Gopi Chand Narang, Professor Emeritus, University of Delhi and Jamia Millia Islamia,Surinder Deol, Previously Program Manager and Senior Specialist, World Bank in Washington

Gopi Chand Narang is professor emeritus at the University of Delhi and Jamia Milia Islamia. A renowned exponent of Urdu literature, he has won numerous prestigious awards and has been recipient of honours, including Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan and Sitara-e Imtiaz as well as the President's National Gold Medal, for his study of Allama Iqbal, from Pakistan. He has served as president of Sahitya Akademi. He was a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Minnesota during the 1960s and at the University of Oslo in the late 1990s. He has published more than 60 widely acclaimed books in Urdu, Hindi, and English. As a versatile genius, his work transcends disciplinary boundaries and has been a source of enrichment to scholars in literary theory and criticism.

Surinder Deol pursued the path of literature after retiring from the World Bank. He is author of several books, including a collection of his poems titled A Moment in the Universe that was published in 2006, followed by a novel Endless Life in 2012. In 2013 he undertook a major project to translate Ghalib's Urdu Divan in American free verse, a genre popularized by Coleman Barks for his translation of Rumi. This translation titled The Treasure: A Modern Rendition of Ghalib's Lyrical Love Poetry was published in 2014.