Bhatkhande Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya is a state public university located in Lucknow, the capital of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Specialising in Indian classical music and the performing arts, it traces its origins to an institution founded by the musicologist Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, after whom it is named. The university offers programmes in vocal music, instrumental music, dance, and allied disciplines of Indian cultural studies.
| Name | Bhatkhande Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya |
|---|---|
| Former name | Bhatkhande Music Institute / Bhatkhande Music Institute University |
| Type | State public university |
| Location | Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India |
| Field | Indian classical music, dance and performing arts |
| Named after | Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande |
The institution emerged from the early twentieth-century movement to systematise and document Hindustani classical music. Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860–1936), one of the most influential musicologists of modern India, devised a notation system and a scheme of classifying ragas into ten thaats, which became standard reference frameworks for Hindustani music pedagogy. The Lucknow school founded in his memory carried forward this tradition of structured, university-style training in classical music.
The predecessor institution operated for several decades as a music college and conservatory in Lucknow, training generations of vocalists, instrumentalists and dancers. It was subsequently elevated to the status of a deemed-to-be-university, functioning as the Bhatkhande Music Institute University. Under a later reorganisation by the Government of Uttar Pradesh, it was reconstituted as Bhatkhande Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya, broadening its scope from music alone to a wider remit covering Indian culture (sanskriti) and the performing arts.
The university conducts undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral programmes in disciplines that typically include:
Teaching combines the traditional guru–shishya mode of oral transmission with formal academic structures of lectures, examinations and graded certification.
As one of the few universities in India dedicated primarily to classical music and the performing arts, Bhatkhande Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya occupies a distinctive position in the country's higher education landscape. It serves as a major centre for the preservation, documentation and academic study of Hindustani classical traditions, and contributes to the cultural identity of Lucknow, a city long associated with the courtly arts of the Awadh region.