News India Times
October 9, 2015
16
– that’s all you need to know
Cover Story
ByMarguerite Rigoglioso
n recent years, as ten-
sions between Hindus
and Muslims have
mounted, India’s gov-
ernment has been
accused of instigating or
condoning numerous acts
of violence against
Muslims.
Popular thought in
India holds that the origin
of this conflict goes back
centuries to medieval
times, when Muslims
expanded into the Indian
subcontinent.
According to Audrey
Truschke, a Mellon post-
doctoral fellow in the
Department of Religious
Studies, however, much of
the current religious con-
flict in India has been
fueled by ideological
assumptions about that
period rather than an
accurate rendering of the
subcontinent’s history.
In her new book,
Culture of Encounters:
Sanskrit at the Mughal
Court (Columbia
University Press, forth-
coming), Truschke says
that the heyday of Muslim
rule in India from the 16th
to 18th centuries was, in
fact, one of “tremendous
cross-cultural respect and
fertilization,” not religious
or cultural conflict.
In her study of Sanskrit
and Persian accounts of
life under the powerful
Islamic dominion known
as the Mughal Empire, she
provides the first detailed
account of India’s religious
intellectuals during this
period.
Her research paints a far
different picture than
common perceptions,
which assume that the
Muslim presence has
always been hostile to
Indian languages, religions
and culture. A leading
scholar of South Asian cul-
tural and intellectual his-
tory, Truschke argues that
this more divisive interpre-
tation actually developed
during the colonial period
from 1757 to 1947.
“The British benefited
from pitting Hindus and
Muslims against one
another and portrayed
themselves as neutral sav-
iors who could keep
ancient religious conflicts
at bay,” she says. “While
colonialism ended in the
1940s, the modern Hindu
right has found tremen-
dous political value in con-
tinuing to proclaim and
create endemic Hindu-
Muslim conflict.”
Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya
Janata Party has been criti-
cized for being anti-
Muslim. Modi was chief
minister of Gujarat state,
where in 2002 Hindu mobs
killed more than 1,000
Muslims; he was widely
blamed for failing to stem
the violence. As a result,
the United States denied
Modi a visa for more than
a decade until 2014 when
it became clear that Modi
would be India’s next
prime minister.
Truschke argues that
the ideology underpinning
such violence – one that
Modi himself openly
embraces – erroneously
“erases Mughal history and
writes religious conflict
into Indian history where
there was none, thereby
fueling and justifying
modern religious intoler-
ance.”
Her work shows that the
Muslim impulse in India
was not aimed at dominat-
ing Indian culture or
Hinduism. She hopes her
findings “will provide a
solid historiographical
basis for intervention in
modern, political rewrit-
ings of the Indian past.”
Correcting The Record
Truschke, one of the few
living scholars with com-
petence in both Sanskrit
and Persian, is the first
scholar to study texts from
both languages in explor-
ing the courtly life of the
Mughals. The Mughals
ruled a great swath of the
Indian subcontinent from
the early 16th to the mid-
18th centuries, building
great monuments like the
Taj Mahal.
Over several months in
Pakistan and 10 months in
India, Truschke traveled to
more than two dozen
archives in search of man-
uscripts. She was able to
analyze the Mughal elite’s
diverse interactions with
Sanskrit intellectuals in a
way not previously done.
She has accessed, for
example, six histories that
follow Jain monks at the
Mughal court as they
accompanied Mughal
kings on expeditions,
engaged in philosophical
and religious debates, and
lived under the empire’s
rule. These works collec-
tively run to several thou-
sand pages, and none have
been translated into
English.
Truschke found that
high-level contact between
learned Muslims and
Hindus was marked by
collaborative encounters
across linguistic and reli-
gious lines.
She said her research
overturns the assumption
that the Mughals were
hostile to traditional
Indian literature or knowl-
edge systems. In fact, her
findings reveal how
Mughals supported and
engaged with Indian
thinkers and ideas.
Early modern-era
Muslims were in fact
“deeply interested in tradi-
tional Indian learning,
which is largely housed in
Sanskrit,” says Truschke,
who is teaching religion
courses at Stanford
through 2016 in associa-
tion with her fellowship.
Hybrid Political Identity
Truschke’s book focuses
on histories and poetry
detailing interactions
among Mughal elites and
intellectuals of the
Brahmin (Hindu) and Jain
religious groups, particu-
larly during the height of
Mughal power from 1560
through 1650.
As Truschke discovered,
the Mughal courts in fact
sought to engage with
Indian culture. They creat-
ed Persian translations of
Sanskrit works, especially
those they perceived as
histories, such as the two
great Sanskrit epics.
For their part, upper-
caste Hindus known as
Brahmins and members of
the Jain tradition – one of
India’s most ancient reli-
gions – became influential
members of the Mughal
court, composed Sanskrit
works for Mughal readers
and wrote about their
imperial experiences.
“The Mughals held onto
power in part through
force, just like any other
empire,” Truschke
acknowledges, “but you
have to be careful about
attributing that aggression
to religious motivations.”
The empire, her research
uncovers, was not intent
on turning India into an
Islamic state.
“The Mughal elite
poured immense energy
into drawing Sanskrit
thinkers to their courts,
adopting and adapting
Sanskrit-based practices,
translating dozens of
Sanskrit texts into Persian
and composing Persian
accounts of Indian philos-
ophy.”
Such study of Hindu
histories, philosophies and
religious stories helped the
Persian-speaking imperial-
ists forge a new hybrid
political identity, she
asserts.
Truschke is working on
her next book, a study of
Sanskrit histories of
Islamic dynasties in India
more broadly.
Indian history, especial-
ly during Islamic rule, she
says, is very much alive
and debated today.
Moreover, a deliberate
misreading of this past
“undergirds the actions of
the modern Indian nation-
state,” she asserts.
And at a time of conflict
between the Indian state
and its Muslim popula-
tion, Truschke says, “It’s
invaluable to have a more
informed understanding
of that history and the
deep mutual interest of
early modern Hindus and
Muslims in one another’s
traditions.”
– Stanford Report
I
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