K. S. Lal

K. S. Lal
Native name किशोरी शरण लाल
Born Kishori Saran Lal
1920
Died 2002
Nationality Indian
Alma mater University of Allahabad
Occupation Historian, Academic
Known for Authoring books about Indian history

Kishori Saran Lal (1920–2002) was an Indian historian. He wrote many historical books, mainly on medieval India. Many of his books, such as History of the Khaljis and Twilight of the Sultanate, are regarded as standard works.[1][2][3]

Career

He obtained his master's degree in 1941 at the University of Allahabad. In 1945 he obtained his D.Phil. with a dissertation on the history of the Khaljis. This dissertation formed the basis for his book History of the Khaljis. He started his career as a Lecturer of History in the Allahabad University, though he served in this position only for a brief period.

From 1945 to 1963 he was with Madhya Pradesh Educational Service and taught at the Government Colleges at Nagpur, Jabalpur, and Bhopal. In 1963, he joined University of Delhi as a reader and taught Medieval Indian history in its History Department.

For the next ten years, starting 1973, he was the Professor and Head of the Department of History, first at the University of Jodhpur (1973–79), and then at the Central University of Hyderabad (1979–83).

Besides his mother tongue Hindi, he was fluent in Persian, Old Persian, Urdu, and other languages.

In 2001 he was appointed chairman of the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) and also placed on the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) Committee to draft the model school syllabus on Indian History.[4]

Works

Legacy

His work has been referred and used by historians, authors, such as Andrew Bernstein,[8] John Esposito,[9] Saiyid Nurul Hasan,[10] Koenraad Elst, Ibn Warraq,[11][12] Robert Spencer,[13] and others.

Lal's early books were not controversial, but some of his later works were criticised by Irfan Habib. The criticism mainly included allegation of being a spokesman for the RSS.[4] Lal noted: "As usual [my books] have been reviewed in journals in India and abroad, bestowing both praise and blame as per the custom of the reviewers. However, during the last fifteen years or so, some of my books have received special attention of a certain brand of scholars for adverse criticism."[14] The controversy surrounding these events is reflected in the theme of the discourses of his books which allegedly describe Muslims as foreigners, destructive barbarians and immoral degenerates,[15][15] Lal himself disputes these allegations, citing, in turn, that the ICHR has always been dominated by historians with a strong leftist bias and that the current controversy is "merely the outcome of an exaggerated sense of pique on the part of the excluded Left wing".[16]

Recently, historian Jeremy Black in his book Contesting History: Narratives of Public History (2014), remarked his writings to be "recent good works".[17]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Comment by Muhammad Habib on the jacket of the book "History of the Khaljis AD 1290–1320" by K.S. Lal. K.S. Lal: Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India
  2. ↑ Times Literary Supplement, London, 19 December 1968. A.A. Powell, Review of The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 58, No.2, (1995), pp. 397–8. Peter Jackson in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain, Third Series, Vol. 4, Part 3, November 1994, pp. 421–23.
  3. ↑ Meenkakshi Jain 2002 Medieval India
  4. 1 2 Delhi Historian's Group, Section 2. Part 3
  5. ↑ "Indian Muslims - Who Are They". Bharatvani.org. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
  6. ↑ "The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India". Bharatvani.org. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
  7. ↑ "Muslim Slave System in Medieval India". Bharatvani.org. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
  8. ↑ Capitalist Solutions: A Philosophy of American Moral Dilemmas, p.79
  9. ↑ The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, p.281, Oxford University Press, 30 March 1995
  10. ↑ Studies in archaeology and history: commemoration volume of Prof.S. Nurul Hasan, p. 116
  11. ↑ Defending the West: a critique of Edward Said's Orientalism, 2007
  12. ↑ Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate's Defense of Liberal Democracy, p. 116
  13. ↑ A Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't, p.226, Regnery Publishing, 8 August 2007
  14. ↑ Lal, K.S. Theory and Practice of Muslim State
  15. 1 2 India: International Religious Freedom Report 2005
  16. ↑ The Hindutva takeover of ICHR,Frontline (4 July 1998)
  17. ↑ Contesting History: Narratives of Public History, p. 183, A&C Black, 13 March 2014

References

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