Criticism
Lal's early books were not controversial, but some of his later works have earned him a lot of criticism by historians such as Peter Jackson and Irfan Habib (despite the fact that Irfan Habib's father, the historian Muhammad Habib, wrote a foreword to "History of the Khaljis"). The criticism included allegations of being a spokesman for the RSS. Lal noted: "As usual these 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."
In the midst of a Hindu-Muslim antagonism he is allegedly oft-cited and patronized by various right-wing proponent groups of Hindutva. He was both placed by the BJP (as part of the NDA 2005 government of India), and made the 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. 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, thereby placing him among a controversial group of authors charged by the left-leaning political parties with the "saffronized" (i.e., make lessons consonant with the Hindu world view) re-writing of history, with a negative portrayal of Muslims and a pro-Hindu bent. 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".
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