Professor M G S Narayanan, who has been sacked as chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, has charged Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi with squandering public funds to promote a communal agenda.

"The HRD minister, along with some bureaucrats and Sangh Parivar academics, are promoting obscurantist policies in the field of history in India. I have been sacked because I fought against his communal agenda and stood strongly for the cause of history and its research," Professor Narayanan told rediff.com.

The noted historian was appointed chairman of the apex council more than two years ago and was operating from the ICHR office in Kozhikode. But since then he has been locked in a battle with Joshi and academics owing allegiance to the Sangh Parivar.

On Wednesday, the HRD Ministry announced that Kumid Bansal, an additional secretary in the Department of Secondary and Higher Education, would replace Narayanan. Bansal will operate from the ICHR headquarters in Delhi.

Professor Narayanan, a retired professor of history from the University of Calicut, said that he is not 'interested' in challenging the 'illegal and arbitrary' government order in a court of law.

The eminent historian alleged that his removal was the culmination of a series of illegal and irregular actions taken by HRD Ministry officials in the last two years. "The officials were under pressure from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which wanted to use the ICHR as a vehicle to spread its communal agenda," Professor Narayanan alleged.

The historian said that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh wanted 'to influence the working of the ICHR'. But, soon after he was appointed ICHR chairman, the RSS leaders felt that he was the wrong man to head the organisation because "I resisted secret moves of the Sangh Parivar."