Did Jawaharlal Nehru address himself as an accidental Hindu? No. The statement was falsely attributed to him.

A viral claim on social media suggests that Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, once described himself as an “accidental Hindu.” A quote attributed to him reads, “by education I am an Englishman, by views an internationalist, by culture a Muslim, and I’m a Hindu only by accident of birth.”

However, Fact Crescendo found the claim to be false. These are not Nehru’s statements. Hindu Mahasabha leader N.B. Khare used these words for Nehru in the 1950s.

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The same post can be seen below as well. 

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Fact Crescendo had already debunked similar claims about Nehru. A post going viral on social media claimed that Nehru was born into a Muslim family and that his father was a Muslim, and that Nehru was a fake Hindu. Fact Crescendo had debunked this claim and proven it false. Below you can see Nehru’s genealogy. 

We first looked at the viral photo in depth. We found that the words ‘Nehru Khan Vansh’ were written on the bottom left of the photo.

After a relevant keyword search on Google, we found that ‘Nehru Khan Vans’ is the name of a book. We read some pages of this book online. In this book, at some places, Indira Gandhi’s name was struck out and written as Indira Khan or Farzana Begum and Sonia Gandhi’s name as Sonia Maino. 

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We found a clip of the Deccan Chronicles magazine on a Twitter handle dated 25 November 2018, in which the magazine clarified that Nehru did not call himself a ‘Hindu by accident of birth’. It is something that Hindu Mahasabha president N.B. Khare had said about Nehru in 1959.

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We also found that in a book named ‘The Nehrus: Motilal and Jawaharlal’ authored by B.R.Nanda. In this book the author had mentioned that Hindu Mahasabha leader N.B. Khare described Nehru as ‘Nehru was an Englishman by education, a Muslim by culture and a Hindu by accident of birth. 

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Conclusion: 

Fact Crescendo found the claim to be false. These are not Nehru’s statements. Hindu Mahasabha leader N.B. Khare used these words for Nehru in the 1950s.