{"id":18986,"date":"2026-06-09T17:11:38","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/the-rise-of-gym-jihad-fitness-centers-become-the-new-battleground-india-news\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T17:11:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:41:38","slug":"the-rise-of-gym-jihad-fitness-centers-become-the-new-battleground-india-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/the-rise-of-gym-jihad-fitness-centers-become-the-new-battleground-india-news\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of ‘Gym Jihad’: Fitness Centers Become the New Battleground | India News"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The gym was supposed to be neutral territory where people arrived in all shapes and sizes to sweat through their weights and workouts. Nobody cared what you were called or who you prayed to. Over the past few months, however, a mix of criminal cases and viral claims has brought communal suspicion into a space that once seemed insulated from it.Like \u2018love jihad<\/a>\u2019, \u2018thook jihad\u2019, \u2018land jihad\u2019 and \u2018UPSC jihad\u2019, the latest addition to this growing vocabulary of compound nouns is \u2018gym jihad\u2019. In January, police in Mirzapur alleged some gym owners and trainers were using fitness centres to befriend women, film compromising videos and pressure them into conversion. In March, a Saharanpur gym trainer was accused of drugging a nursing student’s protein drink and sexually assaulting her.By April, right-wing groups in Karnataka’s Hubballi were protesting outside a police station, claiming gyms had become hubs of \u2018love jihad\u2019. In the last four years, more than a dozen such cases have surfaced. On May 19, authorities in Mirzapur booked 10 gym operators under the Gangsters Act.The most recent flashpoint unfolded in Shamli, Uttar Pradesh, where the family of 30-year-old Ayush Malik accused a female gym trainer-physiotherapist of a calculated conspiracy. According to the police complaint filed by Malik\u2019s father, a pharmaceutical businessman, the accused trainer engineered a relationship to brainwash his son, coercing him into a secret nikah and a new identity as Mohammad Ali to usurp the family’s property.The narrative fractured when Ayush publicly rejected the allegations, asserting he converted entirely of his own free will after a decade of studying Islam. Despite his defense, local authorities registered an FIR under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act and arrested both the gym trainer and her father.In such cases, even before the charges can be verified, social media amplifies the narrative. One viral video last month claimed a Delhi-based Muslim gym instructor was using personal training sessions to advance an agenda. Fact-checkers later debunked the clip as manipulated, but not before it spread widely through WhatsApp groups.The resulting anxieties rarely manifest as overt violence. Gurgaon-based fitness enthusiast Himesh Nanda (name changed) says he began noticing more overt religious symbolism among trainers after the UP cases gained traction online.\u201cYou\u2019ll see the red and yellow thread \u2014 the kalawa \u2014 very prominently on wrists now,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd more conspicuous displays of tattoos with imagery like Mahadev, Bajrangbali, Om, Ram, etc. In my knowledge, they are more closely associated with akharas and pehlwani culture than with urban gym chains.\u201dIn Hubballi, a 23-year-old Muslim gym trainer, Sameer Mulla, was assaulted by local groups over allegations involving a young Hindu woman. While right-wing outfits branded the case as \u2018love jihad\u2019, city police and the woman\u2019s family cited rape, blackmail and abduction. \u201cThe fact is that we have a victim of sexual abuse and an accused person, and we have taken necessary legal action. A fitness trainer is a fitness trainer. Which community or caste a person belongs to is not a matter of concern for us,\u201d TOI was told by police commissioner N Shashi Kumar, who led the investigation.In Bhopal last year, right-wing activists demanded gym owners pledge not to employ Muslim men and organised mass recitations of the Hanuman Chalisa inside gyms. The controversy escalated when a police officer was filmed ordering a gym to ban Muslim staff and clients. Senior officials later suspended the sub-inspector for issuing the directive.\u201cBut suspension hardly works. There is always a new fever in MP. Sometimes it\u2019s \u2018thook jihad\u2019 because of an unverified viral video of a fruit vendor gargling water over a fruit cart, or it\u2019s \u2018land jihad\u2019 or \u2018UPSC jihad\u2019. The community is routinely targeted to deflect attention from other administrative issues,\u201d says Bhopal-based advocate Deepak Bundele, who has routinely petitioned the NHRC on alleged \u2018love jihad\u2019 cases.Members of the community have also challenged the cases in court. \u201cUnder what law have the gym owners been arrested in Mirzapur,\u201d asks Anas Tanwir, founder of the Indian Civil Liberties Union. The Supreme Court is reviewing the Gangsters Act used in the case, but Tanwir says that despite earlier rulings that allegations alone are insufficient grounds for arrest, youth remain in jail for indefinite periods.In north Delhi’s Wazirabad, Sultan Shaikh insists his gym is \u201cnot a battleground in the culture wars\u201d. He has run GS Fitness, a neighbourhood gym, for five-six years. His Instagram reels mix workout clips with messages against violence, hate and vandalism, and draws on Hindu religious values. \u201cPeople hear rumours, then they go shouting \u2018Jai Shri Ram\u2019 and vandalise places. I tell them to first understand what Ram actually stood for.\u201dThe response is often hostile. \u201cPeople comment asking if I\u2019m running a madrasa or a temple in the name of a gym,\u201d he says. But Shaikh insists that \u201call this \u2018gym jihad\u2019 nonsense is political tactics.\u201dYet gym-goers like Prachi, a Pune-based fitness enthusiast, proudly says her gym does not hire Muslim trainers. \u201cThat makes me feel safe,\u201d says the 35-year-old IT professional, who also recounts how her husband\u2019s friend \u201csaved\u201d a cousin in Vidarbha from a Muslim gym trainer after they had an affair. \u201cWhen a Hindu trainer misbehaves with a Hindu girl in a gym, at least there is no added fear of conversion, right?\u201d<\/div>\n


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AI representational image The gym was supposed to be neutral territory where people arrived in all shapes and sizes to sweat through their weights and workouts. Nobody cared what you were called or who you prayed to. Over the past few months, however, a mix of criminal cases and viral claims has brought communal suspicion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-country"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}