Indian Cultural Forum

About Indian Cultural Forum

The Indian Cultural Forum is a New Delhi-based cultural e-journal publishing at indianculturalforum.in. Set up in 2015 to discuss issues of concern to writers, educators and cultural practitioners, it offers a platform to individuals and groups in the cultural and academic fraternities. The site is closely associated with the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT), the Delhi-based artists' organisation founded in 1989 in the wake of theatre activist Safdar Hashmi's killing, and it carries forward SAHMAT's programme of defending freedom of artistic expression, secularism and dissent. Its content spans long-form essays, commentary, poetry, book reviews, interviews and documentary videos, published in English, Hindi and Urdu.

Origins: A Platform Set Up in 2015

The Indian Cultural Forum site was set up in 2015 to discuss issues of concern to writers, educators and cultural practitioners, and to offer a platform to individuals and groups in the cultural and academic fraternities. Its founding statement describes its contributors as committed members of the cultural and academic communities who see themselves as part of a rich and plural heritage, with a dream of building on that heritage for a more just, egalitarian and humane society. The journal positions itself at a juncture where, in its own words, it is critical to resist the range of threats faced by the culture of free expression, exchange, dialogue and debate. From its inception the forum has insisted on the right of writers and artists to use their imagination freely, to speak and debate without hindrance, and to interpret and reinterpret the past and the common legacy of contesting narratives — whether in the form of myth, legend, lore or tale.

The SAHMAT Connection

The Indian Cultural Forum is the cultural e-journal associated with SAHMAT, formally the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust. SAHMAT was formed in February 1989, barely a month after playwright, actor and activist Safdar Hashmi was fatally attacked while performing a street play in Jhandapur, outside Delhi, on 1 January 1989. Since its formation, SAHMAT has brought together diverse artists, performers and writers on a common programme of resistance against attacks on freedom of artistic expression and dissent. Its co-founders included artist-photographer Ram Rahman, artist Vivan Sundaram, theatre director Habib Tanvir, writer Bhisham Sahni and actor-director M. K. Raina. Over the decades SAHMAT has organised exhibitions, musical performances, street theatre, rallies and public meetings, and published books, calendars and posters — most famously interventions such as Slogans for Communal Harmony, Hum Sab Ayodhya, Muktnaad and Postcards for Gandhi. The Indian Cultural Forum functions as a digital extension of this legacy, carrying SAHMAT statements, documenting SAHMAT projects, and publishing the same milieu of writers, artists and scholars that SAHMAT has gathered since 1989.

Society for Knowledge Commons

The website www.indianculturalforum.in is maintained for and on behalf of the Society for Knowledge Commons, a not-for-profit organisation registered as a society under the Indian Societies Registration Act, 1860, and operating out of New Delhi, India. This institutional arrangement places the journal under the stewardship of a legally registered non-profit rather than a commercial media company, reflecting its mission-driven character. The site's editorial identity is that of a cultural forum rather than a daily newsroom: it does not chase breaking news cycles but publishes considered essays, debates and creative work on themes that include communalism, censorship, caste, gender, language politics, history and the arts. The Society for Knowledge Commons framework also underpins the journal's commitment to open knowledge — all of the forum's content is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence, making it freely shareable for non-commercial use.

Advisory Panel and Contributors

The Indian Cultural Forum is guided by an advisory panel drawn from across Indian literature, music, art and scholarship. The panel includes novelist Githa Hariharan, poet K. Satchidanandan, writer Nayantara Sahgal, Carnatic musician T. M. Krishna, theatre critic Samik Bandyopadhyay, artist and writer Chandrakant Patil, sociologist Nandini Sundar, Malayalam writer Paul Zacharia, visual artist Pushpamala N, folk singer-activist Sambhaji Bhagat, immunologist Satyajit Rath, scholar-musician Sumangala Damodaran and scholar Sabitha Satchi. This roster signals the journal's interdisciplinary character, bridging the literary, performative and academic worlds. Its contributors include historians, poets, filmmakers, journalists and activists from across the country, and the site regularly carries conversations with public intellectuals — for instance a roundtable with historian Romila Thapar, and an interview with Sahitya Akademi Award-winning writer Paul Zacharia — alongside tributes to figures such as poet Manglesh Dabral and Sankha Ghosh.

Editorial Sections and Content Formats

The journal is organised into a wide set of editorial sections. Under Features it publishes long-form essays, while Comment carries shorter opinion pieces. Bol hosts Hindi and Urdu writing, Books carries literary criticism and reviews, and Free Verse publishes poetry. Ground Reality focuses on reportage and field dispatches, Sangama on translation across Indian languages, and Speaking Up on statements and appeals. Women Speak foregrounds writing on gender, Waqt ki Awaaz carries Urdu commentary, Conversations hosts interviews, and Campaign tracks cultural campaigns. The Guftugu Collection is a dedicated archive of conversations, while Videos and Resources host documentary films and reference material. A Roundup section collects highlights. This architecture allows the forum to move between the essay, the poem, the interview and the documentary — a deliberately multimedia approach to cultural journalism.

Hum Sab Sahmat: Documenting a Legacy

One of the Indian Cultural Forum's signature undertakings is Hum Sab Sahmat, a ten-part series produced in collaboration with SAHMAT to showcase the trust's work over the years in visual, theatrical, musical and written form. The series documents landmark projects: Slogans for Communal Harmony, the 1992 public-art project in which SAHMAT invited Delhi's auto-rickshaw drivers to compose slogans for communal harmony that then circulated through the city for years; Muktnaad — the "free sound" — the musical festival SAHMAT organised in Ayodhya in August 1993, months after the Babri Masjid's demolition, where celebrated musicians, dancers and theatre artists performed for over a thousand people to assert that the country's musical heritage belongs to its people; and Postcards for Gandhi and The Making of India, interventions defending the secular and socialist legacies of the national movement. The series also covers Anhad Garje, which drew on Sufi and Bhakti traditions, and the National Street Theatre Day commemorations. Published with embedded documentary videos featuring Ram Rahman, Sohail Hashmi and others, the series is both an archive and an argument — a reminder that cultural expression has been SAHMAT's mode of political intervention for more than three decades.

Free Expression, Secularism and Dissent

The forum's editorial line is unambiguously committed to secular, plural and egalitarian values. It has published SAHMAT statements condemning attacks on freedom of expression — including the Central Board of Film Certification's censorship of the documentary The Argumentative Indian — and commentaries on issues ranging from the controversy over Rohith Vemula's death and caste discrimination, to encounters in Gadchiroli and Bijapur, to the rights of human-rights defenders in Bastar. Its pages have hosted debates on the interpretation of mythology and caste politics, on communal organisations, and on the idea of India itself. Regular features include statements issued in solidarity with artists and writers facing intimidation, and coverage of SAHMAT's annual Jashn-e-Daura cultural events held each January to mark Safdar Hashmi's memorial day. In its own words, the forum celebrates plurality and the building of political solidarity of cultural expression at a time when, as it puts it, the idea of India is being recast into a singular, homogenised nation severed from its composite and diverse heritage.

Multilingual Voices and Creative Work

While much of the site is in English, the Indian Cultural Forum gives significant space to Hindi and Urdu writing — through the Bol and Waqt ki Awaaz sections — reflecting the linguistic world of the Delhi cultural scene it documents. Poetry is a prominent genre: Free Verse publishes new poems, and the site has carried tributes to major Indian poets, including reflections on Sankha Ghosh's inclusive vision and memorials for Manglesh Dabral. Book coverage ranges from essay collections such as Subversions: Essays on Life and Literature to conversations about history-writing, as in the discussion "They can write mythology, not history…" The Guftugu Collection gathers longer conversations, and the Videos section hosts documentary shorts and recorded performances. This mix of the scholarly and the creative — the essay alongside the poem, the statement alongside the song — is central to how the forum understands cultural work: not as ornament to politics, but as politics itself.

Licensing, Grievance Redressal and Governance

All content on the Indian Cultural Forum is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence, which permits sharing with attribution for non-commercial purposes without modification. The site maintains a Grievance Redressal Mechanism page, in line with the requirements that Indian digital news and current-affairs publishers follow under the Information Technology Rules, 2021. Contact and about information is published openly, with the Society for Knowledge Commons identified as the maintaining organisation. The forum's governance model — a registered non-profit society, an eminent advisory panel, and an open licence — is designed to protect editorial independence and to keep the journal accountable to the cultural and academic communities it serves rather than to commercial imperatives.

How to Access the Indian Cultural Forum

The Indian Cultural Forum is freely accessible online at indianculturalforum.in, where new essays, poems, interviews and videos are published on an ongoing basis. Readers can browse by section — from Features and Comment to Books, Free Verse and The Guftugu Collection — or follow the Hum Sab Sahmat archive for the documentary record of SAHMAT's three decades of cultural activism. The site also carries statements, campaign appeals and event announcements connected to the wider SAHMAT network in New Delhi and beyond. For readers interested in the intersection of art, literature and democratic politics in contemporary India, the forum offers one of the most sustained digital records of the country's progressive cultural movement, maintained from New Delhi under the Society for Knowledge Commons.