He completed his primary and secondary education at King Edward VII School in the beautiful lake-town of Taiping, before proceeding to the newly established campus of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, where he majored in English, with a minor in Islamic Studies.
In 2009 Ghulam-Sarwar joined the English Department of the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM) in Kuala Lumpur as Senior Academic Fellow, while concurrently continuing to serve as Expert at the UMCC where he supervised postgraduate students in Theatre as well as Visual Arts.
Ghulam-Sarwar has served as visiting professor and guest lecturer at universities in Asia, Australia as well as Europe in addition to participating in numerous conferences involving diverse disciplines in Asian arts and culture.
In ethnographic and folklore studies he has explored Malay-Indonesian mythology and folk literature, Malay concepts of the soul (semangat), and angin as well as their place in healing processes involving traditional theatre.
For the first time ever, through his efforts courses in traditional Malay and Southeast Asian genres such as the shadow play (wayang kulit[3]), the mak yong dance theatre and bangsawan were offered in any Malaysian university.
When it comes to creative writing Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof, who worked with poetry, drama as well as short stories, emerged as one of Malaysia’s most prolific and original authors in the English language.
Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof has written three full-length plays: Halfway Road, Penang, The Trial of Hang Tuah the Great and Suvarna Padma: The Golden Lotus in addition to several shorter pieces.
Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof worked on translations of poetry from Urdu into English, with special focus on the lyrical ghazal form, and well as selected examples of modern verse.
Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof prepared the official nomination papers on behalf of the Malaysian Ministry of Culture for submission to UNESCO to gain recognition for the mak yong dance theatre of Malaysia as an Item of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in the year 2005.