Balkrishna Govind Gokhale was born in Dwarka, India, on September 4, 1919. Gokhale graduated with honors from the University of Bombay (now the University of Mumbai) in 1939. He earned master's (1941) and doctoral (1946) degrees from the University of Bombay.
After teaching at St. Xavier's College in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, from 1942-1954, Gokhale moved to the United States with his wife and two daughters. In the U.S., Gokhale taught at Bowdoin College (1954), Oberlin College (1955-1956), and the University of Washington, Seattle (1959-1960).
Gokhale was then recruited to Wake Forest University to begin the Asian Studies program. At the time, he was the first non-Christian faculty member at WFU. He remained at the University from 1960 until 1990, teaching courses that covered Southeast Asian history, the country of India, and the Hindi language. Gokhale was also the author of 17 books, including
In his spare time, Gokhale taught himself Dutch, Portuguese, Arabic, and Persian. Gokhale died on August 11, 2005.
Materials in this collection include scholarly articles by Balkrishna Govid Gokhale, a
Balkrishna Govind Gokhale Papers (MS569), Z. Smith Reynolds Library Special Collections and Archives, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.
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