Audrey Truschke

"Aurangzeb, the sixth Mughal Emperor (r. 1658-1707), is perhaps the most despised of India’s medieval Muslim rulers. People cite various alleged “facts” about Aurangzeb’s reign to support their contemporary condemnation, few of which are true. For instance, contrary to widespread belief, Aurangzeb did not destroy thousands of Hindu temples. He did not perpetrate anything approximating a genocide of Hindus. He did not instigate a large-scale conversion program that offered millions of Hindu the choice of Islam or the sword."

"For anyone unfamiliar with these episodes, in Valmiki's telling (I'm loosely translating here): During the agnipariksha, Sita basically tells Rama he's a misogynist pig and uncouth. During the golden deer incident, Sita accuses Lakshmana of lusting after her and setting up Rama."

"Thinking today about Sambhaji, a seventeenth-century Maratha ruler who, by the end of his life, had alienated many supporters through brutal and miscalculated tactics. Seems that those who honor him may honor his legacy too. #Sambhaji"

"Over the centuries, many commentators have spread the myth of the bigoted, evil Aurangzeb on the basis of shockingly thin evidence. Many false ideas still mar popular memory of Aurangzeb, including that he massacred millions of Hindus and destroyed thousands of temples. Neither of these commonly believed “facts” is supported by historical evidence, although some scholars have attempted, usually in bad faith, to provide an alleged basis for such tall tales. More common than bald-faced lies, however, have been biased interpretations of cherry-picked episodes selected with the unabashed goal of supporting a foregone rebuke of Aurangzeb."

"Shivaji’s return to insurgency was devastating for the Mughals. Beginning in 1670 Shivaji plundered Surat and other places repeatedly."

"More dubiously, some have proposed that Aurangzeb’s alleged austerity was a fatal flaw. For instance, Jadunath Sarkar, who did more scholarly work than anybody else in the twentieth century on Aurangzeb, put it thus in his dramatic style: “[in Aurangzeb’s reign] the Mughal crescent rounded to fulness [sic] and then began to wane visibly.” Jadunath Sarkar spelled out his vision of Aurangzeb in his many books on the man, including the five-volume History of Aurangzib. The final tome begins, “The life of Aurangzib was one long tragedy,—a story of man battling in vain against an invisible but inexorable Fate, a tale of how the strongest human endeavor was baffled by the forces of the age.” For Sarkar, Aurangzeb was a tragic figure."

"Modern historians estimate that 15 to 20 percent of Bengal's population died during the 1769-1770 famine, a starkly different outcome than after earlier failed harvests. For example, 1737 and 1738 witnessed poor harvests in Bengal, but the Mughals and local rulers helped alleviate conditions by buying grain, making loans, and permitting late revenue payments. In contrast, thirty years later, the British did none of those things and, in fact, still tried to collect revenue from starving farmers."

"The British oversaw - and contributed through inaction to - dozens of famines during two centuries of colonial rule, culminating in the 1943 famine (also in Bengal) that cost two millions Indian their lives."

"Let us note finally that on this issue, Audrey’s book is representative of a wider concern to whitewash Aurangzeb. In their all-out war on Hinduism and specific Hindu ideas, the South Asia scholars tend to practise Groupthink; there is rarely anything original, they only outdo each other in how daring they can make their own articulation of ever the same position.... To sum up, the presently-discussed thesis by Audrey Truschke comes to add to the numbers of what formally look like studies in history, but effectively are meant as strikes in the ongoing battle against self-respecting Hinduism."

"The political power equation that facilitates the partisan anti-scholarly conduct of your camp will not last forever. One day it will become feasible to do academic research on the strange phenomenon that an entire academic and mediatic guild has systematically disinformed the public about the communal situation in India, consistently for decades. Your own whitewash of Aurangzeb will serve as a significant piece of evidence."

"Audrey Truschke has engaged in what would in any other context be called genocide denial and Holocaust revisionism. But because her hatred is against Hindus, Rutgers doesn't care. It's a flagrant and vile "standard"."