Starting the 1910s, Bengal witnessed an alternative printing culture of little magazines. Its experiments included, but were not limited to, providing literary spaces for young writers which nurtured new voices, experimenting with language and style, and exploring the tabooed space. The little magazines gradually evolved and functioned as a counter site of experiments, discontinuities, resistance, thereby paving ways of a culture of counter-modernity against the prevailing printing culture of the contemporary times. The small and non-economic presses such as Sabuj Patra, Kavita, Krittibas, Zebra and many others developed to reconstruct the reading habitus and the rigid system of the literary. This study aims to explore the unique contribution of Bangla little magazines that reshaped the modern, while experimenting with language, style, and themes. For instance, unlike commercial magazines, Bangla little magazines extensively published on partition of India to promote refugee movement and to address the misery of those Other vulnerable subjects. Moreover, it castigated the disciplinary history which glorified independence by side-lining the gruesome history of partition and its consequences. Little magazines as the responsible media liberated the subaltern and minor voices from different corners of the society and discontinued with the dichotomisation of the world to publish, circulate and celebrate the littleness as a political position. In short, this study seeks to explore the forms of alternative printing culture of Bangla little magazines and their unique contribution to redefine the literary.

Keywords: Counter-modernity Little Magazine Print Culture Ethics Aesthetics Twentieth Century Bengal