Nov 20, 2025
Fieldnotes from Battles over Indian History, Society, and Sciences
- 16:00 to 18:00
- Lecture
- Max Planck Research Group (ASTRA)
- Audrey Truschke
Abstract
Indian history is a fraught and crowded battlefield. Even using the descriptor “Indian,” rather than “South Asian” or “Bharatiya,” is a choice laden with intellectual and political baggage. Scholars, popular writers, and everyday people in South Asia and the diaspora engage in loud and contentious debates over the framing and content of Indian history. This High Gravity Talk identifies and investigates several recurring issues in such discussions—including claims of scientific progress in India’s past, Indo-Muslim attempts to understand Hindu traditions, conquests enacted in the name of Muslim-led empires, and more—by beginning with popular (mis)understandings and then offering robust, persuasive counternarratives. In part, popular wayward ideas focused on Indian history are about the past; they constitute attempts to project premodern Indian society and scientific traditions as homogenous and strangely modern. In this talk, I push back against such ahistorical rewritings and recover specific features of Indian history, especially regarding the specific contours of its knowledge systems and cosmopolitan traditions. Such popular claims about the Indian past also hold power and perils in the present-day. In this regard, I examine how (a)historical claims are often intertwined with contemporary projects of political and social domination and disenfranchisement.
Biography
Audrey Truschke is Professor of South Asian History at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. She received her PhD from Columbia University in 2012 and held postdocs at the University of Cambridge (Gonville and Caius College) and Stanford University prior to being appointed at Rutgers University in 2015.
Audrey’s research interests center around the Mughals, cross-cultural encounters, and premodern cultural and religious exchanges. She is the author of four books: Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (2016), Aurangzeb (2017), The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim Rule (2021), and India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent (2025).
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Photography
Click to view photo gallery.
Anuj Misra at High Gravity Talk. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
ASTRA staff members Wan-Chun Cheng and Mariana Chisté Reinhardt. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Audrey Truschke talking to Jacob Schmidt-Madsen. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Jean Arzoumanov and Anuj Misra. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Jacob Schmidt-Madsen, Ole Birk Laursen, and Anuj Misra in conversation with Audrey Truschke. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Jacob Schmidt-Madsen and Ole Birk Laursen in conversation with Audrey Truschke. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Lecture guests. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Anuj Misra. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Anuj Misra introducing the speaker. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Anuj Misra introduction speech. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Anuj Misra introduction. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Audrey Truschke delivering High Gravity Talk. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Audrey Truschke lecture. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Audrey Truschke lecture. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Audrey Truschke lecture. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Guests listening to Audrey Truschke's lecture. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Audrey Truschke lecture. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Audrey Truschke lecture. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Q & A with Anuj Misra and Audrey Truschke. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Guest asking question to Audrey Truschke. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
ASTRA group photo. Source: Andreea Dican, 2025.
Contact and Registration
We welcome both internal and external guests to this event. The event is free, but registration is required.
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For further information about the High Gravity Talks series, please contact Anuj MISRA or Ole Birk Laursen.
About This Series
Organized by the Astral Sciences in Trans-Regional Asia (ASTRA) Research Group, the High Gravity Talks series aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue by bringing leading voices to the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG). Each year, ASTRA invites a few distinguished and world-renowned scholars to Berlin to deliver public lectures on topics relevant to the group’s research into Eurasian astral sciences, broadly defined, and to engage with a broader academic and public audience. While organized within the remit of ASTRA, the High Gravity Talks will resonate beyond the group’s immediate focus, creating innovative synergies with other departments and research groups across the MPIWG and attracting a diverse audience of students, academics, and interested members of the public.