About MLS
Professor ML Sondhi, (1933 – 2003), an illustrious academic and Rhodes Scholar, joined the Indian Foreign Service leading to a posting as Cultural Attaché (also for a time Charge d’Affaires) to Prague. He was appointed Secretary to the Indian delegation at the UN but left the Foreign Service to return to India and join the then Indian School of International Studies as Reader in International Relations. In 1965 he became a Member of the Symposium on Conflict in Society which founded the academic discipline of Peace Research and Conflict Resolution. Professor Sondhi helped start the monthly review Shakti once judged by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the twenty best journals in the Commonwealth.
In 1967 ML Sondhi was elected Member of Parliament from New Delhi on a Bharatiya Jana Sangha ticket, and served a term during which he earned a reputation for being a formidable and eloquent parliamentarian. He took up such causes as Tibet, Bangla Desh, the Frontier Gandhi, the legacy of Subhas Bose, apart from multifarious concerns relating to the citizens of Delhi.
Professor Sondhi taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University and later worked in the Intellectual and Foreign Policy cells of the Bharatiya Janata Party remaining on its National Executive through the eighties and nineties. He was appointed Chairman of the Indian Social Science Research Council in 2000 and was appointed by APJ Abdul Kalam as member of the Consultative Group of Departments on Science & Technology. In 2002 he launched his own Institute for Asia-Pacific Security.