The Royal Historical Society of London in its meeting held on 9th May 2014 at London elected Capt. Lingala Pandu Ranga Reddy, a member of the Society. The Administrative Secretary, Melanie Ransom, informed through a letter dated 19th May 2014 and also confirmed through the Society’s email dated 29th May 2014.
Capt. Reddy is a doyen of History, has been elected for his original contribution to Historical Scholarship. He is the first historian ever to be elected to this prestigious Royal Historical Society from integrated Andhra Pradesh. He is also awarded with the Fellowship of Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland in 2011.
He, a war veteran of 1965 Indo-Pak war, has had a brilliant academic career: an M.A. with a Gold medal of Osmania University, and M.Phil. First-class-First from Annamalai University for his dissertation titled ‘The Case of Hyderabad in the Security Council’. His writings and research works became source material to the Telangana protagonists. While discussing the Telangana State Bill in Andhra Pradesh Assembly in 2014, many MLAs cited his research material to lend verisimilitude to their arguments. He is not only a diligent researcher and a prolific writer but also a consummate teacher of History. He taught History to many I.A.S., I.P.S. and Group-I aspirants. Some of them rose to become senior Secretaries and Director-Generals of Police. He was the amanuensis of the historic memorandum of 40 Telangana MLAs demanding Telangana state to Sonia Gandhi in August 2000. This set the Telangana ball rolling.
He caused a sensation two years ago by spurning his doctorate degree in the convocation of Osmania University for both Urdu language and Telangana statehood. He has been demanding to restore the Urdu legend on the University logo. Presently, he is writing a book about Hyderabad Police Action and Pandit Sunderlal Report. This book will be released on 17th September, 2014.