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 , mottoeng = "As Many Branches So Many Trees" , established = , type = Public , chancellor = Ashish Chauhan , vice_chancellor = Sangita Srivastava , head_label ...

. In 1945 he obtained his D.Phil. with a dissertation on the history of the

Khalji The Khalji or Khilji (Pashto: ; Persian: ) dynasty was a Turco-Afghan dynasty which ruled the Delhi sultanate, covering large parts of the Indian subcontinent for nearly three decades between 1290 and 1320.Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (, ; meaning 'central province') is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Sagar, and Rewa being the other major cities. Madhya Pradesh is the seco ...

Educational Service and taught at the Government Colleges at

Nagpur Nagpur (pronunciation: Help:IPA/Marathi, aːɡpuːɾ is the third largest city and the winter capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the 13th largest city in India by population and according to an Oxford's Economics report, Nag ...

Jabalpur Jabalpur is a city situated on the banks of Narmada River in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. According to the 2011 census, it is the third-largest urban agglomeration in Madhya Pradesh and the country's 38th-largest urban agglomeration. J ...

, and

Bhopal Bhopal (; ) is the capital city of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and the administrative headquarters of both Bhopal district and Bhopal division. It is known as the ''City of Lakes'' due to its various natural and artificial lakes. It i ...

. In 1963, he joined

University of Delhi Delhi University (DU), formally the University of Delhi, is a collegiate central university located in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 1922 by an Act of the Central Legislative Assembly and is recognized as an Institute of Eminence (IoE) ...

as a reader and taught

Medieval Indian history Medieval India refers to a long period of Post-classical history of the Indian subcontinent between the "ancient period" and "modern period". It is usually regarded as running approximately from the breakup of the Gupta Empire in the 6th cent ...

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 Jai Narain Vyas University (JNVU, formerly known as University of Jodhpur) is an educational institution in Jodhpur city in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Established in 1962, the university took over the four colleges of Jodhpur run by the sta ...

(1973–79), and then at the Central University of Hyderabad (1979–83). Besides his mother tongue

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

, he was fluent in

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

Old Persian Old Persian is one of the two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan language, Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native ...

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
''

National Council of Educational Research and Training The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) is an autonomous organisation of the Government of India which was established in 1961 as a literary, scientific and charitable Society under the Societies Registration Act. Its head ...

(NCERT) Committee to draft the model school syllabus on Indian History.

List of works

*''History of the Khaljis'' (1950, 1967, 1980) *''Twilight of the Sultanate'' (1963, 1980) *''Studies in Asian History'' (edited – 1969) *''Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India'' (1973) * ''Early Muslims in India'' (1984) * ''The Mughal Harem'' (1988) is study on the history and nature of the

Mughal Harem The Mughal Harem was the harem of Mughal emperors of the Indian subcontinent. The term originated with the Near East, meaning a "forbidden place; sacrosanct, sanctum", and etymologically related to the Arabic ''ḥarīm'', "a sacred inviolable pl ...

of medieval India. K.S. Lal writes about many obscure topics like the role of the

Eunuchs A eunuch ( ) is a male who has been castrated. Throughout history, castration often served a specific social function. The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 2nd millennium ...

and drugs like

opium Opium (or poppy tears, scientific name: ''Lachryma papaveris'') is dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which i ...

in the Mughal Harem. * '' Indian Muslims: Who are they'' (1990) * ''The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India'' is a book published in 1993. (

Aditya Prakashan Biblia Impex India is a New Delhi-based book distribution company that specializes in books on Indology, Hinduism and Buddhism founded by the influential Indian historian Sita Ram Goel in 1963. It is currently managed by Goel's son Pradeep Kumar Go ...

, ). * ''Muslim Slave System in Medieval India'' (1994) * ''Historical essays'' * ''Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India'' (1999) * ''Growth of Scheduled Tribes and Castes in Medieval India'' (1995)

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 RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

.Delhi Historian's Group, Section 2. Part 3 Lal himself noted: "As usual y bookshave 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,India: International Religious Freedom Report 2005 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". Avril A. Powell praised Lal's works on Indian history in the 1950s and 60s, but concluded that by 1990s Lal's work represented "political agendas". 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".Jeremy Black.
Contesting History: Narratives of Public History
'. Bloomsbury Publishing; 13 March 2014. . p. 235.

Irfan Habib Irfan Habib (born August 10, 1931) is an Indian historian of ancient and medieval India, following the methodology of Marxist historiography in his contributions to economic history. He identifies as a Marxist and is well known for his strong ...

in a dispute over positions at

Indian Council of Historical Research The Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) is a captive body of the Ministry of Education, Government of India established by an Administrative Order. The body has provided financial assistance to historians and scholars through fellowshi ...

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."

''Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India''

The 1973 book ''Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India'' estimated the demographics of India between 1000 CE and 1500 CE. Simon Digby disputed Lal's study of the demographic situation in medieval India in a review in ''Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies'', Digby stated that estimate lacks accurate data in pre-

census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses incl ...

times. Digby, Simon (1975)
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London.
1975
, pp
176

177
Indian historian

criticized the book in 1978 in ''

The Indian Historical Review The ''Indian Historical Review'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that aims to provide a forum in all areas of historical studies, ranging from early times to contemporary history. The journal while focussing mainly on the Indian subcontinent h ...

''. He described Lal's starting population figure as "a figment of the imagination of one scholar resting on nothing more tangible than the imagination of another", and faulted Lal for unexplained or faulty assumptions in his other population estimates. K. S. Lal wrote a reply to Irfan Habib's criticism in 1979 in his book ''Bias in Indian Historiography'' (1979) and ''Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India'' (1999).

''The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India''

The 1993 book ''The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India'' attempted to assess the legacy of

Muslim rule in India Muslim rule in the Indian subcontinent began in the course of a gradual Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent, beginning mainly after the conquest of Sindh and Multan led by Muhammad ibn al-Qasim. Following the perfunctory rule by the Ghaznav ...

and describes its

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

. The book was criticized by Peter Jackson in the ''Journal of the

Royal Asiatic Society The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, commonly known as the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS), was established, according to its royal charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the en ...

'', stating that book contains "a markedly selective and one-sided account of India's Muslim past". K. S. Lal wrote a rebuttal to Jackson's criticism in his book ''Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India''.K. S. Lal's riposte to the reviews
''Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India'',

, 1999, Chapter 7. Avril A. Powell of

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

said the book was "propaganda" that was especially dangerous as it was written by a historian as esteemed as Lal.

Notes

References

"Delhi Historians Group's Publication "''Communalization of Education: The History Textbooks Controversy''", A report in 2002, New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University, India

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lal, K.S. 2002 deaths University of Allahabad faculty Indian male writers 1920 births Historians of South Asia 20th-century Indian historians Voice of India writers