NEW DELHI: Just months after its top panel was reconstituted by the Modi government, cracks are now emerging within the country’s premier body for historical research.Noted archaeologist and professor emeritus at Cambridge University Dilip K Chakrabarti , who HRD Minister Smriti Irani had recently appointed as member of Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) overruling the recommendation of its chief Y Sudershan Rao, has lambasted the body for inviting “vedic teacher” David Frawley to deliver the Foundation Day lecture.Speaking to ET, Chakrabarti said, “David Frawley is not an academic. Why should he be invited to deliver an academic lecture?” “It’s a fact there is a long shadow of the Left on history writing in India. But we need to correct that through proper academic research. We cannot achieve that with the likes of Mr. Frawley.”Charkrabarti added he would flag this matter, apart from the need for structural reforms, at the first meeting of ICHR’s newly-constituted governing body on Friday, just ahead of Frawley’s lecture on ‘Textual Evidence in Vedas — Cultural and Historical Implication’.Frawley, whose Indian name is Vamdev Shastri, is an American-Hindu spiritual teacher and a strong proponent of yoga, vedic astrology and ayurveda. He has a D.Litt in yoga from Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana in Bengaluru and runs a web-based educational institution in US called the American Institute of Vedic studies.Chakrabarti’s critique is interesting as it comes from a historian who is not only an RSS favourite, but also respected by Marxist historians for his peer-reviewed works. He is also associated with the Vivekananda International Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank started by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval , which has given the present central government some of its most significant and strategic appointees.The Cambridge professor is probably the only renowned academic face on the research council at present. His colleagues at ICHR include four historians who are office bearers of RSS’s history wing Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana.Frawley defended his impending presence at the ICHR lecture. “Apart from Leftist, Marxist, and other current academic approaches is a traditional school of thought in India that honours its cultural ethos. My aim is to promote a new examination of that, starting with Vedic literature. Though born in the West, my background is in India’s older traditions, which I believe are still widely relevant. Such a dharmic or Indic school of thought should be revived and have its point of view represented. This may be a task for a new order of thinkers, not simply a modification of existing approaches,” he said in an email response to ET.This is not the first time that an event organised by ICHR under its present chief Rao has attracted flak for the choice of speaker. The seventh Maulana Abdul Kalam Memorial Lecture delivered by Prof SN Balagangadhara of Ghent University, Belgium, in November witnessed fireworks as other historians protested the invited academic’s credentials — Balagangadhara is a philosopher by training.