Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof

Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof (Punjabi: ਗੁਲਾਮ-ਸਰਵਰ ਯੁਸੂਫ, romanized: Gulāma-saravara yusūpha; 21 November 1939 – 10 November 2022) was a Malaysian academic and writer. He was an expert in traditional Malay and South-East Asian theatre as well as one of the leading writers of Malaysian English Literature.
Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof was the eldest of six children of Punjabi Muslim parents. He completed his primary and secondary education at King Edward VII School in the beautiful lake-town of Taiping, before proceeding to the newly established campus of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, where he majored in English, with a minor in Islamic Studies. Ghulam-Sarwar also studied Sanskrit and French, continuing his early interest in languages which included Urdu, Punjabi and Tamil. In later years he was to delve into Malay, Hokkien, Tagalog as well as Persian. Ghulam-Sarwar’s plans to study for a postgraduate degree at the University of Malaya did not materialise due to family considerations as well as his particular interest to work on Asian rather than western literature. He served as a temporary teacher at the Methodist Boys’ School in Penang while also helping in his family textiles business and rubber estate. With the establishment in 1969 of University of Penang (later renamed Science University of Malaya, locally Universiti Sains Malaysia or USM), he was invited in the following year to set up the first performing arts programme in the country at that university.
Given the opportunity to go for further studies in theatre under the university’s Academic Staff Training Scheme, Ghulam-Sarwar went to Honolulu in 1972 on a grant from the East-West Centre, entering directly into the PhD programme of the University of Hawaiʻi Department of Drama and Theatre. Following research trips to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan, an extended tour of several European and Asian countries as well as fieldwork in the province of Kelantan in Malaysia, Ghulam-Sarwar visited Australia at the invitation of the South Australian government to look at theatre facilities in Adelaide, with a view to enhancing cultural exchange between the twin cities of Adelaide and Georgetown, Penang. He obtained his PhD in 1976 with a dissertation on the ancient mak yong dance theatre under the supervision of the renowned Asian theatre scholar, James R Brandon. Ghulam-Sarwar’s was to be the world’s first ever doctorate on any of the Malay performing arts.
Returning to USM in 1976, Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof served as Head of the Performing Arts programme and Associate Professor, until 1995. Following several years of freelance teaching as well as research, mainly in Southeast Asia, but also in India, he joined the Cultural Centre of the University of Malaya (UMCC) as Professor in theatre studies. In 2009 Ghulam-Sarwar joined the English Department of the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM) in Kuala Lumpur as Senior Academic Fellow, while concurrently continuing to serve as Expert at the UMCC where he supervised postgraduate students in Theatre as well as Visual Arts. In July 2014, leaving IIUM, he returned to UMCC. Ghulam-Sarwar has served as visiting professor and guest lecturer at universities in Asia, Australia as well as Europe in addition to participating in numerous conferences involving diverse disciplines in Asian arts and culture. Although not actively involved as a theatre practitioner, Ghulam-Sarwar has, throughout the years, participated actively in various theatre and cultural programmes involving international troupes during the annual Festival of Penang, as well as on preservation and conservation of traditional heritage.
Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof carved for himself a niche as one of the world’s leading researchers on traditional Southeast Asian theatre, as well as related subjects such as Asian epics, folk traditions of the arts and shamanic rituals through his unstinting forays into the field in almost all countries of the region.
Apart from traditional Asian theatre, his major research interests include Asian literatures, folklore studies, as well as South- and Southeast Asian cultures, comparative religion, mythology and, Sufism. In ethnographic and folklore studies he has explored Malay-Indonesian mythology and folk literature, Malay concepts of the soul (semangat), and angin as well as their place in healing processes involving traditional theatre. It is through his pioneering research and sustained academic writing that Ghulam-Sarwar has made his greatest contributions to learning. For the first time ever, through his efforts courses in traditional Malay and Southeast Asian genres such as the shadow play (wayang kulit), the mak yong dance theatre and bangsawan were offered in any Malaysian university. In his teaching of traditional theatre he successfully involved puppeteers, actors, dancers as well as musicians. These practices as well as the curricula he first developed at USM were to serve as models for subsequent programmes in performing arts in several academic institutions.
Beyond his own country, his research efforts in Indonesia, the Philippines, mainland Southeast Asia, and India have provided new insights into relationships between particular shared genres such as the shadow play. His unstinting field research over several decades has generated a considerable amount of data, documentation and writing for which Ghulam-Sarwar has become justifiably well-known.
When it comes to creative writing Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof, who worked with poetry, drama as well as short stories, emerged as one of Malaysia’s most prolific and original authors in the English language.
His poetry has been published in several journals in various countries. He published three collections of verse: Performed Memories (1982), Songs for Shooting Stars: Mystical Verse (2011) and Transient Moments (2012).
While a small number of Ghulam-Sarwar’s poems explore ordinary everyday life, most of his verse reflects a fascination with what he calls alternative realities, and his encounters with them. Influences from a whole range of western and eastern poets as well as mysticism, particularly Sufism are evident in his work. Critics have compared his nature mysticism to William Wordsworth’s: “in spite of the huge boundaries of time and space, both Ghulam Sarwar’s contemporary poetry and Wordsworth’s poems from the Romantic era have a very similar and strong affinity with nature.”
Thus, in many ways, his verse is unique, differing considerably in content, style, meaning and intention from that of most Malaysian poets. Ghulam-Sarwar attributes these features in his verse to his personal background and his cultural heritage from both the Near East and South Asia, something that he has been keenly aware of and fascinated with from his teens. Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof has written three full-length plays: Halfway Road, Penang, The Trial of Hang Tuah the Great and Suvarna Padma: The Golden Lotus in addition to several shorter pieces. Each of his plays is controversial in its own way due to the issues explored. Among his twenty or so short stories several have been published. Notable ones include “Lottery Ticket”, “Tok Dalang”, “Dewi Ratnasari” and “Meditations on a Charpoy”. Like his poetry, Ghulam-Sarwar’s short stories as well as his plays are embedded in traditional Asian culture, mythology as well as religious experience. His short fiction, in particular, explores little known facets of Malaysian life through such characters as the traditional shadow puppeteer (dalang) or members of minority communities such as Punjabi Muslims, Sikhs or Tamil Muslims within the complex and diverse fabric of Malaysian society.
Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof worked on translations of poetry from Urdu into English, with special focus on the lyrical ghazal form, and well as selected examples of modern verse. In collaboration with others he also worked on translations of Persian poetry into English.
Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof prepared the official nomination papers on behalf of the Malaysian Ministry of Culture for submission to UNESCO to gain recognition for the mak yong dance theatre of Malaysia as an Item of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in the year 2005.
Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof was involved in numerous cultural organisations in Malaysia as well as internationally over five decades. He was Theatre Consultant for Mindanao State University- Iligan Institute of Technology, Iligan City, Philippines, 1984; Malaysia’s representative (Governor) on the Board of Governors, Asia Europe Foundation (1999-2005); Founding Member of the ASEAN Puppetry Association (APA), established in 2006, and Presidium Chairman of APA for the entire Southeast Asian region (2011–2014).
Yousof died on 10 November 2022, at the age of 82.
Academic awards
Awards of recognition
For a complete listing of Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof’s academic papers see gsyousof.com
Academic Books
Monographs
Literary Books
General Book
Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof’s Later Research and Writing Projects include: