Bhatkhande Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya

Bhatkhande Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya in Lucknow is one record under four names: Marris College of Music (1926–1966), Bhatkhande College of Hindustani Music (1966–2000), Bhatkhande Music Institute Deemed University (2000–2022) and, since the state Act of 2022, Bhatkhande Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya. It is a state university rather than a gharana school, and it belongs to the reforming, syllabus-and-notation side of Hindustani music that its co-founder, the musicologist Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, did much to create.

The university teaches through departments rather than a single syllabus. It offers the undergraduate B.P.A. and postgraduate M.P.A., PhD research, and part-time diploma programmes graded as Praveshika, Parichay, Prabuddha and Parangat, covering dhamar, thumri-dadra, light music, folk dance and harmonium or synthesizer, with one-year diplomas in folk music and dholak. Vocal music, instrumental music (swaravadya), percussion, dance and musicology are all taught, and Western classical music was added in 2009.

Its own account names the musicians who built the departments. Bhatkhande established the vocal department in 1926; S. N. Ratanjankar, Govind Narayan Natu, Ustad Chote Munne Khan, Baba Naseer Khan and B. S. Pathak joined it in 1927, and Begum Akhtar, Surendra Shankar Awasthi, Harishankar Mishra, Ganesh Prasad Mishra and Kamla Srivastava taught there in later years. The instrumental department began with the college itself in 1926, with the sarod maestro Ustad Sakhawat Hussain Khan and the sitar maestro Ustad Yusuf Ali Khan, and later the violinist V. G. Jog among others. The tabla player Ahmed Jan Thirakwa and the Kathak teacher Mohanrao Kallianpurkar are also named among its historical faculty; the vocalist Shruti Sadolikar Katkar is listed among its notable faculty.

Alumni named on the university's own history page include Naushad, Talat Mahmood, Shanti Hiranand, Anup Jalota, Dilraj Kaur, Malini Awasthi, Padma Sharma and Purnima Pande; other accounts add K. G. Ginde, C. R. Vyas, the flautist Raghunath Seth, Sumati Mutatkar and Shanno Khurana.

The university tells its own founding as part of the institutionalisation of Indian music education, led in parallel by Vishnu Digambar Paluskar and Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande. In 1926 Bhatkhande established a music school in Lucknow "with the help and co-operation of Rai Umanath Bali and Rai Rajeshwar Bali and other music patrons and connoisseurs of Lucknow"; it was inaugurated by the governor of Awadh, Sir William Marris, and named the Marris College of Music after him.

On 26 March 1966 the Government of Uttar Pradesh took the college under its control and renamed it Bhatkhande College of Hindustani Music. By a Government of India notification of 24 October 2000 it became a Deemed University, and in June 2022 it was renamed Bhatkhande Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya "to reflect its broader commitment towards encompassing various art forms" — now a teaching and affiliating state university. The archive holds one record for all four names; these are the same institution, not separate schools.

As checked in September 2026, the university is operating: its site carried 2026-27 guest-faculty and accompanist notices, hostel allotment orders and admission links, listed Prof. Mandavi Singh as Vice-Chancellor and Atul Kumar as Registrar, and advertised posts at Hariharpur Music College, Azamgarh. Public contact as published: 0522-3536962, registrar@bhatkhandeuniversity.ac.in. Courses, fees and admissions should be taken from the university's own site.