Fog Light

IN OCTOBER THIS YEAR, the Hindi monthly magazine Samayantar completed 26 years of existence. For its more than four thousand subscribers, each issue provides a record of an India that has changed almost beyond recognition. Several of its earlier contributors are no longer alive, while many new names have established themselves as journalists, writers and intellectuals in its pages. If its focus during the initial years—as India opened up to the world during the 1990s—was on the impact of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation, and the struggles of women, farmers and workers, today its issues regularly discuss the assault on democracy, the rise of Hindutva politics, and the persistent question of caste. In the aftermath of the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, the magazine began to publish a series of articles, reports and editorials on majoritarian violence as well as on religion in Indian politics and society.

“Samayantar is the only Hindi magazine today that is alive to the present,” Siddharth Ramu, an author and rights activist, told me. Pointing to its regular coverage of the country’s Northeast and Adivasi regions, he said, “The whole country has been on its map, which is very difficult for a Hindi magazine.” A cursory look at the magazine’s special issues over the years shows how it has retained its political edge while expanding the ambit of its engagement: “Religion: questions of relevance” (March 2003); “Scientific temperament and our society” (February 2004); “1857 and the discourse of change” (February 2007); “Hindu Rashtra at the door” (April 2017); “Dalit pawns of Savarna politics” (July 2017); and “Caste and India’s revolution” (November 2017).

“Since its inception, Samayantar has refused to take the middle ground, demonstrating how a publication can remain true to its commitment to truth and awareness,” Shobha Akshar, a poet and an editor at Hans magazine, told me. Samayantar has the same place in India today, she said, that the French journal Combat, edited by Albert Camus, once had in France. “In a time when most newspapers and magazines have surrendered editorial independence for survival, Samayantar remains one of the few striving to preserve rationality, justice and a scientific outlook.”

Om Thanvi, a former editor at the Hindi daily Jansatta lamented the loss of periodicals such as Dinaman, Saptahik Hindustan, Dharmayug, Sarika, Ravivar and Itwari Patrika, as well as dozens of small magazines published in towns across north India. These publications, which led public debate in the Hindi-speaking regions and shaped the thinking of postcolonial Indians until the late 1990s, have collapsed almost entirely. “Today, no one pays attention to intellectual development,” Thanvi told me. “Rather, there is an openly anti-intellectual culture.” But Samayantar, Akshar said, “continues to uphold the revolutionary spirit of Hindi journalism” and “represents a movement of conscience,” since it “consistently stands with the people and questions those in power.”