Govind Purushottam Deshpande
Govind Purushottam Deshpande (Devanagari: गोविंद पुरुषोत्तम देशपांडे) (b. 1938 Nashik) is a Marathi playwright and academic from Maharashtra, India. He is also known as GoPu (his Marathi initials), or GPD.
He taught at the Center for East Asian Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi for many years. Currently retired, he lives in Pune with his wife Kalindi, a women's movement activist. He writes a column in the Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai.
He received the Maharashtra State Award for his collective work in 1977, and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for playwriting in 1996.
His collection of essays on culture and politics, Dialectics of Defeat: Problems of Culture in Post-Colonial India (Seagull, Kolkata) was published 2006), and he has recently published a collection of poems, Ityadi Ityadi Kavita (Etc. etc. poems). He is also the editor of the anthology of Indian plays in translation, Modern Indian Drama,[1] published by Sahitya Akademi, 2004.
The U.S. Library of Congress has acquired twelve of his books, including a few on Chinese foreign policy. Some of his works have been translated into English.
Notable plays [edit]
- Udhwastha Dharmashala (published in English as A Man in Dark Times), directed by Shyamanand Jalan (Padatik) in 1982
- Andhar Yatra (A Journey in Darkness)
- Satyashodhak (The Truth Seeker) on the life and times of the 19th-century social reformer Jotiba Phule Performed by Jan Natya Manch.[2]
- Antim Divas [ Film-Chak de India fame Shilpa Shukla (Bindia Nayak)and Shalini Vatsa (film- Peepli Live) acted in it with director Arvind Gaur,2001]
- Music System
- Raastey directed by Arvind Gaur and Satyadev Dubey
Some of his plays, in English translation, are available from Seagull books, www.seagullindia.com/books.
References [edit]
- ^ Modern Indian Drama, ed. G.P. Deshpande, Sahitya Akademi, 2004
- ^ "Life As Message". Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 24. 16 June 2012.
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