Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof

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).

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).

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.

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 Hawaii 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.

Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof was the eldest of five 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.

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.