A retired professor from University of Delhi, Bharat Gupt is well known in the field of arts as a classicist, theatre theorist, sitar and surbahar player, musicologist, cultural analyst, and newspaper columnist. He is an authority on the Natyashastra and classical Greek theatre; his writings have altered the perception of ancient Greek drama as the “origin of Western theatre” and established its closeness with ancient Indian theatre. He has also expounded on classical Indian Sanskrit texts including the Dharma Shastras, and has advocated the need to include Arts in today’s educational curriculum. 

Bharat Gupt has been a Visiting Faculty at the National School of Drama, Delhi, and a resource scholar at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, where he is currently a Trustee and Executive Member. For more than thirty five years, he has lectured extensively at universities in India, North America and Europe (including Greece) on Indian music and theatre theory. His published works include: Dramatic Concepts Greek and Indian (several editions since 1994, 1996, 2006, 2012 & 2016), Natyasastra, Chapter 28: Ancient Scales of Indian Music (1996), Twelve Greek Poems into Hindi (2001), India: A Cultural Decline or Revival? (2008).

Abstracts of the lectures

The Practice of Ancient Indian Theatre

(1) Natyashastra is the foundational text for all Indian arts, performing and plastic. It is not a glorification of the text to regard it as the “Fifth Veda” as it has expounded the esoteric notions of Rita, Karma, Amritatva, Purusharthas and Rasa to common folks through the art of Natya or theatre, which itself grew practically out of Yajna rituals. Theatre represented the lives of diverse social classes through ten dramatic genres. It brought the high and low in a common aesthetic experience of emotional elevation.

(2) Indian theatre was regional and pan-Indian at the same time. It was multi-lingual, multi-musical, and egalitarian. It drew upon diverse systems of thought and constantly innovated new techniques to expand its shastra.