Maulik Pancholy
Indian American actor, author, activist, and speaker
Maulik Navin Pancholy (, born January 18, 1974) is an American actor and author. He is best known for his roles as Jonathan on 30 Rock, Baljeet Tjinder in Phineas and Ferb, Neal in the first season of Whitney, and as characters named Sanjay Patel in both Weeds and Sanjay and Craig. His debut novel, The Best at It (from Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins), is about a gay, Indian American boy coming into his own. It was named a 2020 Stonewall Honor Book by the American Library Association. In 2022, he released Nikhil Out Loud, which tells the story of eighth grade theater kids rising up against homophobia in their community. It won the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Middle Grade Literature.
Early life and education
Pancholy was born in Dayton, Ohio, to Gujarati parents Gita Jayantilal and Navin Chimanlal Pancholy. He moved around while growing up, living in Ohio, Indiana, and Texas before his family settled in Tampa, Florida, where he attended junior high and high school at Berkeley Preparatory School. His family comes from Gujarat, and his grandparents lived in Ahmedabad. He is a 1991 graduate of the Berkeley Preparatory School in Tampa, and went on to major in theater at Northwestern University, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1995.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Maulik Pancholy” as indian American actor, author, activist, and speaker. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as indian American actor, author, activist, and speaker. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1338610. VIAF identifies the subject as 202986138. The Library of Congress control number is no2011171517. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1974, 2020, 2022 and 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “Maulik Pancholy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.