https://www.southboundreview.com/
Dear Jeyamohan,
I watched your speech about Southbound Review, and it made me think seriously about the larger purpose of the magazine and the challenge before us.
Presenting ourselves to an international audience is certainly a great task. But I feel that before we try to establish ourselves internationally, we have an equally important responsibility: we have to present ourselves to our own readers first.
A magazine can become an international voice only when it has a strong and serious readership at home. We should not think of Southbound Review merely as a publication that introduces South Indian writing to the outside world. It should first become a living literary space for our own young readers, writers, students and intellectually curious people.
Our youngsters have to read the magazine regularly. More importantly, they should discuss what they read. They should argue with the ideas, respond to the writers, recommend articles to their friends and gradually develop a sense that this magazine belongs to them. If we can create such a readership, the magazine will acquire a genuine cultural presence.
Otherwise, there is a danger that Southbound Review may become only a magazine that speaks about us to the world, without having a sufficiently strong conversation among ourselves. An international audience will take us seriously only when there is evidence of a serious intellectual and literary community behind the voice we are presenting.
I therefore feel that building readership should be one of our primary objectives in the coming months. We should think carefully about how to reach young readers in colleges, universities, literary circles and among young writers. We need to make the magazine something they look forward to every week. It should introduce them to new writers, new ideas, literature from different Indian languages, criticism, cultural debates and also the larger intellectual life of South India.
We should also encourage discussion around every important piece we publish. Perhaps readers can write responses, young writers can contribute short essays, and discussions can be organised around selected articles. Social media can help us bring people to the magazine, but the ultimate goal should be to take them from social media to serious reading.
I believe that readership cannot be created simply through publicity. It has to be built through trust and continuity. If readers feel that the magazine consistently offers something they cannot easily find elsewhere, they will return to it. Slowly, a community will form around it.
Only after establishing such a foundation can we confidently say that Southbound Review represents a significant voice from South India. Then our international outreach will have much greater meaning. We will not simply be asking the world to listen to us; we will be able to show that there is already a substantial community here that is reading, discussing and responding to these ideas.
This, in my view, should be one of
