Vayalar Ramavarma, also known as Vayalar, was an Indian poet and lyricist of Malayalam language. He was known for his poems which include Sargasangeetham, Mulankaadu, Padamudrakal, Aayisha and Oru Judas janikkunnu and for around 1300 songs he penned for 256 Malayalam films. He received the National Film Award for Best Lyrics in 1972 and was the winner of the Kerala State Film Award for Best Lyrics in its year of inception which he received three more times. He was also a recipient of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Poetry in 1962. His collaborations with G. Devarajan produced the golden era of Malayalam film music and many songs written and composed by these duo remain the ever green classics in Malayalam. Ramavarma is regarded as one of the most successful and critically acclaimed lyricist in the history of Malayalam cinema.
Mulk Raj Anand was an Indian writer in English, recognised for his depiction of the lives of the poorer castes in traditional Indian society. One of the pioneers of Indo-Anglian fiction, he, together with R. K. Narayan, Ahmad Ali and Raja Rao, was one of the first India-based writers in English to gain an International readership. Anand is admired for his novels and short stories, which have acquired the status of classics of modern Indian English literature; they are noted for their perceptive insight into the lives of the oppressed and for their analysis of impoverishment, exploitation and misfortune. He became known for his protest novel Untouchable (1935), followed by other works on the Indian poor such as Coolie (1936) and Two Leaves and a Bud (1937). He is also noted for being among the first writers to incorporate Punjabi and Hindustani idioms into English, and was a recipient of the civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan.
Prakash Karat is an Indian Communist politician. He was the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from 2005 to 2015.
Jayanta Mahapatra was an Indian poet. He is the first Indian poet to win a Sahitya Akademi award for English poetry. He was the author of poems such as "Indian Summer" and "Hunger", which are regarded as classics in modern Indian English literature. He was awarded a Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honour in India in 2009, but he returned the award in 2015 to protest against rising intolerance in India.
Indian English literature (IEL), also referred to as Indian Writing in English (IWE), is the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language but whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. Its early history began with the works of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio and Michael Madhusudan Dutt followed by Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo. R. K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao contributed to the growth and popularity of Indian English fiction in the 1930s. It is also associated, in some cases, with the works of members of the Indian diaspora who subsequently compose works in English.
Pritish Nandy is an Indian poet, painter, journalist, parliamentarian, media and television personality, animal activist and maker of films, TV and streaming content. He was a parliamentarian in the Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra, elected on a ticket from the Shiv Sena. He is the author of forty books of poetry in English and has translated poems by other writers from Bengali, Urdu and Punjabi into English as well as a new version of the Isha Upanishad. Apart from these, he has authored books of stories and non fiction as well as three books of translations of classical love poetry from Sanskrit. He was Publishing Director of The Times of India Group and Editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India, The Independent, and Filmfare in the 1980s, all simultaneously. He has held six exhibitions of his paintings and calligraphy. He founded Pritish Nandy Communications Ltd, the content company, in 1993. He also founded People for Animals, India's first animal rights NGO which is currently run by co-founder Maneka Gandhi as chairperson.
Manju Jaidka is former Faculty Dean and Head of Department at Shoolini University's Department of English. She was formerly a professor at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India.
Balmiki Prasad Singh was the 14th Governor of Sikkim, India. He is a retired IAS officer and has written books and articles relating to Indian culture, in particular the culture of North-East India. Among his prominent books are Bahudha and the post 9/11 World and The problem of change: a study of North East India.
Vennikkulam Gopala Kurup (1902–1980) was an Indian poet, playwright, translator, lexicographer and story writer of Malayalam. He was the author of a number of poetry anthologies, besides other works, and he translated Abhijnana Shakuntalam, Tulsi Ramayana, Tirukkuṛaḷ, the poems of Subramania Bharati and two cantos of The Light of Asia of Edwin Arnold into Malayalam. He also contributed in the preparation of a dictionary, Kairali Kosham. A recipient of the Odakkuzhal Award and Thirukural Award, Kurup received the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Poetry in 1966. Sahitya Akademi honoured him with their annual award in 1974.
Ramendra Kumar (Ramen) is an Indian author of children’s books with 35 books in English. They are also available in 15 Indian languages and 14 foreign languages. He has also written satire, poetry, travelogues, adult fiction, and non-fiction.
Mehr Lal Soni, better known as Zia Fatehabadi, was an Indian Urdu ghazal and nazm writer. He was a disciple (shaagird) of Syed Aashiq Hussain Siddiqui Seemab Akbarabadi (1882–1951), who was a disciple of Nawab Mirza Khan Daagh Dehlvi (1831–1905). He used the takhallus of Zia meaning "Light" on the suggestion of his teacher, Ghulaam Qadir Farkh Amritsari.
Mohammad Sanaullah Dar, better known as Meeraji was an Indian Urdu poet. He lived the life of a bohemian, working only intermittently.
Ron Whitehead is an American poet, author and activist. Whitehead was born on a farm in Kentucky, but traveled to the University of Louisville and Oxford University to pursue his academic interests.
Raj Kumar Pathria is a theoretical physicist, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Waterloo, and an Urdu poet.
Bibhu Padhi, born Bibhu Prasad Padhi, on 16 January 1951, is an Indian poet. He writes in English and Odia, and is also a translator and literary critic.
Poets Corner Group is a poetry group in India. The group's main purpose is to make it easier for new and aspiring poets to be published. Since its advent, Poets Corner has published over 340 poets in 21 anthologies in both English and Hindi language.
Vihang A. Naik or Vihang Ashokbhai Naik is a modern bilingual poet from Gujarat, India. He has authored many collections of poetry in English and Gujarati, besides translating poems from Gujarati into English. He died in the year 2021.
Dr. Shariq Nisar is an Indian finance professional, academic and activist. He received PhD in economics from Aligarh Muslim University, one of the oldest universities in India. He co-founded TASIS, a shariah advisory institution, related to finance, based in Mumbai, that screens stocks for Shariah compliance. His first major work was the launch of India's first Shariah Index in association with the Bombay Stock Exchange. Later on he worked with the National Stock Exchange to launch Shariah index for them. He is advisor to Kerala Government's Islamic Finance venture Cheraman Financial Services Ltd. He also helped Government of India owned General Insurance Corporation of India establish its Retakaful division in 2009. During 2013 and 2014, he served as a senior visiting fellow at Harvard Law School. He was invited to share his views before the Select Committee of Indian Parliament on the Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill (2015). He served as a non-executive independent director at Octaware Technologies from November, 2015 to December 2018, India's first shariah compliant publicly listed company. Dr. Nisar has also authored various books in the area of Islamic Finance with International as well as Indian perspectives. He has been awarded Bharat Inclusion Research Fellowship 2020.
Gayathri Prabhu is an Indian novelist who currently lives in Manipal, Karnataka. Her most recent work is the novella Love in Seven Easy Steps (2021), preceded by Vetaal and Vikram: Riddles of the Undead, published by HarperCollins in 2019.
Zafar Choudhary is an Indian journalist, author, policy analyst, and practitioner of peace-building. He is founder and Chief Editor of The Dispatch. Educated at the London School of Economics and Political Science, he is Asia Society Fellow (2012). He is a member of Editors Guild of India-a national organization of Editors and Journalists. He was born in the remote village Rehan in the district Rajouri, Jammu and Kashmir in 1975.
