The immanent reality of the Indian Partition and the consequent aftermath that it evoked, in

terms of displacement of the living and the consequent dehumanistion of the human subject,
is the subject of Bandopadhyay's short story "The Final Solution". The story is centered
around a refugee family which has taken shelter at Sealdah railway sta- tion in Calcutta and
in all possibilities, has migrated from East Bengal, which post 1947, was incorporated into
the geo-political milieu of East Pakistan. The plot ushers the readers into a sinister world of
human exploitation as Mallika, the housewife, who is burdened with an ailing husband, a
child and an unmarried sister-in-law, is lured into flesh trade/ prostitution by the pimp
Pramatha. However, Bandopadhyay problematizes the structure of the story by refusing to
present it as a mere chronicle of woman sub- jugation and exploitation, which has been an
overt reality of Partition. Instead, he enhances the possibility of an emancipation of the
feminine as with a climactic turn, the story ends with Mallika assassinating Pramatha and
proclaiming to her sister-in law that she has found "the final solution" (Bandopadhyay 2011:
30) to her misery.

The story begins with a description of the plight of the refugees and portrays the hyphenated
state that the displaced have been subjected to. They have constructed their homes on
railway platforms a heterotopic space where possibilities of recuperation are muted by the
immediate and immanent dystopia, that the multi- tudes of displaced experience. Foucault
defines heterotopias as "counter sites" (Foucault 1986: 24) "which have the curious property
of being in relation with all the other sites" (ibid.) and yet they are outside the familiar place.
The refugee infested Sealdah station becomes a heterotopia which is no longer the public
space used for commutation. Instead, it is now a habituated space, accommodating
multitudes of private space. In other words, it is a habitus of what we have pre- viously
called, borrowing from Agamben, the "bare life" (Agamben 1995: 8), Hence, Bandopadhyay
compares the dispossessed refugees to "herds of cattles and goats" (Bandopadhyay 2011:
19); the natural order of animal/bare life that is removed from the political dictum of
citizenship. The geo-political locale of the railway platform, which is contingent within the
politico-social epoch of Partition, is thus in a concurrent 'state of exception'.

It is this order of exception that suspends the juridico-legal apparatus and the normative
structure of economy and polity. As the plot unveils, the chronotope of Partition reveals itself
as a world turned upside down, where women become active agencies within the modes of
production while the men, the dominant harbingers within the capitalist-patriarchal
framework are rendered jobless. Jasod- hara Bagchi and Subho Ranjan Dasgupta have
pointed this out in their introspec- tions on Partition and the subversive impact that it had, not
just in the lives of individuals, but also on the social structure and ideologies. For instance,
women, who had been, until then, largely confined within the sacrosanct precincts of home,
were now suddenly exposed to the outside (Bagchi and Dasgupta 2003: 10-16). This
outside, in a state of exception, is no longer protected by the juridico-legal apparatus that is
an essential component of the sovereign. Hence, the feminine agency is susceptible to the
ambiguous and simultaneously probable possibilities of abjection and emancipation.

Mallika, in the story, is offered employment by Pramatha, who is apparently a worker in the
'Help and Welfare Society', but a pimp in reality. He is a parasite who feeds on the apparent
suspension of the juridico-political apparatus in this climate of exception and is the perfect
manifestation of the petty bourgeoisie. The author describes him as a pater familias, one
who safeguards the law of the father and the ideologues of patriarchy and seeks to protect
or valorize the woman as the weaker sex. Yet, he is also the pimp who is contemplating to
engage Mallika in the flesh trade and what is more, has located Mallika's femininity within
the economy of desire.

The plot hence unleashes the many faces of patriarchy and constantly speculates an
understanding of the feminine, largely within the discursive limits of patriarchy's conviction of
womanhood. Mallika, the feminine subject is constantly framed and modeled within an
economy of patriarchal gaze. On one hand, she is burdened by the liabilities of family and
motherhood, which ascribes in her a "use value" (Irigaray 1985: 173). On the other hand,
however, her identity of the refugee woman within the political state of exception, where the
juridico-political apparatus stands suspended, makes her susceptible to commodification.
Her possibilities of emancipation and her agency within the modes of production in economy
are thus unmediatedly based on her exchange value, whereby she must commodify her
sexuality in exchange of capital. Mallika seems to be aware of it, as the omniscient story
teller narrates:

Mallika could sense where the woman was being taken. She had known all about it in her
days and nights on the railway platform, living among the multitudes...
She herself had seen how a girl or a woman returned alone in a short time an hour perhaps,
clutching a few coins in her fists, filled with impotent rage.
(Bandopadhyay 2011: 25)

Herein lies the paradox where the woman is undoubtedly located within an economy of
desire where her sexuality is commodified. Yet it is also the moment when the ideal of
motherhood, which has been an over-nurtured ideology through which patriarchy has
subjugated women, gives way to the agency of the feminine. Gerda Lerner locates the origin
of patriarchy in the structure of the family which, in her words, "both expressed and
constantly generated its rules and values" (Lerner 1986: 212). The structure of family is a
historically stable, hierarchically organized foundational core of society which has been the
faithful safeguard of patriarchy and its ethos. The catastrophe of Partition sets this otherwise
stable nucleus called family in jeopardy, dismantling its hierarchical and stratified structure
and desanctifying the sacred locale of home. In a state of homelessness, the structure of
family is dismantled, the hierarchies are turned upside down and it is within the previously
discussed state of exception that the feminine becomes the immediate redeemer of family.
Partition hence becomes a discourse of ambiguity. On one hand, it is the sublime tragedy of
exploitation and violence, which was more often than not, inflicted upon the female body.
Simultaneously, it is a breach in human history through which the patriarchy oppressed
feminine self cherishes a possibility of emancipation.

Partition as the socio-historical calamity thus becomes not just a political state of exception
in the newly founded sovereign state. It is also an ideological and ethical state of exception.
It is within the greater political milieu of Partition that the woman subject realizes that she
must devise alternative strategies of survival, which instead of being ethico-morally valid and
transcendent, would be situational and contingent with circumstances. This is also the point
in the story where the post- modern subject is born, one who doesn't have the a priori
convictions of selfhood and subjectivity but instead relies on a discursive formulation of
selfhood.

Mallika and her family are rehabilitated by the initiative and influence of Pra- matha. In return
though, Mallika is coerced to solicit him. This is a crucial epiphanic juncture in the story. The
already commodified agency of Mallika fails to locate Pramatha as the client. She is
disoriented and disturbed with the realization that she has now been unconditionally
commodified as the fine balance between the client and the pimp no longer sustain. Both
locate her sexuality within an economy of desire and this unconditional objectification of her
sexual identity is a grotesque truth which she fails to negotiate with. Hence, in her fit of anger
she hits Pramatha with the bottle and later strangles him to death. It is also the climactic
moment where the feminine self seeks to transcend all economies of oppression, i.e. the
ethical, the ideological and even the sexual. She is now a dehumanized self and yet it is in
this state of being a bare subject, that she experiences and revels the possibilities of
emancipation. Simone de Beauvoir notes that woman, within the discursive limits of
humanity and culture, has essentially survived as the 'other', a "relative being" (Beauvoir
1956: 15) to man and masculinity, which has been a category as primordial as
consciousness itself. Mallika's moment of dehumanization thus paradoxically becomes the
moment when she finally transcends the ordeal of patriarchy, for history of humanity is
genealogically patriarchal and phallogocentric. Lerner points out that history is the essence
of civilization and the process of history making has largely been a practice of systematic
exclusion of women. (Lerner 1986: 5) Mallika's act of killing Pramatha is inhuman, yet it is
only in her complete departure from humanity that Mallika is able to emancipate her agency
from the oppressive modes of sub- jugation and commodification.

Mallika's body thus becomes the only medium through which she can transcend the
conditions and economies of oppression. Her sexuality is no longer confined within the
possibilities of a governed transgression through which it can become her means of
sustenance. Instead, her body becomes her final solution to the 'state of exception' which
Partition has ushered her into. She triumphantly declares to her sister-in-law at the end of
the story:
"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 again
to pick me up, for sure 'But this time I'll be carrying a sharp knife with me, you understand,
Thakurjhi. I'll hide it so that no one finds out

(Bandopadhyay 2011: 30)

The restoration of the maternal is promised by the libidinal, the recourse to the unethical can
only enhance a restitution of ethics in this politico-social climate of subversion. It is also
within this inverted paradigm of the unnatural that body becomes the contested locale of
both violation and liberation. However, Mallika's emancipation is also one that is conditioned
by the state of exception and hence one is left uneasy, pondering whether the female
subject has truly emancipated her agency or whether it is one that is already predicted by
the political state of excep- tion. The woman in discussion seeks to explore her agency only
as a reaction to the deviant politico-social milieu. Hence, one might argue that Mallika's
agency is derived and contingent, whereby she becomes not a sovereign subject but one
who is conditioned by the politico-social. That being said, the story celebrates a deviant
femininity, and Partition as the backdrop of a socio-political state of exception, seeks to
justify the deviant femininity and legitimizes Mallika's final solution.