I used to think the left hates India and so the Hindus. However, it’s the opposite. Basically, it hates the Hindus and so does India.
This came to me second-hand via a recent interview of Nivedita Menon, a former professor at JNU, with Arfa Khanum Sherwani, a senior editor at The Wire. Menon, when asked about Love Jihad, which is a well-documented phenomenon, said there must be something in the Muslim men that the Hindu girls consider them as desirable. Menon didn’t stop at this and said laughingly: “Aren’t you (the promoters of this concept) ashamed of even saying this?”
According to the Hinduphobia Tracker—a database documenting hate crimes against Hindus—in just the last three years (2023-2026), 1200 cases of Love Jihad have been documented. Out of this, in 1170 cases, the perpetrators were Muslims. Of course, Ms Menon, we should be the ones who should be ashamed.
I got you. How can she deny it then? For this, Ms Menon’s definition of Love Jihad deserves a read: “Love Jihad ka matlab hota hai ki auratein apni marzi se, apni chuninda mardon ke saath chale jaa rahe hain. Ab ho sakta hai ye mard unki jaati ka naa ho, unke religion ka naa ho.” I know it’s “apne”, “chali”, and “rahi”, but the fault lies in what Menon said. Also, apni marzi se chale jaana is called a consensual relationship, whereas Love Jihad means the Muslim men deceiving and trapping Hindu or other non-Muslim girls in love by hiding their identity and then forcing them to convert into Islam. To any person having Google and knowing basic typing, this definition is available with one click. But ignorance helps when you just do not want to accept the truth and “laughing” is the only thing about which you want to remain concerned.
The same ignorance could be observed in the words of Sherwani, when she recently mocked the Hindu civilisation by commenting “5000 saal puraani sabhyata” on a random video featuring some people taking dead goats and running away when a truck at Kaushambi, Uttar Pradesh, overturned. It was nowhere mentioned that these people were Hindu. Yet, Sherwani said what she wanted. Happens when hatred is over your mind and you are a regular consumer of polarising content. Or when some Hindus attempted to bring pigs inside a Mira Road Housing Society, Mumbai, as a sign of protest against the Muslim residents of the society bringing goats for the 2026 Bakrid in a “residential” society. Instead of asking why to do the sacrifice in a residential society, she insulted them by saying: “BJP ne kya haal kardiya hai desh ke Hinduon ka”. Protesting against a rightful thing makes you a person affected by the BJP and allowing your residential society to become a butcher house makes you, I guess, in Sherwani’s opinion, a truly secular.
A secular just like her. Who sees nothing wrong in throwing non-vegetarian food remains into the Ganga River. Who didn’t dare to comment on the political killings of the BJP workers or the Bengali women getting raped in Bengal when the TMC was in power, maybe because, per her, Mamata Banerjee was an “efficient administrator”. Or who didn’t say, as far as my research goes, anything condemning the April 2025 Pahalgam attack. An attack in which Hindus were killed by the Islamists because they were Hindus. However, Sherwani did share the ‘so-called’ assaults, acts of vandalism and incidents of harassment against Muslims in the aftermath of the Pahalgam. A reminder for us that she thinks and acts in binary.
The height of hatred against the Hindus can be noticed in Menon’s statement, when she had said: Hinduism is the most violent society in the world. This violence was linked to the caste system. I wonder what kind of violence this is that has left the oppressed communities to remain in the majority till now.
What you’ll notice in both Menon and Sherwani’s cases is the sheer ignorance. Ignorance towards the truth of the plight of the Hindus. The audacity to laugh at the tears of the Hindu families who bear the brunt of the menace called Love Jihad. To not know anything, even about the concept properly. Yet, sitting to give an interview, thinking that whatever we say becomes the reality. To pass a demeaning comment without even having a clue whether the people mentioned are Hindus or casually calling a society violent. Indeed, the left hates us because we are Hindus.
