The curious case of controversial historian Audrey Truschke
- Vikram Zutsi A little overfive years ago, Audrey Truschke was on the verge ofreleasing herfirst book, Culture of Encounters, which examined the cultural and literary interactions between Hindus, Jains and their Mughal patrons. It was a topic I wanted to know more about, and I reached out to Truschke for an interview. Like most junior academics just starting out, she was eagerto get her work in front of a wider audience. As far as I know, it was one of her very first interviews. I forgot all about it until a few years later when I stumbled on an Internet clip of her fulminating about India’s ruling party and its leader Narendra Modi. This was a very different Audrey Truschke from the person Iremembered. In the interim, she had published a controversial book on Aurangzeb that was largely seen as an unconvincing attempt to rationalise the atrocities attributed to him by a number of Indian and Western historians. As a foreigner, one has to be prepared for backlash when one takes a highl