Audrey Truschke – who likes to be called an ‘academician’ of South Asian studies has been receiving pushback from Indian nationalists and Hindus for quite some time now – courtesy her abhorrent, misinformed and biased opinions about India and its medieval past, marred by Islamic invasions and a murderous rule which claimed millions of lives. Estimates suggest that during Aurungzeb’s rule alone – some 4.6 million Indians were killed for their beliefs and cultural pride. Audrey Truschke, who teaches South Asian studies at Rutgers University, has employed herself in whitewashing the atrocities committed by Mughals and their predecessors on the natives of India.
Such whitewashing has met with stiff resistance from Hindus and those whose ancestors have been first-hand victims of blood-thirsty Islamic tyrants. As such, Hindu students of Rutgers Newark had taken to launching a petition campaign against Truschke for her white lies about India and its history. The petition called on the university to take stern action against the wannabe scholar for her anti-India inclinations. However, Rutgers University chose to stand ‘emphatically’ with their faculty member, thus, signalling to the Hindu students of their university to basically suck it up.
Read more: Audrey Truschke is a racist, hateful, bigoted propagandist; not a ‘historian’
In a statement released on Tuesday, the university said, “Rutgers emphatically supports Professor Truschke, academic freedom in pursuing her scholarship, abhors the vile messages end threats that are being directed at her, and calls for an immediate end to them.” To further justify its support for the controversial historian, Rutgers cited the significance of ‘academic freedom’ in scholarship. “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,” the university said.
— Rutgers University-Newark (@Rutgers_Newark) March 9, 2021
Rutgers Newark faced tremendous flak for their clear support to Hinduphobe Audrey Truschke. The alleged ‘scholar’ had cried foul on Twitter after the petition of students was made public, and claimed that she and her family were victims of a massive hate campaign. On Monday night, Truschke said she had been facing an “avalanche of hate speech, anti-Muslim sentiments, misogyny, violent threats, things endangering my family (yes, I have to leave that vague for safety reasons), and aggression towards my students”.
https://twitter.com/AudreyTruschke/status/1369421071569551360?s=20
For the record, Rutgers University is standing in firm support of Audrey Truschke, who, in the past has referred to Shri Ram as a “misogynist pig”. It is unfathomable how Rutgers has the temerity to stand in solidarity with such a vile woman, yet claim to promote campus-inclusion for all Hindu and minority-students. As a matter of fact, the petition put out by Hindu students of Rutgers details comprehensively the outrageous statements of Truschke. The Hindu students accused Audrey of leveraging her white privilege to portray persons of colour as “uncivilized” and “barbaric” to reinforce colonial stereotypes. It stated that the Rutgers University faculty member had claimed that the Bhagavad Gita, a central Hindu sacred text, “rationalizes mass slaughter” and violence.
Among the foremost demand of the Hindu students was that the university disallows Truschke from teaching a course that involves materials related to Hinduism and India due to her inherently prejudiced views. It also demanded that Rutgers Newark publicly condemn Truschke for causing trauma to Hindu students, alumni, and the Hindu community at large with her irresponsible tweets and utterances. As is evident, the university has done nothing and has instead chosen to walk all over the sentiments of all Hindu students, only in order to shield one braindead and vile faculty member.