A petition, circulated by a group called Hindu on Campus, is calling for Dr. Audrey Truschke to no longer teach South Asian studies at Rutgers University-Newark.
The university came out in support of her scholarship.
The petition argues that Truschke, a professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark, characterized Hindu texts and deities as violent and misogynistic and “leveraged white privilege to portray POC [People of Color] as ‘uncivilized’ and ‘barbaric’ to reinforce colonial stereotypes.” It also takes issue with her work on the history of Indo-Muslim rule, which asserts that Muslim rulers, like Mughal King Aurangzeb, did not target Hindus for systemic violence, counter to the popular narrative in India today.
An accompanying open letter was sent to Rutgers University President Dr. Jonathan Holloway, Chancellor Dr. Nancy Cantor and Dr. Enobong (Anna) Branch, the senior vice president for equity.
In the aftermath, Truschke has received violent threats to herself and her family on social media from Hindu nationalists, from within and outside of the United States. She tweeted that she blocked “5,750 blocked accounts and counting.”
Rutgers University and the South Asian studies program both released statements in Truschke’s defense:
“Scholarship is sometimes controversial, perhaps especially when it is at the interface of history and religion, but the freedom to pursue such scholarship, as Professor Truschke does rigorously, is at the heart of the academic enterprise,” Branch, Cantor and Arts and Sciences Dean Dr. Jacquie Mattis wrote in a statement.
