The little magazine movement originated in the 1950s and 1960s in many Indian languages like Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Hindi, Malayalam and Gujarati, in the early part of the 20th century.
Little magazine movement in Marathi
Little magazines of 1955 to 1975
The avant-garde modernist poetry burst upon the Marathi literary world with the poetry of B. S. Mardhekar in the mid-forties. The period 1955–1975 in Marathi literature is dominated by the little magazine movement. It ushered in modernism and the Dalit movement. In the mid-1950s, Dilip Chitre, Arun Kolatkar and their friends started a cyclostyled Shabda. The little magazine movement began to spread like wildfire in 2017 with hundreds of ephemeral to relatively longer lasting magazines including Aso, Vacha, Lru, Bharud and Rucha. The movement brought forth a new generation of writers who were dissatisfied with the Marathi literary establishment which they saw as bourgeois, upper caste and orthodox. Ashok Shahane was the pioneer of the little magazine movement in Marathi in the 1960s. The writers such as Dilip Chitre, Arun Kolatkar, Namdeo Dhasal, Tulsi Parab, Bhalchandra Nemade, Manohar Oak, Bhau Padhye, Vilas Sarang and Vasant Abaji Dahake came to prominence with the movement. Their writing is non-conformist and non-populist. The little magazine movement of the 1960s ran out of steam in the mid-1970s. A representative translation of many poets of this period has been done by Dilip Chitre.
Little magazines of the 1990s and 2000s
The economic reforms of the nineties in India ushered in an era of liberalization, privatization and globalization in Indian society. The boom in the telecommunications sector, cable and satellite television and digital revolution came in tandem with these economic reforms and deeply affected Indian society and culture. Mumbai, being the economic capital of India, felt the overwhelming force of these dramatic changes. Little magazines resurfaced in this period. Abhidhanantar, Shabdavedk, Saushthav and later on Aivaji, Khel, Anaghrat, and Navakshar Darshan burst upon the scene. The poets such as Manya Joshi, Mangesh Narayanrao Kale, Hemant Divate, Sanjeev Khandekar, Saleel Wagh and Sachin Ketkar who emerged from these little magazines of the 1990s bear witness to the social and cultural transformation, writing with a sensibility that is different from the generation that emerged from the movement of the 1960.
Bengali little magazine movement
Early 20th century
In Bengali literature, it started with Kallol, a modernist movement magazine, established in 1923. The most popular among the group were Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976), Mohitlal Majumder (1888–1952), Achintyakumar Sengupta (1903–1976), Satyendranath Dutta (1882–1922), and Premendra Mitra (1904–1988). Then Bengali poetry got into the brightest light of modernism in the 1930s, through the movement of a few other little magazines, such as Buddhadeb Basu's Kabita and Sudhindranath Datta's Parichay.
Taputtap
This magazine is based on the widely circulated literature, education, culture and social news of India and the state of West Bengal Asansol. It has been published since 1978.
Krittibas
Krittibas first appeared in Kolkata in 1953. It played a highly influential role in the Kolkata literary scene in the decades after Indian independence, and provided a platform for young, experimental poets, many of whom went on to become luminaries of modern Bengali poetry. The editors of the inaugural issue in July 1953 were Sunil Gangopadhyay, Ananda Bagchi and Dipak Mazumdar. Gangopadhyay later became sole editor, and indeed it is his name that is most closely associated with the magazine. Others who also edited the magazine at one point or another included Shakti Chattopadhyay, Sarat Kumar Mukhopadhyay and Samarendra Sengupta. The Phanishwarnath Renu issue of the magazine was edited by Samir Roychoudhury. During 1961-65 several poets left the magazine and joined the Hungryalist Movement.