Hindi Genres, Movements, and Criticism
What the exam tests
Items test formal definitions of genres, representative authors of each movement, and the critical vocabulary attached to them.
Genres
Kavita, khanda-kavya, mahakavya, gitikavya; katha and kahani, upanyas, natak, ekanki; nibandh, jivani, rekha-chitra, yatra-vritta, sansmaran. Each has conventions: the kahani turns on a single decisive moment, the upanyas carries social breadth, the ekanki compresses action into one act.
Movements
Chhayavad (romantic, mystical, musical; Pant, Nirala, Prasad, Mahadevi); Pragativad (progressive and Marxist-inflected, crystallized at the 1936 conference; Yashpal, Nagarjun); Prayogvad (experimental; Ajneya); Nai Kavita (post-1960 urban alienation; Shamsher, Kedarnath Singh); Akavita; Samakalin, Dalit, and stri writing.
Criticism
Ramchandra Shukla's Hindi Sahitya ka Itihas (1929) and his rasa-based criticism; Nanddulare Vajpeyi; Hazari Prasad Dwivedi; Namvar Singh's Dusri Parampara ki Khoj; Muktibodh's essays.
Worked example
A question asks which movement Ajneya's Shekhar: Ek Jivani belongs to. It is Prayogvad, not Chhayavad, because of its psychological experimentation and formal innovation; the reasoning is stylistic program, not decade alone.
Traps
Chhayavad is not identical with mysticism; Pragativad is not Prayogvad; Nai Kahani is a prose movement distinct from Nai Kavita; and Shukla's history must not be attributed to Dwivedi. Don't treat genre labels as interchangeable.