While completing her PhD in 2012 in New York, Audrey Truschke did not imagine that her work would one day rile up a section of Indians so much that she would feel physically unsafe. So much so that Truschke tells Shoaib Daniyal in this episode of Scroll Adda that she fears coming to India.

Truschke's work on medieval Indian history has severely angered India's ruling Hindutva ideologues. She has written on the significant role Sanskrit played in Indo-Muslim culture, a 5,000-year history of the subcontinent and her most attacked book, a slim biography of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb that showed that his demonisation is a much later phenomenon and during his own time, he was looked at with reverence by both his Hindu and Muslim subjects, as any Mughal emperor would be.

Truschke is not shy when it comes to her politics. She compares Hindutva to fascism and her CV has "Hindu nationalist attacks" in the honours section. She sees no contradiction when it comes to being a historian and in fact says that having a moral compass is necessary to study the humanities.

Producer: Kritika Pant

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