He earned his BA and MA, both in 1982, from the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University and wrote his Master's thesis on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Indian philosophy.

His co-edited book, Fingerprinting Popular Culture: The Mythic and the Iconic in Indian Cinema, appeared from Oxford University Press (2006).

It is one of two books, along with The Future of Knowledge and Culture: A Dictionary for the Twenty-first Century, he has co-edited with Ashis Nandy, arguably India's most prominent intellectual.

This is a very personal and yet critical anthology, prefaced by a long introduction, focused on how the city in India has been imagined, and the antinomies it invokes are of day and night, passion and reflection, exclusion and inclusion.

The writers represented in it include Nirad Chauduri, Gieve Patel, Premendra Mitra, Nissim Ezekiel, Ananthamurthy, Tagore, Pritish Nandy, Buddhadev Bose, Ravi Dayal, Amitav Ghosh, Daya Pawar, Chandralekha, and Prakash Jadhav, and contemporary intellectuals such as Thomas Blom Hansen, Shiv Viswanathan, Sumanta Banerjee, and Ashis Nandy.

Lal has been involved in various initiatives designed to enhance South-Asian cultural and political contacts, foster systematic critiques of dominant knowledge systems and the various imperialisms of the West, and suggest more ecumenical futures for all humanity.

He has also been associated with INCAD (International Network for Cultural Alternatives to Development), the Intercultural Institute of Montreal, and the Coalition for an Egalitarian and Pluralistic India (Los Angeles).