Manik Bandopadhyay was a prominent Bengali writer and novelist in the 20th century who wrote about the ordinary struggles of men and women during the independence era and partition of India, most notably in his story "The Final Solution". The story documents the suffering of a family, particularly the female protagonist Mallika, who is displaced and faces violence after partition, ultimately taking courageous action against her oppressors. Bandopadhyay sought to provide perspectives on the social and psychological impacts of events through realistic portrayals of common people navigating extraordinary circumstances.

1. Dr. SHUBHA DWIVEDI
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
ARSD COLLEGE
DSE -PARTITION LITERATURE
B.A. (Hons.) English VI Semester

2. Manik Bandopadhyay (1908-1956)
 An Indian Writer, novelist, key figure in the development of 20th
century Bengali Literature.
 His oeuvre comprises of 36 novels and nearly 250 short stories.
His remarkable works are: Padma Nadir Majhi (The Boatman on
the River Padma), Putul nacher Itikatha (The Puppet’s Tale)
Shahartali (Suburbia) and Chatushkone (The Quadrilateral)
Bandopadhyay published 57 volumes during his lifetime.
 His stories and novels got published in the most prominent
journals and literary magazines of the then Bengal including
Bichitra, Anand Bazaar Patrika, Jugantor, Satyajug, Bangashree
Noboshakti, Kalantar, Parichaya and many more.
 His life was marked by acute poverty and frequent illnesses.
 Worked as editor of Nabarun and Bangasree
 Manik Bandopadhyay tried to analyse the multi-dimensional
facets of social reality. He also dwelt upon man’s socio-
psychological orientation and his consciousness.
 His fiction examines and investigates different problems
confronting the social milieu.

3.  He was inspired by Marxist philosophy and Freudian
principles of psychoanalysis. Instead of describing the
idyllic pleasures of life in rural milieu, he felt content to
describe the psychic predilections and sinister
workings of the human mind. The stories often
unravel the dark, obscure, enigmatic aspects of the
characters’ lives who often lead disturbed existence
under the garb of seemingly unruffled and peaceful
reality.
 He distinguished himself as a great novelist in the
tradition of Bankimchandra, Rabindranath and
Saratchandra. His fiction was about ordinary men and
women who endured extraordinary circumstances
during the independence era and his writings gave us
a chance to revisit some of the most heroic yet
forgotten characters of the times.
 As a novelist, he was concerned with change, the
relation between cause and effect, crisis and
resolution and was not merely content with recording
or subjective analysis of historical events that
influenced the individual in the context of colonial

4. The Final Solution
 ‘The Final Solution’ is one of the most acclaimed
works of Manik Bandopadhyay. The plot of the story
revolves around an impoverished family that migrates
to West Bengal after the partition of Bengal, turning
them into distressed, homeless vagabonds,
anonymous, nondescript among the strangers.
 The story brings out tales of suffering, molestation,
rape and sexual violence quite common during the
post partition days. The story evidently works on the
helpless state of a young mother, Mallika who
struggles to keep her self and her body unscathed in
the face of the terrible events.
 The story unveils incidents of cynicism,
defencelessness, decaying human values, spiritual
desiccation, bringing out the absurdity of human
existence.

5.  The story documents and makes us perceive from close quarters, what
Alok Bhalla calls, ‘the note of utter bewilderment,’ the chaos, the insanity
of the times when ‘we fell out of a world of human world of languages,
customs, rituals and prayers into a bestial world of hatred, rage, self-
interest and frenzy.’
 Displacement and dispossession are the crucial points of discussion in
the narrative as Bandyopadhyay writes, “ Even a few days back, one
could see the forlorn dispossessed people, spending their days and
nights, huddled together like herds of cattle, and goats in the shelter of a
railway platform.(p.36)”
 Contrary to the popular androcentric male discourse on partition history,
the story reaches the objective of feminist historiography in the words
of Joan Wallach Scott as it makes “women a focus of enquiry, a subject
and an agent of the narrative.”
 It also brings to the fore the massive disruption and crisis that followed
partition and projects women as active agents rather than passive
recipients of this change.
 The story captures women’s experience of the partition which further
delineates and reinterprets the significant turning point in history from
the point of view of women, thus providing an alternate history where
women figured not just as objects of study but as subjects and

6.  Keywords: Displacement, dispossession,
resettlement, home, labour, unemployment, hunger,
starvation, labour, home, memories, communal
violence, exploitation, realignment of family,
community and national identities, refugee camps,
rehabilitation, sexual assault, destitute, gendred social
history, sexual transgression, prostitution
 In the opinion of Suranjan Das, “a riot is a
transformatory as well as historical event. It shapes
and alters perceptions and aspirations. People are
changed: their attitudes to each other and their ways
of thinking about themselves are transformed.” In the
light of the above statement, one can easily
apprehend the change that occurred in the lives of the
people during partition and afterwards.

7.  In the story, Manik Bandopadhyay distinctly recalls the
overarching effects of the peace committee, rehabilitation
programmes and the inhuman conditions of the refugee camps
on the minds of the women survivors.
 The story epitomizes the struggle of a female protagonist against
a depraved society; capitalist, hegemonic, androcentric and
patriarchal to the core.
 The story recounts the economic deprivation and uncertainty for
the lower classes in the immediate aftermath of partition.
 It also captures the ruthlessness, the intolerance and the
manipulative nature of the exploiter-the moneylender or the
capitalist.
 The story also observes the tendency among the oppressed to
accept their oppressor as an inevitable evil of nature- A devil
incarnate, with a vehement desire to own all making him a
heartless and a diabolical person.
 The story makes subtle remarks on middle class hypocrisies
and inconsistencies.
 The story is remarkable for the articulation of female subjectivity
and for rejecting male protection/desecration upon women’s
body.
 Mallika’s chooses prostitution to feed her little son compromising

8.  Mallika’s husband is a diminutive figure, turns out to be an abject
failure, a feminization of her counterpart, incapacitated and
unable to sustain his family.
 Mallika’s decision to choose prostitution as a means to feed her
little son comes as a last resort to be able to fend for her son and
family when all doors to finding suitable employment get closed
and she finds her family standing on the verge of death owing to
starvation.
 Her opting for prostitution as a way to salvage her family from
sinking and perishing accentuates her maternal instincts in
defiance of her constant humiliation by Pramatha.
 She is a figure of courage as she thwarts Pramatha’s plan to
exploit her and other women in their state of helplessness and
daringly impedes Pramatha’s advances towards her by
strangling him to death.
 He final revenge brings an apt closure to the tale of misfortunes
heaped on innocent, gullible female victims by spiteful, stony-
hearted racketeer.
 Mallika’s courage in the face of adversities wins the hearts of
readers as she stays undaunted by the final catastrophe and
reaches the final solution through her strong will and presence of
mind.

9.  In the opinion of Sukanya Choudhury, Mallika’s revolutionary
stance symbolizes an anti hegemonic bodyscape to
reterritorialize her identity. In her retributive action lies her
courage to question the dominant forces of the society, she blurts
out in rage: “...I’ve found an excellent way out. That gangster! He
thought he had got me to carry on his infamous goings on. What
did he take me for? Am I physically weak because I’m a
woman?(p.46)”
 Mallika has a strong sense of self and bravely subverts the
gender centric norms by deciding to earn for her family. In her
case mothering results in ‘slow forgetting of the self.’ Yet, she
never gives up even when she is overwhelmed by anxiety and
anguish. In the end, she gains full control over the inner struggle
and the outer struggle.
 The story documents women’s response to the cataclysmic
episode of Partition: sometimes with their wilful amnesia of the
violation, the appropriation of male roles as breadwinners, as
anchors to the family in the state of helplessness, transgression
to sustain their family from the state of abject poverty and
adopting changing gender roles and attributes as they flaunt
courage, practicality and patience in the extremely intolerant
times.
 Quite appropriately, the story stands as a reflection of microcosm
in a macrocosm. “Partition was surely just a political divide or a
division of properties, of assets and liabilities. It was also, to use

10.  Confronted with violence, Mallika turns out to be a
heroic figure in the end who doesn't give up in the
face of calamities, in her case brought by devilish
capitalist forces hell bent to dispossess and degrade
her identity.
 The final act of retribution should be seen as the
possible alternative to the disorder in the absence of
the normal moral/social order. The ending evokes a
sense of shock and bewilderment but has a plausible
justification despite its unnaturalness and
unexpectedness. In the end, her calm and composed
response puts to rest all misgivings about the
appropriateness of her conduct.”Have you all
eaten?... We’ll never be hungry again, Thakurjhi
never, ever... My son will have milk four times a day. ..
I’ll go to the railway station every evening in my frayed
sari, the sharks will come to pick me up for
sure...’...But this time I’ll be carrying a sharp knife with
me , you understand Thakurjhi (p.46)”

11. References
 Menon, Ritu and Kamla Bhasin.” Speaking for
Themselves: Partition History, Women’s History,”
Partition Literature: An Anthology, ed. By Debjani
Sengupta. Delhi:Worldview,2018.
 Mookerjea, Debali. Literature, Gender and the
Trauma Of Partition. London& New York: Routledge,
2017.
 Mishra, Gauri. “Gender and partition.” Women And
Empowerment in Contemporary India. Ed. Brati
Biswas et al. Delhi: Worldview, 2016.
 Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence. New
Delhi: Penguin,1988
 Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence. New
Delhi: Penguin,1988
 Kumar, P Sukrita. Narrating Partition: texts,
Interpretations, Ideas. Indialog publications, 2004.