Govind Ballal Deval

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Govind Ballal Deval (1855–1916) was a Marathi playwright from Bombay Presidency, British India.

Deval was born in 1855 in a village in the Konkan region of Maharashtra, but he spent his childhood in Haripur near Sangli. He attended a high school in Belgaum, where he came in contact with, and was influenced by, playwright/actor Balwant Pandurang Kirloskar, who worked as a teacher in that school.

After a late high school graduation in 1879 at age 24, Deval worked for a few years as a teacher in the same school, moved to Pune to finish in 1894 a college course in Agriculture, and worked for a short while as a botany school teacher. An elder brother of Deval was a musician, while another brother was an accomplished actor in Ichalkaranjikar Natak Mandali.