Audrey Truschke (Rutgers): Losing Religion and Other Challenges in Constructing the History of Hinduism

The Koshal Speaker Series and Department of Classics and Religious Studies present a talk by Audrey Truschke (Professor of History, Rutgers University-Newark): Constructing the history of Hinduism is fraught with challenges, including whether to identify Hinduism as a religion, specifying its dates, and defining this vast and mutable tradition. In this talk, I begin with the story of a fifteenth-century Kashmiri convert to Islam and pose the question: What religion did he convert from? I then use a series of examples from India's early modernity to nuance and question our collective assumptions about the historical development of Hinduism.