How community journals are soldering on against winds of change

Hindustan Times

2 days ago

MUMBAI: In a city where identities jostle as tightly as commuters on a local train, Mumbai's regional, community-based publications continue to thrive—quiet sentinels of memory, language and belonging. While 'Parsiana', the polished SoBo journal of Zoroastrian life, is perhaps the most well-known with its global readership, it is within the pages of the less celebrated but equally vibrant Marathi, Gujarati and Konkani periodicals that the city's diverse inner lives find an expression. While Urdu journal 'Shayar' folded up after a 93-year run in 2023, 'Kalnirnay' stands out as a rare success.
Consider 'Marmik', the Marathi weekly founded in 1960 by Bal Thackeray. Initially conceived as a political cartoon magazine, it quickly transformed into a platform for Marathi pride and grievance—what the late Sena supremo described as 'anxieties of a community pushed to the margins of its own city'. It eventually galvanised a linguistic identity into a political force, showing the mettle of regional publications.
But beyond political assertion lies a quieter world of Marathi magazines and journals. 'Society newsletters, temple magazines and monthly cultural journals continue to hum gently,' says Dr Vidyesh Kulkarni, a Pune-based scholar who chronicled these for his doctoral thesis in 1991. He points to titles such as 'Sahyadri', 'Antarpat' and 'Deepstambh', which offer poetry, short fiction, essays on saints and rituals, and commentary on theatre and literature. 'Produced by cultural mandals, these magazines circulate through homes, temples and libraries—carrying the scent of agarbatti and old paper. They are cultural bridges between generations.'
However, Kulkarni notes a growing fragmentation. 'There's a tendency I call 'sociocultural meiosis and mitosis' — where every sub-group within a community demands its own platform. In the age of WhatsApp and social media, this proliferation is becoming unsustainable.'
Among Marathi publications, 'Kalnirnay' stands out as a rare success. For 53 years, it has had a pan-Maharashtra presence. 'It began as a way to democratise the panchang, but quickly became more than an almanac,' says Shakti Salgaonkar, the current director. 'The back pages featured writers like Durgabai Bhagwat and P L Deshpande. We've included recipes, lifestyle columns, even train timetables.' So deeply woven is 'Kalnirnay' into the Maharashtrian ethos that its jingle is played on the shehnai at weddings and naming ceremonies.
Mumbai's Gujarati-speaking communities offer a similarly layered ecosystem. 'Kutchi Patrika', a newsletter for the Kutchi Jain community, has run for over 60 years. 'It's our mainstay for news, obituaries and event updates,' says Kanji Savla Vamik, part of the team that produces and distributes it. 'It's particularly vital to the Kutchi Visa Oswal Jain community, whose ties stretch across the world.'
Religious institutions also publish journals — 'Anand Yatra', 'Shree Yamuna Krupa', 'Vallabh Ashray'—distributing discourses, festival calendars, and moral reflections. 'We tried to keep the younger generation connected,' says Hemal Rawani, who edited 'Raghuvansham' till it shut in 2005. 'But it's a losing battle—they don't even want to learn the language.'
His lament finds an echo in Hamid Siddiqui who recalls with anguish the folding up of the Urdu 'Shayar' after a 93-year inning. 'Despite being a top-notch literary publication, it was becoming increasingly unsustainable to produce and we had to stop in 2023,' he says, recounting how his family still 'has sack-loads of the mail' from the readers. 'I wonder why none of them came forward to keep 'Shayar' going…'
Among Mumbai's Konkani-speaking communities—Catholics, Goud Saraswat Brahmins, and others—journals have long served as spiritual and cultural anchors. Weekly 'Raknno', printed in Roman-script Konkani since 1938 and distributed from Mangalore to Mumbai, blends religious reflection, fiction and news, often touching on migration, memory, and the sea. Closer home, 'Voice of GSB', a monthly GSB Konkani magazine, features articles on festivals, recipes, wedding traditions and proverbs.
What binds these publications—across language, caste, and faith—is their intimacy. They are not driven by TRPs or algorithms. Their contributors are often retired teachers, community elders or enthusiastic youth. Their pages, modest in print and design, pulse with lived experience. 'They are guardians of language in a city where English and Hindi often drown out the subtler cadences of mother tongues,' says Dr Kulkarni. 'In their pages, Marathi, Gujarati and Konkani breathe—not as relics, but as living entities that argue, console and dream.'
To read them is to walk the bylanes of Matunga, Dadar, Girgaon and Mahim, listening in on the inner life of communities that built this city long before it reached for the skies.