Fourteenth Magazine Open Call

For us, and all our fellow Ambedkarites, The Fourteenth of April is a day of reckoning and recognition. It is the day we come face to face with the essence of Babasaheb’s legacy in its most distilled form. For those who grew up steeped in Ambedkarite culture, the Fourteenth is a day of communal joy and festive assertion. A day when our streets light up in blue and amidst it, the blue sky becomes graspable. It is the day of locating fellow Ambedkarites in a new place, to recollect one’s collective selfhood. It is the act of missing one’s streets when one is away from home.

And for those of us who ‘discover’ Ambedkar later on in life, the Fourteenth is when the calls to his name become a beacon, a calling, a glimmer of light to be followed on the path to emancipation. The distant humming of the Jai Bhim one gravitates towards. The quiet, clandestine celebrations amid a world saturated with Savarna celebrations. It is the sudden recognition of a fellow Ambedkarite in a distant, foreign land one has ended up in, in search of a better life. It is the melancholy of not having accessed Baba earlier.

For our inaugural issue, we seek to celebrate the multifarious ways in which one encounters Babasaheb on the day of the Jayanti. We are looking for testimonies and documentations of how you experience Jayanti – places that you discovered and rediscovered Babasaheb, inside homes, bastis, universities, on social media and beyond borders. We seek stories of assertion, but also of quiet celebration where visibility makes you vulnerable. We are interested in knowing what the story of your fourteenth says about the spaces you occupy.

What are we looking for?

Articles, personal essays, memoirs, photo essays, narrative and other forms of non-fiction that speak to the theme from different perspectives
800-1200 words long
We prefer previously unreleased work, but may also accept released work if authors own the copyright and provide appropriate attribution.

How to submit

Send your submission as a Microsoft Word file in an attachment to fourteenthemagazine@gmail.com
Text should be in a readable 12 point font (such as Arial/Times New Roman/Calibri) with 1.5 – double spacing
Emails should be titled “Issue 01 submission – Your Name”
You can tell us a little about yourself in the body of the email, along with background on what led you to write this essay
Optional – links to previously released pieces and social media pages

Remuneration

We pay all selected contributors around INR 8000, with some flexibility depending on the form and length of the piece