Hyderabad: Hyderabad Police refused permission to US historian Audrey Truschke who is viewed as anti-Hindu by the right-wing groups, to deliver her talk. Her talk which was being organised by Krishnakriti Foundation, in collaboration with History for Peace, was scheduled for August 11 on “Unpopular Stories: Narrating the Indo Islamic Past and Navigating Present-Day Prejudices”.
According to Truschke people with “self-admitted connections to RSS and BJP” had written to Hyderabad police “protesting her appearance”.
Truschke signed off the note stating “I deeply regret that my presentation and the subsequent exchange of ideas will not occur. Today is a sad day for the pursuit of knowledge and academic freedom, and it is a happy day for the proponents of the Hindu Rashtra.”
Truschke who holds a PhD in Indology, is an assistant professor of South Asian History at Rutgers University, Newark, and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University. Her books include “Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court” and “Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth.” She has been studying Sanskrit for nearly two decades.