The Hindu Right Chokes Academic Freedom – By Audrey Truschke 

In early March 2021, I awoke to a social media barrage of misogynist and bigoted slurs, unhinged accusations, and threats to hurt me and my family. For a few days, I thought little about this…. Over the past six years, I have become, by necessity, calloused to the worst humanity has to offer: hate, prejudice, and rage. This recent bout was the worst yet….

Just when the social media storm calmed a bit in mid-April 2021, I received a letter threatening a lawsuit. The letter came from a law firm that has represented Donald Trump and now represents another right-wing client: the Hindu American Foundation (HAF). HAF has ties with the RSS, a paramilitary group in India, and is widely known to promote an extreme right agenda….

I remain unclear about what set off this recent onslaught, but, generally, my research poses challenges for the Hindu Right. I work on Indo-Persian rule, presenting India’s Muslim kings of old as historical figures and highlighting Hindu-Muslim interactions in premodernity. Such research cuts against the Hindu Right’s politics of grievance, which demonizes Muslims in India’s past to justify their accelerating oppression of Muslims in India’s present….

https://academeblog.org/2021/06/14/the-hindu-right-chokes-academic-freedom/