P-202 Assignment

Peaceful Coexistence in Mahesh Dattani’s Final Solutions

Name-Daya Vaghani

Paper- Indian English Literature-Post Independence

Roll no-06

Enrollment no-3069206420200017

Email id- dayavaghani2969@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-III)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

 

👉Introduction

Mahesh Dattani was born in Bangalore in 1958. He is an Indian English playwright, filmmaker, director, writer and actor. As a writer, he wrote several plays like Final Solutions, Tara, Dance like a Man, Thirty Days in September, Bravely Fought the Queen, The Big Fat City and others. He has known to be a modern playwright because he has contributed in making a substantial standing of the current time by attacking the burning problems that take over the view of publicity. In 1998, he has considered as the first English playwright to be the one who won the Sahitya Academy award. He gives a name for theatre, which is “A craft of communicating through the language of action”. He writes the plays by keeping in mind the stage directions.

 This assignment is to highlight and analyze the internal conflicts in the play. The center of discussion in this assignment is the religious tolerance as a platform leads to peaceful coexistence.As we all know that religious Plays vital role in any work of art or literature.In this novel also Dattani has portrayed religious conflict and communal conflict through the Hindu and Muslim community. Dattani’s Final Solutions reflects communal issues in which hatred and fears are aroused among individuals and varied, by the help of the sectarians, from one individual to another. It attempts to raise some questions as the main problem of this research to prove the main idea behind the positive effect of the religious coexistence in a society. What makes Dattani write this play? And what are the solutions that he suggests to end this communal conflict? Is there any story behind Dattani’s Final Solutions? What are the outcomes of the communal riots in India? While the main idea of this work focuses on the question; How can people achieve peaceful and progressive society?

This study aims to find out the spark of the religious racism in a community. It also seeks to find out the reasons and motifs behind Final Solutions. It seeks to study the final solutions that Dattani provides to put an end to the religious conflict, not only in India but also all over the world to bring about peaceful communities. As a way to compare it to Arabic literature, the study gives an example of peaceful coexistence in the Arab world. Thus, if the society achieves harmony and coexistence among religions the societies can be developed and progressed.

👉 Mahesh Dattani-Final Solution

 Mahesh Dattani remains one of the best and serious contemporary playwrights in Indian English Drama. He touches various aspects of Indian raises and society through his plays. Final Solutions is one of his plays that brought him "Academia Award" and it is a very meaningful play. It is first profound in Bangalore in 1993 and contains three acts. The play deals deeply with the issue of the historical past and lays its accolade in acknowledging the similarity of two religions and respecting their differences. In the present paper, a literature review made below to find out the critical articles and researches around Dattani’s Final Solutions.

Final Solutions is a play about communal riots in India and subordination of women who belong to three significant times in the history of India. Daksha/ Hardika belongs to three pre-independence period: Aruna, her daughter in law, belongs to independence period; and Smita Aruna’s daughter, is a contemporary, postindependence Indian woman. (507) Final Solutions discuses the conflict between two communal parties, how the Indian society treats woman as subordinate and keeps her in shadow without accepting any contribution from her. The play deals with three generations of woman; the first character (Daksha as Hardika) lived in pre- independence period while her daughter in law (Aruna) lived in independence period and (Smita) lived in post- independence period that represent the educated and contemporary girl.

👉 Peaceful coexistence in Final Solution:

 Dattani’s plays emerged as a new arrival in the range of Indian English drama in the late of twentieth century.

 In his plays, he raises various issues that people suffer in Indian society like identity crisis, homosexuality, communal tension, gender perception etc. Thus, his plays deal with contemporary problems. Because of that Dattani’s plays could be performed anywhere in the world.

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. It is an attempt to experiment with the chorus. It has been used in a style, which is called 'realistic stylisation'. 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.

Final Solutions is one of his well-known and commonly performed play. It is the fifth play by Dattani written in 1991 a year before the communal riots that happened in Bombay and it sparked because of damage of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhysa. The play performed first at Guru Nanak Bhawan, Banglore in 1993. It is in three acts attacking the conflict of communal violence and religious racism of modern urban Indian culture. In additions, it reflects the loss human weaknesses and identity, greed, selfishness, memory and suffering problems. The play takes a place around a Hindu family that helps and gives a refuge to Muslims boys.

👉Religious discrimination in Final Solution:

 Religious discrimination is also very important in the plays of Mahesh Dattani.His all okay signifies something special that is not signified in any other plays.This concept means a different treatment of a person or group for their particular beliefs especially related to religion, which they hold it. Therefore, these people have treated unequally either in law or in environment settings as housing or employment and consider as inferior among the majority religion. In addition, the concept of religious discrimination is associated to religious persecution; it includes cases, which are the most extremist forms in which it executed people for their beliefs perceived to be heretic. Regarding Dattani’s Final Solutions, there is a discrimination between Hindus and Muslims. Therefore, this discrimination leads to creating problems.

The history of India witnessed the horrible bloodshed because of partition on one hand and being independence on the other. Unexpectedly, the partition made in both communities hatred and people became wild. In addition, this bitter communal did not end and clashes started more by the development of time. The play Final Solutions has written very close to Babri Masjid destruction in 1992. Therefore, this play shows the response playwright to the demolition. Although, it is not just a paly which reflecting the Indian present but also deals with problems of hatred, the violence exploitation of communal riots and the position of the fanatics of the India in 1940s as compare with the present.

👉Role model of religious compromise

 Oman is an example of peaceful country as Oman is known to be one of the best religiously tolerant country. Though Islam is the official religion, but Oman also adopts citizens from different religions like Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Baha’ism and Sikhism. Historically, this behaviour of tolerance was among people in Oman before putting the rules for that. It is considered as a main rule nowadays that calls all people in Oman to follow it and live in peaceful coexistence. In addition, Oman’s basic law protects religious freedom and the discrimination on religion is forbidden because it is against the law in Oman. For centuries, Hindu community has been living in Oman and settling down in Muscat. Several of the families have shown their great contributions to the improvement of Oman. For instance, a young Hindu girl called Brinda Toprani who has been living in Oman since long time ago and some members of her family have been granted the Omani citizenship says: “We have been very fortunate to have lived in Oman and always found it very accepting in terms of celebrating festivals and following our faith”.iv Even the Christians have long history of living in Oman too. Alyssa Alexis is an American Christian who has been settling in Sur mentioned her perspective of people in Oman when she states: “I think Omanis are fairly tolerant of Christians, in general. Some seem to think Muslims and Christians are brothers and others have tried (in not-too pushy ways) to convert me. But, on the whole, they seem to accept that some foreigners who live here are Christian”. vThus, these two examples and we can find more those are considered as proofswhich emphasis that the religious freedom is something very important and highly valued in Oman and it is the main reason behind keeping Oman in the top of the list of peaceful countries.

👉Conclusion

 Religious compromise is important part for individuals within a society, particularly when there are varieties of people and cultures with different religious beliefs who live in a community. If the religious compromise is spread among people of a particular community, unity and harmony occur in a society that lead to peaceful coexistence and consequently this leads to a developed community too. Dattani’s Final Solutions is an example ofa community who shattered by the sectarians and unified by the moderates of the same community. Thus, Dattani’s thesis is quite clear that India is a country of several different religions and everyone needs to accept the others beliefs and religious rituals. But when the seniors forget this virtue of living and converted into sectarians, the conflict leads to unlimited troubles in which the new generation like Smita, Bobby and Javed endure it in their life. They are the victims of this communal conflict. Though they did not commit any sins but they had to suffer. The religious compromise, as Dattani calls for, is the only solution to end such conflict and bring about peaceful community.

Moreover, Dattani’s Final Solutions makes the receivers turn back to themselves and think about searching solutions to end this communal issue. As can be noticed, Mahesh Dattani speaks on behalf of the majority who has suffered in the society. This fears of the consequences made them moving around in the same circle, so this conflict remains the same in every new generation. However, Dattani tried to raise this issue to encourage people from different religions to avoid ignoring the others beliefs and try to live in harmony.

👉References

• Chennai. Gatt, D. (2012). Will there ever be a final solution? Mahesh Dattani’s final solutions revisited in the light of communal divide . Journal of English and literature, 3(6). Retrieved from http://www.academicjournals.org/app/webroot/article/article1379517182_Gatt.pdf

• Dattani, Mahesh. (1998). Final Solutions. Bangalore: East – WestBooks

👉Websites:

• https://englishsummary.com/final-solutions-dattani

• https://www.karnataka.com