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Bharat Gupt (born 28 November 1946 in Uttar Pradesh) is an Indian classicist, theatre theorist, sitar and surbahar player, musicologist, cultural analyst 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. [1]
Bharat Gupt was born in Moradabad (Uttar Pradesh, India). His parents moved in the early 1950s to Delhi, where he went to school and college and studied English, Hindi, Sanskrit, and philosophy. He then spent a year in the US in the late 1960s, and later moved to Canada to complete a master's degree from Toronto. Back in India, he learned to play the sitar and surbahar, training for eight years under the 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. [ citation needed ]
Trained both in modern European and traditional Indian educational systems, Gupt has worked in classical studies, theatre, music, culture, and media studies, and researched as a Senior Fellow of the Onassis Foundation in Greece on the revival of ancient Greek theatre. [ citation needed ]
From 1995 to 1996, he was 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 Onassis Prize for Drama.[ citation needed ]
Gupt retired as an associate professor of English at the College of Vocational Studies, University of Delhi. He has also directed major lectures and directed seminars. As part of his research material, he has made approximately 2000 photographs of amphitheaters and antiquities all over Greece as well as in Syracuse, Italy. [ citation needed ]
As a reviewer, he is a frequent contributor to the Journal of Sangeet Natak Academy, Journal of Music Academy Madras, Indian Musicological Society, and Baroda. [ citation needed ]
Gupt's practical involvement with traditional Indian temple architecture resulted in initiating the construction of the Ram Mandir in Ashok Vihar. In 2001, he was one of the founding members of the International Forum for India's heritage: 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 November 2011, but continues to lecture at other forums. [ citation needed ]
Much of Gupt's writing is devoted to classical Indian and classical Greek drama, comparing their similarities and differences and exploring the possibilities of common Indo-European origins. [2] His first book, Dramatic Concepts – Greek and Indian (first published in 1994), 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). The book compares 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.
AT KALAKSHETRA CHENNAI 1. 6-10 Feb 2012, expounding on Sanskrit text and Abhinavabharati (25 hours)
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The Nāṭya Shāstra is a Sanskrit treatise on the performing arts. The text is attributed to sage Bharata, and its first complete compilation is dated to between 200 BCE and 200 CE, but estimates vary between 500 BCE and 500 CE.
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Indian art evolved with an emphasis on inducing special spiritual or philosophical states in the audience, or with representing them symbolically.
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