Chakmak

About Chakmak

Chakmak is a Hindi-language children's science magazine published monthly from Bhopal by the Eklavya Foundation, a non-profit organisation devoted to critical and creative thinking in school education. Launched in July 1985, it was conceived as supplementary reading material in science for children in middle schools, so that their classroom learning could be reinforced through stories, experiments, puzzles and articles written in a language they could understand and enjoy. Now in its fourth decade, the 44-page monthly serves children roughly between the ages of ten and fourteen, and it has been loved by children, teachers and other adults for over three decades. It completed its 300th issue in October 2011 and its 400th issue in January 2020 — a landmark for any Indian periodical, let alone one published by a non-profit. Details of the magazine and the foundation are available at eklavya.in.

Origins: July 1985

Chakmak was launched in July 1985, three years after the Eklavya Foundation itself was established in 1982 to conduct research and develop curricula for school education in India. A publication unit had been set up at Eklavya's Bhopal centre in 1984 to produce educational books, textbooks, learning materials and activity booklets, and Chakmak was among its first and most ambitious ventures — soon followed by Srote, a science feature service for newspapers and the general public, in 1987. The motivating force behind the magazine was a simple observation: children studying in middle schools needed supplementary reading material in science, in their own language, that would make their school learning come alive. Chakmak was designed to fill that gap — not as a textbook, but as a magazine children would choose to read.

The publisher: Eklavya Foundation

The Eklavya Foundation is an Indian non-profit organisation based in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, registered as an all-India organisation in 1982. Named after Eklavya, the determined self-taught archer of the Mahabharata, it works in school education through curriculum research, textbook development, teacher training and publishing. Its educational publications include textbooks for children up to class 5 in all subjects and for classes 6 to 8 in science and social sciences, alongside periodicals: Chakmak for children up to the age of fourteen, Shaikshik Sandarbh (a bi-monthly for teachers and adult readers), and Srote, a weekly science feature service. The foundation also works directly with schools and communities — running teacher training programmes, community activities and health programmes — and has partnered with NCERT and several state textbook bodies in curriculum and textbook development. Chakmak is the foundation's most beloved public face.

The name and the philosophy

"Chakmak" is the Hindi word for the flint stone that tribal communities in central India traditionally used to strike fire — a name that captures the magazine's philosophy in a single image: a small spark that kindles curiosity. The magazine's approach to science is hands-on and questioning rather than didactic. Its pages carry simple experiments children can try at home or in school, observations of the natural world, and explanations of scientific ideas rooted in everyday experience. The underlying belief — shared with the Eklavya Foundation's wider educational work — is that children learn science best by doing, wondering and arguing, not by memorising definitions. That philosophy, radical in the rote-learning culture of much of Indian schooling, has made Chakmak a model for science communication aimed at young readers.

Content and columns

A typical issue of Chakmak is a 44-page mix of stories, poems, puzzles, articles on science, art and history, and features written in accessible Hindi. Some articles are about children; strikingly, some are by children themselves — the magazine has long published contributions from its young readers, treating them as authors rather than merely an audience. Regular columns cover experiments and activities, natural history, the lives of scientists, and questions sent in by readers. The magazine's science writing avoids both condescension and jargon: complex ideas are built up from familiar observations, and the emphasis is always on understanding rather than information. Over the decades, the thousands of stories, poems and illustrations published in its pages have amounted to a remarkable archive of Indian children's literature in Hindi.

Contributors and illustration

One of Chakmak's distinctions is the calibre of its contributors. Its columns have featured eminent writers, scientists and painters including the astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar, the poet and lyricist Gulzar, the poet Nida Fazli, the writer Ashok Vajpeyi, the artist Dilip Chinchalkar, the writer Asgar Wajahat and the cartoonist Abid Surti, alongside many budding authors and illustrators. The magazine's visual identity matters enormously for a children's publication, and in November 2007 Chakmak was refurbished into a new full-colour format by the children's illustrator Atanu Roy — a redesign that refreshed its appeal for a new generation of readers while retaining its essential character. The combination of serious science writing, literary quality and strong illustration has been central to its longevity.

Editorial leadership

The magazine's editors have included Sushil Shukla and Shashi Sablok, working within Eklavya's publication team in Bhopal. Like much of the foundation's work, the magazine is produced by a small, committed team rather than a commercial editorial staff, and its continuity over four decades owes much to that institutional steadiness. The editorial approach has remained consistent: respect the child reader's intelligence, root science in lived experience, and keep the magazine affordable and accessible to the government-school children who are its primary audience.

Milestones: 300 and 400 issues

Chakmak's publishing record is extraordinary for a non-profit children's magazine. Its 300th issue appeared in October 2011 — described at the time as a landmark effort initiated by a non-profit organisation in India — and it completed 400 issues in January 2020. To put that in perspective: very few Indian magazines of any kind, commercial or otherwise, reach four hundred monthly issues, and almost none aimed at children in a regional language do so while maintaining their founding mission. Each milestone was celebrated not as a commercial achievement but as a reaffirmation of the magazine's purpose: four decades of putting science reading into children's hands.

Readership and impact

Chakmak's core readers are children between ten and fourteen, many of them in government and rural schools across Madhya Pradesh and beyond — children who often cannot afford commercial children's magazines but for whom Chakmak, priced modestly, is within reach. Teachers use it as classroom supplementary material; teacher-training programmes run by Eklavya introduce it as a resource; and the foundation's network of activity centres helps it reach young readers in multiple states. The magazine's impact is visible in the generations of readers who grew up with it, in the young writers it has nurtured, and in its demonstration — watched by educators across India — that a high-quality children's science magazine in Hindi is both possible and sustainable without commercial backing.

Place in Indian children's publishing

India's children's magazine landscape has been dominated by commercial titles such as Champak, Chandamama and Tinkle, and the space has faced well-documented pressures from television and digital entertainment. Chakmak occupies a different position: a mission-driven, non-profit science magazine that has outlasted many commercial competitors. It stands as proof that children's publishing need not choose between educational worth and readability — its four decades show that children will read serious science writing when it is written for them with care, illustrated with imagination and priced within their reach. In the history of Indian science communication, Chakmak is a pioneering institution.

Official website and access

Chakmak is published by the Eklavya Foundation from Bhopal, and information about the magazine — along with the foundation's other publications, including Shaikshik Sandarbh and Srote — is available on the foundation's official website at eklavya.in. Subscriptions keep the magazine affordable for its core readership of schoolchildren, and back material documents a publishing achievement few Indian periodicals can match. For a magazine whose name means a spark, Chakmak has lit a remarkably long-lasting fire: forty years of science reading for Hindi-speaking children, issue after issue, every month.