Mangesh Narayanrao Kale

This IFA Arts Research and Documentation grant will enable Mangesh Narayanrao Kale, a Marathi poet and the editor of an acclaimed literary journal, Khel, to map the little magazine movement in Maharashtra from 1881 to the present. The 130 years of the little magazine movement in Maharashtra will be roughly divided into four phases.

The first part of the study will examine in detail the Marathi literary periodicals from 1881 to 1950 during which time the first literary periodical Kavyaratnavali was published. The second part will cover literary periodicals that were produced between 1950 and 1970 during which time a magazine called Satyakatha gained popularity and set the standard for other magazines.

The 1960s and 1970s witnessed radical literary innovation taking place through the little magazines and this period will form the third part of the study. The fourth and final part of the study will investigate how certain magazines reveal the impact of globalisation, and the advent of 24-hour news channels, cellular technology, and the Internet on the little magazine movement in the 1990s, particularly on writing styles, themes and readers.

Mangesh’s research and analysis will be chronicled in a book on the history and evolution of the little magazine movement in Maharashtra. The changing nature of language, consumption patterns of readers, how social, political and cultural changes in society were reflected in and influenced the little magazines will be addressed. Further, the book will delineate the role of women writers, publishers, funders and critics while some of the chapters will be dedicated to key magazines of the time. The correlation between little magazines and other art forms like painting, cinema and theatre will also be explored.

The book will include photographs of founding-editors, seminal writers, and reproductions of covers of ‘special issues’ of certain magazines. Additionally, Mangesh will digitise the crucial publications from the 1960s and 1970s, a defining era for the little magazine movement. DVDs of digitised copies of these key magazines will be distributed to University libraries and institutions across Maharashtra.

This grant was made possible with support from Madhvi Soman.