Ivan Kostka is the Bombay-born Founder and Editor Emeritus of Forward Press Books (in Hindi and English), as well as of Forward Press (a bilingual anti-casteism magazine www.ForwardPress.in) – both of them based in New Delhi, India.
He started his career as Editor of various Bombay campus student publications in the 1970s, first coming to national attention as the Bombay Bureau Chief of India’s premier youth magazine Junior Statesman, published by The Statesman, Calcutta, India (1974-77). He became even better-known, at least in international poetry circles, as the Founding editor of KAVI India – the “forum for Indian poetry” (1976-1984).
Winning a Rotary International graduate fellowship to the Graduate School of Corporate & Political Communication, Fairfield University, Connecticut, USA (1977-78), he went on to be Senior international Communications and Management Consultant for the Alexander Proudfoot Company (USA); Executive Director of Crossroads Communications, Bombay (India); Executive Director of South Asian Resources (North America); and director of the 2002 documentary ‘Aryans vs. Untouchables: The Battle for the Soul of India’.
Right from the beginning of his career in the 1970s, he has researched and written about India’s Dalitbahujan movements; his most substantial work includes:
- Editor: The Quest for Freedom and Dignity: Caste, Conversion, and Cultural Revolution (2001)
- Editor, The Case for Bahujan Literature (2016)
- Author, Forward Thinking: Editorials, Essays, & Other Collected Writings 2009-16 (2019)
- Author of the Introduction and of annotations to the Hindi translation of Mahatma Jotirao Phule’s Gulamgiri (“Slavery”), forthcoming from Pippa Rann Books & Media, U.K. in 2025.
Ivan is inspired by the work of Mahatma Jotirao Phule, and is deeply involved in study of his life, work, and thought.