Hello Friends, I am Nidhi Dave from the department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. This blog is a response to my Thinking Activity given by professor Vaidehi Ma'am. Here I discuss some questions from the play Final Solution by Mahesh Dattani.
Mahesh Dattani:
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.
He is the first playwright in English to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award.His plays have been directed by eminent directors like Arvind Gaur, Alyque Padamsee and Lillete Dubey.
Dattani teaches theatre courses at the summer sessions programme of Portland State University, Oregon, USA, and conduct workshops regularly at his studio and elsewhere. He also writes radio plays for BBC Radio 4. He lives in Bangalore.
About Play:
This play is about the hindu family in Gujarat who save 2 boys from Muslim community and are under threat to be skinned alive if they don't hand over the Muslims boys to the hindu rioter, and those boys are Friends with the girl whom house they shelter in and one guy love that girl is the brother of her best friend and other guy is her best friend fiance. She got scolded for that her friendship with Muslims guys and she take a full stand against that comments we see the bitterness in the both communities and there responses and author show the true face of the society to us in a way we understand best. But ending show that there is not perfect solution to end this communal hatred but there is hope coming generation may able to vanish this thing finally in the coming years. As in the ending we see all three young members were enjoying the water shower on each other and all there is love between boy of Muslim community and girl of hindu family is the difference they have to cross to become one in this life.
Thinking Task:- (Write any four)
1, What is the significance of the subtitle "The Final Solutions"?
Ans, The play Final Solutions, written by Mahesh K. Dattani discusses the theme of communal riots, hatred and bitterness of Hindus and Muslims against each other. The plot is set in Gujarat (after the 2002 Riots). The communal hatred is at peak. It can be seen when we find Hindu mob chasing Javed and Bobby after knowing that they are Muslims.
Next, we also come to know other complex stories like love affair of Smita (who is a Hindu) and Bobby, Javed’s story of adopting extremist way, Ramanik’s grabbing of Javed’s land (after burning his shop) etc.
We find that Ramanik blames Javed and his community and vice versa. But deep inside, Ramanik’s conscience does not allow him to live in peace because of the sin which he committed in the past.
There is another issue which is discussed in the play. It is the orthodoxy which is inherited among the believers of every religion. They consider people from other communities as untouchables. Aruna’s denying Bobby and Javed from spending night at their home depicts this.
So, throughout the play, we find ample of problems and the playwright has not given any solution. Instead, he has let the audience to decide. Hence, the final solutions are, in real, no solutions to these communal problems. We people need to know what makes us hate others.
2, Do you think Mahesh Dattani’s “The Final Solutions” makes any significant changes in society?
Ans, Yes, i think That The Final Solution is changing in society. Mahesh Dattani is a well-known English playwright, actor and director of India. He is the first playwright in English to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi award for Final Solutions in 1998.The theme of the play Final Solutions is to highlight human weaknesses, selfishness, avarice and opportunism. Woven into the play are the issues of class and communities and the clashes between traditional and modern life style and value systems. The problem of minorities is not confined to only Hindus and Muslims, it eats the peace of any minority community among the majority.
Final Solutions" has a powerful contemporary resonance and it addresses as issue of utmost concern to our society, i.e. the issue of communalism. The play presents different shades of the communalist attitude prevalent among Hindus and Muslims in its attempt to underline the stereotypes and clichés influencing the collective sensibility of one community against another. What distinguishes this work from other plays written on the subject is that it is neither sentimental in its appeal nor simplified in its approach.
It advances the objective candour of a social scientist while presenting a mosaic of diverse attitudes towards religious identity that often plunges the country into inhuman strife. Yet the issue is not moralised, as the demons of communal hatred are located not out in the street but deep within us.
3, How are the beginning and the end of the movie? Do you feel the effect of communal disturbance in the movie?
Ans, The title makes audience members ask themselves, “Are there solutions to religious communalism?”
The communal virus has always played a mischievous role in this pluralistic society. In the beginning of the play we see Hardika opening her diary after four decades and writing a dozen pages more. Her words, “Yes, things have not changed that much” sound so philosophical and true. Communal virus has made this sub-continent to suffer quite often. Ram Ahuja in his sociological work ‘Social problems in India’ defines Communalism as follows:
Communalism is an ideology which states that society is divided into religious communities whose interests differ and are, at times, even opposed to each other. The antagonism practiced by the people of one community against the people of other community and religion can be termed ‘communalism’.”
The play Final Solution is not a mere ‘one more addition’ to the literary works that deal with communal conflicts, but an honest attempt at sensitizing the public about the dangers of prejudice and discrimination based on one’s race, ethnicity and religion. Discrimination, per se, need not be absolutely bad. But it can be truly fatal if it’s based on deadly prejudice. The playwright has given a brilliant title, which indicates that there are solutions to seemingly irresolvable problems. However, the playwright, neither taking an escapist route nor presuming to offer ‘the final solution’, confronts the burning issue with an amazing neutrality and courage of conviction. Therefore, the play cannot be studied merely as a clash between Hindus and Muslims represented by Ramnik Gandhi, his family members and Hindu Mob/chorus and Bobby, Javed and Muslim Mob/ Chorus on the stage.
4, Does education make any difference? Comment with the reference to the women characters.
Ans, Yes, education make difference. We have four women characters in the play. Daksha, Hardika, Aruna and Smita.They make realization that women are not a shadow of male. Today woman is making her spaces. She has a better understanding of realization of identity both inside and outside the family. A woman of liberal ideology views the situation as an individual and constructs the image of life beyond the specified ideology of religious and community-based prejudices. She retains the power to change the conventional thinking and to make better realization of her hidden potentials. She wants to take decision for herself and if it is right she can protest against those agencies who are responsible for her sublimation.
In the play Final Solutions, Dattani represents the three female characters – Hardika, Smita and Aruna. He adopts an innovative narrative technique and the major dramatic events float through the consciousness of Hardika, the grandmother in Gandhian family. The dramatic conflict springs and develops through the reflection of Hardika whose consciousness remains rooted in the horrible events of partition that took place forty years back. The dramatic narration shifts between the present to 31st March 1948 when Hardika, the grandmother was a young girl of 14, known as Daksha and in her reflections she concludes that nothing as has changed and prejudices of communalism are haunting their consciousness continuously. In her diary entry, she mentions:
After forty years … I opened my diary again. And I wrote a dozen pages before. A dozen pages now. A young girl childish scribble. An oldman’s shaky scrawl, yes the things have not changed that much. (Act I)
Education give us vision to see beyond rigidity, and help to break religious barriers. It will help in full development of person.In the character of Smita, Hardika and Aruna, Dattani admits that women have greater consciousness and deeper realization of communal and religious identities.
Thank you
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