Audrey Truschke

Audrey Truschke is Associate Professor of South Asian History at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. Her research focuses on the cultural, imperial, and intellectual history of medieval and early modern India as well as the politics of history in modern times. She is the author of three books and is currently working on a single volume history of India with the support of a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars grant. Audrey believes in talking about history outside the ivory tower, and so you can find her on Twitter (@audreytruschke).

“Decolonizing” Indians Through Hindutva Ideological Control

By Audrey Truschke / Issue 29, Education, Magazine / 9 minutes of reading

“A foe’s words though seeming friendly Can be read at once.” – Tamil Kural of Tiruvalluvar (trans. PS Sundaram) In the hands of the Hindu Right, “decolonize” has become a contronym. In many academic and social justice contexts, the term retains its older meaning of undoing colonizing practices and deconstructing imperial structures and analytics. In this sense,