Audrey Truschke

In 2016, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court, was published by Columbia University Press. It dwelt upon the literary, social, and political roles of Sanskrit in the Mughal courts from 1560 to 1650, and was reviewed in multiple journals.[5]

Aria Fani, in the Journal of Iranian Studies found the work to be an invaluable contribution to South Asian studies.[6] Edmond Smith of the University of Kent, for the Reviews in History, found the work to be "evocative, [and] expertly researched", where Truschke used her "exceptional linguistic talents" to pose and answer provoking questions about the Mughal Empire while inspiring other scholars to re-examine their approaches to studying religions.[7][8][9][10][11][12]

In 2017, she published Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King about the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, with Stanford University Press.[13] Truschke, in her reading of sources, suggest that Aurangzeb was not the anti-Hindu tyrant as he has been made out to be in popular scholarship; there was no "systematic" attack on Hindus and his sporadic destruction of temples or imposition of jizya must be interpreted from within a political and economical milieu.

Munis D. Faruqui, a historian of Mughal India, found the work to be an excellent work aimed at non-specialists, and praised Truschke's willingness to tackle the topic despite being aware about the inevitability of "vicious personal attacks from mostly nonacademic critics".[14] However, Faruqui cautioned that the book "[did] not fill unexplored gaps in the historiography."[14] Sara Mondini, a scholar of Indo-Islamic art and architecture, commended Truschke for having penned a "precise and exhaustive" volume on the subject with due regard to sources; it was far "rich and complex" than the "stereotypical nationalist" ones prevailing in scholarship, and was "pivotal" to the understanding of Hindu-Muslim encounters in premodern.[15] Patrick Madigan, writing for The Heythrop Journal, admired Truschke for having rescued "Aurangzeb from contemporary Hindu nationalists."[16][17]

Her third monograph The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim Rule, was published in January 2021 by Columbia University Press.[5] Sheldon Pollock, Romila Thapar, Cynthia Talbot, and Richard M. Eaton blurbed it.[18]

In May 2021, she co-edited "The Ramayana of Hamida Banu Begum, Queen Mother of Mughal India" which was published by Silvana Editoriale and Museum of Islamic Art, Doha.[19]

In one of her tweets, Truschke, referring to an episode in Ramayana, said that Sita had admonished Rama as a "misogynist pig"; she cited a critical translation of the Valmiki Ramayana by Robert P. Goldman in support.[21][22][23] Goldman however denied that he ever used such language and deemed her choice of words to be "highly inappropriate".[24] Truschke responded by stating that such disagreements are routine aspects of scholarly discourse and she had only offered a "loose translation" using contemporary language.[22][25] According to Truschke, Goldman himself had used words like "pimp" in describing Sita's criticism of Rama and further, she was not endorsing Sita's criticism.[25][26]

Srinivas Reddy, a professor of religious studies at Brown University, found Truschke's choice to words to lie in the extreme and missing contextual nuances; however, he supported her right to critically interpret epic characters and found subsequent attacks on her by the Hindu Right to be misogynistic in essence, and deplorable.[26] Highlighting how the Ramayana was not a dead text but a way of life in India, he urged Truschke to adopt a less polarizing voice in her analyses and respect the text, if not revere.[26] Writer Purushottam Agrawal found the tweet to be inflammatory, disrespectful and poor; it reduced the layered and complex character of Rama to a "caricature in a contemporary American comic strip," noting that "'Prakrita' [is] a common word, which essentially means 'ordinary' or 'uncivilised', or 'raw' as opposed to refined."[27] Cultural critic Pushpesh Pant found the translation to be poor, as well.[28]

After publishing her monograph on Aurangzeb, Truschke was accused of whitewashing his genocidal atrocities on Hindus and trolled by the Hindu right.[34][15][35] Wendy Doniger noted these to be ad-hominem attacks infused with islamophobia and misogyny.[34]

In 2021, a group of Hindu students of Rutgers University circulated a petition that called for Rutgers University to disallow Truschke from teaching a course on Hinduism, condemn her views, and create “a safe space for diaspora Hindus".[1][2] The petition alleged that Truschke held "inherently prejudiced views" on Hinduism and the Hindus.[1] Among the alleged reasons were Truschke's claiming that Bhagavad Gita rationalizes mass slaughter,[1][note 1] linking Hindus with the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol,[1][note 2] whitewashing the "trauma" inflicted on Hindus by Aurangzeb,[1][note 3] and designing an undergraduate course to portray an “exotic-erotic-chauvinist-oppressive" view of Hindu India by relying on scholars like Wendy Doniger and focusing on the multiplicity of Ramayana among other errors of omission and commission.[2]

The University, while defending academic freedom and calling for an immediate end to hate speech directed at her, said that it was initiating a dialogue with the Hindu community to understand their concerns.[40][1] Days later, faculty members of Rutgers from varied faith backgrounds (including Hinduism) drafted an open letter which affirmed faith in Truschke's scholarship, rejected the levelled charges of "Hinduphobia", and applauded Rutgers' affirmation of academic liberty whilst upholding commitment to diversity. Among the signatories who expressed solidarity with those academics were Romila Thapar, Rajmohan Gandhi, Sheldon Pollock, Partha Chatterjee, and Suketu Mehta.[3]

In May 2021, Hindu American Foundation filed a libel suit on her and several other organizations in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.[41][42] A diverse group of intellectuals and academics — Akeel Bilgrami, Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai, Cornel West, Martha Nussbaum, Nandini Sundar, Noam Chomsky, Romila Thapar, Sudipta Kaviraj, Sheldon Pollock, and Wendy Doniger among others — condemned HAF's tactics as a strategic lawsuit against public participation to silence critics and push forward Hindutva.[42][43]

On 15 March 2022, Judge Amit Mehta stayed Truschke and others' motions to dismiss the suit since he deemed one of their arguments—about whether HAF had successfully satisfied the second requirement of invoking diversity jurisdiction—as a "substantial question" of procedure, that needed to be settled prior to adjudication on merits.[44] It was subsequently held that HAF's claimed damages were "speculative" and devoid of "supporting facts" thereby necessitating a discovery.[44]