A video clip from a podcast hosted by leftist rag The Wire ‘journalist’ Arfa Khanum Sherwani featuring JNU leftist ‘professor’ Nivedita Menon has sparked controversy on social media after both speakers mocked the concept of love jihad and dismissed concerns raised by those who cite a pattern of Muslim men targeting Hindu women for religious conversion, as reported in OpIndia.
The viral clip is from a podcast episode hosted by Sherwani in February 2026. During the discussion, Nivedita Menon and Sherwani rejected the concept of Love Jihad and characterised concerns surrounding alleged cases of Muslim men targeting Hindu women as expressions of insecurity among Hindu men.
The discussion began with references to women’s agency and free will before moving towards the question of why some Hindu women enter relationships with Muslim men. Sherwani repeatedly asked, “Why do Hindu girls like Muslim men so much?”.
Responding to the question, Menon remarked, “Muslim men must be so attractive… and they probably can’t find that in their own religion.”
Menon frames the concept of Love Jihad as an expression of helplessness among Hindu men and suggested that Muslim men are seen to be more ‘attractive’ or ‘desirable’. The tone and laughter during the discussion reduces interfaith relationships to a communal competition and stereotypes Hindu men and women.
While Islamist-leftist commentators such as Arfa and Nivedita often present themselves as liberal, feminist and progressive voices advocating Hindu-Muslim unity, moments such as these reveal the underlying Islamist mindset. The concept of women’s agency is selectively invoked depending on whether it aligns with narratives surrounding Muslim victimhood or Hindu majoritarianism.
It is a known fact that we have documented cases in which Muslim men pretended to be Hindu, established relationships with Hindu women, recorded intimate videos, engaged in blackmail, extorted money, pressured women to adopt Islamic practices including Namaz and Hijab, forced conversion to Islam and compelled them into Nikah. Such incidents are routinely dismissed as conspiracy theories by those who reject the concept of love jihad.
There are some self-described secular and progressive voices who echo narratives portraying Muslims as virile and dominant while depicting Hindus as weak, thereby engaging in communal boasting despite presenting themselves as opponents of communalism.
When we compare how the same people react to Islamist violence, we see that Muslim victimhood is often deployed as a political narrative to protect perpetrators, minimise crimes and shift blame onto victim communities. Take for example, the 1990 exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, where you had local Muslims and armed Islamic terrorists issuing threats against Hindu women, which were denied flatly by the same Islamist-leftist commentators and attributed those accounts to BJP-RSS propaganda.
A similar pattern exists in discussions about Love Jihad and conversion-related crimes. We have plenty of cases from Rajasthan’s Beawar and Ajmer, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and the grooming gang case in the United Kingdom, whererape and conversion have often been used as tools of religious conquest and humiliation of non-Muslims. Arfa Sherwani and Nivedita Menon mock Hindu victims sitting in their airconditioned chambers while downplaying “Maal-e-Ghanimat”.
People like Nivedita Menon serve as useful allies for Islamists by providing a Hindu voice that can be used to reinforce claims that Muslim men are viewed as more attractive by Hindu women. Now how different are these women from Muslim men who operate online groups targeting Hindu women with abusive language and religiously motivated sexual fantasies.
Both women along with their secular leftist progressive counterparts are denying cases in which Hindu women were deceived by Muslim men who concealed their religious identities or presented themselves as secular. The same people also celebrate (as we can see from the podcast) Muslim men as more virile or sexually potent due to dietary practices such as meat consumption.
Now Nivedita asks why Hindu men are not targeting Muslim women and doing the same. Does she not realise that Muslim women often face social restrictions and therefore have fewer opportunities to interact with Hindu men? In fact, Muslim men who welcome Hindu women converting to Islam often react aggressively when Muslim women are found to be dating Hindu men – we have reported so many cases like that in The Commune too.
Now let us see how Arfa Sherwani reacted to the TCS Nashik harassment case. Sherwani had questioned the integrity of the complainants and suggested that the complaint was intended to make the accused Muslim men unemployable. There you have it, the evergreen Victim Card!
Menon had described Love Jihad as a term created by Hindu Rashtra supporters. However, Menon needs to remember that the term originally emerged from Christian organisations in Kerala that raised concerns about girls being targeted and radicalised by the same Islamists!
And the same people – Sherwani and Menon have criticised films such as The Kerala Story as Islamophobic propaganda.
How will Menon and Sherwani describe the grooming gangs of Ajmer, the Chhangur Baba episode, the Bhopal love jihad cases? Will they again laugh it off like they did it in this podcast? In the Chhangur Baba case there were financial incentives offered to target Hindu women, and the same network protected the perpetrators while portraying victims as villains.
Now let us come to another hypocrisy – this same gang who cry foul when it comes to love jihad, will again cry victim for what it has named as ‘Bhagwa Love Trap’, which alleges that Hindu men seek to lure Muslim women for eventual conversion to Hinduism. So, will Menon say anything on this – she was the one who asked why Hindu men are not doing the same to Muslim women.
Menon laughed all this as lack of attractiveness and masculinity, but she must remember that physical strength and attractiveness are not linked to religion. Islamists employ deception to trap Hindu women. The day Menon realises it; the sun will probably rise in the West.
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