Cafe Dissensus Magazine

Cafe Dissensus is a quarterly magazine dealing with issues in art, literature, society, and politics. A very specific urge behind this magazine is to challenge the contemporary parochial attitude in Indian media.

Every ‘mainstream’ – we know the term is contentious and yet we know the newspapers and magazines that fit this bill – newspaper/magazine in India seems to be influenced by their business interests which force them to align with particular political parties – Congress, BJP, CPIM/CPI etc, despite their claim to the contrary.

There is a flourishing community media in India as well. But they cater to narrow community interests, despite their excellent service to their cause. For example, the dalit magazines or the Muslim/Islamic webzines. While ‘Cafe Dissensus’  will certainly try to undermine the covert majoritarian biases of the ‘mainstream’ media, we believe, ‘minoritarian media’ is not the way to go.

Then there are webzines which align themselves to various straight-jacketed ideologies – Left, Right, Center etc. Such ideologies make it imperative that one views the world through jaundiced eyes.

We always wanted a magazine on issues that will offer a space for dissenting voices. Dissenting voices, broadly conceived. We are the free thinkers. Despite our own ideological leanings, we will strive to preserve this magazine as a space for free thinkers.  We want honest debate and discussion that should not be colored by any fear or favor. We are not a magazine for news reporting. We want to devote ourselves to analyzing issues that need to be discussed and debated.

Initially, we plan to publish four times a year – January, April, July, and October. Eventually, we would like to turn ‘Cafe Dissensus’ into a monthly magazine. Each of the issues will take up a topic, sometimes immediately relevant and, at other times, independent of the contingencies of time.

While the editors will edit a few issues in a year, we invite our readers to guest-edit issues. If any of our readers is willing to guest edit an issue (with at least 10-15 pieces, max word-limit for each piece 1200-words) on a particular topic, they must send a 500-word proposal to the editors. The guest editor must be responsible for short-listing, arranging, and editing all the articles which will pass through a final edit by the magazine editors. The guest editor must also write an 800-word editorial.   

For discussion, debate, and views on events that require immediate attention, we invite our readers to contribute to our BLOG that we will update on a daily basis.

‘Cafe Dissensus’ is the exclusive copyright holder of all articles published in the magazine, unless the author specifically mentions that she/he wants to retain the copyright. Re-publishing articles from Cafe Dissensus in other magazines and newspapers without permission will amount to copyright violation and the publisher is liable to prosecution.  

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