{ { Infobox person
| name = Pritish Nandy
|image =
| caption = Pritish Nandy (left), Ambika Soni (right), IFFI (2010) | birth_name = Pritish Nandy | birth_date = | birth_place = Bhagalpur, Bihar, India | occupation = Poet, Painter, Journalist, Politician | works = Calcutta if You Must Exile Me” | awards = Padma Shri; EM Forster Literary Award, International Humanitarian Award at the Genesis Awards, US; Bangladesh Liberation War Award | spouse = | children = Kushan Nandy, Rangita Pritish-Nandy, Ishita Pritish Nandy | relatives = Ashis Nandy (brother) }} Pritish Nandy (born 15 January 1951) 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.
Early life
Pritish Nandy was born in Bhagalpur in the state of Bihar in eastern India to a Bengali Christian family. He is the son of Satish Chandra Nandy and Prafulla Nalini Nandy, and brother of Ashis Nandy and Manish Nandy. His daughters Rangita Pritish-Nandy (born 1978) and Ishita Pritish-Nandy (born 1980) are film producers, creators and show runners and his son Kushan Nandy(born 1972) is a film producer, writer and director. Pritish Nandy was educated at La Martiniere College and, briefly, at Presidency College in Kolkata, where he spent the first 28 years of his life. Nandy's mother was a teacher at La Martiniere Calcutta and subsequently became the school's first Indian vice principal.
Literary career
Pritish Nandy's first book of poems Of Gods and Olives was published in 1967. Three further volumes followed in the 1960s and a further 14 volumes were published in the 1970s. During the seventies Nandy edited and published a poetry magazine called Dialogue which published many of India's finest poets in English and other languages, in translation. Dialogue also published over forty books of poems, of first time poets as well as famous poets. It became an iconic platform for contemporary Indian poetry, in English and in translation. In July 1981 Nandy was nominated as a Poet Laureate by the World Academy of Arts and Culture at the Fifth World Congress of Poets in San Francisco. Nandy's poem Calcutta If You Must Exile Me is considered a pioneering classic in modern Indian literature.
The Government of India conferred on him the Padma Shri in 1977 for his contribution to Indian literature. He wrote a new book of poems called “Again” in 2010 after a long hiatus and then, “Stuck on 1/Forty in 2012”. In 2014, his version of the Isha Upanishad was published. His Collected Poems are being published by Seagull Books.
Journalistic career
He was publishing director of The Times of India between 1982 and 1991. He was also managing editor of the group and editor and publisher of The Illustrated Weekly of India during its most successful decade. He was also editor and publisher of ‘’The Independent’’, a newspaper launched by the same group and ‘’Filmfare’’ the popular magazine.
Nandy left The Times of India group to start his own media company Pritish Nandy Communications which was founded in 1993. He is currently chairman of Pritish Nandy Communications Ltd, popularly known as PNC and well known for its films, TV shows and streamed content.
He is also a columnist with The Times of India, Dainik Bhaskar, Divya Bhaskar and Sangbad Pratidin. His regular column appears in ‘’Mumbai Mirror’’ and his blog on Times Online. Nandy was one of the first internet evangelists in India and opened India's first cyber café in 1996 at Hotel Leela Kempinski in Mumbai.