Govind Purushottam Deshpande (Devanagari: गोविंद पुरुषोत्तम देशपांडे) (b. 1938 Nashik) is a Marathi playwright and academic from Maharashtra, India. He is also known as GoPu (his Marathi initials), or GPD.
He taught at the Center for East Asian Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi for many years. Currently retired, he lives in Pune with his wife Kalindi, a women's movement activist. He writes a column in the Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai.
He received the Maharashtra State Award for his collective work in 1977, and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for playwriting in 1996.
His collection of essays on culture and politics, Dialectics of Defeat: Problems of Culture in Post-Colonial India (Seagull, Kolkata) was published 2006), and he has recently published a collection of poems, Ityadi Ityadi Kavita (Etc. etc. poems). He is also the editor of the anthology of Indian plays in translation, Modern Indian Drama,[1] published by Sahitya Akademi, 2004.
The U.S. Library of Congress has acquired twelve of his books, including a few on Chinese foreign policy. Some of his works have been translated into English.
Some of his plays, in English translation, are available from Seagull books, www.seagullindia.com/books.