Small-print India: The time is now

Our passion for democracy is explicit in “small-print” publications brought out by local communities.

People reading at a public library in Fort Kochi. A file photograph. | Photo Credit: Thulasi Kakkat

When I met the literary legend Mahasweta Devi, she was seventy-plus years. She had won the Magsaysay award, the Jnanpith award, and the Padma Shri, and English translations of her works were being taught in universities in many countries. I was told that she had even been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before meeting her, I had imagined that most of our time together would be spent in discussing the great writers of the world. However, from the moment she arrived in Baroda, where I had invited her for a lecture, our conversation was about Adivasis, the nomadic communities and anything else but literature. Soon we started working together on social causes, cases of atrocities, communal harmony, justice for the marginalised, folk culture, and folk performances.

All this work continued for over a decade till she found that her body refused to oblige her desire for more work. Through that decade of great friendship and closeness, one topic at the top of her concerns was a little magazine called Bortika that her father had founded. She had kept it alive and given it a unique personality. It used to publish ordinary people’s writings in ordinary words. It could hardly be called a literary magazine. Neither its production, nor its contents made it outstanding in any sense. Yet, for her Bortika remained a life-long mission. She changed jobs, houses, and her family attachments several times, but not her deep involvement with Bortika.

Some two decades before I met Mahasweta Devi, I came in contact with the iconic Gujarati writer Suresh Joshi. Somewhat like Ezra Pound, he was a writers’ writer, someone whom every contemporary writer wanted to emulate. He is not much known outside Gujarat; but I have no doubt in my mind that he was among the most powerful writers Gujarat has produced since independence. He was some thirty years older than me; but we struck a deep friendship from the moment we met in 1980. Soon, we decided to launch a translation journal. It was called Setu, a bridge bringing various languages together. It appeared in two languages- Gujarati and English, in turns. He died a few years after we launched the journal. About the same time, I had to go off to England on a fellowship. Therefore, Jyotirmaya Sharma, now a political thinker; Shirish Panchal, Gujarati critic; and Gulammohammed Shiekh, the well-known painter, handled Setu for a while. It then fell silent.

Suresh Joshi had in his literary career started several journals and also witnessed them coming to an end. He also inspired his great number of fans and friends to launch their own journals.

About a decade before I participated in editing Setu, I was at a university in south Maharashtra. A small group of activist friends there came up with the idea of launching a periodical. We neither had the funds for it nor the experience of setting up a periodical. But, we managed to hand-write our ‘literature’ on drawing paper and put them up on a notice board in the university library. Another group in the city had started a rag-mag for poetry, mostly for printing our own poems. But the excitement was great and it became for us the “happening space”. One of the poets was particularly gifted, also rather too prolific. Years later, he drowned himself in the Rankala Lake and died tragically.

When I began my work with Adivasis, I suggested to the Adivasi friends that they bring out their own publication. It was called Dhol; it became a great mobiliser for Adivasis in western India in several of their languages. Some years later, having tasted success, I initiated another little magazine called Bol for young children and that was an even greater success. All these journals, their makers and their sad or happy outcomes, lead me to think that the ‘small-print’ India is very vast. I have noticed that in villages and small towns, quite unnoticed by the state surveillance, a phenomenally large number of small-circulation publications keep coming out. They do not reach the national libraries, have no concern for the mandatory nod from the Registrar of Newspapers and journals, do not expect any significant advertisement revenue, no desire to go beyond a small circle of friendly readers, and no ambition for recognition.

Noted author and social activist Mahasweta Devi. A file photograph. | Photo Credit: PTI

The number of such publications in all languages of India—whether they are scheduled or non-scheduled languages—is absolutely phenomenal. Add to these, the bulletins that various associations and organisations bring out, which are slightly more formal, and the books and booklets brought out by hundreds of faceless small publications and sold on footpaths on the more informal side. Add also the more important expanse of digital journals, periodicals, and small group-circulation publications that are made possible due to people’s access to digital technology. All of these, together, I would like to describe as “small-print India”.

One need not take the term “print” in its literal sense. After all, “small-print” as a phrase does say something very important. When a big and tempting advertisement appears on the TV screen, invariably, in the smallest possible fonts, also appears the caution “Conditions apply”. The reality of the advertisement lies, as we all know, more in the small print rather than in the bold glossy visuals in which the advertisement maker wants your mind captivated. The “small-print” India is still not bound like the mythical Prometheus by big corporate houses as they have bound the “mainstream” media.

For the state, the small-print India is mostly a stranger, deserving to be ignored or seen as ignorant. After moving into Karnataka, I once tried to convene a meeting of persons who bring out “small-print” journals, bulletins, newspapers, and occasional publications. This was through an open call and the time given for responding was really very short. Yet, hundreds of them turned up for the meeting. If one were to attempt making a comprehensive list of all such ventures, in print and in digital media, for all languages of India, the numbers are likely to be in a few millions and their total audience in many crores. It is a fact of India’s politics today that the ruling classes have brought the more visible media to a standstill, turning them into a wall between the reality of things and the people.

Media, which at one time were expected to be a bridge between individuals and the rest of the world, are sadly under immense pressure to divert people’s minds from what they really need to know. We often tend to think that if people get to know the reality that they need to know, it is only because of access to social media. However, that view needs a small correction. The role of the small-print media in this cannot be overlooked. The availability of digital technology has made them more efficient than before. Yet, even when the technology is sought to be tamed by bringing it under the stranglehold of an oppressive law, the small-print India cannot be entirely intimidated. They will continue to do what they have done through the colonial rule and later during the Emergency.

During the Emergency, Gopal Krishna Adiga, a gifted Kannada poet, published a rather comical poem titled “dant-katha” which normally should mean a myth but can also mean, in its literal sense, “story of a tooth-ache”, as “dant” means “tooth or teeth” in many Indian languages. It spread throughout small-print India in most languages, generating the most hilarious jokes about the Emergency and ample political anger. Going by its history and considering how intimately India’s passion for democracy is explicit in small-print India, one should expect a most creative phase to unfold in the life of small-print India. Three cheers for the small world of the small-circulation efforts of the small-writers and editors of small-print India, for powers that be must know that conditions apply.

Ganesh Devy is a cultural activist and founder of Dakshinayana.

The Crux

• The number of such publications in all languages of India—whether they are scheduled or non-scheduled languages—is absolutely phenomenal.
• The ruling classes have brought the more visible media to a standstill, turning them into a wall between the reality of things and the people.
• In villages and small towns, quite unnoticed by the state surveillance, a large number of small-circulation publications keep coming out.
• India’s passion for democracy is explicit in small-print India. One should expect a most creative phase to unfold in the life of small-print India.