“TO FORTUNE AND TO FAME UNKNOWN”: BHUVANESHWAR PRASAD SRIVASTAV’S CONTRIBUTION TO HINDI EKANKI (ONE-ACT PLAYS)

Abstract

Bhuvaneshwar Prasad Srivastav (1910-1958), has been languishing in the literary wilderness for far too long.He was one of the leading exponents of the genre of ekanki (one-act plays) and made a unique contribution to Hindi literature. Bhuvaneshwar was a contemporary of Munshi Premchand (1880-1936) and Ramvilas Sharma (1912-2000) whom he met during the conference  of the Progressive Writers Association in 1936 in Lucknow. His erudition was in oblivion due to his wayward lifestyle and the world of letters was teeming with a constellation of writers who had earned an unrivalled reputation for themselves. Premchand acknowledged him as a writer and motivated him to carry on with his literary pursuits.

Bhuvaneshwar was a rebel in his approach towards life and literature. He was way ahead of  his times, and as a visionary, he poured out his myriad experiences in his writings that did not elicit necessary enthusiasm from writers and readers alike. Rather, his oeuvre was largely misconstrued by his generation. In subsequent years, his reputation spiralled to an extent that Bhuvaneshwar impacted the entire intellectual climate of the contemporary Hindi writers.

This paper attempts to locate Bhuvaneshwar Prasad in the pantheon of the Progressives, who as part of the movement prodded authors and other artists out of their world of conformity, and endeavours to explicate how his one-act plays represent the existential crises in the post war world.