At Rutgers University, where she is professor of South Asian history, Audrey Truschke’s research focuses on the cultural, imperial and intellectual history of medieval and early modern India — now, as of June 2023, the most populous country in the world — as well as the politics of history in modern times.
She is the author of three books and is at work on another to be published in spring 2025; that book is to be a single-volume history of India for Princeton University Press, supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars grant.
In addition to her writings on Mughals, Sanskrit texts and Hindu-Muslim interactions — including the history of Hindu nationalism in India — Truschke also writes on abuses of history and human rights in contemporary South Asia.
She’ll discuss her research as it relates to the Interfaith Lecture Series Week Four theme of “World Religion and a Shifting Population,” at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy. Among the topics she’ll discuss are far-right hate campaigns and violent threats, of which she has first-hand experience. Because of her critical writings on Hindu nationalism, she’s been accused of Hinduphobia — but those accusations conflate criticism of Hindu nationalism as a political ideology with criticism of Hinduism as a religion.
“Hinduism is an incredibly broad-based religion with great internal diversity,” Truschke told Rutgers’ independent student newspaper The Daily Targum in 2021. “As a professor who works, in part, on the history of religions, I teach and appreciate that diversity. It saddens me when others see that same breadth as a liability that they are willing to disown in pursuit of narrow political goals.”
Last fall, Truschke wrote an essay for Time magazine titled “How India’s Hindu Nationalists Are Weaponizing History Against Muslims,” arguing that Prime Minister Narenda Modi is advancing a vision for the country “radically different” from its status as a secular democracy.
“Modi wants India to become a Hindu nation, in which India’s religious minorities (about 20% of the population) are second-class citizens and Muslims especially (about 14% of Indians) are compelled to accept increasing majoritarian violence,” she wrote. “Indeed, stories of terrorizing Indian Muslims have become depressingly common in Modi’s India, with human rights groups documenting rising violence with each passing year.”
As the ruling party’s agenda continues, with Modi as its figurehead, Truschke warned, “we will likely see more attacks on religious minorities, especially Muslims, in both India’s past and present.”
