Fact Check: Nehru said he is ‘English by education, Muslim by culture and Hindu by accident’? Here’s the truth
A statement allegedly by India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, about his identity has gone viral. The quote was published in the Deccan Chronicle’s Hyderabad edition on November 19, 2018.
By M Ramesh Naik Published on 10 March 2025 1:53 PM IST
Claim: Jawaharlal Nehru said, “I am English by education, Muslim by culture and Hindu merely by accident.”
Fact: The claim is false. The quote was originally made by NB Khare, a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, about Nehru. DC issued a clarification about the wrongful attribution.
Hyderabad: A quote attributed to the first prime minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, has been widely shared on social media for several years. The latest claim states that Deccan Chronicle published the quote in its Hyderabad edition dated November 19, 2018.
An X user shared an image of the purported newspaper clipping from Deccan Chronicle with the caption “Deccan Chronicle’s Hyderabad edition, 19 Nov 2018.”(Archive)
The viral post implies that the newspaper published the quote as Nehru’s statement, which says, “By education I’m an Englishman, by views an internationalist, by culture, a Muslim and a Hindu only by accident of birth.”
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The quote was misattributed to Nehru.
A keyword search revealed that this claim has been circulating for several years and has been debunked multiple times.
We found a reference to the quote in the book ‘The Nehrus: Motilal and Jawaharlal’ by historian BR Nanda, which states that NB Khare, a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, had said, “Nehru was English by education, Muslim by culture and Hindu by an accident of birth.”
Further, we found a post by Gaurav Pandhi, a Congress leader, from November 24, 2018, where he clarified that Deccan Chronicle had wrongly attributed the quote to Nehru. He stated that the words were originally said by NB Khare in 1950 and later misrepresented as Nehru’s statement.
A day later, on November 25, 2018, Pandhi posted again, stating that Deccan Chronicle had corrected the mistake, issued a clarification, and apologised for the misattribution. He also attached a photo of the newspaper where the correction was published.
Additionally, Shashi Tharoor, in his book ‘Nehru: The Invention of India’, also attributed the quote to NB Khare, not Nehru. Tharoor himself responded to an X user on November 24, 2018, stating, “Yes, it’s a completely fake quote. A line of the Hindu Mahasabha’s NB Khare falsely attributed to Nehruji.”
On November 25, 2018, Shashi Tharoor also posted on X, stating, “Glad to see the @DeccanChronicle this morning retract the fake quote the BJP keeps falsely attributing to Nehru.” He also shared an image of the newspaper correction.
While investigating, we found a speech by Nehru in the book ‘The Great Speeches of Modern India’ by Rudrangshu Mukherjee, which does not include the viral quote. Nehru, in several of his speeches, spoke about his views on Indian identity and secularism, but there is no record of him making this statement.
NewsMeter concludes that the claim is false. The quote was originally made by NB Khare, a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, and was later misattributed to Jawaharlal Nehru.
(Note: NewsMeter previously fact-checked this claim in 2021 and found it false.)
