American Scholars of India Confront a Rise in Threats

Audrey Truschke is a historian of South Asia at Rutgers University and a vocal critic of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist government. Her scholarship and her politics have won her tens of thousands of followers online, but also, a barrage of violent threats like this:

‘Mind your own business u bitch I m Hindu I am kindly request you stop spreading rumours about my Hinduism#my religion otherwise u will be killed by someone don't underestimate us...’

In response, Truschke and other academics who have been harassed or threatened formed the South Asia Scholar Activist Collective, and published a Hindutva Harassment Field Manual. [Hindutva is a term used to describe an ideology of Hindu nationalism and militancy]

"What we see in both the American context and in the Indian context," said one of the members of the collective, Simran Jeet Singh, "is a desire from the [political] right to bring forward a vision of history that fits into their cultural, supremacist worldviews."