Interrogating the Politics of Historiography: A Critical Reading of Audrey Truschke’s Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth

Abstract

From the New Historicists to Hayden White, theorists have insinuated history’s inclination to fictionality. In the light of such claims, the primary objective of my paper is to probe into the controversial book Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth by Audrey Truschke so as to underscore the way historical representation is often suspected to be inflected by political agenda. The backflap of the jacket of her book introduces Truschke as “assistant professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.” In her book on Aurangzeb, she problematizes the conventional monodimensional representation of the eponymous emperor as “a vile oppressor of Hindus” and, consequently, triggers a violent controversy in the subcontinent.