started
working as a hired hoodlum, who is paid to start riots. He even reveals that he was the one who disrupted the Rath Yatra. Bobby has been trying to
persuade Javed to give up his profession.
■ The struggle of these six characters to spend one night under the same roof creates a tense situation. The play reaches its end in the early hours of
the morning when Bobby enters the prayer room and picks up the idol of Krishna to Aruna’s great distress. Bobby proclaims that he is touching
god and nothing is happening to him. Upon seeing Aruna’s horror he tells Aruna that if there is understanding and faith in each other nothing can
be destroyed. He then turns to Hardika and claims that if she is willing to forget everything, he is willing to tolerate everything done to him on
communal basis. Bobby and Javed leave. Ramnik tells Hardika that her husband and her father in law had destroyed her friend Zarine’s family
business. Hearing this Hardika realizes the real reason for why her in laws forbidden her to keep friendship with Zarine was not because Zarine was
a Muslim but they were trying to hide their crime. Crushed Hardika asks Ramnik about why had not he told this to her before. Ramnik replies that
he did not wanted her mother to live with guilt. The play ends with the image of Javed and Bobby standing among the Mob.

9. Theme
■ Communal riot is such a war which is actually not fought between two different nations, rather it takes place between two different religious groups.
Dattani focuses mainly on the communal disharmony between the Hindus and the Muslims. The play talks about the condition of India during the post
partition riots. The play is about a Gujrati family where the head of the family is Hardika, who has a strong hatred for the Muslims because her father was
killed by the minority people. She protests against her son when he gives refuge to two Muslim boys Javed and Bobby in her house.
■ Final Solutions can be considered as a problem play as it speaks about the communal tension and communal riot.
■ Mahesh Dattani mainly speaks about gender bias in almost all his plays. Final Solutions is one such play that not only speaks about the communal tension
but it showcases the patriarchal hegemony and sufferings of a woman as well. Daksha also known as Hardika in the play, gets married to a guy namely
Hari at a very tender age. Daksha’s name is also changed after she comes to her in laws house. Hardikais the new given to her which matches with the
name of her husband. Daksha is not allowed to take education, she is not allowed to listen to her favorite Noor Jehan songs. She becomes a typical Indian
housewife after her marriage who is not allowed to step out of the house without covering her head. Daksha writes everything in her diary. Diary acts as a
symbol throughout the play as it is present in Daksha and Hardika’s life from the past till the present. Diary is not just an object or entity in her life, but it
is her best friend where she writes down each and everything that happens in her life. She shares all those things which she cant share with anyone else as
she did not have any friends in her new house. She feels bad as all her dreams are shattered after marriage.
■ Mahesh Dattani has made use of irony in the play. The setting of the play is during the time when India received its independence. Daskha exactly got
married with Hari at that period. Dattani has tried to show here in the play, that, at one side independence or freedom is achieved by India but on the other
side Daksha loses her freedom. She loses her freedom of singing, humming songs to her husband and she even loses the freedom of dreaming in life. She
leads her life like a bird in the cage with shackles in the legs.

10. Conclusion
■ Mahesh Dattani’sFinal Solutions is a problem play that talks about the socio-political aspects of a society in India. Two different types of community live
in India, one is the majority and the other one is the minority. Each of the communities has hatred for each other and the reason of the hatred is actually
silly and baseless. God is one and the same but people do fight on God and each and everyone claims that God is mine, God is ours, whereas God loves
everyone like parents love all the children.
■ Dattani also focusses on patriarchal system and gender bias, which is the other side of the play. He has tried to show with the help of the character Daksha,
that, gender bias and sufferings of women have not totally swept away from India. Though India has got its independence or freedom, the Indian women in
most of the families, still live like caged birds with shackles in the legs. India shall receive its true independence or freedom only on the day when women
will be receiving their due respect and freedom. Also, the people must start loving and accepting each other, rather than hating and misunderstanding more
than one child in a family.
■ This play is a response to Mahesh Dattani’s reaction to the sporadic communal riots, breaking forth here and there, at different times. The play further
highlights that being in majority or minority also determines our thought processes and subsequently our response towards the people of other community.
While the majority group fails to acknowledge the equal status of the minority, the latter raises the finger at the dominant majority group for becoming
their destiny makers. The promising points which the s the play offers for establishing amity and good-will between the two communities are the nobility
at heart, space for self- expression, open-mindedness and tolerance for other’s dissenting note, respect and regard for one another’s cultural values, a
society sans ego and sans prejudice and initiation on the part of both the communities to look beyond the narrow communal lines.

11. Thank You
■ The presenter greatly acknowledge all the material from reliable sources.