Baktabya became a sensation among the young intellectuals. The old guard, however, did not show any sign of even noticing it. But it was apparent that they got the signal all right. The pamphlet appeared, but the promised magazine did not. Differences of opinion among the young rebels ended the venture. Some of them formed a new group, and with almost no resources published a magazine containing 64 pages of prose and poetry by mostly unknown and little known writers.

Saptak (no editor), the first 'little magazine' of the Sixties, was born.

Within weeks, Saptak was followed by Swakhyar, and then by Sampratik. A stream of such small magazines started pouring out thereafter. Around the middle of the Sixties there were about a dozen of such publications. By the turn of the decade such magazines totalled nearly a hundred and were being published from all the main cities of Bangladesh.

Interestingly enough, some of the young students who called that outer stadium meeting are considered today important literary personalities of Bangladesh. Quite a few of them received national literary awards too. It seems the old guard did finally yield.

2.
The publication of a few small, short-lived, irregular magazines affected the entire literary scene of Bangladesh. Today, any young writer can write whatever s/he wants to in any of the periodicals of the country provided his/her piece has some merit. This was unthinkable back in those days. Those ten years greatly changed the literary spectrum of Bangladesh. It's just not the phenomenon of little magazines that constituted the change; there were qualitative changes as well.

3.
Bengali literature took a different course in East Bengal after the birth of Pakistan. "Bengali Moslem writers" one scholar tells us, "...were extremely exuberant over the creation of Pakistan and engaged in the revival of Islamic themes and traditions in their writings. Some of them simply tried to remove a long-felt need in Bengali literature -- telling the story of Bengali Muslims".

Then came the 1952 language movement.

It provided the direction the country's literature was looking for. A group of young writers emerged with the dedication and power needed to start a new literature. They were the ones we call the writers of the Fifties. They were basically the product of the language movement and hence popularity came to them almost instantly. With that came material success. Many of them were offered official positions and started serving the government faithfully. Some of them possessed the spirit but had to stop for another reason-- the military rule of 1958. Others continued and were joined by the writers of the Sixties. The writers of the Sixties entered a dull, colorless literary world. The emerging middle class's desire for the good life started growing stronger, and under the direct patronage of the Ayub government a new opportunist class emerged. The lack of a democratic social system left the progressive elements in our society in utter confusion. The writers of the Sixties entered their promised land in such a period of transition and emptiness. As a result, the first few years of the Sixties was a fruitless period of experimentation by the young writers.

There was also the problem of publishing their works. Anyone familiar with the state of the publishing business in Bangladesh knows how difficult it is for a young writer to find a publisher. It's no wonder that Bengali writers always use periodicals to reach their audience. But good periodicals were not to be found in abundance back in the Sixties. In 1957 Samakal (edited by Sikandar Abu Zafar and Hasan Hafizur Rahman) had appeared. The very first issue of Samakal was so strikingly different from the existing literary magazines of the time--Mohammadi, Saogat, Dilruba, etc.--that almost a scramble ensued among writers to find a place in it. When the Sixties' writers entered the field, Samakal was too full to carry any new load. It too became irregular after a few years of publication. In 1958 two university students published Uttaran (edited by Enamul Huq), which was equal in quality to Samakal. Uttaran was regularly published for two years as a bi-monthly, and then as a monthly. It continued for a year, and died.

An attempt by the Writers' Guild to publish a literary monthly was equally unsuccessful. After the first issue the magazine stopped publication for several years. When it resumed, the era of 'little magazines' was already in.

So, in that summer of 1962 there were practically no literary magazines where the young writers could publish their works. A magazine of their own was urgently needed but they didn't have the organization and financial support to undertake the publication of a regular monthly or bi-monthly magazine. Moreover, under the then Press Law, the publisher of a periodical had to get a clearance from the Intelligence Branch before s/he was granted a publication license. The young writers finally found the way to beat the regulation. They decided not to publish a regular magazine--instead they would call the publication a 'collection', and there would be no editor.

This is how the 'little magazine' got started in Bangladesh in the Sixties. While they may not have conformed to generally accepted notions of 'little magazines', they did serve the same purpose: an assault on conventional modes of expression and airing fresh, new literary talent.

4.
Saptak was published in 1962. Yet it was not quite the first little magazine of the land. Seven years earlier a group of writers of the fifties published a collection of writing in magazine form and called it Kabikantha. There was no second issue, however, until many years later. Still Kabikantha should be considered the pioneer.

It may be presumed that the writers of Kabikantha felt the same way as the writers of Saptak and Swakhyar did. But their agony must have been short-lived because the very next year the famous monthly literary magazine Samakal appeared. A total of three issues of Saptak was published during the eighteen months it existed. Some of the well-known names of Bengali literature in Bangladesh to-day were associated with Saptak and wrote in it on their way to literary frame.

The splinter group of the people assembled that summer evening at the outer stadium published Swakhyar and in quick succession was followed by Sampratik. It was as if Saptak and Swakhyar together were conducting a literary workshop in Dacca for about two years. In 1964 a group of young people styled themselves as the 'Sad Generation' and started publishing literary pamphlets defying all conventional literary values of the time. A regular magazine was soon published by this group with a declaration, "We are a group of promising, sex-propelled young men, who are against all set values and all rules and codes of conduct. We are against all illiterate journalists, know-all professors, and newspaper critics." However, after some time the magazine Kanthaswar (edited by Abdullah Abu Sayeed), reversed its earlier stand saying, "We are a group of observant writers." Kanthaswar continued for several years, and at a point ceased to remain a little magazine by joining the mainstream. However, over the years Khanthaswar published some of the finest writings of Bangladesh-- prose and poetry.

Saptak's group broke up for various reasons. A year later two of the seven people from Saptak published another magazine primarily to introduce unknown writers. Their magazine Kalbela (edited by Jyotiprakash Dutta and Hayat Mamud) did roaring business for about two years and then disappeared. An extreme political consciousness and unusual beauty were the two characteristics of this magazine. The first issue of Kalbela had to be burnt and reprinted because of its content. The editors had second thoughts about facing Ayub Khan's police!

Kalbela added a new taste to our literature. The well-known weekly Desh of West Bengal devoted a full page in discussing and praising the third issue of Kalbela.

Purbalekh was another little magazine of the Sixties mainly devoted to poetry. It intended practicing pure literature, and published poetry by young poets and old poets alike. Rupsa, Pratidhwani, Samaswar, Polimati, Kranti, Tridhara were other little magazines of the period that earned some reputation. By 1969 there were so many of these 'little magazines' that it became almost impossible for anyone to keep track.

Though mainly centered around Dacca, the literary movements of the period through little magazines soon spread into other cities of Bangladesh. Karnaphuli, of Chittagong, Bipratik of Bogra, Sandeepan of Khulna were renowned for their quality. Rangpur, Jessore, Netrakona, Mymenshingh also had their share of little magazines, it has been said.

It was in the late '60s that another group, mainly from the Engineering University of Dacca, made its appearance. They called themselves 'Naa' group--meaning 'no' to everything, and were more concerned with the physical beauty of their magazine than the content. The artistic beauty of some of the issues of Naa was really astounding. Naa, as usual, lasted for just a few issues.

5.
What can be said about the little magazines of the Sixties? That period is regarded as an extremely bright one in our literature and the little magazines definitely ushered it in. They added much new blood to Bengali literature, gave it a broader outlook and provided the variety and sophistication lacking in the past.

The writers of the Sixties received nothing much, both in style and content, that they could follow from their predecessors. They had to take lessons from their own lives and their own time. They themselves had to do all the soul-searching. During a decade of repression and suffering, they instilled in their writings timely political consciousness and implanted the sense of Bengali nationalism.

Jyotiprakash Dutta is a well-known Bengali writer.