Bharat Gupt

Bharat Gup in September, 2019

Bharat Gupt is an Indian classicist, theatre theorist, sitar and surbahar player, musicologist, and newspaper columnist. He is also a retired Professor in English, who taught at the College of Vocational Studies of the University of Delhi. In February 2023 he received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award by the President of India for his contribution to musicology.

Life and studies

Bharat Gupt was born on 28 November 1946 in Moradabad (Uttar Pradesh, India), a small city of mixed Hindu-Muslim population, known for Hindustani music and Urdu poetry. His parents moved in the early '50s to Delhi where he went to school and college and studied English, Hindi, Sanskrit and philosophy, spending, however, every summer in the district town. He then spent a year in the US at the end of Counter-Cultural days, in the late 1960s; then he moved to Canada and took a master's degree from Toronto. Back in India, he learnt to play the sitar and surbahar, training for eight years under the eminent musician Pandit Uma Shankar Mishra. He also studied ancient Indian musicological texts and modern Indian Music, yoga sutras and classics under Acharya K.C. Brihaspati and Swami Kripalvananda.

Trained both in modern European and traditional Indian educational systems, he has worked in classical studies, theatre, music, culture and media studies and researched as Senior Fellow of the Onassis Foundation in Greece on revival of ancient Greek theatre.

In 1995–1996 senior research fellow invited by the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, Greece, for six months to research on Modern Greek Theatre Productions of Ancient Greek Plays. In 1995 he was also a member of the Jury for the International Onasis Prize for Drama (1995)

He retired as associate professor of English at College of Vocational Studies, University of Delhi and is on visiting faculty at the National School of Drama, Delhi. He has made numerous and extensive lecture tours, speaking on theatre and music at various universities in India, North America and Greece. He has also directed major lectures and directed seminars. As part of his research material he has made about 2000 photographs of amphitheaters and antiquities all over Greece as well as in Syracuse, Italy.

As a reviewer, he is a frequent contributor to Journal of Sangeet Natak Academy, Journal of Music Academy Madras, Indian Musicological Society, Baroda.

His practical involvement with traditional Indian temple architecture resulted in initiating the construction of the Ram Mandir in Ashok Vihar (Delhi) it's a "nagar style" stone temple with carvings which will give Delhi a traditional temple after a millennium. In 2001, he was one of the founding members of the International Forum for India's heritage: a non-religious, non-ideological, apolitical body, IFIH is a network of scholars, educationists, artists, scientists, social workers, environmentalists, thinkers and writers, who have come together to promote India's cultural heritage.

He retired from the University of Delhi in Nov.2011 but continues to lecture at other forums.

Writings and ideas

Much of his writing is devoted to classical Indian and classical Greek drama, comparing their similarities and differences and exploring the possibilities of common Indo-European origins. His first book, Dramatic Concepts – Greek and Indian (first published in 1994, reprinted in 1996 and in 2006), was directly inspired by his Greek travels and studies. Dramatic Concepts compares ancient Greek and Indian dramatic theories. Instead of treating the Poetics and the Natyashastra as Western and Eastern viewpoints, it places them within the broad framework of ancient Indo-European culture and the art of sacred drama (hieropraxis). It demonstrates that hieropraxis was basically different from post-Renaissance European drama which was entirely secular in content and Realistic in presentation. The Poetics and the Natyashastra on the contrary, belonged to theatres which pleased both gods and men, and which used semiotised gesture, dance, music, and dialogue to create a highly ornate theatrical reality. The book aims at comparing not only the concepts as propounded by Aristotle and Bharata Muni, but also attempts to reconstruct the Greek and Indian performances to highlight their similarities and differences. Concepts like anukarana, dharmi, abhinaya, itivritta, mimesis, muthos, melopoiia, katharsis and rasa, etc., as revisited and expounded here, can be seen as means of creating dramatic shows.

Books

• Dramatic Concepts Greek and Indian (1994)
• Natyashastra, Chapter 28: Ancient Scales of Indian Music (1996) [translation into English],
• Literary Criticism and Theory (Greek), Twelve Greek Poems into Hindi Indira Gandhi National Open University, Delhi (2001)
• India: A Cultural Decline or Revival? (2008)

Published articles

• "The Technique of Allusion in the Poetry of T. S. Eliot." In Student's Handbook in American Literature. Ed. C. D. Narsimhaiah. Ludhiana Kalyani, 1972. 188–97.
• "Laxmi Narain Lal ka Abdulla Dewaana (in Hindi)." In Natak Aur Rang Manch. Ed. I. Madan. Delhi: Lipi Prakashan, 1975. 95–100.
• "Ravishena krita Padma Purana main Sangit Carca (in Hindi)." In Sangeet (monthly). Sangeet Karyalaya, Hathras. May 1981. 15–16.
• "Sangit ko Acharya Brihaspati ki den (in Hindi)." In Sangeet (monthly). Sangeet Karyalaya, Hathras. 6 articles. July–December, 1981.
• "Origin of Dhruvapada." In Sangeet Nataka, Journal of Sangeet Natak Academy. New Delhi.
• "Music in the Natyasastra." In Journal of the Music Academy, Madras. 56 (1985), 165–75; 57 (1986), 172–81; 58 (1987), 91–109; 59 (1988) 57–82; 60 (1989).
• "Valmiki's Ramayana and the Natyasastra." In Sangeet Natak. 81-82 (July-Dec. 1986) 63–76.
• "The Date of Natyasastra." Journal of the Oriental Institute of Baroda 36. 1-4 (Sept. 86-June 87) 69–86.
• "Use of the Dhruva Songs in Ancient Indian Theatre." Journal of the Oriental Institute of Baroda 37 (March–June 1988) 305–20.
• "Classifications on Lokadharmi and Natyadharmi." Sangeet Natak 95. (Jan.-March 1990) 35–44.
• "Peace as Theatrical Experience." In Manascarya, Journal of Cultural Studies, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, VOL. II, No. 2&3, 1996, pp 64–9
• "What is Ethnic." The Eastern Anthropologist, 50: 2. 1997, pp 139– 46.
• "Religious Plurality in Education." Globalization and Identity. Editors, Majid Tehraninan and B. Jeannie Lum. Transaction Publishers, UK/US. 2006, pp 55–62.
• "Laughter and Tears in Classical Indian Theater: Its Theoretical Frame" Dioniso, Indtituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico. DIONYSOS 2007, number 6, Journal of National Institute of Ancient Drama, Italy. pp 338–41.
• "Classical Indian Art Theory and its Present Day Worth" Shruti, Delhi, Vol 2, April 2008, pp 58–71

Major public lectures on Natyashastra

• At Madras University

1. 9–13 March 2009 expounding on Sanskrit text and Abhinavabharati (25 hours) and the same at Kalakshetra, Chennai(Madras) February 2012.

• At Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi

1. 8–13 May 2009 expounding on Sanskrit text and Abhinavabharati (10 hours).

AT KALAKSHETRA CHENNAI 1. 6-10 Feb 2012, expounding on Sanskrit text and Abhinavabharati (25 hours)

Major seminars directed

1. "Philosophy of Indian Drama", India International Centre, Delhi. 6–8 April. 2002 sponsored by ICPR.
2. "Philosophy of Indian Music". At India International Centre Delhi 7-9 Feb. 2003 Sponsored by ICPR
3. "Arts and Culture for Indian Resurgence", at India International Centre, Delhi sponsored by IIC and Kalaikoodam Center of Arts. 1–3 August 2008

External links

• Official website