Talk:Audrey Truschke

Audrey Truschke is Associate Professor of History and Director, Asian Studies at Rutgers University as of October 2022. She is also a member of the South Asia Scholar Activist Collective and a contributor to the "Hindutva Harassment Field Manual." According to her university profile, her research focuses on the cultural, imperial, and intellectual history of early modern and modern India (c. 1500-present).

In 2021, she along with Hibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader of the Taliban, co-signed a letter supporting "Dismantling Global Hindutva" Conference, as an academic and scholar and made the allegation

"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."

Publications related to India

Books

1. Truschke, Audrey. Culture of Encounters. Columbia University Press. 2016
2. Truschke, Audrey. Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King. Stanford University Press. 2017
3. Truschke, Audrey. The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim Rule . Columbia University Press. 2021

Articles

1. Truschke, Audrey. “The Mughal Self and the Jain Other in Siddhicandra’s Bhanucandraganicarita.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 42.4 (2022): 341–347.
2. Truschke, Audrey. “Hindutva’s Dangerous Rewriting of History.” South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (SAMAJ), vol. 24/25, 14 Dec. 2020.

   In this article Audrey Truschke distorts the idea about what Hindutva or Hinduism is, spreads misinformation about the Hindus, and makes derogatory remarks on Hinduism.

   Audrey begins by imposing her own definitions of Hindutva and Hinduism and tries to delegitimize the voice of Hindus:

   • "Hindu nationalism or Hindutva—a fascist ideology that advocates Hindu supremacy, especially over Muslims—champions an outlandish vision of how scientific modernity flourished in early India; this is part of a larger agenda to rewrite the Indian past to serve present-day political interests."
   • "In terms of specifics, Hindutva followers conceive of Hindu identity as having little to do with faith.... Rather, in Hindutva thought, Hindu-ness (the literal meaning of Hindutva) is a sort of martial machismo rooted in a shared cultural background that stretches back to time immemorial."

   The author's narrative demonstrates a concerning insensitivity to the profound struggles and historical experiences of the people of India as she continues to holiestian and a historical King who is still celebrated today despite hundreds of years of attempts to destroy him and his image by Muslims and then by the British and then by academics.

   Audrey also feels that she is qualified to tell Hindus how to depict their deities and how they should evolve over time.:

   • "Hindutva advocates have little to say about British colonialism, a brutal period of Indian history, because doing so does not serve their political purposes today."
   • "But, the Hindutva Ram is different; he is a rallying cry for right-wing Hindus to express an identity as a strong, martial race. The Hindutva Ram who is featured on posters even looks markedly different, notably far more aggressive as compared to standard religious depictions of Ram"

   The author is disseminating false information:

   • Such as RSS controlling the government of India "Hindutva ahistoricity has accelerated since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—which embraces Hindutva as part of its platform—took over India’s central government in 2014. The championing of Hindutva myths about the past has also expanded out from social media and political environments, two contexts hardly known for their devotion to accuracy, into academic circles. Hindu nationalists have become more brazen in introducing ahistorical claims into school textbooks, as discussed at the end of this article."
   • "Hindutva ideologues want Hindus alone to be indigenous to India so that this one social group can define what it means to be Indian and can exclude others from this category. They exclude as non-Indian many groups who have long been part of life and society on the subcontinent, above all Muslims."
   • "While giving the British a pass, Hindu nationalists blame seemingly all wrongs in Indian history on Muslims. In addition to that being hateful and incorrect, it is notable that Hindu nationalists rarely distinguish between groups of Muslims, whether past versus present, or those with political power versus those without, and so forth. Since Hindutva ideology seeks Hindu supremacy, the enemy that serves as their foil must be constructed as equally flat and politically homogenous in its identity."

   Audrey then writes irrelevant claims and misguides academics from her argument by talking about origin of Man:

   • "For Hindutva followers, one critical aspect of what it means to be “Hindu,” in the peculiar way that they define that term, is to be indigenous to India. Immediately, then, we have a historical problem, since, if one goes back far enough, no group is originally from India."

   The author completely disregard the edict from the Supreme Court of India of a case that has been going on for 100 years, about 'Ram Mandir of Ayodhya' and states that "The new Ram Mandir in Ayodhya celebrates this violent exercise of Hindu supremacy, in which a modern myth about the past can justify the mass slaughter of Muslims."

3. Sarkar, Marika, John Seyller, and Audrey Truschke. "The Persian Text of the Doha Ramayana." In The Ramayana of Hamida Banu Begum, Queen Mother of Mughal India, Silvana Editoriale, 2020, pp. 24–31.
4. Truschke, Audrey. "A Padshah Like Manu: Political Advice for Akbar in the Persian Mahābhārata." Philological Encounters, vol. 5, no. 2, 2020, pp. 1-22.
5. Truschke, Audrey. “A Mughal Debate about Jain Asceticism.” In The Empires of the Near East and India: Sources Studies of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Literate Communities, edited by Hani Khafipour, Columbia University Press, 2019, pp. 107-123.
6. Truschke, Audrey. “Mughal Sanskrit Literature: The Book of War and the Treasury of Compassion.” In The Empires of the Near East and India: Sources Studies of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Literate Communities, edited by Hani Khafipour, Columbia University Press, 2019, pp. 450-477.
7. Truschke, Audrey. “The Power of the Islamic Sword in Narrating the Death of Indian Buddhism." History of Religions, vol. 57, no. 4, 2018, pp. 404-435.
8. Truschke, Audrey. Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King. Stanford University Press, 2017.
9. Truschke, Audrey. “Deceptive Familiarity: European Perceptions of Access at the Mughal Court.” In The Key to Power? The Culture of Access in Princely Courts, 1400-1700, edited by Dries Raeymaekers and Sebastiaan Derks, Brill, 2016, pp. 65-99.
10. Truschke, Audrey. Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court. Columbia University Press, South Asia Across the Disciplines Series, 2016.
11. Truschke, Audrey. “Imaginative Outsiders: Empowering Undergraduates to Analyze Religion.” Teaching Theology & Religion, vol. 19, no. 3, 2016, pp. 282-286.
12. Truschke, Audrey. “Translating the Solar Cosmology of Sacred Kingship.” Medieval History Journal, vol. 19, no. 1, 2016, pp. 136-141.
13. Truschke, Audrey. "Contested History: Brahmanical Memories of Relations with the Mughals.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 58, no. 4, 2015, pp. 419-452.
14. Truschke, Audrey. “Dangerous Debates: Jain Responses to Theological Challenges at the Mughal Court.” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 49, no. 5, 2015, pp. 1311-1344.
15. Truschke, Audrey. “Regional Perceptions: Writing to the Mughal Court in Sanskrit.” In Cosmopolitismes en Asie du Sud. Sources, itinéraires, langues (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle), edited by Corinne Lefèvre, Ines Županov, and Jorge Flores, Editions de l’EHESS, 2015, pp. 251-274.
16. Truschke, Audrey, and Qamar Adamjee. “Reimagining the ‘Idol Temple of Hindustan’: Textual and Visual Translation of Sanskrit Texts in Mughal India.” In Pearls on a String: Artists, Patrons, and Poets at the Great Islamic Courts, edited by Amy Landau, Walters Art Museum; University of Washington Press, 2015, pp. 141-165.
17. Truschke, Audrey. “Defining the Other: An Intellectual History of Sanskrit Lexicons and Grammars of Persian.” Journal of Indian Philosophy, vol. 40, no. 6, 2012, pp. 635-668.
18. Truschke, Audrey. “Setting the Record Wrong: A Sanskrit Vision of Mughal Conquests.” South Asian History and Culture, vol. 3, no. 3, 2012, pp. 373-396.
19. Truschke, Audrey. “The Mughal Book of War: A Persian Translation of the Sanskrit Mahabharata.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 31, no. 2, 2011, pp. 506-520.