Women activists have come out in support of Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Nivedita Menon, who has been portrayed as anti-national by a section of the media. More than a dozen prominent activists, including social activist Aruna Roy, social scientist Kamla Bhasin, scholar Zoya Hasan and economist Jayati Ghosh, released a statement on Monday in which they said they were "shocked by the vilification" of the senior professor.

They also said that Menon has been "subjected to further trauma" by the filing of "frivolous police complaints" against her by the Bharatiya Janata Party's student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, "with the sole intent to harass her". The statement added, "We find it reprehensible and condemnable that a person of Nivedita Menon’s eminence and standing should be subjected to gratuitous slander and be framed as an 'anti-national' by a section of people who are driven by narrow agendas."

On March 8, Zee News had aired a clip of a lecture given by Menon in 2014 on the JNU campus, where she was heard saying that India is illegally occupying Kashmir and that Hinduism is the world’s most violent religion because its very foundation is the caste system. Menon responded, saying "there has been a concerted campaign against me personally" and that her remarks were "massively decontextualised" by the news channel.