Page 240 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Indian Writings in Literature

Notes majority like the characters of Hardika/Daksha in Hussainabad. And how Muslims like Javed
suffer in the set up of the majority Hindu community. This all resulted in communal riots and
culminated in disruption of the normal social life, and thus hampered the progress of the nation.
The mob in the play is symbolic of our own hatred and paranoia. Each member of the mob is an
individual, yet they meet into one seething whole as the politicians play on their fears. In this play,
the chorus continuously sings sometimes under the mask of Hindus and sometimes under that of
Muslims revealing their feelings of fear and hatred for one another. When the Chariot leading the
procession is broken and the Pujari is killed the Hindus masks sing:
"How dare they!
They broke our Chariot and felled our Gods!
This is our land!
How dare they?"
The mob/chorous comprising five men and ten masks on sticks (five Hindu and five Muslim
masks) is the omnipresent factor throughout the play. Now Muslim in masks sing:
They hunt us down!
They're afraid of us!
They beat us up!
We are few!
But we are strong!
In Act II, the mob/chorus squats haphazardly, and Hindu masks sing:
"Of what use is the curfew? (The chorus 3). When there is unrest in our minds! Have we to let them
insult us? To close our eyes while they stab us".
The scenes of the play take place inside and outside Ramnik Gandhi's house where Ramnik has
given two Muslim boys shelter from the violent mob outside. The mob is in the form of a chorus,
changing its guise into Muslims and Hindus through masks and songs. Inside, a Hindu family is
sharply divided over giving shelter to the unknown Muslim youths in the midst of communal
frenzy and violence. Even after fifty years of Independence, people have not been able to forget
their enemity and bias against each other, i.e. Muslims against Hindus and Hindu against Muslims.
In the play, two young men, Javed and Babban, are hired to disrupt social harmony while others
like Hardika's parents - in-laws have secretly burnt the shop of their Muslim friend, with the
selfish end of buying it at reduced price.
Final Solutions is based on the apparently friendly relations between Muslims and Hindus and the
simmering currents of hatred beneath. The family unit comprises members of different age groups,
symbolic of past and present, stretching the plot to over a period of half a century. Young people like
Smita, Bobby and Javed, present the future and Ramnik and Aruna, the present while Hardika, the
grand mother of Smita, is sometimes presented in Daksha (Past) a fifteen year old newly married
young girl, writing her diary and then as her grandmother in her late sixties (present) teaching her
children and revealing the family's past. Major events are presented through her eyes.
The play, Final Solutions, is also the story of a young baffled boy Javed, who becomes a victim and
a terrorist and is exploited by politicians in the name of 'Jahad'. He is trained for the terrorist
activities and sabotaging. He is sent to a Hindu 'Mohalla' where a 'Rath Yatra' is taking place.
Javed is so over-whelmed with the fervour of 'Jehad' that he throws the first stone on the 'Rath'
causing chaos, ending up in the killing of the 'Pujari' and crashing down of the 'Rath'. Bobby a
close friend of Javed, saves him from the violent mob and gets him sehtler in Ramnik Gandhi's
house, where causes of Hindus and Muslims hatred are being discussed and strange secrets of
terror, greed, avarice and communal hatred are being revealed.

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