Did former PM Jawaharlal Nehru say that he was unfortunately a Hindu? Know the truth.

It is now common to spread baseless rumors about political leaders on social media. Recently, we have seen many posts going viral, defaming the life, name and character of many political leaders.

Currently, an old post about former PM Jawaharlal Nehru has resurfaced again and is going viral on social media. In this post, it was claimed that Jawaharlal Nehru had said that he was a Muslim by education, a Christian by culture and unfortunately a Hindu. 

However, Fact Crescendo found that the claim is false. These were not the words of Nehru but was said by the President of Hindu Mahasabha, N.B Khare in 1950. 

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Fact Check- 

We found some mistakes in the viral image. In the initial lines in the viral image we saw that Nehru was quoted saying he was Christian by education, Muslim by culture and Hindu by accident. But later in the same image we say Nehru was quoted saying that he was a Muslim by education, Christian by culture and unfortunately a Hindu. This raised our suspicion on the credibility of the claim. 

A Google Reverse Image Search led us to the same image posted on Facebook in 2021 by a user. In the lower left corner of the image the credit was given to Nehru Khan Vansh (Clan). 

Keeping the above fact in mind, we looked for ‘Nehru Khan Vansh’ on Google. We found that Nehru Khan Vansh is the name of a book. We read a few pages of the book available on the internet. In some places in this book, Indira Gandhi’s name has been corrected to Indira Khan and Sonia Gandhi’s name has been changed to Sonia Maino.

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After searching on Google using various keywords, we found a clip from the Deccan Chronicles News article on a Twitter handle on 25 November 2018, in which the Deccan Chronicles clarified that Nehru did not call himself a ‘Hindu by misfortune’.This was addressed by Hindu Mahasabha President NB Khare in 1950.

In the same thread, we saw Deccan Chronicle’s correction that the viral quote going viral in Nehru’s name was actually an allegation made by Hindu Mahasabha leader NB Khare in 1959.

We also came across a book ‘The Nehrus: Motilal and Jawaharlal’ published by author B.R. Nanda. He mentioned in the book that the Hindu Mahasabha leader N.B. Khare mentioned that Nehru was an Englishman by education, Muslim by culture and a Hindu by misfortune. 

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Conclusion: 

Fact Crescendo found the claim to be false. Nehru did not say that he was a Hindu by misfortune. This was an allegation by the Hindu Mahasabha leader N.B. Khare in 1959. N.B Khare’s quote was falsely attributed to Jawaharlal Nehru.