Brecht in Asia and Africa 
 
 
urban theater it remained a force to contend with. The direct material as

well as conceptual heir of this theater was the commercial Hindi film. 
 
 
Urban literary drama In Hindi 
 
     Bhratendu Haridcandra (1850-1885) of Benaras sought in a bold 
 move to establish a new aesthetic basis for literary drama by combining

 Western concepts of character and plot development with the rasa base 
 of Indian theory. In practice his plays remained preliminary, experimen-

 tal; it was not possible to create a structure which freed itself from a

 demonstrably Pars! model. 
     The beginning of this century saw drama acquiring a new density 
and sophistication. Jaiankar Prasad (1886-1937) of Benaras sought to 
establish an Indian point of view in literary and dramatic criticism and
a 
link with the past, thereby distancing himself sharply, both aesthetically

and thematically, from Ibsen and his brand of realism. At the same time,

he projected a new subjectivity and triedto achieve social reform. This 
was a crowded programme, structurally still bound to the Pa.rsi theater.

But with Pras~d the language of individual feeling entered drama. 
     It was after Independence, in the early Fifties, that there was 
closest correspondence to the dramatic structure as it had developed in 
Europe. 16 This was what in the Indian context has been termed 
"naturalism": the individual in his relationship with other individuals

forming the core of the play. This drama freed itself entirely from Indian

aesthetics and reflected the problems of the urban middle class. Mohan 
R~kesh (1925-1972), the best known Hindi playwright of his day, was 
confronted in his final play with problems that the West had encountered

much earlier, loss of individuality and communication, and to resolve 
these he had to resort to Western models again: Beckett and Handke. 
     Though drama, theater-as-text, had undergone the developments 
here indicated, generally referred to in India as "naturalistic"
theater, it 
is worth noting, firstly, that it was literary theater of the highly educated

middle classes and reflected their alienation and sense of loss, and 
secondly, there had been no parallel movement in stage practice; the 
actors had no tradition of anything like Western stage-acting behind 
them. 
     Literary drama found a stage for performance only in the Fifties and

Sixties of this century. The "naturalistic" form which Ra.kesh
finally 
developed was a relatively young movement. Stage acting could not 
develop in pace with it and generally remained a mixture of attempts at 
naturalistic character portrayal coupled with clich6d theatricality as 
inherited from the popular P~rsi theater and observable in the 
commercial Hindi film. 
 
 
Political Impulses 
 
    Yet another motivating force in the performing arts was provided by 
movements which had gathered momentum in the Thirties and Forties, 
 
 
110