Fact Check: Jawarharlal Nehru was publicly slapped in 1962 for saying ‘Aryans were refugees in India’

A picture of Jawarharlal Nehru, purportedly taken after he was allegedly slapped, is doing the rounds on the Internet, with some users claiming that the nation’s first Prime Minister was slapped in public during an event in 1962 after he said during his speech, “Aryans were refugees in India.”

The claim is that Nehru was allegedly slapped by the chief guest of the event and Vedic scholar Vidyanand Videh. The Vedic scholar, as per the claim, objected to the remark made by Nehru and said that Aryans were the original inhabitants of India. 

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A message in one of the posts reads, “The Aryas were not refugees they were my ancestors and they were original inhabitants of Bharat but your ( Nehru’s ancestors ) were of Arabian descent and in your veins flows Arab blood so you in fact are not the original inhabitants of this great Country … if Sardar Patel was the PM instead of you, we would not be in such a sorry state.”

The message is believed to be sourced from a book written by Vidyanand Videh.

The claim of Nehru being publicly slapped for saying “Aryans were refugees in India” is False. 

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Team Opoyi team did a reverse image search on the widely-circulated images and found that the photo has been used in an article by Outlook, which had the image by The Associated Press, with a caption, “Braced for the worst Nehru is prevented from plunging into a riotous crowd in 1962, before the war.” 

The Outlook report is a collection of photos, including the viral photo.

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“A security man grabbed Indian Prime Minister Nehru to keep him from plunging into a riotous crowd at a meeting of the Congress Party in Patna, India, January 1962. Later in the year, Communist China’s attack on India plunged Nehru into new troubles,” says the original AP image in the archives of the website. 

Thus, it is clear that the photo is not related to the claim that is being circulated on the internet.