It was published by the Congress for Cultural Freedom's Indian branch (ICCF), which was led by Minoo Masani and Jayaprakash Narayan.
The publisher and secretary Narie Oliaji, resigned, complaining that Masani was a political polemicist lacking the ‘intelligence and zeal to represent the Indian anti-communist intelligentsia’.
[5] During its twenty years of history it featured essays, fiction and poetry from writers such as Nirad Chaudhuri, Dilip Chitre, Allen Ginsberg, Jyotirmoy Datta, Mujibur Rehman, Agha Shahid Ali, Jayanta Mahapatra Dom Moraes, Ashis Nandy, Gauri Deshpande, Adil Jussawalla, Mahapatra, A.K.
Ramanujan, Saleem Peeradina, Arun Kolatkar, Dilip Chitre, Keki Daruwalla, Anita Desai, Kiran Nagarkar and Abraham Eraly.
[1] In 1966, a selection of articles were produced as Ten years of Quest edited by Abu Sayeed Ayyub and Amlan Datta.