K. S. Lal

Kishori Saran Lal (1920–2002), better known as K. S. Lal, was an Indian historian. He is the author of several works, mainly on the medieval history of India.
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.
Reception.
Lal's early books were uncontroversial, and some of his books, such as "History of the Khaljis" and "Twilight of the Sultanate", have been called "standard works." Some of his later works were controversial, including allegation of being a spokesman for the RSS. Lal himself 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." 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, 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".
Historian Jeremy Black in his book "Contesting History: Narratives of Public History" (2014), referenced his book "The Muslim Slave System in Medieval India" as a "good modern work"; he also comments that K. S. Lal " is regarded as right-wing by Indian Muslim Marxist scholars".
Irfan Habib in a dispute over positions at Indian Council of Historical Research remarks: "K.S. Lal may have written a worthwhile work of history in the distant past, but his more recent works - which have focussed almost exclusively on the supposed historical injuries suffered by Hindus - have been tendentious, communal and deeply objectionable."