Fact-Check: False Claim About Nehru’s Religion, Revived and Made To Go Viral

Nehru never said that he was unfortunately a Hindu. Hindu Sabha president N B Khare said the statement.

A statement attributed to former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru has been going viral with the claim that he had said, "I am a Christian by education, a Muslim by culture and a Hindu by misfortune." 

(Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

Is this true?: No, the claim is false.

• We discovered that Nehru did not make that statement. We talked to numerous historians and looked through books about him, yet we were unable to find any record of Nehru making such a statement.

What we found: We found the reference of this comment being made on Nehru in BR Nanda's book 'The Nehrus: Motilal and Jawaharlal '.

• BR Nanda has authored books about Motilal Nehru and Jawaharlal Nehru. He has also written the biography of Mahatma Gandhi.

• As per Nanda, NB Khare, a Hindu Mahasabha leader, had commented on Nehru stating that he was educated in English, had a culture influenced by Muslims, and was unfortunate in being Hindu.
  

• In his book 'Nehru: The Invention of India', Congress MP Shashi Tharoor also refers to N B Khare's 1950 statement about Nehru as being "English by education, Muslim by culture, and Hindu by misfortune."

This claim has previously gone viral in 2020 and 2021.

• The Quint fact-checked this claim in 2021 and spoke to historians to debunk the statement.

• Purushottam Agarwal, a famous Hindi writer, authored a book about Jawaharlal Nehru titled 'Who is Bharat Mata?' He dismissed this assertion and stated that it is incorrect.

• We also spoke with author Piyush Babele, who penned a book about Nehru titled 'Nehru Myth and Truth'. He denied the claim and stated that Nehru did not make that statement.

• This claim was also shared by the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party's IT Cell Amit Malviya in 2015.

In 2020, BJP's Sambit Patra also repeated the same claim on TV channel, Times Now in a show hosted by journalist Navika Kumar.

Jawaharlal Nehru said that he was Christian by education, Muslim by culture & tradition and Hindu only by ‘accident of birth’: @sambitswaraj, National Spokesperson, BJP tells Navika Kumar on @thenewshour. | #AghadiMandirHypocrisy pic.twitter.com/MLlJzfH3Kp

— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) July 20, 2020

Conclusion: An old claim about Nehru's religion has been revived and made to go viral again.

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