Manik Bandopadhyay’s “The Final Solution”: The Feminine Emancipation and Post-partition hyphenated and distressed condition

Abstract

The immanent reality of the Indian partition and the consequent aftermath that it evoked, in terms of displacement of the living and the consequent dehumanisation of the human subject, is the subject of Bandopadhyay’s short story “The Final Solution”. The refugee exodus, prompted by the partition of India in 1947, had generated a wide range of literary and visual representations, which are depicted in this short story. The protagonist, Mallika’s act of killing Pramatha is inhuman, yet it is only her complete departure from humanity that she is able to emancipate her agency from the oppressive modes of subjugation and commodification.